its been over two yrs since i have written something ,had decided that i will write more but just couldnt keep up the promise with myself ,well i didnt waste time actually ,have explored you tube upto its full potential ,watched an insanely huge no of movies over last few yrs covering all major directors,genres,movements in world and india ,ofcourse ,sort of decided now not to watch any movie atleast untill 28th febraury ,hopefully this promise i ll keep :)
now coming back to vibgyor,i have been going to film festivals in last yrs ,i went to bangalore film festival in 2008/2009,goa 2009/2010, and this yr i went to vibgyor film festival in thrissur ,kerala.The main motive was to visit kerala and along with it ,i can indulge in my passion:watching movies back to back over 7 days,i can say it was a good experience overall,i really enjoyed my stay in kerala i will just list few random movies i enjoyed watching at the festival:-
1.MAYTHIL by K.GOPINATHAN:-this was a 41 minutes doc shown on the last day and without a doubt the best movie of the festival for me,now i m from punjab and mostly my reading has been in punjabi/hindi/emglish and i had nevver heard of the writer before this doc but i was hooked for entire duration of 41 minutes,there was so much to absorb that i cannt even remember many things,the guy refered evverything from marxism to robert frost poems to eisenstein's montage ,psychology,women ,sex etc etc.Without a doubt it was the best documentary i have seen on a creative person after "crumb" on robert crumb by "terry zwigoff".BOth the content and the narrative strcture were simply superb,later i went a congratuled the director also,he was a simple ,unassuming man.
the sad thing was that after i serached for english language translation of "maythil" work but coiuldnt find any ,its really sad ,why cant we translate our own indian authors in other languauges ?
2.CENTIPEDE SUN by MIHAI GRECU:-this was one of the best visually moving experiences after a long time ,there is no story ,narrative etc as in all the trappings of mainstream cinema ,just pure visuals and i beleive from my own exp .of watching movies over the yrs ,that such kind of movies are a treat to watch ,its difficult to descibe in words what excalty i was feeling while i watching the visuals ,i just wanted to break the fourth wall and go into the screen and stay there forever faraway from all the metro cities i have been living over the last few yrs ,but then i cant really do "into the wild" right?
now coming to another point as in terms of requirements of narrative,story etc,i firmly believe what we need to engage an audience is an interesting character ,the story will follow from what will happen to that character and waht sort of actions that character takes to resolve the situation arising out of his decisions and other external factors,and even going further ,if we look at a movie like "in mood for love" there is no path breaking story as such ,just 2 ppl and their repressed emotions ,and it is further enhanced manifold by fantastic soundtrack and cinematography by doyle, but then wong kar wai is wong kar wai ,not every one can do this thing
another one of his movie is "chunking express",i have always loved this movie both in terms of usuage of different tools related to cinematic form and as a purely movie buff,there is a scene i like i.e when guy is calling all the girls he has known since childhood but all are married and busy and he is alone with no one to talk to ,and also the one when he is jogging and gets a pager msg from the girl he went to hotel room last night ,
i think love is a matter of right timing and no other film maker has shown it better than wong kar wai,how ,when ,why two ppl fall in love is determined by various factors out of our control,well the post has moved away from vibgyor 2011 but such is the magic of wong kar wai
3.A FAMILY DRAMA by TANMAYEE DEO and DNYANESH ZOTING:-this was a short movie with a trace of black comedy throught the film and its my fav genre,so i ended up liking the movie.The story is that of a girl ,who is free spirited and doesnt want to get married(even thoguh her BF is ready to talk to his mother)and her conflicts with her family(her elder sis,mother and father).Her mother is always after her to get married and a swami blames all the bad things happening to the family of insistence of the younger daughther not getting married,one day she follows her elder sister and finds that she is planning to get divorce.Also,there is a hilarous scene when a dulha comes to see her and she gets her hair cut short (diff from the picture given to the guy),and she shows them a middle finger when they ask her "wahtt the plan after marriage".Also there is a good scene after this when her mother scolds her father for cming out when guy's family ,and last but not the least ,both the sisters are watching the VCR recording of elder's sister getting married but the younger one starts playing it a reverse fast mode,the scene is simply fun to watch and bit sad also as in .they wish if it could ahppen in real life ,overall i enjoyed the movie very much
4.MANY STORIES OF LOVE AND HATE by SHYAMAL KUMAR KARMAKAR:- I simply loved this docu,both the stories were engaging and shot beautifully
(a)story of a kashmiri boy whose father was a terrorist and now he is not getting passport coz of this fact,the docu showed in depth guy's anger ,frustration and shown kashmir visuals diff from what we are used to seeing in bollywood,it showed real kashmir ,one of my frnd had gone to kashmir for her study in early 2000s ,she clicked lots of pics and told me wherever she went ppl used to ask her "kya tum india se ho"? ,i could see lots of those ppl and locations in this movie ,
(b)story of rii,bengali girl,it showed from her POV her disturbed childhood ,her not-so-happy relationship with her father and effects of her father beating her mother .There were fantastic shots in this secction ,one of the shot (if i rem correctly),that a motorcycle is coming from far,then camera turns on the head and folllows it going through ,then we see Rii sitting on the road ,then camera closes on her vagina ,then we cut back to kashmiri story ,
5.SHAPE OF THE SHAPELESS by JAYAN CHERAIN:-now i have been watching lots of weired stuff in lat few yrs including gaspar noe,takashi mike,reyagdas etc but i can easily say that this was equal if not more daring than those names mentioned (in terms of content) coming from an indian film maker ,may be i havent seen other such docs from india so this was a new exp. for me.As another malyali i met at the festival told me that she was also surprised seeing such a movie from a mallu or i can also indian in that context.The story follows a guy who wants to change his/her identity as he/she wishes ,i know this is bit difficult to follow but you have to see this to beleive it ,some of the scenes were explicit in nature and i was worried about the 6 yr old kids sitting in the front and wathching this movie with rapt attention:),next day a women in mid 30s asked the director some Qs in directors meet rgnd censorship and i wont be surprised if anyof the kids watching the movie was her child
6.SONGS OF MASHANGVA by OINAM DOREN:-Now ,this was certainly the best "looking" movie of the fest for me ,the colors,light etc all of it superbly in sync with the songs being sung by the artist in the focus ,i was simply hooked to say the least,it was pretty long and i can safely say that i wasnt even bored for evven a minute ,i like the look of the film ,i feel "7 khoon maaf" look is very similar judging purely from the promos and i like that kind of stylized look ,the doc follows a singer of naga folk songs and how he is preserving centuries old tradition in face of modernity and also shots of rajasthan folk songs festival.When it ended and i looked back ,there were less than 5 ppl in the place where it was playing ,i felt very sad that i couldnt share such fantastic exp with more ppl coz at the end of the day movie watching is a communal exp ,you go to a fest etc to enjoy watching movies with like minded passionate ppl who are crazy about cinema who can watch 6-7 movies at stretch and still luk fwd to next day for watching some more
i ll mention about workshop which i attened in next post and will write about my movie watching exp in general from now on regularly,recently i read a truffaut interview in which he said"just watching and readding movies is not enf,you need to write about movies also ,this helps in exercising your intellect" so i gonna follow truffaut advice
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