In Cinema

Books: on cinema theory and post-production filmscripts by Indian directors,titles by Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Pudovkin.

'Shorts',this country's first-ever international festival and national competition of short and documentary films: Seagull conceived and organized this festival, finding the funding and collaborating with the Federation of Film Societies of India, and the consular cultural wings of USA, Britain, France, Germany, Soviet Union, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Poland. Documentary packages were sent by several countries outside Europe and America as well. With its distinguished national jury and multiple venues within the city, this festival generated tremendous excitement, giving the documentary form its due for the first time in this country. It inspired the now established regular government short-film festival.

Splice, a film journal: A response to the need for a serious film periodical that offered an Indian perspective on cinema, both national and international. Splice filled the gap between gossipy mainstream commercial magazines and the struggling 'little magazines' in regional languages. Filmscripts, interviews with filmmakers and artistes, reviews, previews, sociological studies, analyses of films-each of its four issues was packed with valuable discourse and documentation.

Seagull Film Society: Affiliated to the Federation of Film Societies of India, this was an attempt to facilitate and promote the viewing of serious cinema in an organized manner. Avoiding the common trend of mixed bag screenings of assorted foreign art films, Seagull planned and presented retrospectives devoted to Prithviraj Kapoor, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, John Ford, Amol Palekar, Grigory Kozintsev and others, packages of films in the arts, and study sessions on films and filmmakers conducted or addressed by visiting experts like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, P. K. Nair, Amol Palekar and Andrew Sinclair.