Salim Baba
USA , 2007

Directed by: Tim Sternberg
Script: Tim Sternberg
Producer: Francisco Bello, Scott Mosier, Raja Dey
Production company: Ropa Vieja Films
Cinematography: Francisco Bello, Raja Dey
Editing: Tim Sternberg
Music: David Darling

Format: boja, color, 35mm
Running time: 15'

Synopsis
In North Kolkata, India, the 55-year-old Salim Muhammad earns a living with his mobile cinema made of a Lumière-era projector and a six-foot-long theatre on wheels. Salim buys old film from the local movie halls and, using a tailor's shears, razorblade and tape, edits the scraps together into new films for his discerning audience of neighbourhood children, who appreciate seeing and hearing ‘dialogue, music and fighting without having to wait too long.’ Miniature auto lights and magnifying glass lenses are used to project the films onto a foot-and-a-half-long paper screen. Director Tim Sternberg invites Salim to tell his story while focusing on the details of his trade: hands using rusty pairs of scissors, the rivalry of his sons as they vie to help him splice the films together, the wonderstruck eyes of his audience as they watch his films and the textured, decaying walls of Kolkata's streets. Salim talks about his father, from whom he learned the trade, and about his four sons, to whom he is passing on his expertise.

Awards
2007 Woodstock Film Festival - Best Short Documentary, 2007 Sidewalk Film Festival - Best Short Documentary 2007 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films - 2nd place: Best Documentary

Directors Biography
Tim Sternberg started working in the editing rooms of Francis Ford Coppola's legendary American Zoetrope Studios while still in high school. Most recently he worked as the picture editor on Coppola's Megalopolis, and music editor on Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts. Salim Baba, shot over four days in Kolkata, India is his first film as a director. Sternberg lives in New York City.

Location and screening schedule:
premiere: SC Cinema, Thursday, October 23rd at 17.00
reprisal: BUG cinema &TD, Friday, October 24th at 11.00