First showman/ Suresh Chabria

DHUNDIRAJ GOVIND PHALKE — FILMMAKER, 1870-1944

Though energised by a near messianic zeal to establish an indigenous film industry in colonial India, even D.G. Phalke would be surprised by the overwhelming cultural supremacy—or at least the ubiquity—of cinema and television today.

His project, conceived as a fusion of artisanal impulses, fascination with modernity as well as industrial techniques and a swadeshi-inspired desire to create Indian images for Indian audiences, has translated into the writing and making of history.

Culture historians acknowledge this as the lasting legacy of Phalke and other pioneers of popular Indian visual art.

Born in a Maharashtrian Brahmin family in 1870 and educated at Bombay’s J.J. School of Art and Baroda’s Kalabhavan, he learnt drawing, photography, lithography and drama before joining Raja Ravi Varma’s press in Lonavala.

He also learnt magic, which he later considered an essential qualification for filmmakers.

A naturally gifted entrepreneur, he soon established his own printing and engraving press in Bombay and produced chromolithographs as well as illustrated booklets that were to become the blueprint of his early mythological films.

In 1910, he saw a film titled The Life of Christ and described its impact on him in a famous passage written in 1917, “I must have seen films on many occasions before this but that day, that Christmas Saturday, marked the beginning of a revolutionary change in my life... While The Life of Christ was rolling fast before my eyes, I was mentally visualising the gods, Sri Krishna, Sri Ramchandra, their Gokul and Ayodhya… Could we, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?”

After studying cinematography, Phalke travelled to England to purchase equipment and familiarise himself with filmmaking.

On returning to Bombay, he launched his own production company, Phalke Film Co., and made Raja Harishchandra, which was released in 1913 and is regarded as India’s first feature film.

With Lanka Dahan (1917), his greatest success, the late 19th century phenomenon of mass-produced images assumed a darshanic (philosophical) force and temple icons were further consolidated as a norm in popular Indian visual art.

And, arguably, this quasi-religious aura has never been shed in our mass visual culture.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke

However, the most famous illustration of this is Phalke’s production of Kaliya Mardan (1919) where the struggle between child god Krishna and serpent demon Kaliya, which was done in a superb special effects sequence, drew a strong religious and nationalist response from audiences who identified Kaliya with the oppressive British rule. This trope of mingling religion and politics to the point of interpenetration—even substituting one for the other—has become a fundamental trait of Indian public culture.

The Indian images struck a deep chord in the psyche of the spectators.

They recognised and instantly welcomed his integration of India’s centuries-old narratives with the emerging medium of cinema, finding in it a new self or identity in the modern context.

Quick take Q: Which male actor played queen Taramati in Raja Harishchandra? A: A. Salunke. He was a cook Q: Which was Phalke’s first film? A: No, not Raja Harishchandra, but Growth of a Pea Plant in 1911 Q:Who influenced him to choose Indian mythology as his subject? A: Painter Raja Ravi Varma Q: What careers did he dabble in before settling upon filmmaking? A: Photography. He then became a draftsman, and later a printer Q: In which film did he first use animation? A: In The Growth of a Pea Plant

As Christopher Pinney argues, “It was only a matter of time before the worshipping of gods in mass-disseminated images paved the way to affirming political leaders and recently forged anti-colonial and proto-revivalist national identities.” Other film pioneers in Calcutta and Madras were quick to follow Phalke’s example. Cinema and visual art became an integral part of the Indian landscape in the 20th century.

In spite of his prolific output over the next decade, Phalke came to be forgotten. He has now come to acquire an iconic status.

Today the most coveted award for lifetime achievement in Indian cinema is the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the equivalent of the Bharat Ratna.

That such a comparison can be made is a tribute to Phalke’s visionary engagement with image-making and the social and historical struggles witnessed by the last few generations of Indians.

— The author is a film historian and professor of film appreciation at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India

Courtesy- Indiatoday.in

शिप ऑफ थीसियस – अनहोनी और होनी की उदास रंगीनियाँ: उदय शंकर

  

शिप ऑफ थीसियस एक ऐसी फिल्म है जिसने बॉलीवुड में विद्यमान ‘छवि-समृद्धि के स्टीरियोटाइप’ को तोड़ा है। इस लिहाज से भी यह कुछ अपवाद फिल्मों की श्रेणी में आती है। फिल्म ‘छवि-समृद्धि’ के सबसे आसान तरीके मसलन ‘स्मोक, पिस्टल और सेक्स’ से एक सचेत दूरी बनाती है। यह दूरी और कुछ नहीं बल्कि छवि-अंकन में निष्णात आनंद की एक सचेत रचनात्मक जिम्मेवारी को दिखाता है। जहां आप ‘प्रचलित जनाभिरुचियों’ को सहलाते नहीं हैं बल्कि आप उसे संशोधित-संवर्द्धित और संश्लिष्ट करते हैं। जिसके बाद आपको यह कहने की जरूरत नहीं पड़ती है कि धूम्रपान करने से कर्क रोग होता है या संभोग करने से एड्स होता है।

संपूर्ण आलेख पढ़ने हेतु यहाँ चटखा लगाइए  

Outtakes: Robert Bresson / Srikanth Srinivasan

WHO is he?

Celebrated French film director and writer who made 13 feature films in a period spanning 40 years between the 40s and the 80s. Bresson saw cinema as a medium deriving not from theatre or photography but as an independent medium with its own potential and challenges. He documented his theory of cinema through Zen-like aphorisms in the book Notes on Cinematography (1975).

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Bresson’s films have widely been regarded as ‘transcendental’, as films in which characters transcend their material reality to attain Divine Grace. The idea that such grace is random and can be bestowed on any living creature — a priest, a pickpocket or a donkey — is not only a theme that permeates his filmography, but is also reflected in his own filmmaking method, wherein he believed that one can obtain the right shot only by ‘accident’ and randomness. By making randomness a part of his artistry, Bresson overrides the idea that a work of art is entirely the creation of its author.

Style

Bresson wanted to rid his cinema of the influence of theatre, which included naturalistic or expressionistic acting styles. The actors — ‘models’, as he called them — in his films do not emote and their blank, expressionless faces become a screen on to which we project our own emotions. Bresson uses numerous close-ups of hands and feet in his films, further undermining the identities of actors. The judicious use of sound, especially off-screen sound that complements the image rather than compounding it, is a distinct feature of Bresson’s cinema.

WHY is he of interest?

Bresson had a profound influence on Paul Schrader, who has written extensively about and paid tribute to his cinema, Kumar Shahani, who assisted him on one of his films, and Mani Kaul, who is arguably the most astute student of Bresson’s school of cinematography. Contemporaries such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Cocteau and Marguerite Duras and the critic-filmmakers of the French New Wave held him in very high regard.

WHERE to discover him?

 

Pickpocket (1959), loosely based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), centres on the eponymous thief who tries in vain to find his footing in life. Bresson’s typically, thoroughly anti-psychological film replaces motive with unexplained action and strips the story of coherent psychological analysis, producing a film where the audience is freed of all emotional manipulation. 

- Courtesy- The Hindu

Outtakes: Krzysztof Kieslowski

 

WHO is he?

Polish scenarist and film director who made over 40 short and feature length films in a 30-year career spanning the 1960s and the 1990s. Kieslowski made short documentaries about Polish social reality — a phase that would influence his subsequent filmmaking starkly — before moving on to feature-length fiction. The first part of his Three Colours trilogy, Blue (1993), won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Kieslowski turned away from social realism and political specificity of his earlier works to a more abstract, personal brand of cinema that emphasises the interconnectedness of people and the idea that people separated by geography or social status could be thinking about or having the same experience at the same moment. Chance, coincidence and fate are recurring constructs. His films, especially the 10-part Decalogue (1989) that is based on the Ten Commandments, are illustrations of the ways spirituality manifests itself in modern life.

Style

It could be said that Kieslowski’s style falls in line with the general inclinations of European arthouse cinema, with an emphasis on mise en scène — the physical elements of a scene — for conveying meaning. Abundance of close-ups, expressionist use of score, and subjective cinematography — often handheld — are some of the characteristic elements of Kieslowski’s aesthetic. His use of glass in his scenes — glass that breaks, glass that shields, glass that separates, glass that unites — and enclosed spaces that reflect the psychology of the characters are also noteworthy.

WHY is he of interest?

Along with Andrej Wajda, Kieslowski remains one of the key figures in Polish cinema who helped it gain international recognition. The inventive narrative strategies that he devised in his films with long-time collaborator and lawyer Krzysztof Piesiewicz could be seen as precursors to later-day hyperlink narratives, in which we find the lives of numerous characters inseparably intertwined.

WHERE to discover him?

Camera Buff (1979) is a story about being in love with images. It centres on family man Filip (Jerzy Stuhr) and his relationship with his newly purchased 8mm camera, which he uses to film the world around him. One of Kieslowski’s earliest and most personal films, Camera Buff is a paean to both the creative and destructive powers of cinema. It is both a topical indictment of contemporary Polish bureaucracy and censorship and a personal statement confessing a change of artistic direction for Kieslowski. 

Courtesy- The Hindu