This museum in Kochi has projectors, film reels and posters from the 1950s FilmyMeet

For 71 year-old Jaya Kamath, HBK Museum is as much a museum of memories, a token of her love for her late husband, H Balakrishna Kamath, after whom it is named as it is doing something that is unique and satisfying. “The challenges are inevitable. It is easy if you copy what somebody else has done. Treading a different path offers immense self-satisfaction and it is the reason why I embarked on this project,” she says. The museum is a treasure trove of film paraphernalia, especially 16mm reels and film projectors.     

The museum features restored posters of old films, (the oldest is of the 1959 film, Nadodikal) wooden blocks (similar to those used for block printing fabric) used to print film notices, spools of 16mm reels, a few 35mm and 8mm reels, spool splicers, film rewinders (of spools), film projectors of various sizes, catalogues of films and projector lens. For anyone curious about the evolution of film projection/screening equipment, this is a good place to start.   

Tucked away behind a gate on the crammed-with-buildings Nettipadam Road, off MG Road, the 500-odd square foot building was a house once upon a time. Jaya came here, from Thiruvananthapuram, as a new bride in the 1970s. The 60-odd years show on parts of the building, which a paint job attempts to hide.  

When Jaya moved from the house after Kamath’s passing in 2015, she left the corpus of his ‘work’ there as she could not take everything that her husband had accumulated over 50-odd years. Although an employee of Travancore Cochin Chemicals (TCC), Eloor, Kamath’s weekend hobby was travelling to venues in and around Ernakulam with his film projectors and 16mm reels of movies. Not only Malayalam but also popular films in other languages. 

As one steps into the tiny house, one is welcomed by a photograph of Balakrishna Kamath. Two other rooms serve as ‘galleries’; the display spaces are the walls as are pieces of old furniture such as chairs and peg tables, and a few shelves. White cotton curtains too serve as ‘walls’ for film posters to be hung. There is even a white screen of around six feet by five feet, on which content on the 16mm reels were projected.

Having been locked up for more than seven years, the house had fallen to disrepair. Though she attempted maintenance of the house with her limited resources, Jaya rues the fact that during the process some of the archival material was damaged by the crew. It gave her an insight into the amount of material Kamath had left behind. “I had been wondering what to do with it. It had to something meaningful,” she says. That is when filmmaker VK Subhash came into the picture.

Jaya’s labour of love, she confesses, would not have been possible without help from Subhash, who calls her ‘Amma’. “It is purely serendipity or destiny that we met. We met at St. Teresa’s College, in 2023, where my documentary film, The Green Man was being screened. Amma came up to me and told me about the material and equipment belonging to her husband and asked if something meaningful could be done,” says Subhash who has also chipped in financially with the restoration of the building and helped restore some of the material. She told him about Kamath and how he travelled with projection equipment and spools of 16mm film reels.

When Subhash went to the house, he says, it was chaotic with everything strewn all over the place. He had to rummage through the material — renovation debris and the equipment that was dumped in the house. “It was a lot of work. But once I saw the material here, I realised it was a goldmine!” he says.

Subhash, a filmmaker, spends time at the museum when not busy with work. He restored some torn posters, including character posters of Bharathan’s Nidra; there is an original poster of the classic 1964 film Bhargavi Nilayam. After three months of sifting, cleaning and restoring, the museum was ready in May 2024.

Jaya does not remember how her husband got interested in film projection. “He started in the late 1960s; at the time he had a friend with whom he went about the work. However, by 1971-72 he struck out on his own. He then started going everywhere alone, sometimes I would also accompany him,” she says. One of her memories is travelling to Cheruthoni with Kamath, whilst the Idukki dam was being built to screen films for the engineers and others involved in its construction.   

Pointing to Kamath’s trusty bicycle mounted on one of the walls she says, “He used to cycle everywhere. He would pick up the spools from the railway stations — Ernakulam Junction or Ernakulam South — where they would be sent from either Madras (Chennai), Mumbai and even Kolkata. This bicycle was with him for more than 40 years!” says Jaya. The boxes containing the spools would be loaded on the bicycle carrier and be ferried. These had to be returned. By the mid-1980s, Kamath started buying the reels.    

Going by the number of projectors, it appears Kamath was not one to discard equipment, most of which he had purchased second hand. Although when he started out he hired projectors, for instance Rama Varma Club had one, which he later bought. Some of Kamath’s projectors are GB Bell and Howell, RCA and Photophone, besides a Chinon Sound SP-330 8mm film projector.  

The films came from companies which rented out reels to projectionists like Kamath who showed these films at film societies, educational institutions, and clubs. People like him were crucial to the State’s thriving film society movement which introduced the Malayali audience to not only Malayalam or Tamil cinema, but also classics of other languages and world cinema.    

Kamath primarily screened 16mm films, but he also had a collection of 8mm original film reels of Hollywood films like Winnie the Pooh and Walt Disney productions such as Duel of the Wizards, Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby and Jungle Book. The audience for 8mm reels was smaller, people who wanted a private viewing. 

By the 1990s, with advancement in technology, projectionists like Kamath became redundant. Though he stopped travelling to screen films, he had wanted to do something with the material and equipment he had collected but he fell sick and passed away at 65.

As expected most of the projectors are not in working condition but Jaya and Subhash say, “A person from Alappuzha got in touch with us and said he can repair these. If that happens then we will know what is the condition of the films. We will know in a week.” The museum has reels of IV Sasi films such as Ee Naadu, Iniyenkilum, and Meen; A Vincent’s Bhargavi Nilayam and Ramu Kariyat’s Moodupadam among others.

The effort Balakrishna Kamath took ferrying boxes of spools in briefcase size boxes begs the question why. “For my husband it was not about making money and amassing wealth. He saw it as doing something for society, a service to introduce people to cinema!” says Jaya.

Entry is free; HBK Museum on Nettipadam Road, opposite Avenue Regent, is open from 11am-5pm