Cinema is magic. It is even more so when you experience it with a community of like-minded strangers. Off the Books, a Mumbai-based film club attempts to bring this back. The recently-started club is part of a book club Swapbook! that was founded by Pravin Subramanian in 2011. “When I started the book club, I always wanted to have a film club as well, but I hadn’t found the right people to host it,” he tells us. That’s why when one of their regulars, Vedant Naik, suggested the idea for Off the Books, he was immediately on board. “During the pandemic, I used to go to the Deepak Talkies in Lower Parel. Every Sunday they would screen a classic or a foreign movie or sometimes an obscure one from Europe. Once the lockdown ended, the theatre didn’t reopen. For me, it was quite a loss because it was a place I really enjoyed going to. The film club was mainly to fill that gap in my life; not only to watch these movies, but also to watch them with people who would enjoy them,” shares Naik.

Pravin Subramanian and Vedant Naik