During the first year of my architecture undergraduate degree, I opted to do an 8 week ‘Theatre and Set Design’ workshop. While my other classmates were busy researching local plant species for their landscape design electives or preparing design guidance for office spaces in their interiors courses, all we were expected to do was watch a myriad of movies, ranging from Satyajit Ray’s “Pathar Panchali”, Peter Greenaway’s “The Belly of an Architect”, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” to the classic every architect’s must watch, Arundhati Roy’s “In which Annie gives it to those ones”. At the end we had to do the stage set design for a play based on the historic epic ‘Mahabharata’, with the final battle scene as the subject. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the prescribed binge movie watching in a largely serious scholarly academic setting and the final product which were featured in that year’s Year Book cover design. I also understood how settings were integral in design, particularly period reproductions. Then in 1999 after we launched the walking tours in historic districts of Bombay, we had several location scouters and art directors who used to come to our walks to scour historic settings. It was heartening to see a wider application of history and its dispersion to larger audiences.
Since my final teaching resource is geared towards providing an introduction to historic preservation with Mumbai city as the muse, I am hoping to have an introductory session where certain architectural development occurred globally as well as in the city. The broad stages of architectural development in Mumbai began with indigenous examples in the form of organic settlements along the coastline, Portuguese influenced “bungalow” designs of the 18th century, mid 19th century neo-classical designs, late 19th century neo-gothic public buildings, 20th century Art Deco buildings (particularly movie halls) and post-modern architecture. For this particular section I was planning to first start with an introduction on the genesis of Indian cinema – where it all began. Before this, the students would have already visited the rather dilapidated but still existing Watson’s Hotel on a field trip, where the first movie was screened by the famed Lumiere Brothers on July 7, 1896. The building, although a far cry from its hey day as one of the finest hotels in the world, is in itself an architectural gem, being the only example of a cast iron prefabricated building in India. This first screening created such ripples that went on to encourage local artistes and performers, and anchoring the foundations for the largest film producing industry in the world – Bollywood. That architecture, historic spaces and the rich imagery of Bollywood would find a match was inevitable.
While doing this particular module I have realized that I cannot find films that portray singular historical events with respect to the city. Also, due to the nature of my teaching project I would find it difficult to find relevance to national historical or global events. Hence I have decided to choose architectural history periods in the city’s urban growth and tie in that context to teaching modules.
I envisage providing links to sections of both international and Bollywood movies that would showcase elements of architectural building typologies. For instance, the movie ‘Bombay Velvet’ displays street scenes of Victorian Era Bombay with trams and vintage cars, no longer existing. The movie in itself is unwatchable and gauche. But the behind the scenes trailers of how they made models of the historic core of Bombay city to portray old world charm is very enlightening. Similarly the film ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ shows exquisite Art Deco elements and timber buildings. The 1927 Metropolis is truly ahead of its time through its dystopian portrayal of a futuristic city. Through this I hope to immerse the students into period designs and the final exercise for this section would be to create a catalogue of furniture designs or period finishes (wall paper designs etc. – the options are unlimited!).
It is truly no coincidence that this module on films was merged into that of digital storytelling, and this subtle shift is an excellent progression towards bringing yet another facet into historical thinking. Providing the medium of digital storytelling within the teaching resource would enable the students to get sidetracked – necessary to develop content off the beaten track thereby leading to diverse investigation.