Memories Of Our Ancestors
Life offers you a plethora of choices; the onus is on you to choose what you choose. I chose the portrayal of the human predicament as my aesthetic canvas to paint on. I guess it stems from that specific tradition of art that you identify with and wish to highlight.
Robert Browning’s statement, “My only interest is in the development of the soul, little else is of worth study”, must have left an indelible mark on my psyche when I chanced upon it as a student of Literature. I have been relentlessly pursuing this school of thought ever since. Angst in literature, music and cinema has never ceased to fascinate me. It is a neurotic obsession. I was blessed with this divine disease since I gained consciousness. Maybe that is what Mani Kaul refers to when he mentions of any artist being true to his “Swa-Bhava” or inner nature. I developed a morbid obsession with suffering souls, lost lives, warped lives, lives in turmoil and agony.
Like a fish takes to water, in my early years as a film student I naturally veered towards Bergman’s psycho-sexual world order. Several other masters inspired—the grim and austere Carl Dreyer, the prankster Fellini, the psychedelic Antonioni, the mad hatters Ghatak and Herzog. They were all icons of my teenage years. It was not that I did not enjoy other sort of cinema, but I preferred to make such cinema later on in my life. Visceral, gut wrenching, emotionally over-wrought,, the cinema of damnation, subversion and subsequent expiation. Having been reared in a Christian missionary academic environment, I chose to travel through Purgatory, clicking pictures along the way.
Pankh was born in the context of such pain. It was not conceived to be delivered as a regular baby. With Medusa like ferocity, I wanted to bring my child out in the world being exposed to pain right since its birth. Hence, I took the risk of almost delivering a still born. The midwives in the labour room were modern masters like Almodovar, Daron Aronovsky and Oshima, waiting with trepidation, each wanting to convert the new born to their perverse dogma. It seemed they prayed fervently for a freak child to be born. A child who would redefine all gender codes. Pankh was born in a mad house of traumatized souls.
Tags: Bipasha Basu, debut, maradona, maradona rebello, pankh, sudipto, sudipto chattopadhyayAs Yeats put it so succinctly, “in of every act of birth and death, a terrible beauty is born”. The birth of this child would make the death knell grow louder by the day. It was an amoral world order of searing darkness.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
When would this bengali (aantel) mentality of dropping heavy-weight names will end?
If you are making something original man PFCers will support you…don’t need to shout “Ami Fellini Dekheo fellini”.
This piece really gives me the mood to take inspiration from Dario Argento and Takashi Miike and stalk you so that I can draw up a right-angled triangle with my dagger on your “anntel” torso where three sides of the traingle etched on your flesh will satisfy Fermat’s little theorem. And I will commit this while swearing by the names of Park Chan-wook and David Cronenberg.
will that make me an intellectual too? Go figure.
You need to be lauded for your wit. My intentions were never to drop names but to create a perspective, and elucidate the frame work I work within.One cannot ideate in splendid isolation, bereft of influences. The maestros mentioned have helped shape my consciousness.Please understand,this is not an exercise in intellectual masturbation. PFC as I perceive it, is a forum for enlightened exchange and not a mere “filmy” site pandering to shallow speculation. Take your criticism in the right spirit.
Yes, references are needed, but to a point where it becomes impossible to break the shackles..I hope you have broken those referential shackles. Bengal could not and look where its cinema is!!
These blogs sound more like personal diaries. It’s nice of you to share your inner thoughts with the readers of PFC. It’s your own way of playing Sach Ka Samna. Hope you last till the final question and win your booty.
Sudipto da,
Labor_day_sale kay ignore koro.Baad dao. But the truth of the matter is that there are few people on PFC who have enough formal education of cinema to even begin to fathom your references.Which is not to say that formal education and an informed perspective is compulsary to create thought provoking/ground breaking/entertaining or even interesting cinema.
Your pieces are well written(aanth-lamu shuddho).What a Forum like PFC could benefit largely is by perhaps the elucidation of the lives and works of the greats that you mentioned.If someone undertook that venture as a series, it would be truely enlightening…
@ranjeet,
In my humble opinion, to start your nouvelle vougue movie education from Italy/France/Sweden of early 1900s you might like to choose Piere Paolo Passolini’s “Salo: 120 Days of Sodom”. This is a movie full of optimistic perspective. This movie talks about hope and an achieving underdog in almost a “Forrest Gump” way. I would then request you to pick up another movie called “Serpent’s Egg”. The movie is directed by none other than Ingmar Bergmann.Therefore, I do not need to say more.
Hope that will help and enjoy your journey in that golden age of European movies.
Thanks
Labor boy, did u notice that while you were criticizing the author’s name dropping habit, you yourself tried to prove to the world that you are definitely not way behind in world cinema by “name-dropping” your favorite current horror masters like Argento, Miike, Cronenberg, Park etc. And as an add-on, also tried to educate us by Pasolini’s Salo! It’s human nature to tell your listener about your intellectual depth and reach, how limited it might be. So let it be, buddy ! Just deal with it.
Cheers……
you missed the joke man why Miike or Cronenberg came to the scene
Again you missed the second joke for giving Salo/Serpent’s Egg as being some classic examples of new wave European cinema ( instead of usual 8 and half or The Seventh Seal)
I ain’t gonna prove myself any intellectual man. If I were intellectual I would have guts like Sudipto or Sarthak to put everything at stake and create something. While I am busy here farting on the face of my meaningless existence—- I have immense respect and hope for this new breed of Indian filmmakers. But, when you like someone’s art, when you hope so much that you will like someone’s art even before it is born don’t you want it to be unique and confident enough so that it does not have to take refuge in any kind of reference ?
Hope I made myself clear.
Yoiks!! This sounds like an arty talkie talkie emotional movie! Is it?
do not know, but you were every post seems an exercise of name dropping, some where for me personally your post fails to connect like Sarthak’s or Mahesh.
I sincerely hope your movies proves this wrong and it connects to all audiences.
The proof of the pudding my dear is its eating.Let the film speak for itself. PFC is a democratic forum. Everyone(that includes you) is entitled to express his or her opinion.There was no desired attempt at ostentatious display of knowledge or names dropping. The masters I quote or mention have shaped my consciousness as a maker. Sarthak is a very dear friend. I am glad you connect to him. Please watch his TGIB. It is a very beautiful film.
baaap re … kuch bhi samajh nahi aa raha hai .. na blog , na comments
is this movie meant for common viewers like me?
democratic forum mein log kah rahe hain comment ko ignore karo. aseem bhai mujhe bhi kuch samaj mein nahi aa raha hai. fellini available to karwao aam juntaa ko, phir dekha jayegaa, why mastero is called mastero ?
I guess, all of us are losing focus from the primary purpose of this blog—which I think is to get an insight into Pankh. I wouldn’t think anyone’s personal saga has anything to do witj it. Dada, keep telling me more about Pankh is what I would say. Can you enlighten us why aam janta(mango people) who watch films like LAK would come to watch Pankh?
I’ve heard great things about this movie and really looking forward to it.
when will the trailer come out???
i can’t wait to see it!
Cheers!!
Request the film maker to update the wiki page of Pankh.
Interesting story, why is the delay is release ?
I still don’t understand why do you need a kid girl to enact a boy’s role.
That is a boy dressed as a girl
I hope the final outcome will be as good as your intentions seems to be…I am waiting to see your viewpoint on such sensitive topic. I expect you must have put some light on both child and parental psychology. In India this is a big problem with parents that they are not aware of child psychology and every times they want to put thier thoughts on them, though time is changing but still a lot has to be done…
Curious to know what Mani Kaul’s concept of ’swa-bhava’ is. If it is merely ‘inner nature’, then why try to unnecessarily mystify it by using a fancy Sanskrit word? I am sure Mani Kaul would be deeply embarrassed by all this. Or maybe Mani Kaul has his moments of ordinariness.