words

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair. 

Anne Sexton

Night Lighting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlXZWxoE2wM

The god of destruction shiva

http://www.sanatansociety.org/hindu_gods_and_goddesses/shiva.htm

Samudra Manthan

Angels and Demons Gathered to churn the Milky way, in search of the elixir of life. Apart from many other things, They Came upon the most dangerous poison which would destroy the universe. Shiva came to the rescue and drank the poison. Thats when his neck turned blue, and he became neelkanth.

Shiva Calendar

The character in my film might have
A calendar like this in his room.
Every night at 12, when the day is done, he crossed out the date from the calendar.

moharram self torture

leopards in the city

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/spotted-and-feared-in-leopard-city/988781/

I'm interested by the phenomenon which is becoming more and more common. As cities expand into the homes of wild animals, There are more and more instances of lost animals straying to the cities.

animal market in bombay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ol-MMrb-kE

Jal chakra

Sandhya ab apni kitaabein lekar neeche nahi ati, aur akela baitha main apni purani kitaabon ki dhul jhadne laga hun. Saalon purani school ki meri kitaab mein maine aaj ek sundar sa diagram dekha.
Dharti ka paani sukh kar aasmaan ki or uthta hain toh uske baadal ban jaate hain, aur monsoon bharat ke upar aa jata hai, Varsha ka swagat mor apne nritya se karte hain. Ise Jal Chakra kehte hain.

Jal chakra ka diagram

Purani biology ki kitaab mein yeh diagram bhi mil gaye

Phoolo Ka Kurta

touching story set in a small village, I haven't been able to find an online version but a must read!

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=dGLmLfxaPcIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Looking for a flat for my character

This is a shot of a complex in dwarka, delhi.As soon as my script is in a better place i need to look for flats in bangalore as well

From story to script

Think of story as the plan and screenplay as the execution. A screenplay is a story told in scenes, each scene necessary to tell the story. At this stage you’re just testing if each scene is necessary. When planning a screenplay, I try to write the story in prose first, without dialog, with each scene represented by either a sentence or a paragraph. Then I read and revise the condensed story, omitting what is unnecessary.


— Greg Marcks

Interview with a telephone lineman from Delhi

This is a transcript of an interview I conducted with a telephone lineman from Delhi.Since I'm In Bangalore,The interview happened over the phone. 

Me: Hello, I'm calling you to ask a few questions which will help me learn about your profession.I'm making a film who's protagonist might end up being a telephone lineman.

Him: Sure, go ahead.

Me:Are you from Delhi? 

Him: Yes. I've been born and brought up in Delhi itself, and have been working as a lineman for more than 30 years.

Me: Does one start as a lineman or did you start with other jobs?

Him: I started when i was 18, I used to do digging work at that point. After a few years of doing well, I was encouraged by my peers to give an exam which i passed, and then went on to a 6 month training period where I learn all about telephones and wires, the colour codes, the connections, those sort of things.

Me: Ok. What kind of uniform do you wear?

Him: There used to be a uniform which has been discontinued for the last 6-7 years. Now people wear whatever clothes they have. Some dress up neatly and smartly, and some don't care.

Me: Would you recommend the job to your children or other people who might be interested?

Him: Not at all. It's a difficult job and has it's dangers. The Pay isn't great and currently I'm the only lineman in an area of atleast a good 3-5 Kms. I start every morning at 9 and go on till 5 in the evening, Fixing all the faulty connections. Since there's only one person at this point,  I have to climb the poles and there's no one to hold the ladder in place. Just recently i fell of a pole when a biker nudged the ladder.Im pretty tall so thankfully i didnt get hurt badly.

Me: What kind of equipment do you carry for this?

Him: I have a box with wire cutters, A tester, a receiver.

Me: What exactly is a receiver?

Him: It's just like a receiver of a regular telephone but has a keypad.

Me:Is it possible to connect it to a line and hear the conversation?

Him: It is possible , but there is a strict rule to never do that kind of thing. We only connect it to check faulty lines.

Me:Do you have to go out for emergencies, say faults caused due to rain?

Him: I work in a hospital campus, so for us everything shuts by 5. There is regular timing and all faults that might happen in the night are fixed the next day.

Me: What about your breaks? Lunch etc?

Him: It depends from day to day. But everyday i report to office by 9 and on an average it's hard to get time for lunch. Im eating my lunch only now ( 6pm)

Me.: What about your house is it far from your workplace?

Him: Yes, it's around 15kms from here, I live in a DDA flat. My house was demolished and all of us were rehabilitated there. Theres one room, one kitchen, one bathroom, thats about it.

Me: And your family?

Him: I have a son and a a daughter and both of them are in school, the daughter is intelligent and is giving her 12th exams this year.

Me: How do you travel from work to home?

Him: I use my bike. 

Me: Do young people join for this job nowadays?

Him: No not at all, only those apply who don't have parents, havent studied etc. The average age at my office is very high and I'm considered a young man over there (laughs)

Me: Thankyou for your help sir, I'll call you sometime soon when i have a few more questions.

Him: No problem.

On Adaptation

Linda Hutcheon argues that adaptation may “keep that prior work alive, giving it an afterlife it would never have had otherwise,” for “adaptation is how stories evolve and mutate to fit new times and different places” 

- Penny Gay

The kiss- Anton Chekhov- how to deal with interiority in a film

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1243/

A beautiful story about a soldier who leaps into fantasy when a girl kisses him at a gathering in a dark room.
I'm interested in how interiority, which is relatively simple to express with the written word, can be expressed cinematically using images.Cinema is comprised of physicalities, and all meaning and feeling is constructed from what we see,hear, touch around us. It is a material medium, and hence it's harder to touch upon intagible thoughts and feelings. The story im currently working on has a lot of this and it'll be a challenge that i'll have to face at the adaptation stage. The challenge is to abandon the script and start visualizing the film anew, To take the story as a foundation to base the film on, and not necessarily to get attached to the images and the events that comprise the story.

some images

Makreel - Yashpal

I have been reading a small collection of Yashpal's short stories and out of all the books i've been going through recently, this one has ended up staying with me the most.

A brilliant story about ageing , youth  and passion.

I've only been able to find the english version here; the hindi one is better.

http://www.4to40.com/story/index.asp?p=Makreel

the sound of a peacock calling

http://www.freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/59186/

Richard Mosse infra

A slight change in the ordinary makes you look at it with a new eye.
http://www.richardmosse.com/works/infra/

The world of "content"

" Television is the New age Bonfire, Every night, people gather around it and give warmth to their souls"

Sans Soleil

It's clear to me that Sans soleil will be a film that i will engage with many times in future and this is only the first time i have seen it, and have taken back only certain things specific to this point in my life.

To me it's a long poem about the city of tokyo, about remembering and forgetting, and the existence of mythologies, The invisible side of the city, about the silent ghosts that walk the alleys, about the spirits that rest, still, inside the stone sculptures, about the black bird the flies in the sky above the skyline, as people go about their activities in a blur induced by fast motion.

Even as its all these things, it turns upside and down, and rather than being about all these things, becomes about the mind that generates these things, the dreams ( maybe collective) that the city dreams, the images that do the rounds, the media and its reflection upon what we see behind our eyelids at night.

the more i try to describe it, the more convoluted it gets in my head and i become tentative, but i look forward to watching this once again and whatever little i got from it, it does leave you with the feeling that you feel when you're in proximity of "art".

It has made me think about characters again, at a very basic level, when i think of it in direct corelation with the project that im about to take up in the near future. Humans are incredibly complex creatures,and its better to paint them in abstract brush strokes, never really completing the exact outline and leaving them open, un-understood, incomplete.

Here's another essay on the film that i've read and it gave me new perspectives i'd have never thought of.

http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/feature-articles/notes-on-sans-soleil/

sky scraping

"many centuries ago,humanity got together and wanted to build a city with a tower in it's center, so that the tower could reach god. They are still preoccupied in doing this"

more on chung king express

http://www.erasingclouds.com/0519chungking.html

The power of free association ( not to forget logic)

a : the expression (as by speaking or writing) of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes especially in psychoanalysis

Chung King Express- Wong Kar Wai

An Amazing film By Wong Kar Wai that left me with a lot to think about, not only in terms of the content, and what it says, but also, with the way it says.

Throughout the movie, I felt an incredible setting up of mood, The shots were colourful, the camera movement free and unrestrained, and although my education in film tried to make me think the music was overused, but i dont think that is a valid point.

the narrative as i like to think about it, displayed a continuity of idea and mood rather than a continuity of Action which a classical narrative would emphasize. Certain shots lasted for a blink of an eye, but were still there and had there place, although there is no narrative logic to them.(The girl flying paper planes out of her apartment comes to mind).Their was no on the surface logic to the shift from the first story to the second, apart from the fact that both of them were policemen's stories. But it did make sense, and i had no issue with it. It just highlights the importance of expression in my head. Till now, most of my film work has been constrained by logic, narrative logic, of " this happened in the last sequence, so how can this happen now?"

Although logic is an equally important part of a good story, after all its a communicative medium, but it is by know means superior to intuition or at times, whim. 

the movie created a dystopic world, but as i had been thinking, it left you with something positive yet negative at the same time, most things were gray, most relationships were grey.

It left me with a bittersweet feeling.

There are certain things i can definitely say about the movie, But love stories of two cops, the kind of synopsys that imdb would use, is not even the tip of the iceberg. There were connotations to all sorts of things, people,emotions, relationships, cities, work, love that it became much more than the sum of it's shots and actions.

"let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven"

From time immemorial man has had the strange preoccupation with touching the sky.

ala uddin Khilji built the unfinished Alai minar in delhi, 

Which now is just one gigantic circular base, and nothing more came of that.

He wanted it to be twice the height of the qutub minar.

Here is the story of the tower of Babel

Genesis 11:1-9 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Soundtrack of the city in my head

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7qiosq4m4

Bitches Brew.

Cool.

Edgy.

Dissonant.

loud.

incomprehensible.

monstrous.

Urban Alienation

Why is it that lives are increasingly alienated in the city, the case is of the bahl sisters, living in noida who stayed for 6 months with no human contact. Their parents passed away, and due to lack of money and mental illness, they just rotted away in their home, with a "bustling" neighbourhood around them.

Noone noticed anything for many months until the actual smell of them rotting away led neighbours to contact the authorities and they were finally "rescued".
**

Between two countries

Between two  states

Between two cities

Between two towns

Between two clans

Between two neighbours

Between two strangers

And between two lovers

I see a piece of land

unexplored

Where the lamp flickers

And a watchman  sleeps

with one eye open

thinking about form

Apart from the inherent form of a video medium, like shots, action, pace and sequencing i have been thinking about the presentation of a video as well.Honestly, the work that has moved me the most has been traditional cinema, in the sense it is viewed on a 2 dimensional screen.
Im currently interning under Ranbir Kaleka, someone who's work has inspired me for some time and have begun to think about presenting the work in different ways, i.e an installation of some kind. He has concerned himself with finding another language combining a painted image and a cinematic image creating something more than the sum of these two.

on the other hand, rationality is another thing i find myself questioning as a result of this internship. All my previous work has been rational to a large extent and i would like to explore the other side as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dExgetxDEZI

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.


Krzysztof Kieslowski 

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

Krzysztof Kieslowski 

“Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.” 
― Andrei Tarkovsky

A short film about love- Kieslowski

the last week was the first time i watched any of kieslowski's films. I watched two, but ill talk about a short film about love here.
This was the first time i actually felt deeply connected to a character in a film and i found myself getting into tomek's skin and bones.
From thinking of him as a creep in the beginning to finally ending up rooting for him was quite a journey that i felt i was taken on.
I felt the narrative structure and the events that happened were themselves put into the story with a sense of intuition.there are some things which we all do and relate to, like putting a block of ice to your ear when your ear gets hot, and the next second, munching on that very piece of ice.
In terms of my story building, i took from it this very "freedom" that comes through in this story. Of putting in events which you want to put in ( all of them deeply telling events ) regardless of "that couldnt have happened?how can a guy do that?".
People do strange things and when you get to know a person enough to like them, which is what happened with me getting to know the characters, you bear with them even if they do unexpected things, like tomek slitting his wrist. you want to understand why they would have done that instead of making a judgement and forming opinions
A lot of character was added to the story in its cinematography. the actions, which i see in all european films were slow and allow you to get sucked into a meditative pace, and somehow highlight the soft spoken nature of the characters. they dont tell you anything,
The lighting was beautiful, which is what i need to work on to move towards a succesfull project.