Journal of Indian Cinema

Blog

  • Women in cinema in the age of digital

    Women in cinema in the age of digital

    The encyclopaedia of art is conspicuous by the absence of even a passing mention to several notable women artists. ‘Far too often, women’s achievements have been ignored, underreported, or simply erased from the historical record… While this erasure is frustrating and harmful, creating a false myth that women’s history lacks great creative and intellectual achievement, it’s even more maddening to find instances in which women’s accomplishments have been stripped from them… men deliberately stole credit for women’s work.’[1]

    [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Hollywood may have, once upon a time, installed DW Griffith on a pedestal and proclaimed him as its cinematic father, but long before he had seen his first camera, Alice Guy, a ‘Paris-born pioneer was laying the groundwork for narrative film’s visual language… She was one of the first to employ ground-breaking techniques[/highlight] like the split screen, double exposure, and film tied to sound. She’s also been credited with inventing the close-up (an honor popularly but mistakenly bestowed to Griffith).’[2] Hers is anything but a freak, isolated case. Dorothy Arzner pioneered the concept of the boom mic. And Margaret Booth was ‘a pioneer of the classic editing style, the so-called “invisible cutting, the aim of which was to make the transition from one image to another as seamless as possible, so the audience was almost unaware of the flow of shots within a sequence… All the filmmakers had to go through her in order to have a final editing of sound and vision approved.’[3] [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Alfred Hitchcock may have successfully demolished the studio system by wresting control over the post production, but it was his wife, Alma Reville, who was responsible for some of the iconic cuts. [/highlight]

    Although overshadowed by men, it has not stopped women from emerging from the darkness and creating and telling their stories. And the age of digital has made their job much easier. In this age of communication, video-sharing platforms and affordable tools and technology, women can create art and share their thoughts with the world with ease.

    Women directors in the West and in most parts of Asia now possess the absolute power to challenge the male gaze and subvert traditional narrative storytelling and stereotypes. Their films can go a long way in empowering the feminist movement and creating a more equal world. A majority of the prevalent social issues in India are female centered. Thus, such films are a highly necessitated stepping stone to radical change. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Shalini Shah)[/highlight][4]

    As millennial and Gen Z girls/women are taking an active part in today’s workforce and becoming independent breadwinners, the focus of creating content for predominant male audiences has improved to include women audiences, with focus on real, relatable storylines. Sound-designer /filmmaker Lipika Singh Darai uses the craft of filmmaking to explore and tell the story of the lesser known side of India. She is the winner of four national film awards, and hails from a simple tribal community in Orissa.

    Actresses too have contributed to the movement for equal status in the world of cinema. Be it Hema Malini or Waheeda Rehman, Vidya Balan, Nandita Das or Meryl Streep, they have held their own both in their choice of roles and in personal life. More important, their stance has earned them respect from both men and women. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Sathya Saran)[/highlight][5]

    Streaming platform such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, with the intent of reaching out to more diverse groups with different voices unlike traditional media, have opened the gates for not just women-centric content but also content written and produced by women. Earlier women filmmakers were compelled to navigate through production houses and media executives, primarily men, but now that these streaming platforms have come into existence, independent women filmmakers can directly pitch their ideas. The rise in women-driven shows such as the Golden Globe Award winner, Fleabag, the Primetime Emmy Award winner Glow and many others have proved that there is a sizeable market potential for female-driven content.

    Sathya Saran, Judy Gladstone, Daniela Rogobete, Advaita Kala, Monita Borgohain, Shalini Shah, Ratnottama Sengupta, Oorvazi Irani, and Deepa Gahlot — the 9-member ALL WOMEN jury, spread across 3 categories, at the Chalachitram National Film Festival (March 06-08, 2020).

    There has been a major push too, in recent times, from festivals, organizations & governments for promoting hitch cinema. ‘Challenging filmmakers, producers and artists to create cinema that breaks the stereotypical portrayal of male and female characters in films,’[6] Oxfam India joined hands with the MAMI film festival in 2016 and every year since then sponsors the Best Film on Gender Equality Award. And in the South, the Kerala finance minister announced an allocation of Rs. 3 Crore for women filmmakers, stating that the ‘emergence of a women collective has been an important turning point in the struggle for gender equality in the Malayalam film world.’[7] Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) is a non-profit organization for women in Malayalam cinema, founded in 2017, ‘in response to the alleged sexual assault of a Malayalam actress… “The organisation will work for equal opportunity and dignity of women employees in the industry,” says Beena Paul, film editor and artistic director of IFFK, who heads it along with Manju Warrier, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Anjali Menon, Rima Kallingal, Sajitha Madathil, Vidhu Vincent and Deedi Damodaran. “The movement is a result of the discussions that has been happening among the women in Malayalam cinema over the past two months. We wanted to address the gender issues within the industry which include lack of security, basic facilities and to ensure women’s participation in the industry’s activities.”’[8]

    This utopian vision of the film industry cannot be achieved in isolation with itself. Technology plays a crucial role in bringing everything together. Women in computer and information technology, digital development, mass media platforms along with filmmakers must come together to create digital platforms where women from all fields can unite, collaborate, and work together. Online platforms such as Film Freeway too has turned the process of submitting one’s films to film festivals into a fairly simple one. ‘Several film festivals are specifically focused on promoting female filmmakers, including the Cairo International Women’s Film Festival in Egypt, the Barcelona International Women’s Film Festival, the China Women’s Film Festival in Hong Kong, the Ndiva Women’s Film Festival in Ghana, and the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival in South Korea. In France, the organization Le Collectif 50/50  is working to ensure that male and female-directed films receive equal footing at all film festivals.’[9]

    Technology must be employed to teach filmmaking as well as film studies to the masses who are in need. With privatization of national film schools and fee hikes, virtual film education will be an essential part. Platforms such as YouTube can be both for learning and sharing one’s film experiments with the world. Furthermore, female filmmakers are not just limited to filmmaking and technicians’ roles. Female film educationists also play a critical role in how young film students are exposed to cinema.

    The history of film is partial to a patriarchal setup. The major innovations are named under men. Even though women were in the forefront of film evolution their names are sometimes sidelined. Thus, a female educationist with a keen eye can sometimes correct this by balancing this out and drawing attention to lesser known names who are equally important and need to be acknowledged for their contribution to cinema. Film education can be made more accessible if the government and film societies take the initiative to educate India about cinema through its media channels online and this could focus on bringing to light key women pioneers in cinema from India and worldwide. Today with the mobile phone every citizen is a potential filmmaker and thus more the responsibility to empower them and sensitize them to gender equality. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Oorvazi Irani)[/highlight][10]

    There is much that can be learnt from female filmmakers of the classical era who were pioneers in film techniques. Emerging technologies allow young female filmmakers of today to experiment and radically push the boundaries. It has been more than a hundred years since the first film was made. With these fast-changing times, the possibility of inventing new narrative styles and ways of making films is in abundance. While a majority of the world focuses on recreating nostalgia and making film sequences, female filmmakers must make full use of the ample space and freedom to rethink ways of creating films, and reinventing cinema; because there simply are no rules.

    An increase in open discourse and social media “reviewing”, like amateur and professional YouTube film & TV reviews, with their wider reach of audiences and opinion, have brought light to how women characters are represented in today’s films and TV shows. Preeti, character played by actress Kiara Advani in the heavily criticized and ultra-masculine T-series produced film, “Kabir Singh”, was turned into many memes and jokes elaborating on the character’s muteness throughout the film. The film itself was criticized for glorifying domestic abuse. Ironically, “Thappad”, a female-centric movie tackling domestic abuse, which came out just few months after Kabir Singh, was also produced by the same T-Series. In recent years, there has been a rise in feminist advertisements, the Indian film industry and mass media sees post-feminism as a huge business opportunity and exploits it to the fullest in this age of viral video consumption. First appeared in 1985, the Bechdel test, named after American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, and its derivatives, used as a measure of the representation of women in fiction and indicator for the active presence of women in the entire field of film and other fiction, has helped bring light to gender inequality in fiction. Media industry studies have indicated that films that pass the test perform better financially than those do not. What women filmmakers have to determine is whether they just want to be a part of this passing fad or are here to tell authentic stories. Women filmmakers have the tremendous opportunity and responsibility to create content that not just addresses but also transcends.

    Throughout history, female experience has been filtered through the male gaze. It is important that female writers tell their own story. Women must take charge of their own story, looking past mansplaining. The female-centric film is considered niche cinema. There is no reason as to why it cannot be projected on par with other male-centric mainstream commercial films. Audience support is very important. They play a major role in dictating what kind of films are being produced. The more that audience supports female-centric films, the more such films will be made. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Advaita Kala)[/highlight][11]

    Women filmmakers not only tell stories from a different perspective but also communicate empathy. The advent of the internet and information technology has ensured the rise of many women directors from urban and rural areas. Diversity in Filmmakers and storytellers from different genders and background bring richness and innovation to cinema that is most often homogeneous in nature. This homogeneity brings much needed authenticity and unique experiences to the screen, and makes a cultural impact in the regional films of India.

    Obviously, anything created by a woman be it a film or a novel or a painting would always come from a unique dimension that will bear all the gender specific characteristics. When we talk of these characteristics in films, sometimes, they are very subtle, like in all of Rima Das’ films. If you see, although the issues are universal, she is exploring them through a female protagonist. Replace the girl in Village Rockstar with a boy and you will have a completely different type of narrative. A boy who aspires to have a guitar will have different ways to expressing his desire and will resort to different means to achieve it. So, the entire narrative is bound to take a completely different course. That’s why whenever a female Director takes up a subject it will have a completely different cultural impact than that of a film directed by a male director. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Monita Borgohain)[/highlight][12]

    Alma Reville and Sir Alfred Hitchcock

    Although there have been films that challenged the status quo which have been mostly pushed into obscurity, over the years, there has been a significant change in the way women are represented mainstream media. ‘As societies entered the world of modernization, the role of women changed  dramatically… Films played an important part in portraying women in shifting roles over different decades and the impact it has had on societies in general.’[13] Looking at Indian cinema, earlier women characters were written to serve the male protagonists: a damsel in distress to be rescued by the hero. Then there are films that portray women as the good wife and mother, pushing forward the predominant female stereotype. Other prevailing trends such as the femme fatale in the film noir genre, and the heroine-vamp, enforced the idea that a woman can either be good or bad, and nothing more. This trend soon shifted to career-focused women characters. Not long after, the homemaker character returned to mainstream media. The advent of twenty-first century post-feminism, has given rise to a new kind of female characters, and successful award-winning women driven films and TV show. These new twenty-first century women characters focus on the relatable. These are women with flaws, vulnerability, and not without personal hardships. These characters carry forward the whole plot of a film or TV. One such examples is Queen (2014), which enjoyed a huge success with Indian audiences of all kinds.

    Viewers are offered a change of perspective in Indian cinema so far dominated by male voices and gazes, a change which does not necessarily imply a feminine representation of the world but, importantly, a different approach and a different gaze, which takes into account a number of social, domestic, and cultural issues, generally overlooked or poorly represented. The courage of breaking conventions; the boldness of representation, of subverting gender and genre stereotypes, and of portraying real women instead of prototypes; the highlighting of gender inequality and the creation of self-awareness; and poetic sensitivity are a few of the qualities displayed in the texts produced by these women scriptwriters.[highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”](Daniela Rogobete)[/highlight][14]

    Even with the social prejudice, there is a silver lining. Women filmmakers have the liberty to not only challenge the status quo but, as history has proved, to also bring a unique and rare perspective to cinema; which is what this art form is all about. This is an advantage of being from a minority gender. Filmmakers such as Lynne Ramsay, Chantal Akerman, and Andrea Arnold, to name a few, have reinvented ways of storytelling. Avant-garde female cinematographers such as Maya Deren, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Germaine Dulac and many more have experimented and produced some of the most ethereal films. ‘Known for making films that followed ‘rules of visual music,’ Dulac refused to adhere to narrative conventions that dominated in the late silent period, and instead… created some of the most influential works of the avant-garde movement ever recorded on celluloid.’[15]  In India, 2018 belonged to women filmmakers. Village Rockstar’s won the Film Critics Circle of India Award for Best Film of 2018 and went on to bag 4 National Awards and travel as India’s official entry for the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language film category. It was written, directed, produced, cinematography and edited by Rima Das, who ‘is not professionally trained in any aspect of filmmaking.’[16]

    Alice Guy and Dorothy Arzner

    There are very fewer women role models when compared to men in the film industry. What is needed at this hour is to create platforms and initiate conversations on female filmmakers, to encourage and nudge the talent and artistry of young women from somewhere in some remote part of rural India who might not have discovered their capabilities as yet. Simultaneously, with newer technologies and a rise in streaming platforms, today there exists  an enormous opportunity to usher in the next generation film wave in India, driven as much by women as by men. Women must make the best of this golden age with its dream-like opportunities and must stake claim to their place in the history of cinema.

     

    [divider top=”yes” anchor=”#” style=”default” divider_color=”#999999″ link_color=”#999999″ size=”2″ margin=”0″]

     

    References

    [1]Rutherford-Morrison, Lara. 9 Times Men Were Given Credit For Women’s Historic Accomplishments.Bustle. March 1, 2017.

    [2]Puchko, Kristy. 15 Women of Cinema History You Should Know. Mental Floss. August 10, 2015.

    [3]Bergan, Ronald. Margaret Booth. The Guardian. November 16, 2002.

    [6]Justice, Gender. How Oxfam India is helping crack gender stereotypes in the Indian Film Industry. Oxfam India. November 9, 2018.

    [7]Staff reporter. Kerala Government announces Rs. 3 crore for women filmmakers in state budget. Scroll. February 8, 2019.

    [8]George, Anjana. Women in Cinema Collective will work for equal opportunity and dignity of women employees in Mollywood! Times of India. May 19, 2017.

    [9]Constable, Harriet. Why aren’t there more women film directors? BBC Culture. November 29, 2019.

    [13]Agarwal, Ruchi. Changing Roles of Women in Indian Cinema. Mahidol University International College, Nakorn Pathom, Thailand. January, 2014.

    [14]Rogobete, Daniela. Narratives of Change in Indian Screenwriting. Journal of Indian Cinema. March 8, 2020.

    [15]Page, Aubrey. 6 Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema. Indie Wire. October 7, 2015.

    [16]Karmakar, Rahul. Who is Rima Das? The Hindu. April 29, 2018.

     

    Interviews

    [4]Shah, Shalini. Artistic director, Kautik International Film Festival.

    [5]Saran, Sathya. Consulting editor of Penguin Random House and author of biographies of Guru Dutt and S.D. Burman.

    [10]Irani, Oorvazi. Film educationist /filmmaker.

    [11]Kala, Advaita. Scriptwriter, Kahaani.

    [12]Borgohain, Monita. Festival director, Guwahati International Film Festival.

     

    Photo credits

    [1] Cover pic: Agnès Varda. Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara. 18.03.10 Agnès Varda y Jorge Sánchez Sosa. © Cortesía de FICG 25 / Oscar Delgado.

    [2] Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville. Show History. Vol.14. Published by Mainichi Newspapers Company.

     

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/of-cinema-and-women/

     

  • Ek Betuke Aadmi Ki Aafrah Ratein: Photographed theatre or cinematography?

    Ek Betuke Aadmi Ki Aafrah Ratein: Photographed theatre or cinematography?

    In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (D&G) define the machinic assemblage as having different speeds, slownesses and intensities on the Body without Organs. They go on to deconstruct the machinic assemblage: a machine is anything that can be plugged into, whereas the assemblage is that which “deterritorializes” the becoming (flows). The point is that D&G are providing us with a toolbox for thought, which is then broken into its components that do not resemble one another.

    For us, the fundamental question in Sharad Raj’s debut Ek Betuke Aadmi Ki Aafrah Ratein is whether photographed theatre is different from “a writing with images and sounds” (Bresson) or cinematography. Like D&G we will break the assemblage “photographed theatre” into two parts photography and theatre. Photography is about capturing a section of time on film or digital bits, whereas theatre is the un-covering (altheia) of the truth of the actor. As Rajneesh and Krishnamurthi point out we must stay with the question; or the Deleuzean problem whose construction is more important than its solution: the solution is how the question is constructed. (In this regard, Jean-Luc Godard’s posing of the question is extremely profound. For Godard, things are not “good” or “bad” but instead: “How are things?” (Comment ca va, 1978)).

    Instead of comparing Raj’s work with that of Robert Bresson, I will instead argue that Raj’s work is a commentary on Alain Resnais’ first three films: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad and Muriel. The object petit a or the obscure object of desire, that can no longer be recollected (like ‘Rosebud’ in Citizen Kane), is the event i.e. riots in Muzaffarnagar, that simultaneously affirmative and null event (Badiou) that find their center in the nation’s capital, Delhi and periphery in the film’s location-space, Lucknow. In other words, Raj’s version of filmed theatre occurs at the periphery of consciousness, where horizontal movements and zoom are used to decenter the film. The film is not so much a transformation of the object, as they teach in bourgeois art schools, but a transformation of image. The interior of the film is this ‘real’ image of Lucknow, whereas the projected image is Baudrillard’s “something that hides the nothing” or simulacra. The inside and the outside move according to the self-overcoming that is simultaneously overcoming and negating or Aufhebung. This Aufhebung transforms Being (space) into Becoming (time). This dialectic between Being and Becoming culminates in the shot that are a direct reference to the opening shots of Resnais’ debut.

    The points is not whether Raj’s film is a commentary on Dosteovski or Premchand, but that it creates a sound-image continuum (decoupage) that form a single succession. This succession is then filmed along the Lacanian Real, which find their triangulation in the Symbolic, stylized Kathakali procreation dance, and Imaginary, in the images of political realities that form the outside.

    Contrarily, the theatrical is the filming/recording of Bresson’s dictum of a “profound in a posture”, that materializes itself in the recitations of Tagore that confirm Proust’s dictum of being written in another language: an Othering of the Self. Most significantly, Raj’s cinema is one in which the territorial motifs: the advertisements or shop fronts, find their territorial counterpoints in the fixed distance shots that signal the un-Becoming of the Becoming; until the poetic utterances create pre-empted and delayed images (chhanda) that redefine film as a body in a state of tension.

  • On the illusion of sounds and images, and of perception and escapism

    On the illusion of sounds and images, and of perception and escapism

    Realistic cinema, it used to be said, reflects reality. Right now, that seems to be reversed: reality has turned into the reflection of a horrific apocalyptic film. As the daily tally of the infected and dead all around rise dramatically, the images and live drama of COVID-19 gives the feel of a reality fiction, with all of us as characters. The premise: a deadly virus hellbent on eradicating the entire human species. It’s a gripping medical thriller that’s keeping every age group at the edge of their seats. But we are just passive protagonists, you and I, neither contributing to the story nor taking it forward.

    As the terrifying numbers and images rush incessantly to my head, I drift 28 years into the past. Seated here in Brussels, the capital of Europe, which is fast turning into a chaotic madhouse, I consciously attempt to forget my immediate surroundings by immersing myself in a pool of sounds and images. I transport myself to a certain summer at the Pune Film Institute spent enjoying and analysing films back to back. I relive that sheer pleasure of watching films seen and unseen with no guidelines or timelines. I dream of being swept away totally from this real world into the realm of cinema. When reality is painful, we may search for any easy escape and find it readily in the unreal movies.

    Be it action or romance, fiction is most appealing when we can relate to it and when identifiable tales have the potential to change our perspective on our real-world experiences. Films engage in a constant dialogue with our unconscious mind and our senses absorb what we wish to perceive. There have been uncountable films inspired by actual-time narratives and events or just revolving around a common man’s day-to-day existence. They have won our hearts and made the makers richer. The finest are the ones that add fantasy to our dreams and desires, all at our arms reach. I realised that my real-life situation continued to be the backdrop of every film that I’ve been viewing in the last few days.

    I was unconsciously manipulating the visual scenes and dialogues to suit my context.  V. Shantaram’s 1946 war thriller Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani, set in Wuhan, China, places me at the epicentre of the outbreak of an epidemic. Closer home, Aashiq Abu’s Virus (2019) conjures up visuals in my head of the situation escalating out of control around me. And watching Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), bats and pangolins dance above my head. It doesn’t help at all that the WHO officials in the film resemble the ones updating us live on Euro News, and that Dr. Sanjay Gupta who plays himself in the film is someone I am seeing every day in actual life on the TV screen talking about the pandemic. It all just feels so real.

    We, humans, have an incredible ability to imagine, add or subtract, and often we change the entire storyboard that the writer had planned to fit in well to our unsettled state of mind. Our unconscious mind is always busier than our conscious mind, and it goes way beyond what our rational mind would perceive. The sounds and images that rush through our senses help us to imagine, and to relate to and believe what we so wish in order that we may continue with our lives—this is where cinema transcends into the magical realm.

     

    See also:

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/pandemic-pummels-cinema-into-existential-vortex/

     

  • Super Deluxe sweeps film critics’ awards in India

    Super Deluxe sweeps film critics’ awards in India

    Super Deluxe is the winner of the Best Movie of the Year at the 2nd Critics Choice Film Awards, instituted by the  [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Film Critics Guild[/highlight]; it also picked up awards for the Best Tamil Actor, Best Tamil Screenplay, Best Tamil Director, and Best Tamil Film.

    Much earlier in the year, Super Deluxe had been adjudged the Best Indian Film censored in 2019, or uncensored and publicly exhibited anywhere in the world in 2019, at the 5th annual  [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Film Critics Circle of India[/highlight] Award, at which 33 film critics from all over India cast their votes.

    Super Deluxe is presently also in the final nomination list for the [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]FIPRESCI-India[/highlight] Award for the Best Film of 2019.

     

    Review — Super Deluxe

    We really never know how much strength we embody until and unless we are left with no options. Every pain has a span, however vicious it is. Time transforms them into memory. Thiagarajan Kumararajan’s Super Deluxe, like life itself, is an unpredictable circle filled with unrelated sets of characters whose lives are so interlinked with the circumstantial and the situational components or the happenings; lives take such turns from time to time that nothing can be established as an absolute.

    Some of what we loathe holds the power to transform us for the better and often all it takes to put us on a different path is a forced change due to unexpected circumstances. Life has plans in store for us that we cannot even dream of. An incident happens that would forever radically alter the decaying marital status of Mugill (Fahaad Fassil) and Vaembu (Samantha). From the moment they contemplate divorce, their personal interaction takes a dramatic turn. If in their former situation they were compelled to hold back their resentments, in this newly gained liberation they are permitted to explode into each other’s faces. This brings out all their hidden words, bitterness and negatives that had been bottled up dangerously for years. The realisation that the pressure of impressing each other wouldn’t be needed any more places them in a comfortable zone to expose themselves to each other. This in turn allows them to clearly see their own faults, realise that no one is perfect and be more adjustive, and thus spark a proximity between them that had for long been submerged. Acceptance and adjustment make all the difference in a relationship. It can be tough to have a marriage or a spouse of own choice, and it can be tougher to leave a created bonding. And often it is better to recreate or modify one’s own self than to give up. With understanding, many emotions can be worked out, and life can continue smoother than before. The depth of sweetness is never fully realised till the bitter is tasted.

    Love is something that exists in any condition. There can be no term as real love, because what is not real, what is fake, cannot be love itself. The choice of Manickam (Vijay Sethupathi) to change his gender and become Shilpa is an exercise of individual and constitutional freedom, but for that decision he is emotionally tortured and turned into a laughing stock. A society is degenerate that refuses to accept anything or anyone unusual or unique, that demands individuals to fall in line with the crowd, and that has no tolerance towards personal choice of lifestyle. Ironically, it is a child, Rasukutty (Master Ashwanth Ashokkumar), who demonstrates matureness by being open and by accepting his father for the way he is. The cruel hostility of society ensures that Shilpa feel like an out-of-the box creature, an object, an IT, who is not even human. The transgender in Super Deluxe is established as a pure human entity, an independent character, unlike the stereotype clownish one that is commonly seen in most Indian films; the notable exception being Mahesh Bhat’s Sadak (1991), starring Paresh Rawal, who plays a dotting human being, a father. Shilpa too is treated as one possessing beautiful human emotions, a loving and caring heart, and a humane warmth; this contrasts well with the meanness of the two socially-accepted “normal genders”. The primary difference in the two is that one was born a transgender while the other chose to transform.

    The existence of God and beliefs are questioned in Super Deluxe. Human action and efforts are projected to be more powerful than idle prayers. The lucky ones go through an illogically violent phase before finally returning to their senses. Dhanasekaran /Arputham (Mysskin), who was once saved in a tsunami, assumed that human industry is worthless and that it is only divine powers that matter. What appear as miracles might provide rich entertainment, but it would be folly to treat them as examples to live by. Karma is the only truth. It is not bogus miracles but the results of our deeds that guide our future. While a mother wishes to appeal to medical science to save her son, a priest insists instead on fervently chanting prayers. It is such blind dependence on the non-existent that prevent people from taking charge of their destiny.

    For the crime of entertaining others, a female performer, Leela (Ramya Krishnan), is condemned. There is always an audience for every drama in this world. Entertainment is created for the masses, who in turn ensure the survival of the industry. If consumers of porn are blameless, then it would be a double standard to condemn the role players in a porn film. For, it is a profession like all others, and deserves as much respect. Absolute badness is as much a myth as absolute goodness. Neither exists in this world. No perceived truth is absolute; everything is relative. Says a character, “When we say it is day, we must remember that there is another half of the world that lie in utter darkness”. Conservative society confers the fraternity of mothers with a specific status, attributing to them the symbol of sacrifice and love. But their status is conditional; they are required to love and care for their offspring at the cost of their own dreams and desires. Leela, who had acted in a porn film, is thus revered as a mother but reviled for her choice of profession. Being a mother is a biological status and being of a particular profession by choice is individual freedom, which often is denied. Audiences of porn are thrilled by their porn stars as long as these stars aren’t from their own family or social circle.

    Though all the characters present in the various threads of this film have varied histories and situations, they are finely interwoven, and presented with a balanced clarity. The abuse of power is shown through the actions of a pervert cop, Berlin (Bagavathi Perumal). The dilemma, restlessness, enthusiasm, sexual urge, and inner innocence of adolescence is touched upon. And two characters enact the voice of human conscience—the issue and importance of love, loyalty, and desire is displayed through an alien (Mrinalini Ravi); and Ramasamy (Ramana), though a follower of Arputham, speaks rationality.

    Along with the suggestive exploitation of spontaneous, messy, hazardous sounds of street vendors to explain the natural flow of life, music arranger Yuvan Shankar Raja scatters Ilaiyaraaja classics from old films at strategic points in Super Deluxe. The high-spirited ‘I am a Disco Dancer’ track plays twice. The first time we hear it is when a person is about to die at the peak of his happiness, emphasising the unpredictability, the fragility, and the irony of life. The next time it appears is towards the end of the film, as if alluding to Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

    Fraternized as a dark comedy, this Super Deluxe thriller screams volumes. One can lie and cheat the whole world, but one can never lie to oneself without escaping the sufferance of guilt. It is in the control of human beings how they can manage desire and addiction against all odds to be loyal to love. Many a times, human actions are determined by situation rather than by will. Character is destiny. And our actions are so interconnected with our society and surroundings that they create a ripple. Life is a butterfly canvas and all the colours, be it dark or dazzling, display their own flavours in due course. Every colour is needed to live life, and when all these are perfectly blended, they turn to one in unison—black, the colour of life, love, acceptance, and neutrality. And this precisely is how ideally human judgement ought to be—neutral.

     

  • Cinema — the art of bringing people together

    Cinema — the art of bringing people together

    The universal language of the seventh art, cinema, unites us all together as one human race. Cinema has brought us closer. Sitting here in Guwahati, watching films, we can feel the agonies and ecstasies of the people by the Caribbean. We can feel the depth of the Mediterranean from the banks of the Brahmaputra.

    Set with the onerous task on my head, a few years ago, of steering the first edition of the [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Guwahati International Film Festival[/highlight] (GIFF), I experienced the shivering of a little bird just about to commence the very first flight of its life. Today, though, GIFF is well on track on its mission of assimilating culture and connecting hearts beyond boundaries. The moto of this Festival is basudhaivo kutumbakam, that is, the world is a family. I hope and would like to believe, therefore, that the films curated with much care will help in widening our horizons, and will lend a new perspective to our vision, as we explore ourselves and the world around us.

    Those who are acquainted with the scenario of present day cinema with all its nuances right from pre-production to projection would immediately agree that the challenges are rapidly on the rise. For indie filmmakers, many of these challenges are colossal enough to sow fear and doubt in their minds and make them consider the idea of altogether discarding their dreams. Purely to inspire and encourage all, film festivals arrange interaction sessions, open forums, and panel discussions; and conduct film seminars, workshops, and master classes. At the [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Chalachitram National Film Festival[/highlight], where I was a member of the jury in one of the categories this time, there are awards for the best debut film and the best screenplay too. By screening the amateur films of young debutants, and by encouraging them to to write, we prepare them for the future.

    The purpose of all good film festivals is to create a platform where we not only strengthen our culture but also simultaneously groom our audience as future custodians of our grand heritage. I have the satisfaction of being a part of a campaign that recently planted the seed of an international film festival in an important yet long-neglected region that is presently once again contributing much to the universe of cinema. The future of heritage rests with how well our youths have been exposed to and educated on it; thus, it is immensely pleasurable to witness a sizeable increase in the number of student delegates at film festivals all over the country. It is reassuring to see the resurgence of an appreciation of good cinema by the passionate new generation.

    “Alone I can say, together we can talk. Alone I can smile, together we can laugh. Alone I can enjoy, together we can celebrate. That is the beauty of harmony.” And of cinema. Thus, together, let us rejoice in the greatness of cinema. Together, let the goodness of cinema liberate us from the isolating bondage of human follies.

    [divider size=”2″ margin=”0″]

     

  • Of tea and coffee house culture, and cinema

    Of tea and coffee house culture, and cinema

    The basement of the Grand Café, Paris, in 1895, served as the pioneer film screening hall; ten short films were exhibited by the Lumière brothers. Long, long before that historic moment, the tea rooms and cafés of Europe attracted artists and thinkers, who would gather to read out their ideas, and engage in long, often heated, conversations. This intellectual culture would spread rapidly to other parts of the world.

    In Los Angeles, the iconic Mussos and Frank Grills used to be a favorite destination of the likes of Chaplin and Hitchcock. By situating the characters of his ‘Once upon a Time in Hollywood’ in this quaint old place, Quentin Tarantino throws the focus on the coffee house culture of Hollywood in the golden age. He turns this 100-year-old joint into a character. This isn’t anything new, though. The wayside tea shops play a prominent role in quite a few of the old Malayalam film classics.

    Here in India too, the coffee/tea houses have been a central meeting point of artists. “In traditional Indian villages, tea shops played a vital role in the social connection of the community. The tea shops were the meeting place for villagers, and a place to share all their emotions, happiness, and problems. Understanding their role is an important part of learning the ways of natural social unity.”1

    In Bengal, we have the renowned ‘addas’. There is no literal translation for the word as such. It roughly translates to ‘a long, heated conversation with ever-changing topics, over cups of coffee.’ Filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak frequented the Calcutta Coffee House, “making it a breeding ground for the inception of many political and cultural movements of the country. The charm of the coffee house laid in the conversations that flowed and the ideas that were exchanged.”2

    The literature and cinema of Assam in the previous century too owes much to these joints. Madhumita was a favourite haunt of Hemanta Das. Noted litterateur Lakhyodhor Choudhury has familiarized his readers with the ‘addas’ at Noor’s Shop in Uzanbazar, Guwahati. “A similar tattle existed at Panbazar’s Delight Coffee House. A symbol of aristocracy, the place attracted the who’s who of the book and film worlds, and shaped the thoughts and ideas of many a potent mind. Brojen Baruah, Nirod Choudhury, and Hiren Bhattacharya were its ardent aficionados, and the impact is often echoed in their respective works.”3

    Mumbai used to be famous for its string of Irani cafés. One of them, the erstwhile Brabourne Café, was co-owned by film critic Rashid Irani, who reminisces, “I think what distinguished these Irani cafes was you could sit on a table with just one cup of tea and read the newspaper for hours on end, and you could be sure that you would never be asked to leave—that was one of the great things, so they became a kind of meeting point for a lot of people—there’d be innocuous debates to the more kind of intellectual discourses.”4 Prithvi café, which sits just outside Prithvi Theatre, has a nice, rustic ambiance. Mocha too used a be a chilled out place, till it shut down at its peak around a decade ago; what it rightly ought to be remembered for is its jampacked monthly short film screenings.

    The wayside tea shops of Kerala is unique in that it “offers an opportunity to every person who otherwise does not get a chance to express their opinions in the public sphere… People from various sections of the society come and sit in tea shops. Anything under the sun can become a matter of discussion for them. They discuss and even indulge in a verbal duel to prove their points.”5 “In serving as a space for free interaction of individuals who come from diverse social backgrounds, a tea-shop is no different from a cinema theatre.”6

     

    [divider top=”yes” style=”default” divider_color=”#999999″ link_color=”#999999″ size=”2″ margin=”0″]

     

    1Rasa Gurukul. “Experience Traditional Indian Life: Teashop Session.” Accessed February 29, 2020.

    2Mukherjee, Anushka. “A Look at Kolkata’s Iconic Coffee House: Chai, Adda, Revolution and More.” April 21, 2019.

    3Lahkar, Bhuban. “Xex Xondhiar Xoor”. Assam.

    4Carter, Bruce. “Irani Chai, Mumbai. Remembering the Irani Cafes of Bombay/Mumbai.” May 12, 2008.

    5“Tea Shops in Malayalam Cinema. Cultural Hubs Where Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary: a Journey Through Tea Shops in Select Malayalam Movies.” June 20, 2014.

    6Venkiteswaran, CS “Tea Shops in Malayalam Cinema.” Translated by Sherrif, KM. Archived. Accessed February 29, 2020.

     

  • Sthalpuran: The New Dialectical Cinema

    Sthalpuran: The New Dialectical Cinema

    Viewing a film can be thought of as a game played between the spectator and the director. The game comprises of the director intentionally constructing the shot, whilst the spectator tries to predict the next shot via the cut.

    Of late, there has been a renaissance of a metaphysical form of cinema that appropriates space as time; following the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema books: L’image-mouvement and L’image-temps. This approach popularized by the films, writings and discourses of Mani Kaul, has been the only consistent critique of the realism of Satyajit Ray in India. Contrary to the metaphysical approach to film is the dialectical approach, in which space and time conflict and contradict with one another, or form dialectic. G.W.F Hegel developed dialectical materialism, later taken up by Karl Marx in his critiques of capitalism.

    Dialectical cinema, pioneered in the silent films of Sergei Eisenstein, could only find its first ‘talkie’ in Vselovod Pudovkin’s Dezertir. In this film, image and sound are in conflicting relationships with one another. In Indian cinema, a uniquely local approach to dialectical cinema was developed notably in Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara, which finds its color counterpoint in Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan. In the latter, space and time provides a rational basis to history, rooted in Hegel’s dialectic, such that myth and reality form the space for the circular enfolding of History.

    In Sthalpuran (Chronicle of Space), director Akshay Indikar weaves a dialectical cinema that is closer to the conceptual empiricism of David Hume, in which experience is the only basis of determining the ‘reality’ of space and time. This ‘chronicle’ is precisely the narrative, forwarded by the Marathi inter-titles; whereas ‘space’ is the location-space, which is nothing but matter occupying a degree of intensity. In other words, narrative and matter, combined with Indikar’s unique approach to the two, raise several important questions to the nature of cinematographic practice, namely: What is the relationship between depth-of-field (as in the films of Orson Welles) and a flattening of space (as in the films of Jean-Luc Godard) and can the two find a cinematographic relationship? Is a static shot in between a track and a handheld pan? Can time be frozen via the indexical (the stopped clocks that are a physical proof of time but do not work) instead of the symbolic?

    Indikar provides several answers to these questions through his dialectical approach to film form that emphasize the dialectical relationship between space and time. For him, space is feminine, whereas time: masculine. The temporality of the film, its own duration, manifests itself in the story of the boy adjusting to the fragmented rhythms of a Konkan village. This manifestation finds its crisis in the handheld sequences in the city that find their Othering in the Maharashtrian ritual celebrating the initiation of the boy’s sister into Womanhood. In other words, the masculine becomes feminine, or time becomes space. As Martin Heidegger points out Dasein (Being-there or Existence) is a Being (temporal) that is there (spatialized).

    Speaking like a cinephile, Sthalpuran is an Ozu film with the camera at a distance, and without reverse-shots. This is not to say that Indikar’s penchant for ordinariness in his content, reminiscent of the Japanese maestro, is derivative; for it has a unique authenticity in its approach. Most notable, in this context, is the fragmentation of rhythm to capture the texture of the sound-image combination that culminates in the tracking shots into the object. This is the primary position of cinema: between camera and object, which Indikar indicates, converges on the object; whilst the image and sound diverge from one another.

     

    Sthalpuran has been nominated for the Crystal Bear,
Berlin International Film Festival | Feb 2020

     

  • Directors’ Diaries: The Road to Their First Film

    Directors’ Diaries: The Road to Their First Film

    Book review – Directors’ Diaries: The Road to Their First Film

    The principle attraction of an interview lives in the questions thrown by the interviewer. Questions are framed to dig out unknown facts from the inner core of the interviewee. Additionally, they mirror the study, preparation, insight, mental makeup and so much more of the interviewee too. And that mirrored picture determines the character, purpose, and philosophy of the interview. Rakesh Anand’s  Directors’ Diaries: The Road to Their First Film, a compilation in two volumes of interviews conducted with a variety of film directors offers a valuable insight on the journeys to their respective first films; the preparations for the same; and the sweet and sour experiences gathered on the way.

    In a way, the author was always the ideal candidate for this job. Though he has studied film making and acting, has worked with important film personalities, and is the son of the legendary Hindi film song lyrics writer Anand Bakshi, Rakesh is yet to complete his debut feature film. In contrast to his plight, some of the directors whom he interviewed are people who weren’t blessed with the slightest link to the film world yet they succeeded in realizing their dreams. The author says in Directors’ Diaries that he felt some sort of anger at this, and craved to know how this was possible. The ‘craving’ felt by the author determined the soul and character of the book. However, the ‘anger’ that he claims to possess is nonexistent; rather, one comes across a down-to-earth person who commands affection, attention, and respect.

    In the prelude to every interview, the author introduces the director from a personal angle; this reflects his humility. Readers enjoy reading any kind interview when they feel attached with the interviewer. Instead of lengthy, boring questions or a scholarly self-presentation of the interviewer, the author throws questions that are crisp and lead the interviewee to unravel their past. This pattern may be compared to the presentation of a Raga in Indian Classical music where the beauty of a Raga is being unfolded in a systematic pattern of movement. The author believes too that a film director must be associated with any medium of creative work prior to their stepping into the world of filmmaking. He therefore poses this question to almost all his interviewees. That the replies he receives is more or less identical establish that whatever the character of the film may be, the basic creative qualification for one and all directors is essentially the same.

    Quite apparently passionate and emotionally charged about film direction, the author’s attachment to this artform compels him to be attentive in respect of all angles of film making. He doesn’t however stop with simply exploring the process of filmmaking through the experiences of these various directors. He informs the reader of the kind of dedication, courage, confidence, and dedication that is required for one who aspires to be a director. The answers to his questions also offer an insight into the requisites that follow in the next stage after one has turned director.

    At one point, the author enters the dreaded realm that haunted the protagonist of Fellini’s 8½. Have you as a film director ever faced a barren state of mind, he asks. Film shooting, especially in the traditional manner, is a very expensive creative process where every single moment involves costs. Therefore, the question of whether a director can have that luxury of facing the situation of a director’s block is highly relevant. It also gives indication of how seriously the author attempts to explore the conflict zone in the creative process of a director.

    The question of ego management is another that the author tosses into the air. Film shooting is like war. There’s an assembly of a huge number of participants. All are important, and most carry a huge ego. Some are highly sensitive and easily hurt. And the director has to lead such a team, while managing to satisfy all kind of egos, and yet without comprising on the pace of the shoot. Ego management is a hard task, and an important part of every film shoot, but very few books on filmmaking usually care to throw light on this issue. Ego management is a practical work, and the directors express their personal experiences of dealing with this issue.

    When a director makes a film, in addition to the craftwork that is involved, an emotional and passionate creation, and some personal or autobiographical elements too enters into the narrative, sometimes as a metaphor or as an incident or a character trait. Directors’ Diaries sets out to uncover some such moments. This double volume primarily interviews twenty film directors ranging from veterans such as Shyam Benegal to the young Tanuja Chandra-Mohit Suri. By including in it an interview of a spot boy, the author immediately throws the limelight on that person on the lowest rung of the film direction ladder; albeit, one who is crucial to the sets and all people on it.

    Such curiosities transform Directors’ Diaries from a mere anthology of interviews to a motivational book; one that is meant not just for aspiring filmmakers but for anyone who has and chases a dream. This anthology of experiences and dedication seeks to enrich the film viewing experience of the general audience while also providing endless courage to those who wish to see themselves someday seated on a director’s chair. In addition to providing for a thrilling reading experience, therefore, it also serves as a guide for upcoming filmmakers.

  • The emergence and popularity of the grey protagonist in Bollywood

    The emergence and popularity of the grey protagonist in Bollywood

    Early Bollywood movies were famous for their idealistic, flawless central characters. Audiences loved them. Classic examples are the simpleton Raju in Raj Kapoor’s Jis Desh Me Ganga Behti Hai, the upright Satyapriya Acharya in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Satyakam, the righteous Bharat in Manoj Kumar’s Upkar, and the patient jail warden Adinath in V Shantaram’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath.

    V Shantaram

    The idealist protagonists, back in those days, always stuck to their principles, and the films appeared honest and real. In Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti, we see the dutybound Dilip Kumar refusing to allow the love for his flawed son Vijay to come in the way of discharging his responsibilities. And in Do Aankhen Barah Haath, the jailer doesn’t compromise on his virtues and is committed to reform the prisoners, even if it means making sacrifices. Even the pioneer film that ushered in the new age of Bollywood, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti, exhibits ordinary, listless college students fighting for justice and being inspired by revered freedom fighters, but not before investing a lot of screen time in highlighting their vulnerability and insignificant college banter meant to connect to the audience.

    Filmmakers of yore also frequently used a two-character format to balance traits and appeal to all sections of society ⁠— one who favoured idealism, and the other, realism. So, we have Vijay and Ravi in Yash Chopra’s Deewar, Ram and Lakhan in Subhash Ghai’s Ram Lakhan, and Ramu and Birju in Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, and in a different theme, Sunil and Rahul in Yash Chopra’s Darr. And in Deewar, the flawed Vijay gets to express his pain and his angst while the idealistic Ravi has no such luxury.

    Popular culture however often tweaks itself for acceptance by a changing audience. Thus, over the years, quite a few Bollywood films have rejected the ‘all-good’ protagonist in favour of a ‘grey’ and ‘getting greyer’ protagonist, while retaining the larger construct of the ‘good vs evil’ theme.

    Two of the grey protagonists

    Karan Malhotra’s remake of Agneepath saw not one but two well-fleshed-out antagonists in the form of Rishi Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt. Similarly, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat saw Ranveer Singh soar in popularity despite playing a villain. Shahid Kapoor as the flawed titular character in Sandeep Vanga’s Kabir Singh was greeted with repulsion by some spectators and cat-whistles by the majority. Rajkumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munnabhai too was probably loved more for the flawed protagonist, a lovable goon.

    It is improbable that writers fail to realize that idealistic characters go through their many dilemmas too, and that being virtuous does cause angst too. It is more likely that these days, writers begin their story on the presumption that it is the grey protagonist who steals the show. Perhaps the reason why writers pay more attention to the grey character is that they feel that a multiple-shade personality is less predictable, more entertaining, and connects better with audiences.

    While probing the reason for cynicism of audiences would be a subject of psychology and sociology, filmmakers’ deliberate choice to flesh out the grey character in greater detail and lend them more screen-time; powerful, distinct dialogues; and multiple layers begs the important question — is this a case of absence of conviction, a sign of the time we inhabit, or compromised filmmaking?

     

    [divider size=”1″ margin=”0″]

     

    The artworks above are by the author himself. He has done well over 350 portraits of film stars from the early to the present eras.

  • Freeing up the grid: Piyush Shah’s The Third Infinity

    Freeing up the grid: Piyush Shah’s The Third Infinity

    How can point, line, shape, curve and texture be applied to the form of film? This question drives veteran Piyush Shah’s debut documentary The Third Infinity. Shot over 15 days in January 2017, Shah’s approach is to capture the grid in such a way that the flattened out space collides with depth and verticality, and horizontality form a mandala that free up time.

    The essence of the film is cinematographic consciousness and its representation as an index in the film. The images, at the beginning of the film, show a flattened out space at the right half, and a deep space in the left half of the frame. Shah keeps reframing so that he is able to cut directly into space and produce a temporal collage of a new kind. The argument of this piece is that, with a certain approach to film form, it is possible to create a new image even in a post post-modern world. The horizontal plane represents the horizon which is the representation of bliss (ananda) and the vertical is an indexical for stages of consciousness that the film form can transform the viewer’s perception into.

    The symbolic is represented by the triangular formation with which the film opens and into which the water thuds into, which represents a feminine energy. This grid like meeting of flattened shape and depth finds its own rotation along an axis. The manifest reality of this rotation, in other words, is in the swapna awastha, whilst the spectator is in the awake or jagrut awastha. The frame, the totality of matter in the image captures a straight line whilst it documents movement in a curve: is this a cinema of the tangent, in which the straight line meets the volume of a curve?

    Shah’s use of color is reminiscent of Bauhausian color schemes, with yellow as the sruti or tonic color complemented by the red and the blue as is the Bauhaus dictum influenced by the writings of M.H.J Schoenmaekers. Having spoken about the matter in the image and the image itself, we now turn to sound. Sounds are used as indexes for fragments of rhythms:the sound of the helicopter, an index for the closing shot of Mani Kaul’s Before My Eyes, finds its counterpoint in the rotation-translation-line of flight assemblage that the sound of the cycle is a referent for. Similarly the kitschy sounds from advertising jingles and Bollywood songs refer to the outside of the purified space of Beneras that realizes itself through the suggestive form of the soundtrack. On the visual plane, the shot of the pigeon flying is precisely an index for the Deleuzean line of flight by which the spectator is free of meaning.

    Still from Piyush Shah’s The Third Infinity

    Which doesn’t mean the film is free of meaning or only celebrates experience. The indexicals implied in the above paragraph culminate in the shot of the red arrow pointing upwards that is an index in a visual form. The jor section where Raga The Third Dimension develops finds its symbolization in a vistaar of Raga Todi on rudra veena culminating in the shots of fragmented sounds and varied rhythms, in which a 4(16) beat cycle is broken into a 7 beat cycle which then becomes a 6 beat cycle. This is precisely where Shah returns to electronic sounds in the third quarter of the film to imply transcendence to a next level of consciousness. This transcendence is at the same time a new beginning i.e. in this new level of consciousness. Cinema however is an immanent form, which as Deleuze points out is virtual-real and not actual, and for Shah this immanent form is its representation as space. The lines of flight discussed above are precisely this proof of immanence whilst the indexes refer to transcendental possibilities of the image,

    The solidified image finds its counterpoint in the liquefied images of Benaras ghat and the gaseous images of smoke. The solid and liquid combine in the paddle boat in which the equipment i.e. the paddle produces movement, only to be replaced by the diesel boat in which the sign is replaced by the signal, that moves the boat forward. This signal is a representation of post-modernity in all its form that dissolves the sign and all forms of objectivity. The Third Infinity tries to argue that the real of the dream is all the camera can capture as the spectator is in her/his waking state. For Shah, this ‘real’ of the dream is precisely equipment: the paddle which one links to Shah’s work as cinematographer i.e. equipment and moving into combination or appropriating equipment as the only way of capturing ‘the reality of the fiction’ that the ‘documentary’ cannot help but become.

    [divider top=”yes” style=”default” divider_color=”#999999″ link_color=”#999999″ size=”2″ margin=”0″]

    The Third Infinity was nominated for IDSFFK 2018.

    [youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIs1UYagTs4″ width=”150″ height=”100″ responsive=”yes” controls=”yes” autohide=”alt” autoplay=”yes” mute=”no” loop=”no” rel=”yes” fs=”yes” modestbranding=”no” theme=”dark” playsinline=”no”]