5 min readUpdated: Jun 30, 2026 10:24 PM IST VK Cherian was a science student in Thiruvananthapuram Kerala, in the late 1970s when he first started watching films at Chitralekha, the cooperative film society founded by Malayalam screenwriter-director Adoor Gopalakrishnan. He didn’t become a filmmaker. Neither did Cherian pursue MBBS that his family wanted him to. Instead he went to the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, and became a journalist. But those early years of watching world cinema in small theaters, interacting with Adoor and G Aravindan – giants of Malayalam parallel cinema – stayed with him. Long enough to eventually become a book. Noon Films and the Magical Renaissance of Malayalam Cinema (Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2024) is VK Cherian’s attempt to document the two decades, between 1970 and 1990, tracing how a group of filmmakers trained from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, including directors Adoor, Aravindan and John Abraham – whom he collectively calls the “A-Team” changed what Malayalam cinema looked and felt like. “That period really changed …