How Mehelli Modi is recreating the 16-mm romance with his home video label

It is urgent to prolong the lives of these rare works and make them available to view at home

Mehelli Modi’s memories of his formative years in Bombay play out in the manner of vignettes. The steady thrumming and distinctive scent of a 16mm film projector come to his mind, as do the images of Laurel and Hardy it would cast on the wall of the dining room so that he would eat his food without protest. Some years later, he would spend long hours at screenings of cinema clubs in the city. There used to be one within the “Ramnord” film lab, he remembers, and wasn’t another one housed under the bridge between Marine Lines and Chowpatty? 

Film