Movie Murmur

(My foray into the short fiction format) The short fiction movie format, like the short story its counterpart in literature, is a very powerful mode of expression; and a tricky one too. The maker will have to be precise, the luxury of meandering or dwelling on multiple aspects of the subject matter does not arise, the extra detailing might have to be cut off; and many a times like in a typical O. Henry style, a twist in the end is what is longed for. Mention the word short film and the 1962 black and white film from The Netherlands 'Big City Blues' directed by Charles Huguenot Vander Linden, the 1964 French movie 'An Incident at Owl Creek' directed by Robert Enrico or Julian Bigg's Canadian film '23 Skidoo', immediately pops up in one's mind. So, do the films of the Dutch film maker Bert Haanstra or the one and only Norman McLaren, the prolific Canadian short film maker.  23 Skidoo from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo . But the ...

My association with Films Division first began when my school friends graphically described to me on how Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanth hit boundaries upon boundaries in the 1971 test match against the mighty West Indies team in the Caribbean islands on a newsreel that they saw before the main movie in a local theater, in the early seventies. A couple of days later I did sneak into the movie hall only to savor one of the most significant overseas test cricket victories that the Indian team had  since it started playing cricket Newsreels such as these were produced by Films Division, an organization under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India. The exhibition of these newsreels were mandated by law - a practice first initiated in pre-independence India by the British, mainly to promote their war efforts. 'The Information Films of India', was what the unit was called then. After independence, this unit was transformed ...

Niraj Sah in GOTALA Nostalgia sucks, but for some strange reason, I have cut one frame of the negative film of an unused take of my diploma film that I had done at the Film and TV Institute of India (FTII) in 1990 and I have preserved it over the years. A diploma film is the final exercise that any student does at FTII.    My film's name was GOTALA (The Mess) and since it was in black and white, it was 30 minutes in length. The ones who choose color then, had to go only up to 20 minutes. Again for some strange reason, Mathi Azhagan the cameraman who shot my diploma film had preserved a copy of the script of GOTALA for all these years. Mathi was a faculty in the Cinematography Department at FTII when I was studying. He had just graduated from the State film school in Chennai and he had already shot my song exercise. In 2009, I had been to the LV Prasad Film Institute to conduct a documentary film workshop. Mathi was a faculty here. I had lunch at his house, after...