Indian Auteur: Jan 2010, issue no-8

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TABLE OF CONTENT

E-magazine: READ ONLINE

AUTEUR

IA Master Series: Kamal Swaroop

COVER STORY

A Documentary Fantasy: Our Beloved Month of August: Dr Adrian Martin

Cinema, considered as a Toolbox: Ignaity Vishnevetsky

Berlin School: Srikanth Srinivasan

20 Young Independent Thai directors: Jit Phokeaw

Call Money or Mani Kaul: Satyam

The Dreamer of the East:- Corneliu Porumboiu: Anamaria Dobinciuc

Zero Bridge: IA talks to Tariq Taqa: Indian AuteurTm

Reviews

Tingya: Sagorika

Paa: Debojit

Avatar: Anuj

FROM THE VAULT

Cinema and Television in India: Nitesh Rohit


Editorial:

GOODBYE SOLO:-

Independent filmmakers in India come in two shapes and sizes. The first that s (he) is a filmmaker confined to represent ideas of our world via the bastardization of social realism aka documentary filmmaker. The second group is a cousin of the carnivores T-Rex aka Bollywood, these small dinosaurs are no different from their kinship. They talk like them, the walk like them and they act like them. The only difference between the cousins is in respect to size.

There is a stark similarity between both schools of so called in (dependent) cinema of India. Either of them are not bothered about the nature of the medium itself. This means, that both the groups are heaping money based on the idea that the films they sell or make are “real” or in more fashionable terminology used by desi pundits and critics- realistic. Each independent school has a clear demarcation of what they believe is the right idea of reproducing the nature of our world and the existence of our being. The documentary filmmaker stresses the fact that his work is a representation of things as it exist, the New Bollywood films of thought exclaims the same, added with a tagline “ Service to Mankind” . Little do they realize that the mechanical instrument without their divine intervention already reproduce what it see (reality).

And, if by any chance, a new approach of an individual’s cinematic view of the world could have been possible also goes missing since neither groups pay any heed to the fundamentals of cinema. They are so ignorant in their own success of reinvention or experiment based on the ideas of narratives or dramaturgy that if, a documentary film and a Bollywood film were to be broken down cinematically then their final atom would be the same. That means there would be no clear identification between a shot of Sharukh Khan as a person suffering from a disease and that of an actual man filmed suffering with a disease. Everything in cinematic DNA would appear the same. In the end, you realize that both groups behave as if they are doing great culture service for the human race but it’s precisely due to the nature of such state that images have lost any meaning.

What we really need more than ever this decade is to start from zero, from the very beginning… where it all began: “The Arrival of the train at La Stioat”.


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