Kumar Talkies, the first feature documentary from Pankaj Rishi Kumar, explores the relationship between Kalpi, a small town in northern India, and its only surviving cinema hall, a decrepit and cash-strapped shed squatting in a seedy corner of town. Cinema emerges as a vehicle in which the townspeople expect their own existence to be both captured and displayed. In the cinema, images and meanings constantly flow between the theater hall, where disbelief is suspended, and the broader world, where economic decay threatens the Kapliwallah′s survival. Kumar Talkies documents the vital realities of Kalpi and its implication in the larger drama of filmmaking in India, where the compelling images of television are fast replacing the sensual experience of cinema. Cinema culture in Kalpi teeters on the edge of collapse, perpetuating alien dreams and borrowed desires far removed from the banality of existence. The film questions: How does cinema survive, despite the forces that threaten its prosperity? The issues that surround this question are convincingly addressed by incorporating archival video, television and photographic images into the multiple narratives that texture the film. The multi-layering of images and sounds proved an effective means for capturing the Kalpi′s collective imagination: a fractured realm where value-based judgments and preconceived attitudes about cinema are forcefully challenged. (production notes)