Cover Story:
Auteur
Notes on Missing Images, Preservation, Film Programming, Film Criticism Indian Film Directors Page 21 Page 55
Bandee Designee Kamal Swaroop’s Omniyam Page 40
From the Vault
Cinema of Hollis Frampton Page 82
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EDITORIAL NITESHROHIT LOVE EXPOSURE
B
oa Sr, died a broken heart, she was about 85. She suffered from loneliness and isolation, as she had noone to speak to. At the time of her death, she passed away with histories(s) that linked to a tribe that was 65,000 years old. She was the last surviving member of the Bo tribe of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. In the only reality that we know of- death- Boa Sr, became a memory. One that is hardly documented or one that is never represented, in other words she became, a dream. A figment of imagination, of which mainstream India, has absolutely no clue. With the ever changing Indian landscape coupled with our power to show celebration of mainstream cinema and exploitive documentary (the only possible identity for most Indian documentary films). The state of affairs of our own being is reduced to nothingness with each passing day. Our choice to express our identity that contains our personal world view has become limited. It’s next to impossible for most people to break away from the conditioned ideas of representation of their own lives. Bollywood is playing a major role in the construction of this massive blockage. It acts like a virus that has spread in all aspects of our lives. A clear indication is the methods the news media applies to talk about the existence of the state and its citizens. It films the realities of only those subjects that has information value even before the film is shot, much like
the documentaries or the fiction films made in this country. That is the reason why people like Bo only become stories after their disappearance. As we enter into the second year of our independent existence, we reflect upon such issues in this edition of the magazine. It has become vitally important to contemplate not just the work at hand (education via cinema and film criticism) but also bringing forth the missing images that exist in different states of our country. In this issue, we try to achieve that by looking at cinema via a photo essay of Bhopal, republishing a film script (that likely will never get made) as a graphic novel series, Omniyam. Also, from our yearly traveling experience via organizing film festivals, film workshops, cinephile meetings, discussions and running an e-magazine, IA authors attempt to present the state of film archive,film criticism and film festivals cum programming bodies in this country in this edition of our ezine.
INDIANAUTEUR.COM ISSUE
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IA/FEBRUARY 2010
editor NITESH ROHIT
art director ANUJ MALHOTRA
image sources Brightlights film journal
cover design GAUTAM VALLURI SATYAM BARERA SRIKANTH SRINIVASAN contributors ANUJ MALHOTRA online supervisor DEBABRATA NATH GAUTAM VALLURI SUPRIYA SURI publishers NSMedia Film EBRAHIM KABIR DEBOJIT GHATAK Indian Auteur is published monthly. All images SAGORIKA SINGHA have been used for non-commercial purposes KSHITIZ ANAND only. Content cannot be reproduced without contact W-104, GK-I , prior permission of Indian Auteur. NEW DELHI, 110011
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AUTEUR
NOTES ON DIRECTORS
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s 2010 begins, Indian Auteur takes stock of the prevailing situation in Indian cinema by applying its own prism of judgment to the filmmaking industry, i.e, study of the film director.
BANDEE DESIGNEE OMNIYAM(PART 1 of 3)
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COVER STORY WHAT THEY FORGOT TO TELL YOU KSHITIZ ANAND 56 TO FILL UP SCREENS AND SEATS SUPRIYA SURI 65 IN COLD STORAGE
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WHICH WAY TO THE MONOLITH ANUJ MALHOTRA 77
FROM THE VAULT CINEMA OF HOLLIS FRAMPTON SATYAM
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hey did what they liked to do, or what they do automatically, like picking their noses. It’s a terribly irresponsible thing for an artist to say.
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ONTENTS
SAGORIKA SINGHA
AUTEUR
Harmony Korine in one of his rare sober moods.
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EVEN JAMES BOND READS US!
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s 2010 begins, the Indian Auteur team takes stock of the prevailing situation in Indian cinema by applying its own prism of judgment to the filmmaking industry, i.e, study of the film director. Indian Auteur has adopted the model of Francois Truffaut’s legendary tract, “French Cinema short of ambition”, which was published in Arts on 30th March, 1955; which is to facilitate a process of classification of directors on the basis of their work in cinema, the tendencies displayed within those works, the cinematic talent exhibited, and whether the formerly done work validates anticipation for the upcoming work.
The conclusions, while not completely unpredictable, are a little startling; for the investment of rigorous thought in contemplating the current situation of Indian film directors makes us realise that there are no auteurs in the current setup, and all the real masters are residues from a greater era. However, we have briefly commented on a few directors that we believe represent different schemes of film production, or different levels of talent within the mainstream setup. Here it is, then, the inaugural edition of Indian Auteur’s Notes on Directors followed by the first Director’s Classification.
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22
NOTESEY ON DIRECTORSOT ZOYA AKHTAR
I
t’s a matter of good luck by chance that Zoya Akhtar is a film director or more so a metteur en scene. If one removed her surname see might well have never got a chance to touch a film camera. She is playing the female lead in the New Bollywood cinema- pseudo wave. Like most of her contemporaries wearing the “New Wave” on sleeves, she is aware about cinema beyond the boundaries of Bollywood. Has a good taste in music, and can get top stars like Hrithik Roshan to act in her film. But her taste and the presence of a star cast in her maiden film (Luck By Chance) does not translate into a movie that defines her sensibility as unique. There is absolute no difference between a bad Tanuja Chandra film and a Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance. Her film may seem refreshing on the outset, but is as confused of an identity like the director’s brother. himself. To be or not to be. A Film director. Or an Actor.
SHIMIT AMIN
T
he director of the most explosive debut of the past decade, Ab Tak Chhapan, is now content becoming the illustrator of Jaideep Sahni’s text. Having begun with a film that smelt of a lingering commitment to the cause of the industry outsider, the independent artist seeking the luxury of a personal microphone in the cacophony of Bollywood assembly line products; he now lies officially embraced by the largest mainstream movie making machine in the nation, the Yashrajs. As such, he has located a comfortable solace in being their director-for-hire, relegating himself to the the absence of a film technician, rather than the presence of a film director. Even though he is earnest, his work remains corrupt – and that is odd but true, for when he submits to a position which allows no ideological participation in his own film, and affords him the luxury only to shoot Bollywood’s most powerful screenwriter’s script – then his film and he become separate entities, with a filter between them. With Rocket Singh, a more worrisome question arises : Is Amin’s film any longer Amin’s film at all? How does one recognise in a scurry of Bollywood films? For Bollywood films are often like a maternity ward with cradles without tags. Another important question arises : Will Rocket Singh’s commercial failure finally wake up from his slumber into his original commitment, or do we have one more tale of a fantastical middle-class victory coming up?
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7 23
AUTEUR
SANJAY BHANSALI
L
ooking at Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s repertoire it’s difficult to categorize where he belongs. His movies from the debut Khamoshi till Sawariya reflect a growth in his tendencies to embrace the nature of Bollywood cinema. Even in his attempt at an “arthouse” film, Black he could not break away from the mannerism of mainstream films. What started out as a means of expression to look at the nature of relationships: longing, suffering, desire, and nostalgia; has turned into an exploitation of images that involves stretching human relationship into an exaggerated interaction that and that only can exist in the realm of Bollywood cinema. The question today is not that Bhansali cannot develop ideas that he once loved- Megha Dehka Tara- but the problem is that he needs to step outside the box of his own image. One that his films at hand are at par with the best of world cinema, it’s then only he can possibly think of joining the gang of his master’s favourite pupils - Mani Kaul or Kumar Shahani. And bringing a cinematic idiom that could be his very own vehicle of pain.
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AUTEUR
NOTESEY ON DIRECTORSOT
M
VISHAL BHARDWAJ
ore a poet than a filmmaker, more a romanti his films, despite claiming a realist nature somewhere in the real world, do not fail as if set inside a certain fable, a certain folklore, or debut, Makdee is the most typical of this mythical n only extends the tradition. Contrary to much popular his films are not good because they are realistic, but b They are capable films only because they are a poet’s fl a documentarist’s account; which is why Makdee, Ma Umbrella, his three most accomplished films, seem mariner would recite on a mysterious night by the sea – era, not truths from our own. Which is also why two films, Omkara and Kaminey, are so tepid and preten
IMTIAZ ALI
O
ne cannot help but feel that the unexpected commercial success of Jab We Met might have given birth to one more assured career in Bollywood, but also marked the point of suppression for a young writer capable of much more contemplation on the state of the world he lives in. Even as he made his fairytale romances, he never failed to set them in a context that deprived them of a wholly fantastical nature, and brought them, as the cliche goes, ‘closer to life’. He remains, till day, the master of subversion of one trope: he lets his stories chug like any normal love story. Until he decides to reverse one element of the normal, thus leaving audiences stranded suddenly and for a few scenes groping in the dark for the assistance of convention. Not that he delays that assistance, but the subversion remains his speciality – with the girl actually getting married in Love Aaj Kal, to the boy actually helping the girl get married to another guy in Jab we Met. However, with his newfound position as the man all big producers want to fund and big actors to work with; the man will find it tough to reconcile the urge of a personal statement with the responsibility that arises out of being in servitude to the demands of the market. If out of that attempt at reconciliation arose Love Aaj Kal, a film confused about the nature of its own statement – then the future is not as bright as it might have seemed a year ago.
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ic than a reactionary; e and a setting based to seem fantastical, a certain poem. His nature, and Maqbool opinion of his work, because they are not. flights of fantasy, not aqbool and The Blue like tales an ancient – legends of a bygone o of his most popular ntious – as if the poet’s been waken up and forced to face harsh reality – much like his mentor Gulzar’s attempt to make a tale of the times and ending up with Hu Tu Tu. But filmmakers like them do not respond to the need of the time, they depart from it. Also, much like most poets, he cannot forego his habit of quoting couplets by other favoured poets – mostly, it was S h a k e s p e a r e ’s sonnets – recently, he has turned to Tarantino and Guy Ritchie.
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AUTEUR
DIBAKAR BANERJEE
E
ven as he borrows his aesthetic from Martin Scorsese, he remains wholly committed to the articulation of a personal voice. One of the two only two truly cinephile turned film directors working within the mainstream setup, the director of Khosla Ka Ghosla and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye! brandishes about a nimbly measured agenda to detail the middle-class existence, and a curiously exclusive ability to rid his storylines from the burden of moral judgment or a declaration of a coherent moral pattern. The only dictum his films follow is that of the pragmatic – that of a person who holds naive idealism in contempt and instead, they let his characters be imperfect human beings in search for individual hedonistic goals. Therefore, in his universe, no one is good, and no one is bad. The ‘heroes’ are con-men, thieves,
and by the end of the film, have indulged in acts more immoral than the villains. But as Bannerjee would have us believe, in a world as devoid of pattern as ours, the only intention worth any real nobility is one involved in a consistent pursuit of happiness. Laced with doses of cynicism typical of a person who has lived life, his films may end up depressing as they offer no hooks of redemption – but all the more real because they do not. He confesses that Khosla ka Ghosla was in its original intention, not the tale of a victory, but that of a defeat – possible, if he thought of it.
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AUTEUR
NOTESON DIRECTOR
VIDHU VINOD CHOPRA
I
f William Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser was to be staged in Bombay with an all- Bollywood director starcast, Vidhu Vinod Chopra would fit the bill as Brutus. In one of his televised interviews he stands firm on the ideology of honesty and not falling prey to the hands of commercial cinema ala Bollywood. Yet the last bastion of hope that one could lay upon his direction ability was in 1989 when he made Parinda.
He later went on to make third grade musicals (1942A Love story, Kareeb) and films like Mission Kashmir - a Bollywood picturesque representation of the problems engulfing the valley with sensibilities that could only have been found in the dictionary of Bollywood cinema. His so called epic (Eklavya) presented a technically polished film that lacked the core grip on the narrative or his ability to
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develop cinematic sensibilities. He now accounts as one of the most successful film producers in Bollywood but is one of the few men who in spite of their training in the field of cinema, their knowledge of the medium, have turned their backs on innovation aesthetically‌.Et tu Brute!
RS
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AUTEUR
AMIT DUTTA
F
ASHUTOSH GOWARIKER
or long the premier film institute in India, FTII has produced great technicians who are fulfilling the demands of their Bollywood monarch much like how the Indian princely states did during the British Raj. They see nothing wrong in making third grade works even after studying about a world beyond that of, commercial cinema. Unlike like the technicians, FTII ceased to produce great directors after a stint in the 60s and 70s. But the 21st century offers hope with the works of Amit Dutta. Amit’s approach to dealing with narrative is unique in the state that Indian cinema exist today. His approach in his maiden venture, Man, Woman and Other stories is contained in between the world of Mani Kaul and Kamwal Swaroop, with a feeling of sounds wherein the geneology could be traced back to Ritwik Ghatak. His film offers a possibility of seeing a progressive approach to representing different states of our reality today: paranoia, love, longing on the foundation of relationship between man, his world and his state of existence.
A
fascination for the burlesque never escapes him, and he would gladly accept the mantle of India’s David Lean; but Lean’s burlesque was not the scale of his production, but the scale of his characters. Even as the most glorious cinemascope frames lent a generous hand to the desert in Lawrence of Arabia; even as armies (literally) of characters surrounded Lawrence, and even if a region underwent a political upheavel, it remains a film about one man, and one man alone; with the remaining elements only auxilliaries to enhance his relevance, much like placing
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a white dot in the middle of a million red dots. It is this ability to somehow utilise the splendour of the collective to elaborate on an individual trajectory that Gowariker lacks sorely. For he has a tendency to be so consumed within his own grandeur that he forgets that each film is individually about people, and not about how they look on top of elephants in battle formations in wide angles. Even then, if he can manage to mix the truth of Swades with the fraud of Lagaan, we might just see a film, which if not as good as a Lean, might still be as great as a Wyler.
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AUTEUR
RAJKUMAR GUPTA
O
ne film may not be a clear indicator, especially if its aesthetic is a directly inheritation from his mentor Anurag Kashyap’s much superior Black Friday, but if Aamir were to revealed a secret or two; it is that Gupta is the most vehement prototype of the new age director – new idea, shallow insight, and a bravura so typical of the youth. With Aamir, Gupta attained a balance between two aesthetic choices so vast, that his next film remains worthy of anticipation- with one scene shot with docu-realism, from atop a roof as if to maintain an objective distance from the proceedings (Black Friday’s most staggering achievement), the second quickly jumped to the lead’s point-of-view shots, with each character in his vicinity becoming the resident of a subjective gaze that deemed them sinister. The film’s end betrayed Gupta’s preference for human tragedy over a political statement. The only mistake (call it blunder) he made was to the method applied in shooting the head terrorist, for whereas the rest of the film tried hard in preserving its status as a spectator the sport - Gupta remained over-eager to declare him evil. What’s more, he even gave evil an appearance, instead of allowing it to be faceless, and thus, stripping the character of its ambiguity. That he also showed Aamir’s family is yet another anomalistic device, because providing them with a visual representation meant that his family could not be just about any family any more – and thus, could not be generalised.
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NO D
29
OTESON DIRECTORS
RAJKUMAR HIRANI
W
hat was earlier an expression of genuine concern, has now become a formula. What was earlier an earnest call to arms, has now become a trope. What was earlier provocation, has now become exploitation. What was earlier the heart of a debutante itching to encapsulate a searingly personal belief, has now become the head of a businessman. The problem is not that he cannot relinquish the similar narrative template that all his films follow – for that might be an automatic result, and if organic, one that cannot be
helped – but that he deliberately does not wish to relinquish a pattern that makes him so much money. No other director with talent as enormous as him has made a conscious decision to enclose himself within a formula as he has. He has identified a safe zone – a middle-class hero, who through the application of a raw old-world idealism defeats each single power that be – and does not wish to impact a departure from it very soon. Till Lage Raho Munnabhai, his humanity was still scruplous – but with 3 Idiots, he steers consistently in the domain of a Madhur Bhandarkar – for whom, each newspaper
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headline is a new opportunity to remind the middle-class viewer of how miserable his life is. As a result, his latest film is a meticulously designed machine that feigns a human nature. More than anything, Hirani needs a jolt soon for each concern is as earnest as proximity to the subject of the concern and the more he bases his filmmaking decisions on prospective revenue, the more dishonest each frame of his films will become; until finally, he will be rejected by the same audiences who, he seeks to represent the voice of, while sitting in his furnished cabin somewhere.
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AUTEUR
NOTESON DIRECTORS
KARAN JOHAR
O
ne cannot help feel sympathetic for an existence so confined, a worldview so limited, and an ideology so constrained, but if one were to question whether Johar’s reputation for the worst our cinema has to offer is his own doing – the answer would have to be a resounding, yes.
He is the primary example of the type of film director who remains aesthetically, morally and ideologically – a residue of an inglorious past of Hindi cinema – a director whose works exhibit a ridiculous pride in all that is wrong with us. Is it too much to ask of him that if he wishes to
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discuss human behaviour, he must meet some human beings first? That if he desires to contemplate over a sidelined religious identity, he must undergo isolation first? That if he wants to ponder extra-marital affairs, he must experience the feeling of commitment first? His works are the worst examples of pop-art so empty and innocuous, that each issue is reduced into bullet-points, or newspaper headlines – trivilisation which is a result of his desire to make a statement about the road down below while staring at it from the window of his fifteenth floor airconditioned office – but also of his sniggering awareness that really, when the paper is of a quality so high, who will care about the tepid nature of the text? He is hypocritical also, because when critics reproach him for reduction of each issue into an uninformed discussion with his friends over wine and caviar, he defends himself as a candy-floss filmmaker who should be absolved of much moral responsibility – but when the same critics call him a candy-floss filmmaker, he claims an identity that deserves to be taken more seriously. Also, would someone please inform him that even as empty mindless entertainment, his films are considerable failures?
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AUTEUR
ANURAG KASHYAP
A
pseudo-auteur with a tendency to go around the market of world cinema, handpicking influences from acknowledged masters – the masochism of Kim-ki Duk, the lighting schemas of Wong Kar Wai, the self-destruction of Fatih Akin and the repartees of Quentin Tarantino – but even as he seeks to mix them into a concoction where each influence is individually indiscernible, he does not stir well enough. As a result, his films may end up coming across as more embar-
rassment than achievement. And as attempts at distancing themselves from the trash of the mainstream, but that distantiation only remains an intentional fallacy – an aim of noble intent but bad implementation – for in their results his films embrace the very elements of the mainstream that he so seeks to denounce. He remains consciously a director who, inspired by the hordes of DVDs in his library, seeks to create an international masterpiece – but the
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conflict remains, for his fragile sensibility still remains prone to falling prey to the temptation of yet another Bollywood trope. It is the compromise between the two he needs to achieve, and not either one of them. The moments of genius are there ofcourse – the picturisation of Nayan Tarse in Dev D., and the denouement of Gulaal – but too sporadic and far few in between to fulfil the promises he makes before each new release through his blog. Is there, after seven films, even a pan that is unique to Kashyap?
32 SAJID KHAN
T
he best gift of being born in a Bollywood family is that one can do anything they want in the name of audience. One can act without knowing anything about the ideas of acting and similarly one can direct without understanding the nature of cinematic medium. The only reason there is a note on this director is because he provides hope to every Indian, that if he can direct a film, anyone in this nation can. Though it comes with a disclaimer: “You can make a film in India, but it won’t be distributed”. Everything is controlled from Bombay. What you see is not a choice you make, but by people like Sajid Khan who make films like Heyy Babyy.
RAKEYSH MEHRA
NOTESON DIRECTORS
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E
ven with his advertisement influenced editing, and a camera caught in a torrential river current, he is plagued by the disability of simplification. Prone to covering up the scratches on the wall with heavy coats of flourescent paint, he suggests juvenile solutions to problems of adults. Rang De Basanti, despite its brilliant depiction of youth caught in transit, could think of no better than nihilism to solve its problems. With Delhi 6, he resorted to the age-old monologue. Staging often as if his characters are on a theatre stage, with each of them arranged in one space, and contributing one line each to the conversation; he is to the roster
33 SRIRAM RAGHAVAN
of Indian directors what Soderbergh is to the American – an anomaly within the mainstream, for even as he works inside a homogenous industry, he demands authorship. Even then, he is a protestor in a rally whose participation cannot be faulted for the lack of earnestness, but who is prone to quickly get bored standing in the sun, and resort to empty sloganeering or well, just be satisfied of participation itself and never wait till a solution.
A career that began a tad late, but a youth that refused to relent; it is almost as if Raghavan had been storing up portions of his youth to film at a later date. Most in this nation attempt to film the pulp noir, but he comprehends it. Not since Raj Khosla has an Indian director devoted himself to the service of the noir so wholly and yet, he remains a little apprehensive, a little undecided about whether to allow his pulp noir merely linger in its famed shallowness, or make a departure from it and make a deeper statement. As a result, entertaining and thrilling his films are, they remain curiously devoid of any psychological inquiry of the characters other than what is functional as per the narrative. Therefore, his central characters have a certain tendency of being reduced to cardboard cut-outs with one, and only one ambition allotted to them, written across their chests in chalk money- for Johnny- revenge for Sarika. And all the other characters are mere hurdles to be crossed in their personal races to that destination. He must be reminded that even if it is merely James Hadlee Chase, there is a Miss Blandish possible. Even if it is pulp, it is also noir. And for every Hubert Cornfield, there is a Jean Pierre Melville. That aside, Johnny Gadaar’s acknowledgement of Parwana as a reference remains as creative a method of homage as any other in cinema.
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34 DIRECTOR REPORT CARD 2010
I
ndian Auteurs
T
he auteur is, in all literal terms, a film artist whose medium of expression is cinema and cinema itself. Each of their films are an extension of their personalities, and from among a crowd of thousand films, their film towers above the rest - for it bears a signature so legible that the authorship of the film becomes indisputable.
Satyajit Ray Ritwik Ghatak Mrinal Sen Guru Dutt Adoor Gopalakrishnan Buddhadeb Dasupta Mani Kaul Kumar Shahani Bimal Roy Vijay Anand Girish Kasaravalli Govind Aravindan
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AUTEUR
R
epresentatives of Quality
Q
uality stands for a certain achievement in cinematic form that is earnest in its attempt but a failure in its achievement. It is a tendency to believe that cinema arises from the paper, from text, and from the burden of words. It is a habit of choosing security over bravura, assurance over impundency, and awe over irreverence. It is a condition of displaying almost certain cinematic talent, but stopping short of translating it into cinema.
Anurag Kashyap Ashutosh Gowariker Dibakar Banerjee Sanjay Leela Bhansali Sriram Raghavan Mani Rathnam Aparna Sen Prakash Jha Amit Dutta Vishal Bhardwaj
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AUTEUR
H
onest Commerce
T
o lend the mainstream an air of respectability, both in terms of intention and accomplishment. It is a condition of filmmaking which does not claim an aim higher than revenue, and yet, from within the homogeneity of the mainstream, they attempt individual statements. They struggle to use cinematic device, but the shallowness of their ideas usually fails them. They cannot escape the holes of categorisation they have dug for themselves.
Ayan Mukherjee Rajkumar Hirani Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Rajkumar Santoshi Rajkumar Gupta Nagesh Kukunoor Sudhir Mishra Farhan Akhtar
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AUTEUR
C
inema of Contempt
T
hese are the directors of films that feign concern, pretend to contribute an insight, and portray a definite participation in a cause; but are eventually, the worst exploitation of their audiences, for these films are ‘newspaper headline’ films - they pick their story ideas from the current topics in vogue and squeeze its worth. They are harmful, for they are hypocritical, dishonest, sensationalistic, and instead of provoking a debate, provoke a controversy. These are directors who claim noble intentions but make immoral films.
Madhur Bhandarkar Kabir Khan
Vidhu Vinod Chopra Neeraj Pandey J.P.Dutta Ram Gopal Verma
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AUTEUR
S
treets of Shame
T
hese are the directors who, have by some strange serendipity, managed to arrive on a film set. They do not deserve the fotrune to peep through the camera’s viewfinder, and should not, in an ideal world, be allowed in the proximity of a film set.
Farah Khan Kunal Kohli Rohit Shetty Karan Johar Sajid Khan Anil Sharma Rakesh Roshan Sanjay Gadhvi David Dhawan Vikram Bhatt Rohit Shetty Priyadarshan Anees Bazmee Sanjay Gupta
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RESIST THE
TORTURE OF
BAD
CINEMA INDIANAUTEUR.COM IA/FEBRUARY 2010
40
M N
achiketa/Narrator is a student of a scientist/philosopher named Atpateshwar Nath, and has committed a robbery and a violent murder of a man Named Seth Bhagchand soni with an accomplice, Devisingh, who is his hired help at the farm and pub his family owned. The narrator/ Nachiketa seeks a black box belonging to his Victim, believing it to contain money that he will use to finance the writing And publication of the definitive critical work on Atpateshwar a work which has Obsessed him to the point it has even cost him a leg. The black box was carried by the victim, yet was hidden immediately by Devisingh. The narrator refuses to allow his accomplice out of his sight for months, until Devisingh believes that it is now safe. Devi tells him where the box is hidden, and asks him to retrieve
the box for him.From the point at which the narrator reaches for the box, the setting, begins to become increasingly unfamiliar and out of proportion He becomes acquainted with his soul, which he names Om; who provides advice and lively conversation. At the suggestion of Soni who appears to him just after he touches the box, the narrator sets out to find a police barracks, hoping to enlist the policemen into locating the black box for him; on the way, he meets a one-legged bandit, Yadupeer who threatens to gut him, but becomes his friend upon finding out that his potential victim is also one-legged. At the barracks, which is two-dimensional? He IA/FEBRUARY 2010
meets two of the three policemen, Bhairon singh and Kaali who speak in a curious mĂŠlange of spoonerisms, solecisms, and malapropisms and are entirely obsessed with bicycles. There he is introduced to various peculiar or irrational concepts, artifacts, and locations, including a contraption that collects sound and converts it to light based on a theory regarding omnium, the fundamental energy of the universe; a vast underground chamber called ‘Eternity,’ where time stands still, mysterious numbers are devoutly recorded and worried about by the policemen, and there is a box from which anything you desire can be produced; an in-
7 41 tricate carved chest containing an infinite series of identical but smaller chests; and a theory of the transfer of atoms between a man and his bicycle:“The gross and net result of it is that people
thwarted by a bicycle painted with an unknown colour which drives those who see it mad. He faces the gallows, then narrowly escapes on a beautiful bicycle when the two policemen
He also reveals that the box contains not money, but omnium, which can become anything he desires, and is actually the box that was in ‘Eternity’. Elated by the possibilities before him, he
MNIYAM who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”
I
is later discovered that Bhagchand Soni has been found dead in a ditch, apparently gutted by Yadupeer, and the narrator is blamed because he is the most convenient suspect. He calls on the help of Yadupeer, but his rescue is
are called away by dangerously high readings in the underground chamber.On his escape, he passes Bhagchand’s house and sees a light, and he finally meets the third policeman, Veer who has the face of Bhagchand. Veer’s secret police station is in the walls of Bhagchand’s house, and he tells the narrator that he is the architect of the readings in the underground chamber, which he alters for his amusement, meaning he saved the narrator’s life. He tells the narrator that he found and sent the black box to the narrator’s home, where it is waiting forhim.
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continues on to the home he and Devi inhabit, to find that while only a few days have passed, his accomplice is twenty years older, with a wife and children. When Devi sees the narrator, he has a heart attack and dies shouting that the narrator was supposed to be dead, for the black box was not filled with money but a bomb.The narrator runs off, and is soon accompanied by Devi. They walk down the road, and come to the police barracks. It is then obvious that the narrator, and now Devi, are in a surreal afterlife, and go through the same series of events without remembering any of it
I:
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COVER STORY
CHAR ACTERS
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44
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13 45
H
is father was a strong farmer and mother owned a public house. He knew his mother well but his father and he were strangers and did not converse much. His father and mother died when he was too young and foolish and did not know properly why they left him.After a few days he was sent to a boarding school filled with people, some young and some older.
”He knew that if his name would be remembered
it would
be with Arpateshwar’s” IA/FEBRUARY 2010
His life at this school did not matter except for one thing. It was here that he first came to know something of Atpateshwar. One day he picked up idly an old tattered book in the science master’s study and put it in his pocket to read in bed the next morning. He was about sixteen then. The book was a first edition of Golden Hours with the two last pages missing. By the time he was nineteen and had reached the end of his education he knew that the book was valuable and that in keeping it he was stealing it. It was for Atpateshwar he committed his first serious sin. He did not go home direct from school. He spent some months in other places broadening his mind and finding out about Atpateshwar’s works. He met one night with a bad accident and broke his left leg in six places and when he was well enough again to go his way he had one leg made of wood, the left one. At the age of twenty he went back to his home to a rocky farm. He was certain by this time that farming, even if he had to do it, would not be his life work. He knew that if his name was to be remembered, it would be remembered with Atpateshwar’s.
46
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47
H
e has spent a long life of fifty years in the cattle trade and now lived alone in retirement in a big house three miles away from the village. He has a spent bloodless face peering from the top of the great black coat which covered him from ear to ankle. He still did large business through agents and carried no less than three thousand pounds with him every time he hobbled to the village to lodge his money.
H
”A spent bloodless face
peering over
the great
black coat”
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e is nearing seventy. The hand is yellow, the wrinkled skin draped loosely upon the bones. Over the knuckleof his forefinger clearly see the loop of a skinny vein. His face was terrifying but his eyes in the middle of it had a quality of chill and horror. The skin is like faded parchment (writing material made of animal skin, paper resembling this) with an arrangement of puckers and wrinkles which creates between them an expression of fathomless inscrutability.The eyes were horrible. They were not genuine eyes at all but mechanical dummies animated by electricity or the like, with a tiny pinhole in the centre of the ‘ pupil’ through which the real eye gazed out secretively and with great coldness. Occasionally the heavy cheese-like lids would drop down slowly with great languor (laziness) and then rise again. Wine color dressing gown wrapped loosely around the body. Sticking plaster or bandage at the left hand side of his neck. Throat and chin are also bandaged. His voice had a peculiar jarring weight like the hoarse toll of an ancient rusty bell in an ivy-smothered tower. His lips hardly move, he has no teeth behind
48
KALIPRASADA
H
e has a dark face and hooky nose and masses of black curly hair. He is blue-jowled and black-jowled and looks as if he shaved twice a day. He has white enameled teeth, two rows of them arranged in the interior of his mouth. He is heavy-fleshed and gross in body like the sergeant but his face looks far more intelligent. It is unexpectedly lean and the eyes in it are penetrating and observant. If his face alone were in question he would look more like a poet than a policeman but the rest of his body looks anything but poetical. His voice is high, almost feminine, and he speaks with a delicate careful intonation. He lived in the barracks for more than 100 years.
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49
”His face alone would look more
like a poet
than a policeman”
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50 DEVI SINGH
”His strong face has
collapsed
to jowls of fat”
D
evi is a strong civil man but he is lazy and idle-minded. He has brown hair and is made handsomely enough in a small way. His shoulders are broadened out with work and his arms are thick like little tree-trunks. He has a quiet civil face with eyes like cow’s eyes, brooding, brown, and patient. After sixteen years Devi has grown enormously fat and his brown hair is gone, leaving him quite bald. His strong face has collapsed to jowls of hanging fat.
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51
O
�His moustache shot out into the air like the antennae of some
rdinary enough as each part of him looked by itself, they all seemed to create together, by some undetectable discrepancy in association or proportion. A very disquieting impression of unnaturalness, amounting almost to what was horrible and monstrous. He is very big and fat and the hair which strayed abundantly about the back of his bulging neck are a pale straw-colour. He is having huge back, thick arms and legs are encased in the rough blue uniform. His hands were dark, swollen and enormous. His face is enormously fat, red and widespread, sitting squarely on the neck of his tunic with a clumsy weightiness that reminded of a sack of flour. The lower half of it is hidden by a violent red moustache which shot out from his skin far into the air like the antennae of some unusual animal. His cheeks are red and chubby and his eyes are nearly invisible, hidden from above by the obstruction of his tufted brows and from below by the fat foldings of his skin. His face is gross and far from beautiful but he had modified and assembled his various unpleasant features in some skilful way so that they expressed good nature, politeness and infinite patience. His voice is heavy and slightly muffled, reminding of a thick winter quilt. He turned slowly round, shifting his stance with leisurely and heavy majesty, In the front of his peaked official cap is an important-looking badge and over it in golden letters are the word sub inspector -Bhairon singh He lived in the barracks for more than 100 years as collapsed to jowls of hanging fat.
unusual animal.� IA/FEBRUARY 2010
52 YADU BIR (LANGDA)
H
e is small and poorly dressed and on his head is a cloth cap of pale salmon colour and wears a ragged trouser. His arms are as strong as an article of powerful steam machinery. He is tricky and smokes a tricky pipe and his hand is quavery. His eyes are tricky and very unusual eyes. There is no palpable divergence in their alignment but they seemed to be incapable of giving a direct glance at anything that was straight and he looks through bushes of hair which are growing about his eyes. His left leg is smooth, shapely and fairly fat but it is made of wood.
�His left leg is
smooth shapely but made of
wood IA/FEBRUARY 2010
53
”His voice is like
cardboard rubbed on
H sandpaper
”Cinema is the most
alive
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e has coloured stripes of high office on his chest but he is dressed in policeman’s blue and on his head he carries a policeman’s hat with a special badge of superior office glittering very brilliantly in it. He is very fat and circular, with legs and arms of the minimum, and his large bush of moustache is bristling with bad temper and self indulgence. The sound his voice made is rough like coarse cardboard rubbed on sandpaper and it is clear that he is not pleased with himself or with other people.
35 31
E S I T R E E V ER nt@ D A H seme r.com rti uteu e adv iana ind
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INDIANAUTEUR
5
COVER STORY
COVER STORY
YEAR:ONE
In the anniversary issue, various IA regulars take turns to contribute personal insights on various areas of individual interests. Missing images, film programming, film preservation and film criticism. Read on.
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WHAT
THEY FORGOT K
TO TELL
SHITIZ ANAND
YOU
Ksihtiz Anand travels to the site of the Bhopal Gas tragedy, and uses his camera to document the hitherto ignored. The images missing from our cinematic screen and those that the media conveniently glosses over.
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“B
hopal is an interesting city. There is water scarcity, inspite of the presence of the lakes. There is a stark difference in the quality of life in the old and the new Bhopal. The old being defined primarily by the areas that was affected by the world’s worst industrial disaster that night of the 3rd December, in 1984.
“
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958
“I
have to make a trip to the factory. That’s where it all started. That’s where I started and based my story. I needed to get a first hand experience of feeling the location. All my shots were there. After some persuasion to the guards on duty, I reach the location exclusively. The government has taken over the premises and its under strict surveillance.
“
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61 COVER STORY
“T
he factory stands rusting in peace. The evening sun renders a slight warmth on the otherwise cold heap of metal junk that is been lying there for years. Phosgene tanks, reactor tanks and other tanks designed to hold methane and other poisonous gases. All it required was one small error and a disaster struck.
“
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629 7 COVER STORY
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63
“M
otors and bolts larger than I have ever seen before. The cornucopia of metal and the metallic wires all around is scary. Just looking at it sends shivers down my spine. As I move from one plant to the other, I hear cries in my mind. Shouts. Screams.
“
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946 64 is even difficult to fathom the beliefs that it leads to. People worshipping trees and stones at the very sites that were affected by the disaster is common. And it is inexplicable.
I
T
he black night as they called it. Of people screaming to leave their homes in fear of being engulfed in the disaster. The photographs come flashing back in the mind. The pics that have haunted me always. Of the buried child. Of the masses of dead bodies. The graves. The shocked faces. It's as if a movie is playing out right in front of my eyes. I close my eyes. Silence. Tears fill my eyes. How could a human being be so irresponsible? It had to be a human. Perhaps the demand to hang Anderson, was justified. God would never to such a thing. But then there is a strong belief in the country that whatever happens is God's will. So why did God have to be so cruel. Why have so strong a faith in something that could be so cruel at times? Faith is one thing that is so strongly embedded in the Indian culture, that it
take closer look at the paraphernalia around. T 1, T2 smaller tanks acting as connectors to the larger ones that are often 30 to 60 feet high. Plastic duct tapes still adorn the naked wires.The green color is slightly lost its freshness. Plastic is non-biodegradable. A curse to the environment. The rusting iron and the leaked gases have rendered the soil useless. The air is polluted. The water is contaminated. Nature seems to be taking charge here. Creepers have made its way up the pipelines. Where do they get the required manure to survive? The roots of many a plant lies adjacent to the machinery. What use is the machinery here now? Why does it even have to be there. Why not just dispose it off? Perhaps the abandoned factory serves a testimony for generations to come. A constant reminder of the world's worst industrial disaster.
I
stood exactly there where the disaster started. Lying there in one corner of the premises was the infamous tank number 610. Appearing as a dwarf in front of it, I approach it and take a few pictures. Some say this tank was overflowing. Some say it was a leakage. The evening breeze is picking up pace. I feel a chill. Was it the winter, or the situation I was in. The sun had gone
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down and I could now feel the cold December evening.
T
he guard who had accompanied me asks me to hurry up. Shuffling between the lenses on my Nikon, I capture as much as I can. There is less time to compose things. I shoot impromptu. There are a lot of shakes. Lot of low light shots. My back is aching with the constant bending over and standing for a long period. I know I cannot stop though. I had to take the shots at any cost. All I seek is any visual proof that will recollect my thoughts at a later date.
I
hand the guard some money and I return home. Unable to speak of the two days to others for a few days. Shocked. I am at a loss of words for a few days. I am still figuring out what the theme of the documentary should be with so much going on.There are so many threads that are going on.
COVER STORY
p lm
i: fi
spects
in
intro-
retrospect
lenges of programming films in the capital, and also describes the journey
of
Cinedarbaar,
the
film
programming
body, as it completes one year of its inception.
ing
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Suri
about the various chal-
m am
r rog
TO FILL SCREENS AND SEATSSURI SUPRIYA
Supriya
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COVER STORY
C
inema is like a time machine that makes you travel through different spaces and times whenever you watch a film. It was two years back that I got acquainted with the images of Yugoslavia through Emir Kusturica’s Underground. The alien world of Kusturica and the foreign French subtitles on the big screen was nothing less than a fantasy and yet this world did keep me glued to the screen for three hours. Such magical fantasies are only possible in Paris, where a cinephile can chose any time machine like La Cinematheque, action due cinema theatres, and film clubs to visit different places and times on any given day.
T
o build a gathering of cinephiles, with a place to watch good films and sharing the experiences through discussions got me back to India. A small dream of a film club to build a cinematic culture in Delhi was what initiated Cine Darbaar (Gathering for cinema). Traveling across with this dream to different people for over months and still having no possible funding for the project made us start with a small film festival in collaboration with Film Trust of India and Iran Culture House. This was the Iran film festival in Feb, 2009, which gave Cine Darbaar its first start to get in contact with the cinephiles in Delhi. Thus we started the series of activities that our team began conducting in urban and ru-
ral landscapes in India. 2009, was hence the year of observation, experimenting, travelling & confusions. We conducted around five film festivals, interactions in three film institute’s along with cinephile meetings for about three months in six small towns and cities. But the goal with which it had started: to have a regular screening, talk on cinema, a place where once could read and to create one spot for all cinephiles under the common roof was deviated towards other activities. Fortunately, continuing these activities for a year helped us understand the basic problems of cinema in India. And in turn has created a strong foundation for a body beyond a film club like Cine Darbaar to exist as a necessity to bridge the gap for the existing loopholes in order to promote a good taste of cinema. With all these activities and on the basis on experiences we categorize what already has been existed, what exists today and what more is needed. IDEAS THAT HAVE ARRIVED
U
nder Nehru’s government; International Film Festival of India, National Film Archive of India, National film development corporation as a funding body, (although came later) and Film and Television institute (FTII), Pune emerged. These bodies were formed in order to promote good cinema in India and it did start in a positive direction. It was from Bengal the new wave
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began spreading, and there was a shift in the process of film making. If one were to look at the developments in cinema in any other part of the world, one would find certain common platforms that were set to bring out these developments i.e. a change in the policies of government, an institution or a governing body being set up to promote cinema, a funding facility by the government for artist as well as an institution to impart education. For instance, Iranian New wave, it all began with such major developments pre and post revolution.
T
here were children and adult foundation that helped directors like Abbas Kiarostami to make their short films. The government body Farabi cinema Foundation was set up to promote cinema and there were policies related to tax and censorship being put to practice. In that aspect India had enough set ups to take Indian cinema forward to international level and vice versa. Like the IFFI (International film festival of India) was responsible for bringing forward the Italian Neo Realism and French New Wave through the first international film festival. This international film festival was the major shift in the style of Indian directors, where they came across the European directors and imbibed their style into the Indian traditions and culture. This was the time when the directors were consciously aware not only of the world
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cinema but also about their own regional lifestyles, art, music and culture and hence India saw the best of films during this time. The post independence saw overall growth in National cinema including the Hindi cinema. Directors like Raj Kapoor, V.Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Mehbood, Guru Dutt, Saeed Mirza, Shyam Benegal, and Mani Kaul lifted the Hindi cinema. The directors produced some great social dramas and considered cinema as the medium to convey a lot of social issues in Hindi cinema. At one hand where film schools developed a ritual for all upcoming film professionals to watch plethora of films, we had film clubs in various towns and cities taking international cinema to the laymen. This was the film society movement, a time when the audience enjoyed films beyond the theatrical releases and had options for watching several films. Then FTII was set up to train the actors, directors and cinematographers. With teachers like Ritwik Ghatak, the institute produced some of the best directors of India. Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahini, and John Abraham were among a few. With this institute the Indian cinephiles, previously autodidacts, turned towards receiving a perceptive through a teacher with FTII. And thus this institution became an important way of producing the future great directors of India. To support the film makers was the Film finance corporation, now National Film Development Corporation of India
provided funds for directors like Shyam Bengal , Kundan Shah and also, importantly, Mrinal Sen to make films with the help of the government. Thus in short the ideas that have already been arrived since 60s are the educational institutes, Film Societies, National Awards, International Film Festival, Film Division and National Film Development Corporation. The whole infrastructure needed to develop a base for cinema had started developing. Cinema enjoyed popularity and was also taken seriously during this time. Unfortunately all these foundations to promote cinema have gone silent since years now. The ideas that arrived 50 years ago are in the dormant state. IDEAS IN PROGRESS
I
n the 21st century media has already become a strong source of revenue especially the film sectors on which all other media like television & advertisements look up for. Hence ideas that will affect the film viewing habits in India are already in progress, i.e. expanding the international cinema market to the mainstream audience has been progressing with various steps taken by different organizations. Film festivals in India have already seen a growth during the past few years, a person on an average has more than three to four per month to choose from. There are efforts taken to conducts regular screen-
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ings at popular places during the dine outs often. Embassies are promoting their cinema for their own purposes in India. We also have feminist and socialist fighters using film festivals for their own purposes. One even finds international cinema on their television box now. More than this we have DVDs available in the market to select a variety of International directors as well. Apart from screenings we also have private film institute’s mushrooming to spread an education in cinema. Regular workshops independently are conducted as well. Overall the accessibilities for an Indian audience towards international cinema have increased once again. On the other hand for Indian cinema to be accessible internationally, there are ideas in progress as well. The government film department has taken an active role to send Indian films to major international film festivals. The Bollywood has realized the need to invest more funds in marketing with pre assumptions to marketing being equivalent to film being successful. The producers are also pushing the co production possibilities, like the coming of Fox and Columbia pictures in India, but they all Hence one could say the infrastructure to promote cinema just like the past is once again pacing up in India.
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A T
udiences at the Taiwan Cine Experience.
he entrance for the Taiwan Cine Experience with the official festival poster.
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COVER STORY
F
ilm maker Mr. Mani Kaul during the opening ceremony of the Taiwan Cine Experience. He observed Hou-HsiaoHsien’s trickery with filmic time.
T
he projectionist at Sirifort Auditorium. He lights the screen up. Literally.
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A
udiences during the Russian Cine Experience. The team managed an ovation from the audience on the closing day.
T
he Shakti Samanta retrospective resulted in crowd discussions that were overflowing of nostalgia and recollection of a bygone era.
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71 IDEAS IN CONFLICTS
T
he ideas that already have arrived and the ideas that exist now have a huge difference. The earlier development took shape only with a group of cinephiles who took cinema seriously, who understood or tried to understand cinema and its potential as a mass medium. The film society movement, the famous critic Chidananda Das Gupta, the film makers, the film institute and film festivals all had common vision, to spread the art of cinema and its understanding among the masses by being honest towards their own medium. Decades after, the effort are once again been made but not by cinephiles. The ideas that are in progress are the ideas whose genesis solely comes from the fact of generating revenue with the skills of marketing. Today if one has the option to watch many films it is because the seller sees his money and not because they take cinema seriously. For instance we don’t expect a lawyer, busy with his marketing team to sell his services to the clients, foremost we expect that lawyer knows the constitution. Or else there would be no other professionals expect marketers.
S
imilarly, even in cinema if one chooses any market segment with in it, it should at least be accompanied by some cinephiles who could channelize the efforts in right direction. Hence even though the genesis of viewing international cinema has seen a start in Indian, the change to appreciate cinema still is pes-
simistic because there are no right people to answer the basic WHAT? For e.g. What DVD distributor should buy? What film to be shown in television? What film festivals to be conducted? What kind of films is needed to develop the taste of cinema? What kind of films should be screened at the cultural centers? What should be the course curriculum for the private institutes? What workshops apart from the semesters do children need in films? On the other hand getting Indian films at the international market is also facing the same problem. While we have producers and directors who have been trying to promote and sent their trash, hoping to be a part of the competition section, their marketing strategies and ideas have been failing. On the other hand, there are government departments responsible for Indian entries at international festival. Again the basic question missing is what films to be sent? What films need promotion? What films have the possibilities to be a part of the competition section? IDEAS IN ANTICIPATION
T
he major lapse in as in answering these questions are due to the lack of participation of cinephiles and regulating the content for television, film festival, screenings etc. Hence there are some ideas that needs immediate attention and should hence be anticipated. To make India a better place for cinema, there is now a need for professional cinephiles performing responsibilities like film programmer, film critics & film
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
teachers are needed. They are needed to understand the viewers, film students and overall the market to be able to develop cinema gradually in a positive direction. Just like how all professions have been taken seriously with various people providing inputs as professional, cinema needs the same seriousness and the same seriousness to be given to such professionals. We need these cinephiles to understand their audiences, their viewing and understanding habits and then taking them gradually towards better cinema through good film programming, through better film criticism & through better film education. We need festivals, screenings to celebrate cinema, to celebrate directors and to celebrate their contribution to the world cinema rather than social and environmental fighters conducting film festivals. We need television channels to understand their audiences and decide their film programming a little better, rather than each distributor launching his own television channels to promote their DVDs. We need a common platform to watch film intelligently programmed understanding the audiences and to open their languages of cinema through screenings rather than every country promoting their own soft skills and promoting tourisms through cultural programmes. We need film programmers and not marketers to make Indian a better place for cinema. Where are the cinephiles who are working for the development of cinema? With so many seniors already taken up this space without
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any knowledge of cinema, that when the cinephile comes and expresses his wish to watch a series of films celebrating close ups, his ideas are no wonder shoved away and discourages by these bullies existing for their own reasons. “ Why conduct
should film
they not festivals�
We need these film programmers to also help structure the film festivals in India and sending Indian films at the international film festivals. Why is it that after so many efforts with great marketing and PR skills, our directors and actors have managed to break through the top international film festival with no films being at the competition section? Why is that films that deserve a chance to be sent are never sent? Why is there so much red tapism that is affecting cinema? The departments are never accompanied by such film programmers to help them select the films to be sent. No wonder even the National award for the best film has no value. The jury members belong to all the fields but cinema. And no wonder while other countries are celebrating their wins as best films, we are still harping with the news channels and being happy standing at the corner in the pavilion section. These are all the more reasons why a film programmer should exist.
O
n the education segment, we need film institutes to first tell the students to be a cinephile, to help build a cinephile culture of at least watching films at their institutes. We need teachers and directors to again to push the upcoming directors to pursue and make their films.
We need teachers to incorporate among the students to understand an image, its relevance, what makes it dense? Even after three years of film making diploma, the children have not learnt to talk about images. Basic functions of camera, editing is what students are acquainted with, but not mise-en- scene and montage. Students understand the cuts between images but not the aesthetics. They understand the progress of the narrative structure, the linear, non linear editing but not the critical aspects to know, why?
H
ence we do need a revival in the course structure with the help of cinephiles to develop cinema. We then need teachers to develop their personalities then to be able to sell their ideas to producers, but foremost trying to understand cinema. And to support a new kind of cinema, new ideas, and young film makers we need a revival in funding opportunities for these upcoming film makers. So that these students do not succumb to the escapist film making ideology. The touring around during 2009 thus laid a strong foundation for Cine Darbaar and its film programmers to create a space for good cinema, to organize workshops at film institutes to give a new perspective on cinema. To what we started with a small fantasy of bringing the cinematic time machine to India from Paris has although been kept on hold, yet the year gave us an important reason to continue our activity and even more intensely now.
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7 73
IN COLD SAGORIKA SINGHA STORAGE
SAGORIKA SINGHA MUSES OVER THE STATE OF FILM PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION IN THE COUNTRY, WITH SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES FOR THE SAME. SHE CONCLUDES MUCH MORE CAN BE DONE.
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COVER STORY
Cinema has always suffered being the youngest of the arts. Cinema, which came into existence with the invention of the kinetoscope in 1891, has a history only a century old. But that does not simplify the challenges that had existed and continues till date. This article, in aboveground, would try to bring out an amateur’s outlook on the current scene involving film archiving, particularly in India, discussing the-not-so-explored arena here, its pros and cons and mulling over the possible cure to awake the unawareness from its almost-slumber in this regard.
A
rchiving, which can alternately imply to maintenance of a film repository, has multiple functions. It is simply not about storing film stocks, videos. Moreover, the fragile medium that cinema employs, deems it difficult and hence, necessitates its preservation. Very recently, the report of the auctioning of 25000 film stocks by the National Films Archive of India (NFAI) fuels the fear. Reportedly, dozens and dozens of regional and national films, most of them the only remaining copies, were sold off as junks. It was not only about losing out on the film stocks (and the manner it was disposed of) that is of concern, it is also about completely losing a veritable portion of the particular period that those cinema held, the heritage and its ultimate demolition.
T
his further provokes the immediate emergence of doing something for holding on to the art and preserving it for the progeny and the cinephiles, all alike. Cinema, ultimately, ends up being universal, so the responsibility towards it also encompasses the ordinary pretext. When one goes forward, it’s not necessary to leave a mark, as a witness to some achievement. Somehow, it’s always necessary to understand evolution, the past, as it has been overtly said, its only then we relate to the present. This is no different for cinema. Now, let’s consider the basic premise of
advertisements. They are called the preservers of social history. Lasting for mere seconds, these ephemeral chronicler of sorts are likened to an archaeological record. They are not of course a regular, simple, faithful recorder of society but present an assortment of social life capturing the various stages of society and its changes. When compared with a bigger or rather a longer and a far refined medium, called cinema, the function of preserving the social heritage increases manifold.
C
inema or any form of documentation, do not become the sole witness to a valid past or an event but they end up being one of the visual carriers of a bygone legacy- literature, photography, painting, all the major form of arts do the same, however, cinema could very well coalesce and bring out an aspect absent in the rest. Cinema captures in parts what the society undergoes, so that we often end up recording history and later reviewing them through them. Storing moving images of a period, of a phase in celluloid. Our history gets recorded, captured for the progeny to follow, to understand its past and to relate it with its future. Every time getting immersed in the medium called cinema, we often forget the reality it spreads across. And, no one complains,
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because, for many that is precisely what cinema means, an escape route to an alternate reality. How a few minutes of newsreel open a completely different world in front of us, sometimes so much so that it creates an undefinable affect. There is a mystery to the impact cinema leaves on different varieties of individual. But the basic representation is undebatably always as the reflector of the then-present. Review the silent eras of Raja Harishchandra, the talkies arrival with Alam Ara, the super hit syndrome introduced by Mughal -e- Azam. Then take a quantum leap and move to the angry-socialist-pronemen-with-their-angst-againstestablishment of the seventies. Switch to the present 21st century’s globalisation gamut, and the capitalist cacophony. This is a filmographical representation of the society and you are bound to see the common link –the slice of the period. But then again, is not this coincidence meant to be?
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his is exactly why the role of cinema as social recorders and its subsequent preservation becomes important. A random comparison: the ozone depletion and the green house emissions, the exposure to the ultraviolet, the climate consensus, it is giving rise to. A similar depletion (the altar of ignorance) in the cinema scene would no doubt give way to the worst situation which will
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place even this young art to perish silently. In the process we lose a part of the history, not only of the celluloid world but also the age, the era and the evolution. Cinema’s survival thus becomes a poignant and persistent issue, not only for the cinephiles or the general viewers alone, but the society at large. Romantic notion would make one relate failure to preserve the art to a diminishing social history, dissolving into a vacuum when not restored. Videos, newsreels that once proclaimed and captured an event in history, a fictionalised setting, a story, an emotional moment, vanish without a trace. It is a loss, no doubt and the greater concern is when, it is not stored, not remembered and not even known that such reel ever existed. This devoid, if continued, spells the recipe for the most fatal concoction ever.
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he art dies an ignoble death, the banishment, the worst of the kind. It’s as if the lights go out and the room altogether ceases to exist. From the realist point of view, the urgency is radical because otherwise it would help the art do the disappearing act, literally. India is the world’s greatest producers of film. According to statistics, around 1300 films are produced annually. Archiving thus becomes a challenging issue. We are of course not right now probing into other details such as the issue of quality over quantity here. But the real issue is how archiving should go about. The National Films Archive of India (NFAI), set up in 1964 as a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has been
Martin Scorsese with members of the World Cinema Foundation. the only major archiving board for India. Since 1969 it has been a member of FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) and has played an active role in the work of this organization. At present it stores more than 17,000 films and the list is growing. In a data revealed by NFAI in 2008, it was discovered that more than 80% of the films produced annually were not archived. It was then that NFAI collaborated with film institutes like Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) to take the case seriously and in that very year introduced the subject of film archiving as a different paper for the first year students. This is a healthy step, one which encourages and brings hope.
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owever, this is just the surface and definitely not the benchmark. For the last two years, they had been also organizing the annual “Pune Film Treasures Festival” with the Thomson Foundation for Films and Television Heritage. Film archiving has been a major subject
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for numerous film institutions offering film studies like New York University, Columbia and UCLA. This has been late coming to India. But better late than never. At this stage, this is the best way to go about. The more people, cinephiles are aware of its importance and thus prepared, the more beneficial it is for the survival of the art. For an archivist or a preserver, even the process itself is an art. It is important to understand the professional way to go about it as well. That does not imply that one would be solely seeking the business aspect of it, because, that is the other part of the preservation process, and a rather a popular one, in the outside market. But that would constitute a different topic altogether.
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n the international scene, Martin Scorsese’s initiative called World Cinema Foundation was launched in the 2007 Cannes with the noble and novel aim of restoring the valuables in terms of cinema from all the corners of the world so that even
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countries, who could not afford the preservation, is not left out. It is a non-profit organization which collects, preserves films, from as diverse countries like Morocco, Romania, South Korea, Senegal, Turkey, Brazil to Sweden, France and as rare and old, getting them a global platform. The idea behind the establishment of WCF also emphasises on the importance the international art form holds and how it needs to be preserved and protected in order that the value is felt by the younger generation to follow.
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rchive outlasts its owner, and that way it immortalises not only the art but also the artist. That is the other side of it. The loss of the preservation also spells doom for the cinephiles and those on the way to become one. What is the use if they don’t have a history to go back to? The problem in India has been its unawareness. But words are not what it requires, it demands more actions. The urgency and the immediacy needs to be understood, felt by the cinema community at large, it is not the effort of a single individual. And practically, when it comes to the task of preservation, it is ‘the more, the merrier’. The pathetic state of the Indian archiving scene is even more evident when an organization like NFAI complains of ‘lack of staff’ to look after it. Moreover, there are no independent bodies to support the task in India. This is just a reflection on a ‘state of things’. But the mere thought that cinema and its depletion might lead to an inevitable untold/unpreserved/ dubious future is unbearable. It is
important to rise to the occasion, along with generating ideas and implementing them. To lay emphasis on its protection so that the history does not fade out but rather gets constructed and help in continuing the legacy. For the chronicler of our times and beyond, the notion of preservation and its passive state in our country threatens the already young art. It’s always the best who survives because they manage to find a means to it.
WCF RESTORATIONS
LIMITE BRAZIL
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here has to be a basic difference between product and art, cinema is no FMCG, it is not meant to arrive and depart and be extinguished just like that. For all cinemas’ loyal lovers, programming and archiving ends up being the two keys of survival. However, the aim of the former and the latter are not restricted to only its propagation. It’s high time for the Indian film archiving scene to wake up, take notice and make available a platform that would further enable the process of restoration in the work dedicated to the cause called cinema. To educate and prepare the budding generation of film enthusiasts, specially, to not leave the other side of their lovedevotion, because preservation gives a more lasting and lingering fruit of labour, a remarkable memorabilia for the entire posterity to behold, a gift unlike any other. What could be the greater deed for a greater love?
THE HOUSEMAID SOUTH KOREA
KALPANA INDIA
DRY SUMMER TURKEY IA/FEBRUARY 2010
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WHICH WAY ANUJ TOTHE MALHOTRA MONOLITH? ANUJ MALHOTRA CONTEMPLATES THE CONSISTENTLY EVOLVING ROLE OF THE FILM CRITIC IN A NATIONAL CINEMA THAT IS CAUGHT IN THE STATE OF TRANSITION.
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The role of film criticism can be defined in the context of its inconvenient existence as the knot in a tug-ofwar between its nature as a device of encapsulation – of summarisation of a mass taste, and thus, its devotion to the cause of populism – and as a piece of writing that vows eternal commitment to the acknowledgement of the various unreasonable whims of the massively important artform it wishes to tackle – cinema.
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oo much film criticism in India seeks comfort in an existence on the margins, in a certain sense of romanticism attached to the bohemia of life on the fringes – but a film critic cannot afford to be elitist, for if a critique is useful only as an exalted appreciation to be fawned over the next round of wine with a small circle of friends – then it’s purpose is failed, and as such, a film critic should consistently place himself in the middle of the heated discussion. A critique is defined not by its eclectisism, but by its utility, or by its influence. Film criticism is utilitarian art. It’s existence does not run parallel to the artform it criticises, but in conjunction with it. If great film criticism were to exist only on the pages of a personal diary, never released to the public – would it still be film criticism? Or it exists on the other end of the spectrum – as the marketdriven device of exploitation of the current topic in vogue – wherein everyone wants to jump in on the bandwagon and put an opinion in the ballot box. Such criticism exists as much from the need to be counted as from the rather vulgar ambition of posterity. For most journalists who indulge in this manner of criticism only appreciate the need for criticism to function in a popular domain too well.
However, the crucial difference in their approach is, that while a good film critic may try to identify the element of resonance in an obscure piece of film and then establish it’s significance in the popular domain; the bad critic will simply enough, comment on the most popular film on the marquee to achieve that resonance with popular culture. As such, his film criticism, if it can be called that, is not an act of discovery, that very vital element of all cinephilia, but of simple exploitation.
the high tower of elitism that it’s shouts from the window do not reach anyone but itself in the form of an echo the latter chooses to contain itself in the confinement of a moment. In the temporariness of each event that exists ‘now’ but will go kaput in another, as is the case with all empty pop-culture, and while such criticism may achieve a special significance on the day of a film’s release, it wishes to be discarded at the moment of the next update – the next Friday review.
he choice with a film critic does not lie in the either/or mode, wherein he can seek comfort in the selection of loyalty to either his reader or his cinema – but instead, a film critique has to function in the state of consistent compromise between commitment to the eccentricities of its great artform, and the impatience of its reader. A film critic has to be the travel guide who uses the interest of his tourist to slowly unravel the richness of the city’s architecture; but also as the pamphlet distributor near the stall who has to generate that interest in the first place. As a result, however, it might be important to point out that each of the two aforementioned types of film criticism render themselves highly irrelevant – for the former isolates itself so much in its cosy room in
film critic, also must not uphold criticism as an instrument of superiority, for often enough, film writers in our nation pride themselves on their inaccessibility which is a betrayal of the very molecule of the process of film criticism – cinephilia. As has often been said on more distinguished portals of film literature, as on the pages of Indian Auteur’s Olympus, cinephilia, when stripped to its bone and reduced to its most simplistic theorem, is the act of participation. It is the act of sharing, of being able to generalise the jubiliation of watching a masterpiece, or the contempt at watching cinema reduced to a nymphet show; to a greater audience. It is thus, the act of a collective. Cinephilia is not an act of exclusivity, or of protection of information as if it is a national
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Chaplin in his classic, ‘Modern Times’
treasure. The bane of much criticism, thus, lies in the lack of this basic understanding – displayed most vehemently on the pages of Osian festival catalogue, where the text of each film introduction is another act of condescension. As an extension of the type of criticism defined above, a writing on film develops that remains ashamed of having to watch the same film as the simple-minded folks on the street. It is a blow to their egos to have to share the same space with them and watch the same set of images on the white curtain. They are plagued, thus, by an urgent need to distantiate themselves from such esteemed company, to create a separation between the average movie goer and themselves (similar to the balcony and the stall hierarchy in the single-screens only that the differences this time are purely intellectual) and to establish
themselves in a strange, twisted manner as being superior. And yet, does it remain beyond them to comprehend that cinema remains a universal experience, one which does not demand of its audience a certain level of erudition, a certain level of education, a certain level of literacy – it is the medium of the Neanderthal pre-historic man. As the presenter famously announced during Charlie Chaplin’s Honorary Oscar presentation, “As long as there is a screen and a projector, there will be Chaplin.”
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heir writing on film thus becomes an extended exercise in the appeasement of their personal egos, or an effort in the similar vein to create an impression of intellect among their own peers. They achieve this through the attach-
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ment of personal agendas to a film. A sociologist locates clues of social trends, an ethnologist requires of a film to be primarily an ethnographic document, a symbologist digs deeper into the screen to excavate symbols which might mean something that proves their pre-concieved notion. As a great defense of Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’ says, “Such criticism reveals more about the critic, than about the film.” Eventually, one must realise that nothing exists beyond the screen. The artifact is the only evidence, and the evidence is the only artifact. It presents itself on the two-dimensional white wall the blue light is projected on. The film is only as deep as the screen. While a film is a vehicle for ideas, it is eventually, a film. Such lazy interpretation, where each viewer is allowed
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their own film is an impediment in the path of development of cinema as a medium; for more thought is invested in the ideas a film may propagate than the film itself. Impressionism in painting was always about the novel nature of the brush strokes, and secondarily about the ideas they sought to represent. The belief that each film is actually many films, and the early 20th century popular literary folklore seepage into cinema – “Author is dead.” – are actually the initiators of a process that culminate in a death of argument. For each argument will only meet its dead end if everyone occupies a personal cubicle of ‘opinion’ that they do not wish to vacate at any cast. However, cinema does not exist in a vaccum, and howsoever subjective and personal the experience of watching each film maybe, the need for a monument of consensus is essential. Only if there is an agreement on something,will we, as film makers, film critics, or film watchers – all children of cinema – progress to another level.
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he primary role of the Cahiers Du Cinema writers, while also fulfilling the urgent need to subvert the popular opinion, was to cultivate a culture of argument, of inquiry, of thought – all important milestones in the journey to consensus. Without universal agreement on any tangent, we would all be moving in our personal circles – indulging in criticism that involves discussion to deaths on the meaning of individual words, theories, interpretations and
prisms of judgments. As Quentin Tarantino said about Pauline Kael’s criticism of Godard films, “At one stage, her criticism became more entertaining than the films themselves.” It is important for criticism to not establish an identity separate of its subject. And while it may not need to be subservient to the artform it serves, it should not supercede it as well. The truth remains, for cinema to remain an important artform in the 21st century, we cannot allow further bifurcation of audiences – the more we recede to our personal shells – and the internet, which instead of its famed role of being the catalyst of unison; actually arranges people into neater ‘circles’ – the more are the chances of extinction of the artform.
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he Friday film critic, who writes for national newspapers or appears on national television channels in India, does not realise the full responsibilities of his profile. His job is not that of the product-tester at the local toothpick factory – to rate products and certify them as suitable for public consumption. It is infact, separated from the job of a film historian by only a very feeble line of difference. The opportunity of a weekly presentation on each latest film should facilitate a film critic with the chance to accurately map out cinematic progress (or regression), ideological trends, new innovation with the camera, a new thought (or the absence of one, as in our
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case); helping his job transcend the very basic task of merely mentioning a few scenes from the film, elaborating on his opinion on the actor performances, and summarising the story of the film – for the perusal of the viewer/ reader at home; and instead, expand into documentation of a na-
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in giving films marks out of ten or five, and then justifying that grading. A mainstream critic, thus, has to be a reactionary, and his criticism should be a direct product of the times. He or she should, in the first place realise that their occupation of a place from where each of their views can be disseminated to millions does not afford them the power to influence a film’s commercial future, but the ability to cultivate a culture of cinema itself.
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Cahiers(Above) the gospel truth of film criticism; David Bordwell( left), the only pure film critic.
tion’s cinema history – measured week-by-week. It is tragic to see most mainstream ‘criticism’ – by the likes of Rajeev Masand, Raja Sen, Taran Adarsh, Kaveree Bamzai and Anupama Chopra – underestimate the power and potency of their own devices – instead finding relative happiness
here is a definite reason why none of our critics can be categorised into any classification related to cinema – a certain belief, a certain ideology, a certain method applied to each film, a certain affection for a director – because in order to feign the exalted aim of objectivity, they end up writing on each film as if it is the first film in the history of cinema. And that cinema is born each new Friday. For none of their reviews reveal any awareness of a cinematic past, or the placement of the film-at-hand in a certain historical context. That remains why all of their reviews are interchangeable, and when the bylines are removed, one may never be able to guess the authorship of the critique – and also why there is no internal coherence in their body of work as well – a new critic is born each Friday. It remains essential to question, as well, whether any of these critics have moved beyond the films released in the theatres, and attempted discovering an obscure gem. To disseminate awareness about such a film would be
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81 the ideal use of a mainstream setup for film criticism, but alas, we are all already perceived as individual authorities. Why bother. As a conclusion, film criticism is in tatters in the nation. No attempt is being made, except on isolated blogs which bear more the vanity of a duke than the humility of a stablehand, to restore film criticism to its original conception – the position of power, the position of information, the position of awareness, the position of enlightenment – and also, the position of humility, the position of servitude, the position of acceptance. Which is why commentators on random sites often ask, “Why do we need a film critic in the first place.” However, the onus in this new decade, lies on the shoulders of the film critics – they cannot ridicule these commentators and deem them ignorant, but instead, introspect on why their own role is treated with so much disdain so that it’s very existence is put into question.
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FROM IA EXCLUSIVE THE THE CINEMA SATYAM BARERA VAULT OF HOLLISFRAMPTON
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hile reading Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema, the first thing that struck me was Hollis Frampton's statement The term Intuitive - although that's an indelibly sloppy word that i dislike immensely. When people say they did something intuitively, it means that they didn’t think about it. They did what they liked to do, or what they do automatically, like picking their noses. It’s a totally irresponsible thing for an artist to say. On the other hand, simply attempting to keep an apparent progression from developing was probably a better control than assigning them each a number and taking the numbers out of a hat. As always happens with the very elementary uses of chance operations that would have produced "Clumps."".
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he Structure of his films explores fundamentals by limiting the numbers of elements used in a work and using them in pre-determined systematic ways. Manuals of Arms present its fourteen portraits using minimal means [eg; lighting is simple and each subject has apparently been given the same basic instructions in the same empty darkened space]. A serial structure, all the subjects are introduced in fourteen second shots, each separated from the next by forty frames of dark leader; then the portraits are presented in the same order. Palindrome (1969) organizes found imagery discarded by the film lab into complex palindromic sequence. Artificial Light (1969) uses the same sequence of imagery twenty times, but in each instance this material is presented in a different way; in one instance Frampton paints on the footage, in another he erases portions of it, in still another he presents it upside down and so on. Frampton’s systematic approach to film structure reached perhaps its most elabo-
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rate exposition in Zorns Lemma (1970). Zorns Lemma is divided into three sections, each representing a phase in the process of learning [particularly the process of learning languages] that begins in early childhood and continues until adulthood. First section, a school marmy voice reads verses from the bay state primer, an early English rhetoric used in New England, while the viewer watches a dark screen. The verses focus on words beginning with successive letters of the alphabet, which becomes one of the central grid structures in Zorn’s Lemma. the second sections begins with run through of the roman alphabet, then proceeds to reveal in silence, an immense collection of environmental words that are presented in alphabetic sets, one second per word.
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hey form an immense spatial temporal grid. As set after set of the words revealed, second development comes to dominate this central section of the film; gradually each of the word positions within each twenty four part alphabetic set [I/J and U/V are considered one letter] is replaced one second segments of a continuous action; Robert Huot painting a wall, egg frying, the pages of a book being turned. A new kind of narrative develops for viewers, who begin to follow the sequential actions [the length of each of which coincides with the time remaining in the central section of the film] and to wonder which letter will be replaced next. When the
last letter has been replaced, the middle section of the film ends. In the concluding section, we watch a man, a women and a dog walk away from the camera across the field, and into the woods, in a series of roll long shots, edited to look like a single continuous shot. The final section is the first with both imagery and sound; we hear several people reading. The voices alternate, each one reading a single word at a time. Just as the alphabetic system of the short first section continues during the second section, the one second rhythm introduced in the second section continues here. The voices read in time to a metronome marking off a one second beat.
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nstead of identifying with fictional character and vicariously experiencing this character’s adventures, the viewer of Zorn’s Lemma metaphorically relives phases of an educational process that, from Frampton’s point of view characterize contemporary experience.
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rampton’s next work, the seven parts Hapax Legomena - the first three sections of Hapax Legomena - Nostalgia, Poetic Justice & critical mass are some of Frampton’s most impressive films. In Nostalgia, we see close-ups of a series of photographs as they are burned, one by one, on a hot plate. As we look at each image burning. We listen to Michael Snow read a discussion of the image we will see next. In poetic justice, the viewer reads 240 page screenplay one page at a time. A
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story of a stressed relationship between a photographer and his lover is evident within the verbal & visual labyrinth created by Frampton’s ingenious text. In Critical Mass, he uses forms of visual & auditory repetition, to dramatize a lover’s quarrel between a young man and women.
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fter Hepax Legomena, he made 36 Hour long film Magellam - organized and meant to be viewed cylindrically over the course of 371 days.
REVIEWS
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“Turn out the lights The party's over They say that All good things must end Call it tonight The party's over And tomorrow starts The same old thing again “ - ‘The Party’s Over’ Willie Nelson, ‘56
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