One of the categories within Google Arts & Culture’s (GAC) latest exhibition on Hindi film history is titled Pocket Gallery — a name that brings to mind memories of those treasured childhood collections, the troves of matchbox covers and film posters carefully stowed away. It opens into a virtual space that imitates an art gallery, complete with floors, rooms, and walls, which the user can navigate using their keypad. On a wall hangs a black and white photograph of filmmaker V. Shantaram poring over a strip of film, engrossed in editing at the erstwhile Prabhat Studios, his face softly illuminated by a beam of light. In the next hall, a horde of portraits — in monochromes and in colour, spanning different eras — are bunched together. The design is fascinating and fun but also radical, for it brings a vast collection of cultural treasures from brick-and-mortar vaults to an immensely accessible ‘museum without walls’.
Unveiled on November 20 at the opening ceremony of NFDC Film Bazaar in Panjim, the exhibition marks GAC’s foray into the world of Indian cinema. Collaborating with 21 cultural organisations such as the National Film Archive of India, the Museum of Art & Photography, Cinemaazi, and Bollywood studio giant Yash Raj Films, it presents a multifaceted narrative of Hindi film history (now available on the GAC website.) There is an abundance of film ephemera — over 7,000 high-resolution behind-the-scenes stills, posters, and videos — whose weight is offset by over 120 meticulously curated stories. A collection of stills accompanied by vividly descriptive notes, curated by documentary filmmaker and author Nasreen Munni Kabeer, delves into Hindi cinema’s Golden Era (the late 1940s to the early 1960s), while one of the sections curated by the Museum of Art and Photography narrativises the portrayal of female friendships.
Particularly striking is how the exhibition demonstrates technology’s potent role in bridging individuals with archival materials. The user can browse movie posters from over 100 years, neatly sorted by their colour palettes, and photographs arranged in a chronological timeline. Using Google’s Augmented Reality and Street View technologies, the platform arranges a virtual tour of Mumbai’s grand old cinema halls — Liberty, Regal, and Eros — and film studios, capturing their architectural splendour through immersive 360-degree imagery.
