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iView: A. Singh (Fremont, CA, USA)

Email: Witheld

“Khoya Khoya Chand”: A classic that didn’t get it’s due

This is the third time I watched KKC on a DVD. Yes, I get to watch most of movies now a days on DVD. I am not a professional movie reviewer, so have no compulsion to go see the movie in a theatre. Also, it’s a pain to watch the movie with small kids, and I have two of them. Yes, as you might have guessed by now, I am a middle aged man, stuck in the rut of life. Is that why KKC appealed to me?

I say that because KKC was largely ignored by critics and masses alike when it came last year. There were review here and there, but I couldn’t make out whether the movie …

iView Author:
SUDDHASATYA GHOSH
(Kolkata, India)
EMAIL:
withheld

A few thoughts on Bengali cinema……

Passion for cinema has produced a few pages of Sudhir Mishra’s diary for readers and expectantly brilliances of Sudhir came out in open in that space.

Sudhir is a name in ‘so-called’ parallel cinema or in good cinema, if I am allowed to use Satyajit Ray’s coinage for it. As I went on reading it I faced a few questions and am trying to present those in my write.

Let me start with a cinema by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ‘Ali-Fear Eats the Soul’. It starts with an apparently incorrect title in original German. Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem was cast respectively as an old German woman …

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 …

Dearest Geeta,

Have started becoming more and more like a protagonist of a ‘feel good’ film. Have mellowed down a little.

Cigarettes ? I know that will be your first question. They have gone down from 20@day to 15@day. You, the censor board of India and honorable Mr. Anbumani Ramadoss will be very happy to hear this.

It doesn’t look as good as we wanted it to be back then. May be I too am trying for a naxalite-parallel-cinematic-revolution. “That the audiences will rise up one day and grab all the ‘different’ and ‘well made’ films.”

I can hear you snigger.

One thing I’ve noticed is that CHANGE is very uncomfy. Any new idea is not discovered on its way, but only recognized when it’s gone. People want great ideas like Lagaan, Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par.

Ideas that everyone can relate to and say “Hey Ishaan …

MOVIES AND REAL LIFE

Some days back, I saw an interview of Sudhir Mishra on Sahara Filmy by Mayank Shekhar. Mishraji told “Today’s film makers watch movies, not life” They are engaged in watching movies, discussing movies but they do not devote their time to watching, analyzing life. 100% correct.

Some so called biggest filmmakers claim their film’s connectivity to real life. They give very stylish, larger than life films. Making is stylish, larger than life films is not a bad thing. But their films do not connect with common man. Why?

Because…..
- They do not research properly for their films. They do not know minor rules of Indian culture like in Hindus, women do not go to shamshan for Agnisanskar. I have seen in many films by so called biggest filmmakers that women were present in shamshaan in a white cotton sarees.

- Human behavior (physical, mental, biological) is not properly analyzed. …