Montage

By -
TRUE



“Do not call it Bollywood. This is a very wrong thing to call it. We are not trying to copy Hollywood. We are making films for an audience of a billion people. Over 80% of these people don’t have enough food in their bellies. Our country does not provide its people with pool halls, basketball courts and video parlours, so we make films for them that will let them forget their lives for 3 hours. We create total fantasy, not the polished reality that Hollywood portrays. Never forget that, never forget that we are making films that allow people to believe for 3 hours that they are not poor and hungry”.

Subhash Ghai, Indian filmmaker, producer...etc.




Lies

How I learned to stop worrying about life and watch only Bollywood films




When will strike and curfews end in Manipur?


Cinema-verite


When will we see traffic jam in our films
When will we hear stories from Manipur, Orissa, Chattisgarh.....
When will...
When will...
When will...
When will....


----------------------

Indian Auteur Issue no-4- Coming Soon.

Comments

srikanth said…
"But if film aspires to be part of culture, it should do the things great literature, music and art do: elevate the spirit, help us understand ourselves and the world around us and give people the feeling they are not alone." - Kieslowski


"Never forget that, never forget that we are making films that allow people to believe for 3 hours that they are not poor and hungry" - Ghai

Not comparing, but just found that funny.

BTW, The Ghai quote is another sign that our cinema and politics are inseperable. Even our politicians would say the same line:

"Never forget that, never forget that we are making laws that allow people to believe for 5 years that they are not poor and hungry" :)
June 6, 2009 at 6:39 PM
nitesh said…
Thanks for the comment, Srikanth. Completely agree on the fact that our politician love to use a similar rhetoric along with another similarity with our politician- " They all can't take criticism.
June 6, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Satyajit Ray, 'What's wrong with Indian Films?

By -
Image
2008 The year is drawing to a close and top-ten lists have already started hitting the Internet. While going through several list of the, ‘Best movies of the year- distributed and non-distributed,’ it’s sad and remarkable to see the omission of Indian films. Over the years, there seems to be either ignorance on part of film festivals, critics, organizers about our cinema or in a country of over billion people,we are not able to make one worthwhile film that could transcend boundaries and cultural space- irrespective of being Indian. Beside let’s make this clear- Slumdog Millionaire is not an Indian film as the media seemed to project, rather it’s a British film with an Indian context. And so instead of proclaiming this as our conquest on the global stage, we should lament why anyone from our own industry couldn’t achieve this feat. While it's high time we should move on from talking about our scripts reaching the Oscar library or the growth of Bollywood in the US and UK box-offic...
Read more

Satyajit Ray

By -
Image
Satyajit Ray Date of Publication: 2004-06-03 Language: English Author: Amitav Ghosh In 1989, during my first extended stay in New York, I was suddenly struck by a wave of Ray nostalgia. It was no coincidence perhaps that I had recently finished writing The Shadow Lines, which is, of all my novels, the one that more clearly shows the influence of Satyajit Ray. It struck me that Ray too had once been a stranger in this overwhelming city; that he too had walked the streets on Manhattan in Kolkata-bought shoes. One day, plucking up my courage, I made an appointment with the director James Ivory, who I knew to be a friend of Ray's. Later that week I went to interview Ivory, cassette recorder in hand. This is how Ivory described his first meeting with Ray, in the winter of 1960: 'I looked him up in Calcutta,' Ivory said. 'I had never met him. I had seen at that point, Pather Panchali ('Song of the Road') and Aparajito ('Undefeated'). I knew that Apur Sansar (...
Read more

THE DELHI MANIFESTO

By -
Image
THE DELHI MANIFESTO Our cinema screen has become an ill-constructed, and conventional portal to a world we aspire of, rather than a mirror, which reflects us. Our emotions are guided by leitmotifs placed deftly, and religious beliefs exploited. Our spirit of inquiry has become dead and we have been reduced to mere receivers in the process. Cinema and television has replaced interaction with imposition of thought. Its thought. An artificial, fake and ill-created thought, a manifestation of our needs to escape ourselves. The medium has become a symbol of cheap entertainment, devoid of any examination of the form, and a victim of our collective need to create personalities, perfect alternate universes, and images of our aspiration. Our criticism has become trivial. Stories take precedent over the intrinsic qualities of the cinematic medium. Our film lovers are snobs, indulging in their wholehearted pseudo-intellectual diatribe, condemning the ignorant, and the ignorant have become so used...
Read more