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