From now until Nov. 30, the University of Washington Libraries will be displaying “From Film Festivals to Songbooks: An Exhibition on Indian Film Memorabilia.” This exhibit showcases ephemera from American cinephile and writer Lyle Pearson accumulated over nearly five decades from film festivals in Paris to Tunis to Istanbul to New Delhi. The collection comprises songbooks of commercial films, brochures for serious art films, publicity posters, production stills, photographs documenting India’s film festivals, and Pearson’s correspondence with important figures in the world of cinema.
Beyond the UW Library exhibit, Pearson’s collection was examined more in-depth in an Oct. 24 conversation with Pearson, as well as an Oct. 25 symposium; South Asia affiliate and Comparative History of Ideas and Cinema and Media Studies associate professor Sudhir Mahadevan also discussed Pearson’s ephemera this quarter in HUM 597A: “Collecting Cinema: Visual Culture, Film History, and the Archive of Indian Cinema.”