I don't know anyone else who at 10 was buying copies of Roopatara,” filmmaker Dinesh Shenoy, son of Konkani cultural icon Basti Vaman Shenoy, tells us when we ask him if the heroes of his Kannada short film Madhyantara—movie lovers enraptured by the charms of the big screen who work their way up the film industry—are versions of him.

Growing up in Bantwal, Shimoga and Chikkamagaluru in Karnataka in the early 1970s, Shenoy would often borrow money from his parents to travel to towns with cinema halls to watch Kannada films. He remembers poring over cinema listings in the newspapers each Friday, devouring every word printed in film magazines such as Roopatara and Vijayachitra, and even buying cinema tickets at black market rates.