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IA/FEBRUARY 2010
F E B R U A R Y 2010
Cover Story:Missing Images, Preservation, Film Programming, Film CriticismPage 55
AuteurNotes on Indian Film DirectorsPage 21
Bandee DesigneeKamal Swaroop’s OmniyamPage 40
From the VaultCinema ofHollis FramptonPage 82
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ONE1YE
AR
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ONE1 of
YEAR
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1 of
YEAR YOUTH
YEAR
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YOUTH
YEAR
1 ofYE
AR INQUIRY
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1 ofYE
AR CONFUSION
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CONFUSION
1 YEAR LOVE
of
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GUNINDIANAUTEUR
GIRLGODARD
WE DO NOT RATE FILMS
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GUNGIRLGODARD 1 YE
AR REBELLION of
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1 YEARNOSTALGIA
of
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ARANTICIPATION of
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1 YEAR
ofINDIANAUTEUR
anniversary issueFEB2010
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INDIANAUTEUR.COM
INDIANAUTEUR
anniversary issue
EDITORIAL
Boa Sr, died a broken heart, she was about 85. She suffered from loneli-ness 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 real-ity 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 imagina-tion, of which mainstream India, has abso-lutely no clue. With the ever changing Indian landscape coupled with our power to show celebration of mainstream cinema and exploi-tive documentary (the only possible identity for most Indian documentary films). The state of affairs of our own being is reduced to noth-ingness with each passing day. Our choice to express our identity that con-tains 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 con-struction 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 reali-ties 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 contem-plate 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 look-ing 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, dis-cussions 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.
NITESHROHIT
LOVE EXPOSURE
ISSUE 9
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
7 6editor
contributors
NITESH ROHIT
SATYAM BARERASRIKANTH SRINIVASANANUJ MALHOTRAGAUTAM VALLURISUPRIYA SURI
DEBOJIT GHATAKEBRAHIM KABIR
ANUJ MALHOTRA
NSMedia Film
W-104, GK-I , NEW DELHI, [email protected]
Indian Auteur is published monthly. All images have been used for non-commercial purposes only. Content cannot be reproduced without prior permission of Indian Auteur.
KSHITIZ ANAND
online supervisor
SAGORIKA SINGHA
art director
cover design
publishers
GAUTAM VALLURI
contact
DEBABRATA NATH
Brightlights film journalHollisframpton.co.ukTehelkaThe HinduNaachgaana.comRogermoore.comTwitchfilm.comAllmoviephoto.com
image sources
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
AUTEURNOTES ON DIRECTORS
21
As 2010 begins, Indian Auteur takes stock of the prevailing situation in In-dian cinema by applying its own prism
of judgment to the filmmaking industry, i.e, study of the film director.
BANDEE DESIGNEEOMNIYAM(PART 1 of 3)
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ENTS
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COVER STORYWHAT THEY FORGOT TO TELL YOU KSHITIZ ANAND 56TO FILL UP SCREENS AND SEATS SUPRIYA SURI 65IN COLD STORAGE
73SAGORIKA SINGHA
WHICH WAY TO THE MONOLITH ANUJ MALHOTRA 77
FROM THE VAULTCINEMA OF HOLLISFRAMPTON SATYAM
They did what they liked to do, or what they do automatically, like picking their noses. It’s a terri-
bly irresponsible thing for an artist to say.
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AUTE
UR
Harmony Korine in one of his rare sober moods.
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Page 21
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EVEN JAMES BOND READS US!
INDIANAUTEUR.COM
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INDIANAUTEUR.COM
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As 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 antici-pation for the upcoming work.
The conclusions, while not completely unpre-dictable, 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 Direc-tor’s Classification.
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DIRECTORSOT
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NOTESEYON
ZOYA AKHTAR
It’s a matter of good luck by chance that Zoya Akhtar is a film director or more so a metteur en scene. If one re-
moved 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 Bolly-wood. 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
The 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 prod-ucts; 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 Bolly-wood’s most powerful screenwriter’s script – then his film and he become separate entities, with a filter between them. With Rock-et 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 mater-nity 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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AUTEUR 7 23
SANJAY BHANSALI
Looking 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 “art-house” film, Black he could not break away from the manner-ism of mainstream films.
What started out as a means of expression to look at the na-ture of relationships: longing, suffering, desire, and nostalgia; has turned into an exploitation of images that involves stretch-ing 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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DIRECTORSOTNOTESEYON VISHAL BHARDWAJ
More a poet than a filmmaker, more a romantic than a reactionary; his films, despite claiming a realist nature and a setting based somewhere in the real world, do not fail to seem fantastical,
as if set inside a certain fable, a certain folklore, or a certain poem. His debut, Makdee is the most typical of this mythical nature, and Maqbool only extends the tradition. Contrary to much popular opinion of his work, his films are not good because they are realistic, but because they are not. They are capable films only because they are a poet’s flights of fantasy, not a documentarist’s account; which is why Makdee, Maqbool and The Blue Umbrella, his three most accomplished films, seem like tales an ancient mariner would recite on a mysterious night by the sea – legends of a bygone era, not truths from our own. Which is also why two of his most popular films, Omkara and Kaminey, are so tepid and pretentious – as if the po-
IMTIAZ ALIOne cannot help but feel that the unexpected
commercial success of Jab We Met might have given birth to one more assured career in Bol-
lywood, 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 con-text 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. Un-til 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 subver-sion remains his speciality – with the girl actually get-ting married in Love Aaj Kal, to the boy actually help-ing 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 per-sonal 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.
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
AUTEUR
VISHAL BHARDWAJ
More a poet than a filmmaker, more a romantic than a reactionary; his films, despite claiming a realist nature and a setting based somewhere in the real world, do not fail to seem fantastical,
as if set inside a certain fable, a certain folklore, or a certain poem. His debut, Makdee is the most typical of this mythical nature, and Maqbool only extends the tradition. Contrary to much popular opinion of his work, his films are not good because they are realistic, but because they are not. They are capable films only because they are a poet’s flights of fantasy, not a documentarist’s account; which is why Makdee, Maqbool and The Blue Umbrella, his three most accomplished films, seem like tales an ancient mariner would recite on a mysterious night by the sea – legends of a bygone era, not truths from our own. Which is also why two of his most popular films, Omkara and Kaminey, are so tepid and pretentious – as if the po-
et’s been waken up and forced to face harsh real-ity – much like his mentor Gul-zar’s attempt to make a tale of the times and ending up with Hu Tu Tu. But filmmak-ers 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 Shakespea re ’s sonnets – recent-ly, he has turned to Tarantino and Guy Ritchie.
DIBAKAR BANERJEE
Even as he borrows his aes-thetic from Martin Scorsese, he remains wholly commit-
ted to the articulation of a personal voice. One of the two only two truly cinephile turned film directors work-ing 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 coher-ent moral pattern. The only dictum his films follow is that of the pragmatic – that of a person who holds naive ide-alism in contempt and instead, they let his characters be imperfect human beings in search for individual hedo-nistic 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 Ban-nerjee 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 happi-ness. Laced with doses of cyni-cism 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 con-fesses that Khosla ka Ghosla was in its original intention, not the tale of a victory, but that of a de-feat – possible, if he thought of it.
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If William Shakespeare’s Ju-lius Caeser was to be staged in Bombay with an all- Bol-
lywood director starcast, Vidhu Vinod Chopra would fit the bill as Brutus. In one of his tele-vised interviews he stands firm on the ideology of honesty and not falling prey to the hands of commercial cinema ala Bolly-wood. 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 (1942- A Love story, Kareeb) and films like Mission Kashmir - a Bollywood picturesque rep-resentation of the problems engulfing the valley with sen-sibilities that could only have been found in the dictionary of Bollywood cinema. His so called epic (Eklavya) present-ed a technically polished film that lacked the core grip on the narrative or his ability to
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 train-ing in the field of cinema, their knowledge of the medium, have turned their backs on innova-tion aesthetically….Et tu Brute!
VIDHU VINOD CHOPRA
DIRECTORSNOTESON
26 AUTEUR
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AMIT DUTTA
For long the premier film institute in India, FTII has produced great tech-
nicians who are fulfilling the demands of their Bollywood monarch much like how the Indian princely states did dur-ing the British Raj. They see nothing wrong in making third grade works even after study-ing 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 con-tained 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 founda-tion of relationship between man, his world and his state of existence.
ASHUTOSH GOWARIKER
A fascination for the bur-lesque 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 (liter-ally) of characters surrounded Lawrence, and even if a region underwent a political up-heavel, it remains a film about one man, and one man alone; with the remaining elements only auxilliaries to enhance his relevance, much like placing
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 tra-jectory 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 el-ephants 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.
DIRECTORS
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RAJKUMAR GUPTA
One film may not be a clear indicator, especially if its aesthetic is a directly in-
heritation from his mentor Anurag Kashyap’s much superior Black Fri-day, 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 in-sight, and a bravura so typical of the youth. With Aamir, Gupta attained a balance between two aesthetic choices so vast, that his next film re-mains worthy of anticipation- with one scene shot with docu-realism, from atop a roof as if to maintain an objective distance from the proceed-ings (Black Friday’s most staggering achievement), the second quickly jumped to the lead’s point-of-view shots, with each character in his vi-cinity becoming the resident of a sub-jective gaze that deemed them sinis-ter. 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 sta-tus 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 repre-sentation meant that his family could not be just about any family any more – and thus, could not be generalised.
DIRECTORSNOTES28 AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
RAJKUMAR GUPTA DIRECTORSNOTESON
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RAJKUMAR HIRANI
What 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 encapsu-late 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 deliber-ately does not wish to relin-quish 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 de-feats 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 scru-plous – but with 3 Idiots, he steers consistently in the do-main of a Madhur Bhandarkar – for whom, each newspaper
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 de-signed 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 filmmak-ing decisions on prospective revenue, the more dishon-est 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.
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
DIRECTORSNOTESON
KARAN JOHAROne cannot help feel
sympathetic for an ex-istence 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, mor-ally and ideologically – a residue of an inglorious past of Hindi cinema – a director whose works exhibit a ridicu-lous pride in all that is wrong with us. Is it too much to ask of him that if he wishes to
discuss human behaviour, he must meet some human be-ings first? That if he desires to contemplate over a sidelined religious identity, he must un-dergo isolation first? That if he wants to ponder extra-marital affairs, he must experience the feeling of commitment first?His works are the worst ex-amples of pop-art so empty and innocuous, that each issue is reduced into bullet-points, or newspaper headlines – tri-vilisation which is a result of his desire to make a statement about the road down below while staring at it from the win-dow of his fifteenth floor air-conditioned 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 can-dy-floss filmmaker, he claims an identity that deserves to be taken more seriously. Also, would someone please inform him that even as empty mind-less entertainment, his films are considerable failures?
30 AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
ANURAG KASHYAP
A pseudo-auteur with a tendency to go around the market of world cin-
ema, 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 distanc-ing themselves from the trash of the mainstream, but that distantiation only remains an intentional fallacy – an aim of noble intent but bad imple-mentation – for in their results his films embrace the very elements of the mainstream that he so seeks to denounce. He remains consciously a di-rector who, inspired by the hordes of DVDs in his library, seeks to create an interna-tional masterpiece – but the
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?
31AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
SAJID KHAN
The 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 understand-ing 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 dis-claimer: “You can make a film in In-dia, but it won’t be distributed”. Ev-erything 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
Even with his advertise-ment influenced editing, and a camera caught in
a torrential river current, he is plagued by the disability of sim-plification. 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 de-piction of youth caught in tran-sit, could think of no better than nihilism to solve its problems. With Delhi 6, he resorted to the age-old monologue. Staging of-ten as if his characters are on a theatre stage, with each of them arranged in one space, and con-tributing one line each to the conversation; he is to the roster
DIRECTORSNOTESON
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of Indian directors what So-derbergh is to the American – an anomaly within the main-stream, for even as he works inside a homogenous industry, he demands authorship. Even then, he is a protestor in a ral-ly whose participation cannot be faulted for the lack of ear-nestness, 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.
SRIRAM RAGHAVANA career that began a tad late, but a youth that refused to relent; it is al-most 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 compre-hends 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 al-low his pulp noir merely linger in its famed shallowness, or make a depar-ture from it and make a deeper state-ment. As a result, entertaining and thrilling his films are, they remain curiously devoid of any psychologi-cal 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 Mel-ville. That aside, Johnny Gadaar’s acknowledge-ment of Parwana as a reference remains as cre-ative a method of homage as any other in cinema.
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Indian Auteurs
The 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 leg-ible that the authorship of the film becomes indisputable.
Satyajit Ray Ritwik Ghatak Mrinal SenAdoor Gopalakrishnan Buddhadeb DasuptaMani Kaul Kumar Shahani
Vijay Anand Girish KasaravalliBimal Roy
Guru Dutt
DIRECTOR REPORT CARD 2010
Govind Aravindan
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
Representatives of Quality
Quality stands for a certain achievement in cinematic form that is ear-nest 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 im-pundency, and awe over irreverence. It is a condition of displaying almost certain cinematic talent, but stopping short of translating it into cinema.
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Anurag Kashyap Ashutosh Gowariker Dibakar BanerjeeSanjay Leela Bhansali Sriram RaghavanMani Rathnam Aparna Sen
Amit Dutta Vishal Bhardwaj
Indian Auteurs
Prakash Jha
AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
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Honest Commerce
To lend the mainstream an air of respectability, both in terms of in-tention and accomplishment. It is a condition of filmmaking which
does not claim an aim higher than revenue, and yet, from within the ho-mogeneity of the mainstream, they attempt individual statements. They struggle to use cinematic device, but the shallowness of their ideas usu-ally fails them. They cannot escape the holes of categorisation they have dug for themselves.
Ayan Mukherjee Rajkumar Hirani Rakeysh Omprakash MehraRajkumar Santoshi Rajkumar Gupta
Nagesh Kukunoor Sudhir MishraFarhan Akhtar
AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
Cinema of Contempt
These are the directors of films that feign concern, pretend to con-tribute 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 cur-rent 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 in-tentions but make immoral films.
Madhur Bhandarkar Vidhu Vinod Chopra Neeraj PandeyKabir Khan J.P.Dutta
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Ram Gopal Verma
Honest Commerce
AUTEUR
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
Streets of Shame
These are the directors who, have by some strange serendipity, man-aged 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.
Karan Johar Farah Khan Kunal Kohli Rohit ShettySajid Khan Anil Sharma Rakesh Roshan
Sanjay Gadhvi David DhawanVikram Bhatt Rohit Shetty Priyadarshan
Anees Bazmee Sanjay Gupta
38AUTEUR
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RESIST THETORTURE
OF
BADCINEMA
Streets of Shame
INDIANAUTEUR.COM
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Nachiketa/Narrator is a stu-dent of a scientist/philos-opher named Atpatesh-
war 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, be-lieving it to contain money that he will use to finance the writing And publication of the definitive criti-cal 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 immedi-ately 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 be-comes acquainted with his soul, which he names Om; who pro-vides advice and lively conver-sation. 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
meets two of the three police-men, Bhairon singh and Kaali who speak in a curious mélange of spoonerisms, solecisms, and malapropisms and are entirely obsessed with bicycles. There he is introduced to various pe-culiar or irrational concepts, ar-tifacts, 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, mys-terious 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-
MNIYAM
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7
MNIYAM
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
who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this par-ish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the inter-changing of the atoms of each of them and you would be sur-prised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”
Iis later discovered that Bhagchand Soni has been found dead in a ditch, ap-
parently gutted by Yadupeer, and the narrator is blamed be-cause he is the most convenient suspect. He calls on the help of Yadupeer, but his rescue is
thwarted by a bicycle painted with an unknown colour which drives those who see it mad. He faces the gallows, then nar-rowly escapes on a beautiful bi-cycle when the two policemen
are called away by dangerous-ly high readings in the under-ground 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 amuse-ment, meaning he saved the nar-rator’s life. He tells the narrator that he found and sent the black box to the narrator’s home, where it is waiting forhim.
He also reveals that the box contains not money, but om-nium, which can become any-
thing he desires, and is actually the box that was in ‘Eternity’. Elated by the possibilities before him, he
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 shout-ing that the narrator was sup-posed 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 nar-rator, and now Devi, are in a surreal afterlife, and go through the same series of events with-out remembering any of it
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I: CHAR ACTERS
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I:
COVER STORY
CHAR ACTERS
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13
His father was a strong farmer and mother owned a public house. He knew his mother
well but his fatherand he were strangers and did not converse much. His father and moth-er 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.
His life at this school did not matter except for one thing. It was here that he first came to know somethingof Atpateshwar. One day he picked up idly an old tattered book in the sci-ence master’s study and put it in his pocket to read in bed the next morn-ing. He was about sixteen then. The book was a first edition of Golden Hours with the two last pages miss-ing. 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 com-mitted 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.
”He knewthat if his
it would be with
remembered name would be
Arpateshwar’s”
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27NACHIKETA
of fat”46
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He 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.
He 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 parch-ment (writing material made of animal skin, paper resembling this) with an ar-rangement 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 pin-hole 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. Stick-ing plaster or bandage at the left hand side of his neck. Throat and chin are also ban-daged. 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
”A spentbloodless face
the great black
peering over
of fat”
coat”
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SETH BHAGCHAND
BHAGCHAND AS GHOST
KALIPRASADA
He has a dark face and hooky noseand masses of black curly hair. Heis blue-jowl-
ed and black-jowled andlooks as if he shaved twice a day. Hehas white enameled teeth, two rowsof them arranged in the interior ofhis mouth. He is heavy-fleshed andgross in body like the sergeant buthis face looks far more intelligent. Itis unexpectedly lean and the eyes init are penetrating and observant. Ifhis face alone were in question hewould look more like a poet than apoliceman but the rest of his bodylooks anything but poetical. Hisvoice is high, almost feminine, andhe speaks with a delicate careful intona-tion. He lived in the barracks for morethan 100 years.
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KALIPRASADA”His facealone would look more than a
like a poet policeman”
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Devi is a strong civil man but he is lazy and idle-minded. He has brown hair and is made hand-
somely enough in a small way. His shoul-ders are broadened out with work and his arms are thick like little tree-trunks. Hehas a quiet civil face with eyes like cow’s eyes, brooding, brown, and patient.After sixteen years Devi has grown enor-mously fat and his brown hair is gone, leaving him quite bald. His strong face has collapsed to jowls of hanging fat.
”His strongface has
to jowls of fat”
collapsed
DEVI SINGH
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DEVI SINGH
Ordinary enough as each part of him looked by itself, they all seemed to create together, by some undetect-
able discrepancy in association or propor-tion. A very disquieting impression of un-naturalness, 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 ani-mal. 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 im-portant-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.
”Hismoustache
antennae shot out into
the air like theof someunusual animal.”
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BHAIRON SINGH
277 52
He 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 giv-ing 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
smooth
made of woodshapely but
left leg is
YADU BIR (LANGDA)
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
”His ”Cinema is the
most alive
YADU BIR (LANGDA)
He 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 of-fice 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.
”His voiceis like
rubbedcardboard
on sandpaper
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35INDIANAUTEUR
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YEAR:ONE
COVER STORY
COVER STORY
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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33337 56COVER STORY
WHATTHEYFORGOTTO TELLYOU
KSHITIZ ANAND
Ksihtiz Anand travels to the site of the Bhopal Gas tragedy, and uses his cam-era to document the hitherto ignored. The images missing from our cinematic screen and those that the media conve-niently glosses over.
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
YOU
COVER STORY
Bhopal is an inter-esting city. There is water scar-city, 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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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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The 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 poi-sonous gases. All it required was one small error and a disas-ter struck.
“
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Motors and bolts larger than I have ever seen be-fore. The cor-
nucopia of metal and the me-tallic 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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397 46
The 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 hu-man. 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 embed-ded in the Indian culture, that it
is even difficult to fathom the beliefs that it leads to. People worshipping trees and stones at the very sites that were af-fected by the disaster is com-mon. And it is inexplicable.
I 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-bio-degradable. A curse to the en-
vironment. The rusting iron and the leaked gases have rendered the soil useless. The air is polluted. The wa-ter is contaminated. Nature seems to be taking charge here. Creepers have made its way up the pipelines. Where do they get the required ma-nure to survive? The roots of many a plant lies adjacent to the machin-ery. 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. Ap-pearing as a dwarf in front of it, I approach it and take a few pictures. Some say this tank was overflow-ing. 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
down and I could now feel the cold December evening.
The guard who had ac-companied me asks me to hurry up. Shuf-
fling 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 vi-sual 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 documen-tary should be with so much going on.There are so many threads that are going on.
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COVER STORY
i: film p
ro
gr
am
min
g
TO FILL
AND SEATS SUPRIYA
SURI
SCREENSSupriya Suri intro-SpectS in retroSpect about the variouS chal-lengeS of programming filmS in the capital, and alSo deScribeS the jour-ney of cinedarbaar, the film programming body, aS it completeS one year of itS inception.
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47
Cinema is like a time machine that makes you travel through dif-
ferent spaces and times when-ever you watch a film. It was two years back that I got ac-quainted with the images of Yugoslavia through Emir Kus-turica’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 pos-sible 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.
To build a gathering of cinephiles, with a place to watch good films and
sharing the experiences through discussions got me back to In-dia. A small dream of a film club to build a cinematic cul-ture in Delhi was what initiated Cine Darbaar (Gathering for cinema). Traveling across with this dream to different people for over months and still hav-ing no possible funding for the project made us start with a small film festival in collabo-ration 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 observa-tion, experimenting, travelling & confusions. We conducted around five film festivals, inter-actions 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. For-tunately, continuing these ac-tivities for a year helped us un-derstand 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 ne-cessity 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 to-day and what more is needed.
IDEAS THAT HAVE ARRIVED
Under Nehru’s govern-ment; International Film Festival of India,
National Film Archive of In-dia, 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
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 com-mon 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 be-gan with such major develop-ments pre and post revolution.
There 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 In-dian cinema forward to inter-national level and vice versa. Like the IFFI (International film festival of India) was re-sponsible 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 di-rectors 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 cin-ema including the Hindi cin-ema. Directors like Raj Kapoor, V.Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Me-hbood, Guru Dutt, Saeed Mir-za, Shyam Benegal, and Mani Kaul lifted the Hindi cinema. The directors produced some great social dramas and con-sidered 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 lay-men. This was the film society movement, a time when the au-dience enjoyed films beyond the theatrical releases and had op-tions for watching several films. Then FTII was set up to train the actors, directors and cin-ematographers. With teachers like Ritwik Ghatak, the institute produced some of the best direc-tors of India. Mani Kaul, Ku-mar 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 In-dia. To support the film makers was the Film finance corpora-tion, now National Film Devel-opment 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 insti-tutes, Film Societies, National Awards, International Film Festival, Film Division and National Film Development Corporation. The whole infra-structure needed to develop a base for cinema had started developing. Cinema enjoyed popularity and was also taken seriously during this time. Un-fortunately all these founda-tions to promote cinema have gone silent since years now. The ideas that arrived 50 years ago are in the dormant state.
IDEAS IN PROGRESS
In the 21st century me-dia has already become a strong source of revenue
especially the film sectors on which all other media like tele-vision & advertisements look up for. Hence ideas that will af-fect the film viewing habits in India are already in progress, i.e. expanding the international cinema market to the main-stream audience has been pro-gressing with various steps tak-en by different organizations. Film festivals in India have al-ready 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-
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 so-cialist fighters using film fes-tivals for their own purposes. One even finds international cinema on their television box now. More than this we have DVDs available in the mar-ket to select a variety of In-ternational directors as well.Apart from screenings we also have private film insti-tute’s mushrooming to spread an education in cinema. Regular workshops indepen-dently are conducted as well. Overall the accessibilities for an Indian audience to-wards international cinema have increased once again.On the other hand for Indian cinema to be accessible inter-nationally, there are ideas in progress as well. The govern-ment film department has tak-en an active role to send Indi-an 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 be-ing successful. The producers are also pushing the co pro-duction possibilities, like the coming of Fox and Columbia pictures in India, but they allHence one could say the in-frastructure to promote cin-ema just like the past is once again pacing up in India.
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Audiences at the Taiwan Cine Expe-rience.
The entrance for the Taiwan Cine Experience with the official festival poster.
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Film maker Mr. Mani Kaul during the opening cer-emony of the
Taiwan Cine Experience. He observed Hou-Hsiao-Hsien’s trickery with filmic time.
The projectionist at Sirifort Audito-rium. He lights the screen up. Liter-ally.
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Audiences during the Russian Cine Expe-rience. The
team managed an ovation from the audience on the closing day.
The Shakti Samanta ret-rospective resulted in crowd dis-
cussions that were over-flowing of nostalgia and recollection of a bygone era.
IA/FEBRUARY 2010
IDEAS IN CONFLICTS
The ideas that already have arrived and the ideas that exist now have a huge dif-
ference. The earlier development took shape only with a group of cinephiles who took cinema seri-ously, who understood or tried to understand cinema and its poten-tial 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 com-mon vision, to spread the art of cinema and its understanding among the masses by being hon-est 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 law-yer, 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.
Similarly, even in cinema if one chooses any market segment with in it, it should
at least be accompanied by some cinephiles who could channel-ize 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 dis-tributor should buy? What film to be shown in television? What film festivals to be conducted? What kind of films is needed to de-velop 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 semes-ters 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 di-rectors who have been trying to promote and sent their trash, hop-ing to be a part of the competition section, their marketing strategies and ideas have been failing. On the other hand, there are govern-ment 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
The major lapse in as in answering these ques-tions are due to the lack
of participation of cinephiles and regulating the content for tele-vision, 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 perform-ing responsibilities like film programmer, film critics & film
teachers are needed. They are needed to understand the view-ers, film students and overall the market to be able to develop cinema gradually in a positive direction. Just like how all pro-fessions have been taken seri-ously with various people pro-viding inputs as professional, cinema needs the same serious-ness and the same seriousness to be given to such professionals.We need these cinephiles to understand their audiences, their viewing and understand-ing 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 environ-mental fighters conducting film festivals. We need television channels to understand their au-diences and decide their film pro-gramming 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 under-standing 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 pro-grammes. We need film program-mers 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 al-ready taken up this space without
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any knowledge of cinema, that when the cinephile comes and ex-presses 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 should they not conduct film festivals”
We need these film programmers to also help structure the film fes-tivals in India and sending Indi-an films at the international film festivals. Why is it that after so many efforts with great market-ing 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 affect-ing 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 chan-nels and being happy standing at the corner in the pavilion section. These are all the more reasons why a film programmer should exist.
On the education segment, we need film institutes to first tell the students to be
a cinephile, to help build a cine-phile 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 func-tions of camera, editing is what students are acquainted with, but not mise-en- scene and montage. Students understand the cuts be-tween images but not the aesthet-ics. They understand the progress of the narrative structure, the lin-ear, non linear editing but not the critical aspects to know, why?
Hence we do need a reviv-al in the course structure with the help of cine-
philes to develop cinema. We then need teachers to develop their per-sonalities then to be able to sell their ideas to producers, but fore-most trying to understand cinema. And to support a new kind of cin-ema, new ideas, and young film makers we need a revival in fund-ing opportunities for these up-coming 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 pro-grammers to create a space for good cinema, to organize work-shops at film institutes to give a new perspective on cinema. To what we started with a small fan-tasy of bringing the cinematic time machine to India from Paris has although been kept on hold, yet the year gave us an impor-tant reason to continue our activ-ity and even more intensely now.
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IN COLDSTORAGE
SAGORIKASINGHA
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SagoriKa Singha muSeS over the State of film preServa-tion and reStoration in the country, With Special focuS on the governmental initiativeS for the Same. She con-cludeS much more can be done.
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Archiving, which can al-ternately imply to main-tenance of a film reposi-
tory, has multiple functions. It is simply not about storing film stocks, videos. Moreover, the fragile medium that cinema em-ploys, deems it difficult and hence, necessitates its preservation. Very recently, the report of the auction-ing 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 heri-tage and its ultimate demolition.
This further provokes the immediate emergence of doing something for hold-
ing 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 en-compasses 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 his-tory. Lasting for mere seconds, these ephemeral chronicler of sorts are likened to an archaeo-logical record. They are not of course a regular, simple, faith-ful recorder of society but pres-ent an assortment of social life capturing the various stages of society and its changes. When compared with a bigger or rath-er a longer and a far refined me-dium, called cinema, the func-tion of preserving the social heritage increases manifold.
Cinema or any form of documentation, do not become the sole wit-
ness 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, cin-ema could very well coalesce and bring out an aspect absent in the rest. Cinema captures in parts what the society under-goes, so that we often end up recording history and later re-viewing them through them. Storing moving images of a period, of a phase in celluloid. Our history gets recorded, cap-tured 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 of-ten forget the reality it spreads across. And, no one complains,
because, for many that is precise-ly 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 differ-ent varieties of individual. But the basic representation is unde-batably always as the reflector of the then-present. Review the si-lent eras of Raja Harishchandra, the talkies arrival with Alam Ara, the super hit syndrome intro-duced by Mughal -e- Azam. Then take a quantum leap and move to the angry-socialist-prone-men-with-their-angst-against-establishment of the seventies. Switch to the present 21st cen-tury’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?
This is exactly why the role of cinema as social recorders and its sub-
sequent preservation becomes important. A random compari-son: 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
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.
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place even this young art to per-ish 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 gen-eral viewers alone, but the society at large. Romantic notion would make one relate failure to pre-serve the art to a diminishing so-cial history, dissolving into a vac-uum when not restored. Videos, newsreels that once proclaimed and captured an event in history, a fictionalised setting, a story, an emotional moment, vanish with-out 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.
The 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 pro-ducers of film. According to sta-tistics, around 1300 films are pro-duced annually. Archiving thus becomes a challenging issue. We are of course not right now prob-ing 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 Informa-tion and Broadcasting, has been
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 an-nually were not archived. It was then that NFAI collaborated with film institutes like Film and Tele-vision 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.
However, 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 ar-chiving has been a major subject
for numerous film institutions offering film studies like New York University, Columbia and UCLA. This has been late com-ing 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 sur-vival 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 sole-ly seeking the business aspect of it, because, that is the other part of the preservation process, and a rather a popular one, in the out-side market. But that would con-stitute a different topic altogether.
In the international scene, Martin Scorsese’s initiative called World Cinema Foun-
dation 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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Martin Scorsese with members of theWorld Cinema Foundation.
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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 Swe-den, France and as rare and old, getting them a global platform. The idea behind the establish-ment 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.
Archive outlasts its owner, and that way it immortalises not
only the art but also the art-ist. 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 un-awareness. But words are not what it requires, it demands more actions. The urgency and the im-mediacy 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 preserva-tion, it is ‘the more, the merrier’. The pathetic state of the Indian archiving scene is even more evi-dent when an organization like NFAI complains of ‘lack of staff’ to look after it. Moreover, there are no independent bodies to sup-port 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 em-phasis 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 pres-ervation and its passive state in our country threatens the al-ready young art. It’s always the best who survives because they manage to find a means to it.
There has to be a basic dif-ference 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 lat-ter 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 pro-cess 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 love-devotion, because preservation gives a more lasting and linger-ing fruit of labour, a remark-able memorabilia for the entire posterity to behold, a gift unlike any other. What could be the greater deed for a greater love?
LIMITE BRAZIL
THE HOUSEMAIDSOUTH KOREA
KALPANAINDIA
DRY SUMMERTURKEY
WCFRESTORATIONS
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WHICH WAYTOTHEMONOLITH?
ANUJ MALHOTRA
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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59The role of film criticism can be defined in the context of its inconvenient existence as the knot in a tug-of-war between its nature as a device of encapsulation – of summarisation of a mass taste, and thus, its devo-tion to the cause of populism – and as a piece of writing that vows eternal commitment to the acknowledge-ment of the various unreasonable whims of the massively important artform it wishes to tackle – cinema.
Too 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 ap-preciation 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 con-sistently place himself in the middle of the heated discus-sion. 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 market-driven 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 journal-ists 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 iden-tify 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, com-ment 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 vi-tal element of all cinephilia, but of simple exploitation.
The choice with a film critic does not lie in the either/or mode, where-
in 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 consis-tent compromise between com-mitment to the eccentricities of its great artform, and the impa-tience 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
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 lat-ter 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-cul-ture, and while such criticism may achieve a special signifi-cance on the day of a film’s re-lease, it wishes to be discarded at the moment of the next up-date – the next Friday review.
A film critic, also must not uphold criticism as an instrument of superior-
ity, for often enough, film writ-ers in our nation pride them-selves 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 distin-guished portals of film litera-ture, as on the pages of Indian Auteur’s Olympus, cinephilia, when stripped to its bone and re-duced to its most simplistic the-orem, is the act of participation. It is the act of sharing, of being able to generalise the jubilia-tion 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 ex-clusivity, or of protection of in-formation as if it is a national
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treasure. The bane of much criti-cism, 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 writ-ing 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 distan-tiate themselves from such es-teemed company, to create a sepa-ration between the average movie goer and themselves (similar to the balcony and the stall hierar-chy in the single-screens only that the differences this time are pure-ly intellectual) and to establish
themselves in a strange, twisted manner as being superior. And yet, does it remain beyond them to comprehend that cinema re-mains a universal experience, one which does not demand of its audience a certain level of erudition, a certain level of edu-cation, a certain level of literacy – it is the medium of the Nean-derthal pre-historic man. As the presenter famously announced during Charlie Chaplin’s Hon-orary Oscar presentation,
“As long as there is a screen and a projector, there will be Chaplin.”
Their writing on film thus becomes an extended exercise in the appease-
ment 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-
ment of personal agendas to a film. A sociologist locates clues of social trends, an ethnologist requires of a film to be primar-ily 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 Inter-pretation’ says, “Such criticism reveals more about the critic, than about the film.” Eventu-ally, one must realise that noth-ing exists beyond the screen. The artifact is the only evi-dence, 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 ve-hicle for ideas, it is eventually, a film. Such lazy interpretation, where each viewer is allowed
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Chaplin in his classic, ‘Modern Times’
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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 paint-ing 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 ev-eryone occupies a personal cu-bicle of ‘opinion’ that they do not wish to vacate at any cast. How-ever, cinema does not exist in a vaccum, and howsoever subjec-tive and personal the experience of watching each film maybe, the need for a monument of consen-sus is essential. Only if there is an agreement on something,will we, as film makers, film critics, or film watchers – all children of cin-ema – progress to another level.
The primary role of the Ca-hiers Du Cinema writers, while also fulfilling the
urgent need to subvert the popu-lar opinion, was to cultivate a culture of argument, of inquiry, of thought – all important mile-stones in the journey to consen-sus. Without universal agreement on any tangent, we would all be moving in our personal circles – indulging in criticism that in-volves discussion to deaths on the meaning of individual words, theories, interpretations and
prisms of judgments. As Quen-tin Tarantino said about Pau-line Kael’s criticism of Godard films, “At one stage, her criti-cism became more entertain-ing than the films themselves.” It is important for criticism to not establish an identity sepa-rate of its subject. And while it may not need to be subservi-ent 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 can-not 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 ar-ranges people into neater ‘cir-cles’ – the more are the chances of extinction of the artform.
The Friday film critic, who writes for national newspapers or appears
on national television chan-nels in India, does not realise the full responsibilities of his profile. His job is not that of the product-tester at the lo-cal toothpick factory – to rate products and certify them as suitable for public consump-tion. It is infact, separated from the job of a film historian by only a very feeble line of dif-ference. 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), ideo-logical trends, new innovation with the camera, a new thought (or the absence of one, as in our
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, ex-pand into documentation of a na-
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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 po-tency of their own devices – in-stead finding relative happiness
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 culti-vate a culture of cinema itself.
There is a definite reason why none of our critics can be categorised into any
classification related to cinema – a certain belief, a certain ideol-ogy, a certain method applied to each film, a certain affection for a director – because in order to feign the exalted aim of objectiv-ity, they end up writing on each film as if it is the first film in the history of cinema. And that cin-ema 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 re-views 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 ob-scure gem. To disseminate aware-ness about such a film would be
the ideal use of a mainstream setup for film criticism, but alas, we are all already perceived as in-dividual authorities. Why bother.As a conclusion, film criticism is in tatters in the nation. No at-tempt is being made, except on isolated blogs which bear more the vanity of a duke than the hu-mility of a stablehand, to restore film criticism to its original con-ception – the position of power, the position of information, the position of awareness, the posi-tion of enlightenment – and also, the position of humility, the posi-tion of servitude, the position of acceptance. Which is why com-mentators 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 crit-ics – they cannot ridicule these commentators and deem them ig-norant, 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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Cahiers(Above) the gospel truth of film criticism; David Bordwell( left), the only pure film critic.
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FROMTHEVAULT
THE CINEMAOF
HOLLISFRAMPTONSATYAM BARERA
IA EXCLUSIVE
FROM THE VAULT
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OFHOLLISFRAMPTON
5
While reading Scott Mac-Donald'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 im-mensely. 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 automati-cally, like picking their noses. It’s a to-tally irresponsible thing for an artist to say. On the other hand, simply attempt-ing to keep an apparent progression from developing was probably a bet-ter 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."".
The 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 pres-ent its fourteen portraits using minimal means [eg; lighting is simple and each subject has apparently been given the same basic instructions in the same emp-ty darkened space]. A serial structure, all the subjects are introduced in four-teen second shots, each separated from the next by forty frames of dark leader; then the portraits are presented in the same order. Palindrome (1969) organiz-es found imagery discarded by the film lab into complex palindromic sequence. Artificial Light (1969) uses the same se-quence of imagery twenty times, but in each instance this material is presented in a different way; in one instance Framp-ton 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-
83FROM THE VAULT
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6563577 84rate exposition in Zorns Lemma (1970). Zorns Lemma is divided into three sections, each repre-senting a phase in the process of learning [particularly the pro-cess 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 be-ginning with successive let-ters of the alphabet, which be-comes one of the central grid structures in Zorn’s Lemma. the second sections begins with run through of the roman al-phabet, then proceeds to reveal in silence, an immense collec-tion of environmental words that are presented in alphabet-ic sets, one second per word.
They 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 remain-ing 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 voic-es read in time to a metronome marking off a one second beat.
Instead of identifying with fictional character and vi-cariously experiencing this
character’s adventures, the viewer of Zorn’s Lemma meta-phorically relives phases of an educational process that, from Frampton’s point of view charac-terize contemporary experience.
Frampton’s next work, the seven parts Hapax Lego-mena - the first three sec-
tions of Hapax Legomena - Nos-talgia, Poetic Justice & critical mass are some of Frampton’s most impressive films. In Nos-talgia, we see close-ups of a se-ries 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
story of a stressed relationship between a photographer and his lover is evident within the ver-bal & visual labyrinth created by Frampton’s ingenious text. In Critical Mass, he uses forms of visual & auditory repetition, to dramatize a lover’s quarrel be-tween a young man and women.
After Hepax Legome-na, he made 36 Hour long film Magel-
lam - organized and meant to be viewed cylindrically over the course of 371 days.
FROM THE VAULT
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“Turn out the lightsThe party's overThey say thatAll good things must endCall it tonightThe party's overAnd tomorrow startsThe same old thing again “
- ‘The Party’s Over’ Willie Nelson, ‘56
