Hidden Craft
At the 18th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Malavika VN's 'Viraamam' stood out for its focus on a profession that rarely receives public attention: the film projectionist. Screened in the short documentary competition section, the film enters a space where documentary cinema is often at its strongest — in recovering overlooked lives, preserving vanishing work cultures and asking audiences to look again at the machinery behind the image.
The choice of subject is significant. In an era dominated by digital distribution, streaming platforms and automated exhibition systems, the projectionist can seem like a figure from another time. Yet the role remains essential to the integrity of the cinematic experience. Projectionists are the custodians of timing, image quality, sound coordination and the physical or digital delivery of a film to the screen. By centring this labour, 'Viraamam' does more than profile a profession; it restores visibility to the human hands that make cinema possible.
The film's inclusion in IDSFFK's competition section also places it within a festival known for encouraging rigorous, socially alert nonfiction work. Kerala's documentary ecosystem has long supported films that engage with labour, memory, identity and institutional change. In that context, 'Viraamam' appears to participate in a broader cinematic conversation about what is lost when technical work is treated as invisible and what is gained when it is documented with care.
Cinema Behind The Screen
The projection booth has historically been one of the most consequential yet least seen spaces in a theatre. Before the rise of digital systems, projectionists managed reels, splices, lamp houses and frame alignment under considerable pressure. Even today, despite technological simplification, the job demands precision and responsibility. A single error can affect an entire screening. A well-run projection, by contrast, is often noticed only in its absence.
That invisibility is precisely what gives 'Viraamam' its documentary force. Films about labour often succeed when they reveal not only what workers do, but how their work structures public life while remaining uncredited. Projectionists occupy a paradoxical position in cinema culture: they are indispensable to the audience's encounter with film, yet their names are rarely known outside the industry. By selecting this subject, Malavika VN taps into a deeper question about cultural memory — who gets remembered when an art form celebrates its stars, but not its technicians.
The timing of the film's screening is also notable. As exhibition spaces continue to adapt to digital workflows and changing audience habits, professions tied to analogue cinema face uncertainty. Some theatres have modernised; others have closed; many have reduced the number of specialist roles once required to run a screening. A documentary on projectionists therefore becomes not only a portrait of work, but a record of transition. It captures a profession at the intersection of continuity and decline, where expertise persists even as the conditions around it shift.
Why The Film Matters
'Viraamam' matters because it expands the documentary frame beyond the visibly dramatic. Rather than pursuing spectacle, it appears to draw strength from observation, attention and the dignity of routine. That approach aligns with the best traditions of short documentary filmmaking, where a compact form can still produce a layered social argument. A film about projectionists can speak to labour, technology, memory, and the ethics of cultural preservation without needing to announce those themes overtly.
For festival audiences, such work can be especially resonant. IDSFFK has often functioned as a site where filmmakers test the boundaries of nonfiction storytelling and where viewers encounter subjects that mainstream cinema may ignore. In that setting, 'Viraamam' likely invites reflection on the unseen systems that sustain public culture. It asks viewers to consider not only the film on the screen, but the labour that precedes the image and the people who ensure that the image arrives intact.
The documentary also underscores a broader truth about cinema itself: every screening is a collaboration between artists, technicians and institutions. Projectionists represent one of the most direct links between the filmmaker's intent and the audience's experience. By focusing on them, 'Viraamam' affirms that cinema is not only an art of creation, but also an art of transmission.
As IDSFFK continues to showcase short documentaries with strong social and cultural insight, Malavika VN's film fits squarely within the festival's intellectual terrain. It is a reminder that the most enduring documentary subjects are not always the most visible ones. Sometimes, they are the people standing in the dark, ensuring that the light reaches the screen.