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I see at least one film everyday. It’s often a tall order and I have to plan in advance to have a supply of good films on hand. I am a member of two video rental shops, a big commercial one and one small art-house place. I also rent from the internet rental house which sends me 2 DVDs by the post, according to my wish list. I watch them and post them back to them and they send me two new ones. I also go to the cinemas as and when there are interesting films shown there. (rare)

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="288" caption="Pimwalee THAMPANYASAN as Koi"][/caption]
I saw Soi Cowboy yesterday, a film that was in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the Cannes film festival this year. The film hasn’t been released yet but I was given a preview DVD …

Before discussing any kind of points, first we must read this wonderful poem of
Jacob Riis

When nothing seems to help
I go and look at a stone cutter
hammering away at his rock
Perhaps a hundred times
without as much as a crack showing in it
Yet at the hundred and first blow
It w’d split in two
And I know it was not
That blow that did it
But all that had gone before together

Keep the essence of the above mentioned poem with you as it will be supporting the whole hypothesis.

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Are you a person related to some parts of cinema? Actor? Director? Producer? Writer? Cinematographer? etc etc ?

You believe that you want to do work, taking cinema ahead and you are not interested in doing regular stuff only? …

The author further talks about his interpretation of the festival, right from the name to its staff etc. I am not going to cut the following paragraphs because it needs to be read in one flow.

“IFFLA stands for Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Its a carefully thought of name -INDIAN (proud to be one) FILM (a beautiful medium of expression) FESTIVAL (celebration)of LOS ANGELES (mecca of hollywood). There’s this observation I made during my flight to LA - every third person in LAX is an Indian (or even a pakistani/sri lankan). So that means Los Angeles (which is in USA) is brimming with people of Indian descent. Now what is more surprising is - the INDIAN film festival is run by a lovely lady, Christina Marouda, a lady of GREEK descent.

India & Greece - the only relation between the two is Alexander the great crossing the Indus river to …

“I wasn’t feeling too well this time around. Maybe it was the California sun or the moisturizer that I applied to get away from it - but this time I wasn’t feeling too well. Being housed up in a small room at the “Orchid house” (aka Directors’ house), I was the youngest among the other legends that I shared the space with.”

It is not apparent as to what the author is saying here, so we read further -

“So I wake up on one of the mornings - mind you we used to sleep at 4 am , while the others finally used to vacate at around 6am; and I hear sounds in the kitchen. As I make my way to the dining table, Sriram Raghavan is heating ‘parathas’ on the pan. Opposite to me, Shivajee Chandrabhushan is trying to work his skype on his laptop while Sanjay Routray offers me …

It’s been almost three months since I have been in Mumbai. I was called in by Sudhir Mishra to edit a 90 minute international version of his new film, Tera Kya Hoga Johnny! It was a very interesting experience to take a film and reconstruct it in a different way. The Indian version is about 130 minutes long and one could not just throw away 40 minutes of the film. So the narration had to change and the story had to be told in a different way. As the film was made up of multiple characters and their stories, I tried to find a situation in the original film which would become the pivotal point of the new narrative structure. Once I had found that, I reworked the different stories from that pivotal point in a non linear narration. It was quite fun. I dismantled the rough cut and …

I recently met Manjeet Singh, an author on PFC in Mumbai. We had a long and interesting chat about films and particularly on his feature film project.
As he wants to make to make a short film first and wanted to understand the basic differences between a full length feature and a short length feature, so instead of writing only to him, I thought I should share it with all on PFC.

Short films are where I come from and they have helped me formulate my style in cinema. They have also taught me to tell stories easily and swiftly. My first short film ‘Le Cochon’ (see Photo) ( 35mm/12′/French) was selected at the Clermont Ferrand short film festival in 1996 and I also represented France at the Locarno film festival in the ‘Leopards de Demain’ section of the short film competition …

There was an auto-rickshaw strike the other day. The government wants them to change their mechanical fare meters into fancy electronic ones. So the union decided to flex its muscles. Suddenly the streets were empty of thousands of noisy gnats. My car driving friends were very happy they said they should be a permanent ban on them. But the people (like me) who are dependent on them were in a real fix. I saw people on the streets jostling with each other for that rare taxi.
I had this meeting with a big corporate film company. I had to go some faraway place to meet them. I tired in vain to borrow some transport from my friends. So finally, I decided to get a radio Cab (they are quite efficient). I told the driver to take me there and to bring me back.
So I arrived at my meeting on …

iView Author:
ANIRUDH JAYARAM
(NAVI MUMBAI, INDIA)

EMAIL:
WITHHELD

Books to CINEMA - A Journey through Mediums

Dear fellow bloggers, today I read an article on PFC about Guide. This set me thinking about movies based on books.

Hollywood has a grand tradition of movies made on books. From “To kill a mocking bird”, “Ben Hur”, “The Wizard Of Oz”, and so many great films to the Star Wars series, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and the Harry potter series, all of them have been based on books. Just for reference, the LOTR books were written by J.R.R.Tolkien and the Harry Potter books by J.K.Rowling. Now you have movies based on the “Inheritance Trilogy” by Christopher Paolini, the first of which was Eragon, and a movie on C.S.Lewis’s “The Chronicles Of Narnia”, the second movie of which is scheduled to be released soon. Even Roald …