Director: K.R. Manoj; Writer: Ranjini Krishnan, P.V. Shajikumar, K. R. Manoj; Producer: Tropical Cinema; Cinematographer: Shehnad Jalaal; Editor: Mahesh Narayanan; Cast: Murali Gopy, Lena, Alencier Ley Lopez, Indrans, Maniyan Pilla Raju, Sudheer Karamana, Parvathi T., Krishnan Balakrishnan, Sunil Sukhada, N.L. Balakrishnan, Nandhu
Duration: 01:54:09; Aspect Ratio: 2.353:1; Hue: 21.138; Saturation: 0.165; Lightness: 0.241; Volume: 0.083; Cuts per Minute: 5.002
Summary: A gripping tale is woven around Kanyaka Talkies, a twenty-year-old movie theatre in a sleepy Kerala village, where the mainstay was the screening of soft porn. The theatre owner moves away and leaves the theatre to the parish, which decides to convert it into a church. The priest who comes to the village to spread the word of the Lord is haunted by a woman's voice. Whose voice is it? Is it the voice of the countless heroines from C grade movies, which were previously screened in the cinema? The priest is slowly driven crazy and suffers a crisis of faith. Adding to the mix is a woman who leads the double life of a home nurse and a porn star. The film deftly weaves themes of body, desire, guilt and forbidden pleasures into its racy and spellbinding narrative.
“Kanyaka Talkies is an ode to the many C-class theatres in Kerala that are finding it difficult to survive in the age of television. Once upon a time in Kerala, we had some 1,500 such cinema halls. Now the number, I believe, is less than 450. The melancholic film is imagined as a contemplation on human desire, where colonialism, religion and cinema are the three main interlocutors. It is the story of Yakoob (Alencier), who runs one such theatre in a village in the mountains. Certain circumstances force Yakoob to desert his beloved theatre, leaving the space to be transformed by the villagers”--K.R. Manoj
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