Madhabi Mukherjee in a scene from Ray’s Charulata.

Gangtok, Sept. 1: After rocking the house with some of the hottest DJ events in the town, city nightclub X’Cape has turned its attention to promoting parallel cinema.

Serious cinema fans can now sample the best of art house movies and Hindi classics thanks to the efforts of the X’Cape film club launched by nightclub owner Pema Ladakhi and his elder brother, Guru T. Ladakhi.

The brothers, who are avid collectors of works by serious cinema’s long list of luminaries, decided to give Gangtok residents a chance to view the best of parallel cinema for free in the comfort of the lounge environment which they have created as an extension of the nightclub.

The film club will convene every Tuesday and Thursday with two films being screened on each day.

The first movie scheduled for screening tomorrow is Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, which the director had singled out as being one of the best he had ever made. The film will have English subtitles. Aparna Sen’s Mr and Mrs Iyer will follow.

On Thursday, another of Ray’s works, Kanchenjunga ,also in Bengali, with English subtitles, and Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane will be screened.

The other Ray movies in line include Pather Panchali and Agantuk. This will be followed by Giuseppe Tornatore’s Italian classic Cinema Paradiso, which won the best foreign film award in the 1989 Academy Awards and also at the Cannes film festival.

All the foreign films being screened have English subtitles.

Pema Ladhaki said the idea behind the film club was to share their collection of DVDs with film buffs in the town. “It is basically to bring like-minded people with a love for parallel and art house cinema together and share film knowledge and movies,” he said.

The other movies that will soon be screened sinclude Jean Pierre Jeunet’s French movie Amelie ,which won the best foreign language film at the 2001 Oscars, Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thief and The 400 Blows, a French classic by Francois Trauffaut.

Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Roma will be screened in the second half of the month. Later, works by great directors from East Asia like Akira Kurosawa will also be on offer.