Of dust storms and comic book readings at CineASA film fest, Guwahati
We have this new (established about two years ago) film society in Guwahati, called the Cine Art Society, Asom (CineASA). Well, actually, Guwahati has three major film societies – The Gauhati Cine Club, which was established by the likes of Dr Bhupen Hazarika and Jnanpith Award-winning writer the late Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, and the Assam Cine Art Society (ACAS), and directly or indirectly I have been involved with all the three. Gauhati Cine Club screenings gave us, then youngsters in the 1980s, a window to classics of world cinema (it even now does so to cineasts in the city), and ACAS, which has become of late very irregular in its activities, gave us a chance to watch a lot of world cinema and cinema from various parts of India by screening the Indian Panorama packages. All the three societies have the involvement of film personalities of the state, and there is a healthy sense of competition among the three (which is always good from the viewpoint of the viewer).
CineASA, which is doing an innovative thing in Assam, where there are a lot of people interested in watching good cinema but without having any access to them, by tying up with other film clubs in various towns and cities and taking films from outside to those places, last year started an international festival of short films in collaboration with a Canadian organisation. The tie-up had happened thanks to Joseph Pulinthanath, a Keralite Christian missionary who has made Tripura his home, and has made – very courageously – two films in the tribal language Kokborok, the second one, Yarwng (The Roots) having got selected as the opening film of Indian Panorama at the last IFFI. Maybe because of the economic meltdown, the Canadian organisation could not provide CineASA with the package this time, but the festival happened during March 16-20, with the help of Fulmarxx of Ahmedabad (which organised by Fulmarxx short film competitive festival last year and this year is planning to upgrade it to the Ahmedabad International Film Festival – PFC I understand too is going to collaborate with it), which provided a wonderful package of short films. Palador provided some interesting world cinema too.
Though I could not travel to Guwahati for the festival, I have got the feedback from our compatriots in CineASA that the response has been great. Goutam Ghose, who could not inaugurate the festival as scheduled because his plane could not land in Guwahati due to a dust storm (he did that though, over telephone from Kolkata), he managed to be there on the closing day, where his Kalbela gave the finale to the festival. Anurag Kashyap too was there – his first visit to Assam I believe. He interacted with the audience after a screening of Black Friday, and then participated in a seminar too, where he said a few interesting things about script writing, going by this report published in today’s (March 24, 2009) Assam Tribune newspaper:
————————————————–
“Read comics to understand nuances of script writing: Kashyap
Correspondent
GUWAHATI, March 23 – “Read comics to understand the nuances of script writing.” This is the piece of advice celebrated Bollywood filmmaker Anurag Kashyap had to offer to filmmakers and scriptwriters of the languishing Assamese film industry.
“There is an interesting story in almost every single aspect of lifestyle here which could be transformed into the celluloid — be it the local-made liquor, the tea gardens or production of oil, besides the people associated with them,” Kashyap said.
“Script is the backbone of any movie, and comics or for that matter story books could also be a good source of learning the art of script-writing. It teaches us to work on short breakdown of a story,” asserted the national award-winning filmmaker, adding that even watching different genres of movies can help in honing the skills of a scriptwriter.
“When you read something, you also start imagining simultaneously, which in turn help in creating your own piece of script,” he said, adding that the Assamese film industry can take a leaf out of the resurgence of the Marathi film industry, which has now started making better movies than Bollywood.
Kashyap was speaking during a seminar organised on the ‘Importance of a Script in Filmmaking’ at the Rabindra Bhawan here recently organised by Cine ASA International Film Festival. Kashyap, it may be mentioned, is associated with many critically-acclaimed and commercially-successful movies of Bollywood both as a director and scriptwriter, which includes flicks like Water, Black Friday and recent movies like Dev D and Gulaal.
Taking strong exception to the monotonous way of film-making in Assam, which more often than not are melodramatic in nature, Kashyap said, “Filmmakers here must try new plots. A thriller or an out-and-out comedy movie would not be a bad idea, provided they are backed by quality scripts and Assam being the land of interesting stories, there should not be any dearth of well-written script.”
When asked whether the film industry is facing paucity of quality scriptwriters, Kashyap said that a lot of new scriptwriters are making inroads into the film industry with path- breaking scripts, even from Assam.
Noted film critic Apurba Sarma, filmmaker Gautam Bora and Swapnanil Baruah, secretary, Cultural Affairs department were also present on the occasion.”
———————————————————-
There was a competition for short films from North-East India too, which apparently got a very good response. I hope to post the details about the winning entries soon.
Tags: Anurag Kashyap, CineASA, Fulmarxx, Goutam Ghose, Joseph Pulinthanath
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
Damn. I wasn’t even aware Guwahati had all this going around
When I used to be there I saw only dust storm & no cinefest!!!…
Anyway hope this motivates some new Assamese filmmakers…Arthouse cinema is dying out there due to lack of interest…they used to win awards in festival circuits till mid 90s…commercial films are low budget copies of Bollywood craps…
Good luck to all these film societies.
“Kashyap said that a lot of new scriptwriters are making inroads into the film industry with path- breaking scripts, even from Assam”
I hope my name figures among those someday ha ha ha.
We had such good films in the 80s. A few years back when I wanted to watch them again, I found none of them are available in video stores. All they have are the new films, which I’d rather not comment on.
And I totally agree about comics being the best medium next to movies themselves to understanding screenplay. Some of the work done by greats like Jim Lee, Jeph Loeb and Alex Ross has been truly inspiring. Comics like Batman: Hush, The Dark Knight Returns etc have fantastic frames and amazingly potent drama
kenny aap katar mein hai…
cool. I read books on screenwriting/scriptwriting from the library but never read any suggestion for reading Comics for better understanding of scripts. excellent point!
And yes…I heard Satyajit Ray was a great fan of Tintin…
Mainak, Inshallah.
@Amrita
I can remember the exact comic book which first made me notice how wonderful a particular frame would look on a movie screen. It was an old Batman comic (sometime around ‘94) about a mysterious ghostly Aborigine who tracks down and kills the men who stole the relics of his tribe. The exact panel was one in which he had speared the wrist of one of these guys into a wall. “Here’s a great camera angle,” I thought
Comics in addition to staging imo might also help in keeping the dialogues shorter/simpler, more like a conversational tone and thus appear more real
Hello People,
It is very encouraging to know about these film societies. I was aware of Guwahati Cine Club but its nice to hear about the other two as well.
What we require is more awarenes among the people on our old clsssics. This time when i was in Guwahati, I was really amazed to find that I couldnt get a single copy of old films like ‘Chameli Memsahib’, ‘Ornyo’ etc after literally scouring the whole city.
I am very scared now that most of these gems will go into oblivion unless revived. And like it or not one of the biggest factor responsible will be our own generation, which has taken westernization to severe extremes.
I feel I am one of them; having memorised many Tolstoys, Rushdies, Coetzees while I havent studied any Bhabendra Nath Saikias.
But I think I have the desire to revive it all and that gives me hope !!!!