Movement in two dimensions : a study of the animated and projected pictures which preceded the invention of cinematography (1963)

MOVEMENT IN TWO DIMENSIONS century by the Shadra Film Company in Bombay as a modern development of a native tradition. So natural is the medium to the Indians that they have even used it, quite unself-consciously, in the service of religion. Just as the shadow show celebrates the gods of the Buddhist and Brahmin hierarchies, so the fdm conjured up the divinities of the new religion from the West, Christianity. Curt Moreck, in a fascinating book on the sociological aspects of the cinema, reports that when he was in Calcutta in 1908 the cinema was regularly used in the churches there as part of the ritual. After the priest had intoned his final Amen, a single choir boy would sing a hymn while every light was slowly extinguished and the windows were shuttered. Clouds of incense bemused the senses of the congregation, and then suddenly through the smoke a colossal figure of Christ was flung on to a screen. The whole scene of Christ walking on the waters was shown in vivid detail: mountainous seas threatened to engulf the worshippers, the pallid moon shone fitfully through ragged clouds and cast a metallic glow on the giant, striding figure, his white, billowing robe, and the terrified Peter. If any proof were needed of the direct kinship of the film and the magic practices of the priests of antiquity and of Kircher with his projection of the Ascension, Moreck's account provides it. 58