Paintings…n Cinema
The school days are so vivid in our memory. Apart from the masti n fun, some nerdy questions. What did I like in school days? Hmm…Drawing, painting and science. What did I hate the most? Languages! Did not really enjoy mathematics that much as it required little bit of practice.
May be the instinct for visual art, got me closer to cinema. Once I tasted more of it in a short film making courses, it has being a hangover.Which grows everyday. The intoxication I am enjoying ever since. No complaints about not drinking or not smoking as I have an alternative 
The poor flair for languages makes me a poor reader. It is a struggle to read fiction. I have tried many a times, but it is tough. Non fiction on other hand is fun. Newspaper articles, which interest me. Or even a thick book based on subject of interest.
I do not consider myself a writer in literary term. May be that’s why my blogs might appear dry, as I am told, to lot of readers. Occasionally someone likes something in my blogs. It doesn’t really matter, that’s what I am in real!
Then there is a moment, when I can not stop myself from writing. Not a literary piece but a cinematic interpretation. The inspiration mainly comes from the visuals; the emotions hidden behind the visuals; off course the story hidden behind the visuals and definitely the dream to see the same on the big screen someday hopefully. I am in process of writing a feature script, inspired by these power visuals, which sometime make it tough to sleep at night.
While writing for screen, the lack of powerful vocabulary does not hurt me that much. As most of the time it’s deals with regular daily talk I have experienced. The bigger challenge however I have found out is observing the subtleties in our life. It becomes more important than the rosy words of description in the screenplay. What life has to offer is certainly lot more, than we can think of.
Sometimes I remember the dreams. I have discovered from recollection of my dreams, that the dreams do have cuts like we have cuts in film, while editing. May be a dream is a purest form of cinema, which everybody has a capacity to visualize. Only if we could record our dreams we all could be filmmakers! Wish it was also as cheap to make films.
I have never forced myself to paint or write a screenplay or shoot something. It happens automatically. I am forced to do it. Sometimes just grabbing a handy cam and shooting randomly, without anything written on paper.
I want to share some of my paintings!
-
- childhood bliss
-
- oil on paper
-
- watercolors
-
- watercolors
-
- oil pastels
-
- oil pastels
-
- charcoal sketch
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
Wonderfull paintings Manjeet. Curious to see your camera work now. Hope you keep some of it online.
When we talk about camera and paintings then I am reminded of Chetan Anand’s film Heer Raanjha where he had used vast paintings of famous painter Shobha Singh Ji and camera is used in such a way that audience can not guess that what they are seeing in the background is not the real background but a painting is used in the background.
Paintings of village, fields, sun rise, cotton crops etc, were used.
That remains as most wonderful use of paintings.
Hope you also invent some ways to use your wonderful paintings in your films.
good command on sketching and painting.
Whenever you become successful in films, you will be knowing the importance of posters of your film and they will carry some meaning. It can be expected from a painter cum cameraman cum director.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Brilliant Manjeet Bhai ! Lets talk about my fav topic : cinematography…..next time we meet ! Cheers !
Good stuff, Manjeet.
Navdeep Bhai ! Ram Ram !
@ manjeet –
wonderful. really like the baby in the bucket one
Man gaye Bhraji, you are a good painter.
Look forward to seeing your strokes on the biggest canvas of all – the silver screen.
holy crap manjeetey! too good nahin, yeh tho three good hai! watercolors is my fav..
awesome…
Great artwork!
Made me think of an artist who dabbled in cinema and was successful at bringing his vision to the big screen, Salvador Dalì. There is an exhibit – currently held at the MoMA in NYC and truly worth seeing – titled “Dalì: Painting and Film”, running through September, and it’s a great opportunity to learn more about this amazing artist’s cinematic vision. Go to http://www.moma.org/ for more.
@PLAYBACK, Aur aap kho bhi, bhaiya
Manjeet – wow! Manjeet, these are so good.
wow! good work…specially the watercolour ones. Loved the Ship wreck wali painting.
Wah…Wah!
wah wah
Manjeet // you’re mr.aptly named. bahut khoobsurat andaz se aaghaaz kiye apni fankaari ka. iss nacheez ka khushamadeed-e-salaam bhi zara qabool kijiye janaab!
..superb Manjeety!!
RK, thanks for your inspiration…regarding cinematography, I have hardly done anything significant:) Had a brief experience of working on arri 16s, which kind of cleared the basics of cinematography…but it is a very vast field in itself…at this point of time, may be I can design a shot on paper, reading the script, which would include, selection of film stock(tungsten or day), its ASA, rough lighting strategy and apperture of the camera, but have no experience to do the job myself…may be after spending valuable time I could venture into the field, which I am kind of attracted too:)will always try to do my best…The almighty have being very kind so far, leave the rest to him!
Playback, you definitely have more stuff to share on the topic:)
Navdeep, its a good feeling to get appreciation from you:)
Subrat, thanks! you seemed to have met all the PFCites, but not me:)…eager to meet you…let me know the next time you r in Mumbai
Neeraja, while in school, I had a hobby of collecting art books, saving my pocket money…I would go on the streets of flora fountain, where there are lanes of booksellers…I would pick up the ones that would struck me…one of the series was ‘the great artist’ collection. The ship wreck is a copy of the masterpiece by German master ‘Friedrich’. I made it quite some time back, may be around 12 years back or so, when i was in late teens or early 20s
Dabba, that’s one of my favorites too!
Arun, Striker, axw, Mainak, Shriram sir, wb thanks for your admiration…It has being a while, almost 10-11 years that I have painted…hopefully will get the mood back and pick up the brush again:)
Nina, there are many film-makers, with the art background…
Some of the true masters like Ray, Kurosawa, Lynch and lot more.
Don’t think my art work comes even close to theirs.
Cinema is primarily a visual medium…You can cut out the sound and everything else still you can tell the story. But without visuals it does not remain cinema.
You reminded me of the New York Museum! I once went there for Dutch Master ‘Vermeer’s’ exhibition, but was late…so had to miss out.
I am sure it would be a great show at MOMA. May be one of the few things I miss about the USA
Ashish, thanks! would like to see your paintings sometime;)
Aaja kabhibhi ghar!! ;)
@Manjeet
guess what? I have a hobby of collecting art books too
I bought loads of them last year…mostly from renaissance and impressionism era.
How long did it take you to finish that painting?
Ashish milte hain! also want to see the short, which you finished recently:)
Neeraja, thats wonderful to know…my collection was also similar, with few artist european from 16th-17th century.
Caravaggio remains my all time favorite!Van Gogh offcourse from the impressionist era…love Renoir too.
Unfortunately had to leave all the collection abroad, which seems to be lost now:(
Art is another area, where our poor documentation is evident. You can buy, whole lot of western artist’s books on the roadside, but it is rare to find our masters works.
oye manjeetey, tune kabhi bataya nahi. kya baat hai!! sexy hai. aaj se tu parsi sardar nahi, painter sardar!
wow… me not much of an art connoisseur… in fact, i almost hate paintings…
But for some reason, really really liked these paintings…
Wonderfully done…
Especially the water colors (both) and childhood bliss…
oh even charcoal one…
OYE SAHI SAHI PAINTINGS RE …
COMPLETLY AGREE WITH PHONIX !!!
Wow, really impressive work!!! What other hidden talents do you have that you are keeping from us?
somen, sale jungli takle, kabhie poocha hi nahin tune:)
rbehemoth, KK n t! thanks!
@Manjeet
Yup Caravaggio’s work is awesome and so is Monet’s, bought a calendar this year with Monet’s work on every page
Unfortunately haven’t had a chance to see much of Indian paintings…poor documentation, as you mentioned, being one of the major reasons.
Neeraja, off course Monet is brilliant. btw, where r u based, n what do u do?