SEMINAR 598 – June 2009 28 Romancing history and historicizing romance BINDU MENON M. ‘The film is a medium born to become a depot of history.’ 1 ‘The screen has come to be known as the subtlest and the most powerful medium of propaganda and especially in the case of Travancore, nothing is going to succeed in making her greatness known. 2 THIS paper tries to explore the fasci- nation with history that is demon- strated in these two commentaries upon a film’s capacity to record and store the historically important and conventionally eulogized aspects of history in the princely state of Thiruvi- thamkoor (Travancore) in the early decades of the 20th century. By 1940s when the studio system was estab- lished and thriving in the metropoli- tan centres of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, cinema in Thiruvithamkoor was as much driven by a desire to cap- ture and represent history as it was impelled by the challenge to store and archive this endless vista of evidence for future generations. Nestled within debates of political self-assertion, anti- quity and ‘modern-ness’ of Thiruvi- thamkoor and formulation of Aikya Keralam, the project of imagining a cinema for Thiruvithamkoor occurred in the context of a rich film culture, knowledge about other cinemas, and vexed attempts at film production in the state. The quest to represent the terrain of historical experience, record details and events provided one of the central contexts in which early cinema evolved in Thiruvithamkoor. In this essay I wish to analyze the re- 1. ‘Making Money’, Chitra Kerala Bilingual monthly, 1(3), p. 13. 2. Malati , ‘Travancore: Subject for a Public- ity Film’, Chitra Kerala Bilingual monthly, 1(4), p. 6.