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ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 43 The poster of Zabak (1961) directed by Homi Wadia. Out of Sight: Archiving Hidden Histories of Practice Debashree Mukherjee All photographs courtesy Priya Paul Our understanding of Indian cinema would remain incomplete until we acknowledged its supporting cast of hairdressers, poster painters, costume designers, still photographers, makeup artists and numerous other specialists invisible to the public eye. In January 2013, Debashree Mukherjee curated an exhibition of Hindi film memorabilia titled ‘Maya Mahal’, which featured artefacts from the private collection of Priya Paul, Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels. In this essay, Mukherjee uses examples from the collection to point to hidden histories of work and practice, and to give us a fragmented view of low-budget films, lost genres and the wage-workers who mark each film with their individual skills. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 44 ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1 eterodox in its scope and the elemental contract of cinema range, Priya Paul’s itself: to deliver sensory excitement, Hcollection of film voyeuristic delight and magical memorabilia represents an eccentric worlds. Thus, the exhibition mix of films. There are archives larger showcased genres, practitioners and than this, there are archives that are aesthetics that are often forgotten in more systematic, but the pleasure of a bid to celebrate auteurs and ‘classics’. serendipity springs from This is an alternative history of juxtaposition, not from order and Hindi cinema—one that is decidedly expanse. Comprising approximately excessive, melodramatic, even 5,000 paper artefacts, the Priya Paul utopian.
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