Weeknote #16 [W26.03] - Curating films, and chasing reading goals

Published on Jan 20, 2026 • 3 min read

Curating films for February

A scene from Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala
A scene from Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala

Next month’s curation theme for Cinema Next Door is going to be “What we talk about when we talk about love”.

The idea for the theme came from a book Manu had read. We had then run a poll on the CND WhatsApp group, with options for a few more themes, and this came out on top.

So I spent most of last week watching films for the curation. And after a few tense discussions with the rest of the group, here’s a tentative shortlist we’ve arrived at for now:

(1987 was clearly a good year to talk about love.)

As always, things might change. And we’re unlikely to be able to do all 8 films, as there are only 4 Tuesdays in February, and we don’t want to be doing screenings every weekend.

A possible new venue in Koramangala

We also spoke with another venue in Koramangala: The Bangalore Local. They have a large terrace with a projector and sound system where they want to do screenings.

We might do 1 or 2 weekend screenings there if things go ahead. The terrace setup is appealing, but it also means someone has to handle logistics, ticketing, etc. And we really need more people in the team to manage these events if we are going to expand to new venues. At the moment, we are all quite stretched.

Catching up on reading targets

This year, my target for books to read is 80. Which translates to about 1.5 books per week.

I’ve gotten off to a pretty bad start as I didn’t finish anything in the first two weeks of the year (because I was too busy watching films). But I finished two books last week, and am currently in the middle of these four books:

I also now have a page on the blog for collecting quotes from the books I read.

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