Have been busy writing…
Have a deadline and have to finish this treatment. More soon…
Check out this animation film:
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
On Karl Marx str in Berlin!
I was surprised the other day when I came upon a headline in the New Indian Express (Chennai edition dated Saturday May 17 2008 11:48 IST) which said ‘Cannes honour for Billa’.
It said “A year after Veyil, the Tamil movie directed by Vasantha Balan, was officially nominated to the Cannes Film Festival; yet another Tamil movie makes it to the Mecca of movie makers.” (Veyvil was in Cinema du Monde, a special side attraction at the festival last year)
Continue reading ‘STOP PRESS – Indian film in Cannes!’
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 made bins for each character and their stories. And as the film wasn’t written or shot like that, there were lots of holes in each story. But it did give us an idea of which story and character had more material than others.
Continue reading ‘MUMBAI STORIES 3 - Last Drink!’
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. Phillipe Seurin in \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 in the same year. I have made 5 short fiction films in all and they have all been in festivals and some have won awards.
Continue reading ‘Making short films’
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.
Continue reading ‘MUMBAI STORIES 2 - Art for Art’s Sake’
I was standing at the bar of a famous night spot in Mumbai sipping at mango Vodkatini watching the young and old, bold and the beautiful, the rich and the famous.
So are you back in India? said a suave looking man with greying hair.
I recognised him like I recognise most of the rich and famous in Mumbai. I knew all these guys when they weren’t so rich and famous back in the late eighties and the early nineties, when they all drank Old Monk in ‘quarter’ bars like Casbah and Janta. They all swore by the Che and the revolution and had smoked at my Alvares house loft.
Continue reading ‘MUMBAI STORIES 1 - Mango Vodkatini’
Here’s something interesting that I wanted to share with you guys:
From the site Room 999
“Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” This question was answered by a.o. Jean Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Steven Spielberg, in Wim Wenders’ 1982 film Room 666, which he made during the Cannes Film Festival.
A producer called me yesterday and asked me if I had a story for a film to be shot in India. I said depends what is it for?
He said well I have some people who are interested in making ‘interesting’ films from the ‘South’.
That’s the politically correct term for the third world originally coined by the Che, but now used by all, even the CIA.
I said sure, great!
But I am scared, I have heard this before. It is a well-known fantasy of the aging white European male producer to make a film in India. I was told once by a producer I met: the context is boy meets girl, sorry old European man meets young nubile poor Indian girl. The man is successful, has had a long uneventful marriage, grown-up children but something is missing in his life. He lands in India on some stupid pretext, (easy) and meets this poor young beautiful chokri who teaches him some tricks from the first chapter of the Kamasutra. Man is rejuvenated but ultimately has to go back. Blood is thicker than tanker ka pani! But the man changes his view of the world and goes back to his botoxed wife and gives 20 quid every month to an orphan child in Bihar.
Oh yeah, he does Yoga too!
Continue reading ‘A film from the ‘South’’
I dare say that making films and food are the same business. They both create drama and emotions. They both tell stories and give the audience something to think about and react. They both excite and fire up electrical sparks in the brain. They both have to be made with fresh and new ingredients that have to be carefully chosen and hand-picked by the ‘maker’. The elements have to be right and their dosage perfect. They must have the right amount of sensations; too much of any would spoil the equilibrium and thus making it inconsumable. The cook or maker must know all about the people s/he is cooking /making for, their tastes, their palate, even though s/he may want to surprise them, and even if s/he wants to take them into the unknown.
So is it necessary to be a good cook to be a good film-maker? Perhaps not, but I believe that through food, one can learn more about film-making.
Continue reading ‘Making films and food’