From film buff to archives man, youth has a way

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His life reads like the earlier part of the Italian classic Cinema Paradiso of Giuseppe Tornatore. For Tanseer, a 24-year-old school dropout from Thiruvananthapuram, the flashback of life started when he sold CDs and DVDs in a shop at Bheemappally in the state capital.

The journey of life that now finds him at the library of the Kerala Chalachitra Akademi has left him a little perplexed and elated.

And like Salvatore, aka Toto, the protagonist in Cinema Paradiso, who as a little boy spends every free moment in the projector room of a local movie house, mesmerized by the art, Tanseer’s joy too knew no bounds after he was posted last month in the archive section of the Akademi by minister and actor K.B. Ganesh Kumar.

Incidentally, Cinema Paradiso was the first classic he saw and from there he has grown to be an authority on world classics.

“When I was offered this job and came to the Akademi, I felt like Toto. Cinema has been my passion”, he says. And among those who interact with him are big names like Jabbar Patel and Girish Kasaravalli.

Failing to go beyond class IX, Tanseer was forced by the conditions at home to seek a job. He finally landed at Bheemapally, a market where one can buy everything under the sun. Name a film and you get the CD/DVD.

He was made a salesboy in a CD shop. Being one among the few there who could read and write, he was assigned English films.

It used to be a big crowd out there, hunting for classics, award-winners and the ones nominated for the Oscars. This slowly made him familiar with names like Kurasowa, Vittorio De Sica, Polanski and the like.

Slowly, he got hooked to the works of the masters. During the annual international film festival in Thiruvananthapuram (he has not seen a film at the festival), he is accosted by several who want to know which films are worth watching.

Even film directors used to make it to Bheemapally to seek his help in laying their hands on some rare films.He gave up the job after three years but his passion never died.

He keeps track of films abroad and keeps a tab on what’s new. He posts his comments on Facebook which is closely tracked by film buffs.

And his present job, though on daily wages, is to prepare the list of films shown at the Venice, Berlin and Cannes festivals.

He has to note down details of the upcoming films of masters and guide visitors, most of who are renowned film-makers, thus making his life eventful.