1956 Bangalore, India
Gave Cursetjee
Born in 1943
Bangalore, India
Interviewed on February 8th, 2024
To start with I should let you know that I was born into a family of film exhibitors who owned and operated four garrison cinemas in North India army cantonments. So I got to see bits and bobs of a lot of movies, mostly comedies like Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. However the first one I remember well and enjoyed was Around the World in 80 Days, an adventure comedy, which I watched at about 13 years old.
Around the World in 80 Days took us to see many interesting places in the world which I hadn’t been exposed to before. It was very adventurous. I even learned what the international date line meant, which saved the day for the team in the end. I remember the cast was David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, and Cantinflas. David Nivens was perfect for the role he played. Cantinflas was outstanding and kept me amused with his shenanigans. I walked to see the film with my friend Rajkumar Rao, around 1956. We had ice cream cones during the interval [British-Indian term for intermission] and shared a Kit Kat during the movie. The cinema was called Rex on Brigade road in Bangalore in Southern India. There was no usher or assigned seats.
As I mentioned earlier, as a kid I grew up surrounded by cinemas and cinematic equipment. My father came up with an ingenious plan to rent movies from distributors for a week at a time. Each film was exhibited in one Garrison cinema and then driven to the next cantonment overnight, and repeated until it was shown in all four cantonments within a week.
Film in those days was made of cellulose acetate, wound on several steel reels about 18 inches in diameter, and they were packed in steel trunks for transportation. Father brought a Buick Super 8, so that he could drive the movie overnight to the next cantonment. He was always accompanied by Harbans Singh who was the operator of the RCA projectors in all four cinemas. Harbans always carried a loaded 12 bore shotgun as the route was infested with dacoits [armed robbers in India or Burma].
As a kid, about 6 years old, I spent much time in the projection room with Harbans who allowed me to do things like rewinding reels, and splice film. What was tricky was switching projectors as a reel was coming to its end. He even taught me how to adjust the ark of the carbon electrodes that produced the light. In our office storeroom there were spools of discarded film, empty reels, rewinding machines, splicing equipment and most importantly slightly damaged lenses, all of which I commandeered. All one needed was to put together a shoe box and a hand operated movie projector powered by a bright household bulb. I spent several evenings with my family and friends watching these disjointed films with no sound and many breakdowns. I thank my parents for trusting me with the expensive equipment and for their total support and encouragement.
Gave is my paternal Grandfather.
