Flashback (1974)

Made a year before the Emergency, Flashback was commissioned by Films Division to commemorate its 25th anniversary. Sastry, with his ever-surprising style, turns this ‘history of’ film into a joyous mix, bringing archival film footage, documentation of Films Division’s infrastructure, and the musings of John Grierson, Ezra Mir, S Sukhdev and himself together, to tussle with the role of documentary cinema. Today, the unprecedented access to archives like that of Films Division is an open invitation to ‘flashback’ and reassemble the past.