KAUFMAN - "Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know ? Movie shit."
Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment - from "Adaptation".
We are all about CINEMA. That movie shit.
NOTHING is sacred.
NOBODY is spared.
Because we talk about films, dammit.
Not your sex life.
Films, fests, unsung, indies, undiscovered - all that and some fun. If you have dope on anything related to cinema or you would like to share something, do write to us at moifightclub@gmail.com.
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Thanks to BFI for making this possible because we hardly get to see and hear Adoor Gopalakrishnan.
Info from BFI account – Only two filmmakers from India have won the BFI’s Sutherland Trophy for most original and imaginative film — Satyajit Ray and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Adoor has won the International Film Critics Prize six times, and in 2002 the Smithsonian Institution honoured him with a complete retrospective of his work.
Adoor pioneered the film society movement in Kerala and formed India’s first film co-operative for production, distribution and exhibition. Here he answers questions from Twitter, Facebook and email, as part of our Ask an Expert series.
Anand Gandhi’s much accalimed film Ship Of Theseus is going to release this friday. Thanks to Kiran Rao and UTV, the film is getting much deserved space in mainstream media. If you have read about Gandhi’s short films in those interviews and still haven’t seen them, we are embedding two of his shorts here. The video quality is not great but do watch both the shorts.
– written and directed by Khushboo Ranka & Anand Gandhi.
Synopsis – This film narrates simple enjoyable stories from everyday life that explore the continuum of life and death, of love and paranoia, of trade and value, of need and invention, of hunger and enlightenment. The five moments of its childlike innocence branch out into a more intricate gamut of an urban scape, culminating into a space where the stories no longer exist as singular threads in their own vacuum but come across and play with each other to form a larger fabric of life.
– You can also check out the filmmaker’s blog here and his DeviantArt page here to see some of his interesting work.
– Click here to check out the Flickr page of Pankaj Kaumar, the DoP of Ship Of Theseus.
Meghe Dhaka Tara – a Bengali film (with English subtitles) inspired by the life of filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak has released in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore this week. Do watch it quickly as it will be in the theatres for just a week.
The film is experimental in nature with its non-liner narrative and criss-crosses tracks between scenes from his films, his life and his plays. With the names of his films being changed, it might be difficult to connect if you are not aware of Ghatak’s films. Like the character is named Nilkantha instead of Ritwik Ghatak – the name of the lead character in Ghatak’s Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Reason, Debate and Story). Or like Satyajit Ray is referred to as Arijit Ray in a dialogue. It’s quite an ambitious film and must have been a daunting task to put it all together. But even then it beaautifully captures the essence of Ghatak’s life and films – looking for his land, his country. It also has terrific performance by Sashwata Chatterjee who brings out the madness of the man brilliantly.
The film made me go back to Ghatak’s films and while googling, this is where i landed – a docu on him made for DD. It has some very interesting talking heads including my favourite actor Anil Chatterjee. Do check it out. Has some really great anecdotes.
– If you go to youtube, there are more such videos on various other filmmakers. Do check
– And click here to read an article where Aparna Sen and film’s director Kamaleswar Mukherjee discuss Ghatak and his films.
As part of the campaign “India is a visual journey”, five filmmakers were commissioned to make five short films. You must have seen the promos of the shorts. Now all the films are online. Do watch and vote for your favourite
1. Hidden Cricket by Shlok Sharma
About the film – A country that is divided in the name of religion, state, language, caste, economy, profession and even god… breathes together, stands together in the name of CRICKET!
A sport that defines the country. Cricket is in our blood and rules our hearts. A synonym to passion — cricket redefines enthusiasm, craze, zeal and excitement. We are a nation that loves cricket, lives cricket, beyond conventions and beyond rules, from breaking boundaries to breathtaking highs, a million cheers and a zillion sighs, such is the madness, such is the passion to play it anywhere, any day, all the time, all the way. Cricket is our way of life!
2. TheEpiphany by Neeraj Ghaywan
About the film – After their college reunion in Pune, a divorced couple is forced to take a ride together to Mumbai. As they meet an old woman on the highway in desperate need of help, their disparate sense of morality, culture and class creates friction, scraping the wounds of past that they thought was long gone. Some journeys may not take you anywhere, but you do move on.
3. Moi Marjani by Anubhuti Kashyap
About the film – A spirited independent single mother struggles on a daily basis to provide a comfortable life to her son and herself. She runs a small Internet cafe in Patiala, Punjab for a living, and is an Internet user herself. The film highlights a phase in her life when love comes knocking on her door. If only its timing was right!
4. Geek Out by Vasan Bala
About the film – The dual lives we lead, that virtual alter ego we all have nurtured and empowered, The Indian “Geek” today is no longer that lad who sat in a corner. He could be that carefully framed pic on Instagram to that deadly opinionated Twitter handle or maybe that pop philosophy spitting Facebook page or that revolutionary blog that was created to change the world or just plain drowned into the Audio-Visual black hole “You-Tube”. Day dreaming now has a new address, the world wide web. Dream on ! May the force be with the Geek!
5. Chai by Geentanjali Rao
About the film – The film is a sequence of montages that shows four different people making tea in a tea shop. A ten year old boy selling tea in Bombay at the Gateway Of India, An 18 year old girl with her tea shop in a mid level town, A 19 year old Kashmiri lad in a Barrista and An 80 year old man’s tea shop in a busy Kerala bus stand.
The film is a view of rapid change that India is going through and what it means to those people whose faces we never notice as we go along sipping our cup of tea everyday. Tea like the people of India changes with every language, culture, climate yet serves the same purpose everywhere always. A constant in a flux.
– And do VOTE for your favourite short. You can vote for as many shorts as you like, there’s no limit.
In a completely shocking news, filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh died of heart attack today morning. He was working on his latest film Satyanweshi – a Byomkesh Bakshi story starring filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh.
Easily one of the best filmmakers in the country, nobody explored the intimate space between two people like Ghosh did. All those film fanatics who are mad about world cinema, i hope they do get time to watch Ghosh’s films. His entire filmography is worth watching. Embedding the video of one of my favourite film – Titli – a terrific coming of age film. And easily the best desi film in that genre. It stars Mithun Chakraborty, Aparna Sen, Konkona SenSharma, and is with English subs. Do watch.
I first saw this short film by Chinmay Nagesh Dalvi at Mumbai Film Festival’s 2011 edition. It was in the “Dimension Mumbai” section, a competitive segment for U-25 filmmakers where films have to be about the city and duration should be less than 5 minutes.
I loved it, and thought that it will easily win the top spot. But Bombay Snow went on to receive the Special Jury mention. Later on it bagged the award for Best Short Fiction at International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. Since then i have been recommending it to everyone looking for good shorts. But the film wasn’t online. So for all those who have been asking for the film, finally the short film is online. Enjoy.
The version that was submitted at MFF was slightly shorter than this one. It didn’t have the scene of the boy stopping near the park. Compared to other shorts in the segment, this was brilliant as it didn’t try to force the “Mumbai” factor in it. Also, it beautifully touches upon so many subjects without shouting or saying anything – displacement issue, rural versus urban, the equation between husband, wife and hooker, and that epic “bombay snow”.
At some point most cinema discussion always move towards that rather simple question – who’s your favourite actor in the current lot? And to answer that question, my current favourite is Pankaj Tripathi. But the tragedy is sometimes i do have to explain who this actor is. It was the same for my other favourite – Yashpal Sharma. All these actors are always good, in any bad film or bad role.
A graduate of National School Of Drama, Pankaj has been acting for quite a few years. He got his much deserved visibility with YRF’s tv show Powder in which he played Naved Ansari. And then got recognition with his portrayal of Sultan in Gangs Of Wasseypur. Since we hardly care about actors who play character roles, so it’s rare to see them in mainstream media. Much thanks to Komal Nahta who he did this long interview with Tripathi where he talks about his theatre days, village, parents’ aspirations, struggling days and much more. And it’s quite an honest interview. DO WATCH.
(PS – To make life bit simpler, now you don’t need to fill in all the details to post comments. If you are already logged into Facebook or Twitter, just log in with your FB/T account. Click on the small (FB/T) icon below the comment box, a pop up will appear, authorize the app and you are done)
If you were not among those lucky selected few who were invited to attend the Spielberg-Bachchan session, don’t worry, we have got it for you. Click on the video and enjoy.
Steven Spielberg is currently in India. All thanks to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Entertainment. All the prominent filmmakers of the industry were invited to attend the session.
The Hollywood Reporter has also done an extensive report on the session. Click here to read it.
Rediff’s Raja Sen has written a column on “How Steven Spielberg brought Bollywood closer”. Click here to read it.
So, what’s next? Reliance will release Commando. Himmatwala is our next big release. David Dhawan has remade Chashme Baddoor. And Bollywood will keep chasing 100 crore films. Aha, beauty.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 