At the 18th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Malavika VN's 'Viraamam' stood out for its attention to a profession that rarely receives sustained cinematic scrutiny: the film projectionist. Screened in the short documentary competition section, the work uses a modest subject to make a larger argument about memory, labour and the fragile infrastructure that keeps cinema alive.
Projection as Labour
'Viraamam' enters a space that is both technical and deeply emotional. Projectionists occupy a hidden but essential position in the film ecosystem, responsible for ensuring that images, sound and timing reach audiences without interruption. In an era when digital platforms and automated systems have transformed exhibition practices, the projection booth can seem like a relic. Malavika VN's film appears to resist that erasure by treating the booth not as a backstage utility, but as a site of expertise, discipline and cultural continuity.
The documentary's inclusion in IDSFFK's competition section is significant because the festival has long functioned as a platform for formally adventurous and socially attentive nonfiction cinema. By placing 'Viraamam' alongside other short documentaries, the festival underscores a curatorial interest in films that observe overlooked lives and professions with precision rather than spectacle. The choice of subject also reflects a broader documentary impulse in India: to document not only public events and political conflict, but the quieter systems of work that sustain public culture.
A Vanishing Craft
The projectionist's world has changed dramatically over the past two decades. The shift from celluloid to digital projection has reduced the tactile, mechanical relationship many technicians once had with film prints, reels and projectors. Yet the profession has not disappeared; instead, it has been reshaped by new technologies, tighter exhibition schedules and a different kind of technical responsibility. A film like 'Viraamam' gains force from this transition, because it captures a craft at the edge of transformation.
That makes the documentary relevant beyond the festival circuit. In India, where cinema remains one of the most powerful mass cultural forms, the labour behind exhibition is often taken for granted. Projectionists are among the many workers whose names rarely appear in public discourse, even though their skill determines whether a screening succeeds or fails. By focusing on them, Malavika VN's film restores a human face to a process usually described in mechanical terms.
The title itself suggests pause, stillness or interruption, and that tonal quality seems apt for a film concerned with reflection rather than speed. In documentary terms, such a subject invites a patient gaze. It asks viewers to consider the relationship between technology and memory, and between the visible glamour of cinema and the invisible labour that makes that glamour possible.
Festival Context Matters
IDSFFK has become one of India's most important venues for documentary and short-form cinema, especially for films that do not fit commercial distribution models. Its short documentary competition section is often where emerging voices and formally distinct works gain early recognition. For a film like 'Viraamam', that context matters as much as the subject itself. The festival audience is typically receptive to films that value observation, atmosphere and social detail over narrative urgency.
The screening also points to the continuing vitality of regional documentary filmmaking in India. Kerala, with its strong cinephile culture and long engagement with politically conscious cinema, remains a particularly fertile environment for such work. A documentary about projectionists resonates in that setting because it speaks to the material conditions of film culture itself: the workers, spaces and technologies that allow cinema to exist as a shared public event.
What 'Viraamam' ultimately seems to offer is not nostalgia, but recognition. It suggests that even as cinema changes format and delivery, its human infrastructure remains worthy of attention. In doing so, the film joins a growing body of Indian documentaries that locate significance in ordinary labour and in the institutions that quietly shape cultural life. At IDSFFK 2026, that perspective gives the film its authority.