Priyanka Chopra testimonial di Bulgari

L'incredibile notizia è di pochi minuti fa: Priyanka Chopra è la nuova testimonial di Bulgari. Il profilo Twitter del celebre marchio italiano annuncia: 'The Bvlgari family are proud to welcome actor, film producer, and activist @priyankachopra as a Global Ambassador. She debuts wearing a B.zero1 Rock necklace and ring. Welcome Priyanka!'. Dal canto suo, la diva indiana scrive: 'So proud to join the @Bulgariofficial family as a Global Ambassador. Thank you #JCBabin and the entire team for such a warm welcome. Many things drew me to this iconic brand, but what we connected on so organically is our mutual love for India and the beauty it has to offer'.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021

La 35esima edizione del festival Il Cinema Ritrovato si svolgerà a Bologna dal 20 al 27 luglio 2021. In cartellone la rassegna Poeti ribelli e spiriti rivoluzionari: il Parallel Cinema indiano. Nella presentazione si legge: 'Che cos’è il Parallel Cinema? Dopo cinquant’anni, rimane ancora una questione aperta. È un movimento, un genere, una rivoluzione, un nuovo linguaggio cinematografico? Spesso utilizzato in modo improprio come sinonimo di cinema sperimentale, non convenzionale o semplicemente in antitesi al cinema mainstream o populista, il Parallel Cinema è un fenomeno estremamente ricco ed esteso, complesso da definire. La sua genesi affonda le radici nel Manifesto del movimento per il nuovo cinema pubblicato nel 1968 dai registi Arun Kaul e Mrinal Sen. L’anno successivo, l’uscita di un trittico di opere innovatrici come Bhuvan Shome di Mrinal Sen, Uski Roti di Mani Kaul e Sara-Aakash di Basu Chatterjee segna l’inizio di una delle congiunture più creative e radicali del cinema indiano. Questi tre film furono prodotti dalla nascente Film Finance Corporation, ente istituito dallo stato per concedere prestiti a bassi interessi alle produzioni, che avrà un ruolo chiave nella definizione e nelle future declinazioni del Parallel Cinema. Il nostro programma guarda ai suoi anni fondativi (1968-1976), caratterizzati da diversi flussi creativi che scorrono in molteplici direzioni, assorbendo l’influenza delle nouvelle vague europee così come l’ideologia di stampo comunista e l’estetica del cinema bengalese'.

Suketu Mehta: Questa terra è la nostra terra

È in vendita nelle librerie italiane Questa terra è la nostra terra. Manifesto di un migrante, di Suketu Mehta, pubblicato da Einaudi. Nella presentazione si legge: 

'Le migrazioni sono una costante della storia umana. E oggi piú che mai, perché le conseguenze del colonialismo, delle guerre, del cambiamento climatico hanno reso la vita impossibile nei loro Paesi d’origine a milioni di persone. Siamo un pianeta in movimento e Suketu Mehta, con la chiarezza e la passione che l’hanno reso celebre, ci racconta perché questa è la cosa migliore che potesse capitarci. (...) Partendo dalla sua esperienza personale - lo scrittore è emigrato ragazzo da Bombay a New York con la sua famiglia -, Mehta fa il giro del mondo per delineare il quadro della situazione in Occidente: dalla frontiera tra Messico e Stati Uniti, alla recinzione che separa il Marocco da Melilla, alle politiche islamofobe di molti governi europei, il sentimento prevalente è la paura. Perché le storie di chi ogni giorno lavora e lotta duramente per conquistare diritti che dovrebbero essere scontati sono offuscate dai discorsi altisonanti pieni di retorica populista. E allora tutti a difendersi, chiudersi, respingere invece di accogliere. È un errore, e Mehta lo racconta in questo vero e proprio manifesto a favore dell’immigrazione: non si può che trarre vantaggio dall’apertura, dall’accoglienza, dallo scambio. Appassionato, intenso, tenero, pieno di storie e personaggi memorabili, Questa terra è la nostra terra è una lucida lettura del presente, e un incoraggiamento a cambiare il futuro'.

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa dallo scrittore a Nandini Nair, pubblicata da Open il 15 agosto 2019. Suketu Mehta: From America with Love and Anger:

'In 1977, a 14-year-old Suketu Mehta moved to the US with his parents and two sisters. In Bombay, he left behind his closest friends. To them he would write letters, not of the aching loneliness or isolation he felt at the all-boys’ Catholic high school in Queens, New York. He did not tell them that a bully had christened him ‘Mouse’, and would trip him in the hallways. He did not mention the time when his family found hate painted across their car. Instead, he would share with his friends pages from comic books, which were available in the US, and were coveted back in India. Speaking on the phone from New York, he says, “The stories immigrants send back home is, ‘Look, we’ve gone to America, this is the dream.’ But it is actually not. It is a very emotionally fraught kind of storytelling.” As an immigrant, even a teenage Mehta knew that the stories one shares with those one has left behind, are stories of success, anecdotes of joy, to prove that the move to the new land has, indeed, been a successful one. The role of stories, those which we tell ourselves, those we recount to our family, and those which politicians tell us, play a pivotal role in Mehta’s most recent book This Land is Our Land. An Immigrant’s Manifesto. (...) He writes, ‘The first thing that a new migrant sends to his family back home isn’t money; it’s a story.’ It could be about the first snowfall, or the first sight of Brooklyn bridge or the first taste of a hotdog.

But if stories bind, they can also sever. And of late, they’ve been used as tools to create discord and divisions. Mehta writes, ‘Stories have power, much more power than cold numbers. That’s why Trump won the election; that’s why Modi and (...) Orbán (...) and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte won power. A populist is, above all, a gifted storyteller, and the recent elections across the world illustrate the power of populism: a false narrative, a horror story about the other, well told.’ It is these false narratives that Mehta redresses in his book. He says, “The debate around migration is a contest of storytelling.” He believes that all “these populists” - whether it is Trump on television, or Bal Thackeray at Shivaji Park - know how to tell a story, how to build a brand, and they do it adeptly, through lies. The only way those false stories can be fought is “by telling a true story better.” And that is the job of journalists and writers. “Why are all these people demonising writers and journalists,” he asks, “it is because they are truth tellers. (...) I felt I had to write this book now. The US 2020 election will be won or lost on the basis of immigration. It is the single most pressing issue for Americans. (...) I felt it almost like a calling. I did this because I felt angry. This book was born out of rage. Because of the staggering global hypocrisy built around migration.” 

This Land is our Land is an excellent example of crystallised rage. This is not the rage of spit and bluster, that leaves the recipient of it annoyed, but unmoved. Instead it is a rage borne from moral clarity and fostered by the truth. It is a rage that has been harnessed into adamant arguments, and which only the wilfully blind and selectively deaf can choose to ignore. Mehta comes to the issue of migration from personal experience, but through the stories of others, and in-depth research on the topic, he proves that we are all migrants. The fear of immigrants is stoked only by politicians to earn votes, make money, and to vilify the ‘other’. “Trump calls migrants robbers or rapists, I call them ordinary heroes,” Mehta says. (...) In this book, Mehta underscores that the great animating force of migration is that most human and innate of desires - to do better for one’s family, to provide for one’s children, and to toil towards a future that is brighter than the present.

An ‘Immigrant's Manifesto’ is an apt title for the book because it is as much an exploration of migration, as it is a proclamation. This Land is Our Land is a public declaration of the belief and aims of all immigrants. It is a manifesto, which in no uncertain terms declares, ‘I claim the right to the United States, for myself and my children and my uncles and cousins, by manifest destiny. This land is your land, this land is our land, it belongs to you and me. It’s our country now. We will not reassure anybody about their racist fears about our deportment; we’re not letting the bastards take it back. It is our America now.’ Mehta stakes a claim to America, as he believes all immigrants can lay ownership to the richer world, because of the past workings of colonialism and the present machinations of capitalism and climate change. Migrants from poorer parts have a right to settle into richer parts, and that right is essentially restitutionary. (...) For Mehta the restitutionary nature of immigration can be simply explained by - we are here, because you were there. Mehta adds, “The British ran India not as civilising endeavour. But to make England rich.”

While the US can choose to obfuscate and declare that they don’t owe anything to India, since they were a colony themselves, they need to be held accountable for the ruin they are unleashing upon the planet today. While the US military alone is a bigger polluter than 140 countries combined, the “US has walked away from the Paris Accord and will do nothing about climate change,” says Mehta. “Indians are suffering, and will continue to suffer, at enormous rates,” he adds, “because the developed countries, built up their economies, with fossil fuels.” Climate change of today has replaced the colonialism of the last century, as we will continue to see the rich countries get richer, and the poor countries get poorer. Mehta believes that the catastrophic effects of climate change, when entire countries get submerged, will unleash the kind of human migration that history has yet to witness. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, when it comes to movement,” he says, and even over a trans-Atlantic phone line I can hear his assertion in all capitals.

It is little surprise that Mehta’s book has been met by a range of reactions. (...) He notes how one reviewer on Amazon said he should be ‘skinned alive’ and must return to his ‘turd-world country,’ while someone else tweeted, ‘This cockroach needs sent back to whatever shit hole he crawled out of.’ But for Mehta what is interesting and meaningful is the appreciation he has received from people like him. He says, “I have been getting all these letters from Indian Americans, saying that my book has really made them stop apologising, for moving. People who came here in the ’60s, they are professionals, they are expected to be really grateful to America for letting them in. My book points out that this country would fall apart without immigration.” Now is not the time for the Indian American community to merely enjoy its economic success, instead they need to contribute to the public sphere, possibly join politics and “claim our place in the country,” he asserts.

According to Mehta, everyone benefits from migration. For the refugees, it might make the difference between life and death. For the recipient country, it will bring young and enterprising migrants who having left home and embarked on an arduous journey will work hard and honestly. The immigrants will send back money to their homes, and the remittances will benefit the countries that they’ve left behind. As Mehta writes, ‘They will make their new countries richer, in all senses of the word. The immigrant armada that is coming to your shores is actually a rescue fleet.’ Mehta might have written This Land is Our Land from anger, but it is ultimately “an angry book with a happy ending”. And the happy ending is that immigration benefits everybody. Mehta adds, “The end of the book is also a renewal of my faith in America.” He loves America because it is one country made up of all other countries'.

Tesher: Young Shahrukh

Compie un anno il brano Young Shahrukh, scritto e interpretato da Tesher, rapper indo-canadese. Vi segnalo il video prodotto da Tesher (vale la pena, fidatevi), e il video ufficiale realizzato da Sony Music India. Il mio verso preferito? From Bombay to Milan I feel like Shah Rukh Khan, ovvio! Il brano campionato è Bole Chudiyan, di Jatin-Lalit, tratto dalla colonna sonora di Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

Thank You: le riprese in Italia

Il 7 maggio 2021 si sono concluse le tre settimane di riprese italiane di Thank You, film in lingua telugu diretto da Vikram K. Kumar e interpretato da Naga Chaitanya e da Raashii Khanna. La trama è in realtà ambientata a New York, e la produzione ha deciso di trasformare Torino e dintorni nella metropoli americana. Nel campus ITCILO sulle rive del Po è stato approntato il quartier generale. I set: campus ITCILO, campus Luigi Einaudi dell’Università degli Studi di Torino, conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Parco del Valentino, cinema Fratelli Marx, Villa Frua nel comune di Stresa, stazione Italia 61 della società di trasporti GTT, aeroporto di Cuneo-Levaldigi.

Salman Rushdie on Midnight's Children at 40

Il 3 aprile 2021 The Guardian ha pubblicato un testo di Salman Rushdie nel quale il celebre scrittore commenta i primi 40 anni del suo romanzo I figli della mezzanotte. Salman Rushdie on Midnight's Children at 40: 'India is no longer the country of this novel':

'For a writer in his mid-70s, the continued health of a book published in his mid-30s is, quite simply, a delight. This is why we do what we do: to make works of art that, if we are very lucky, will endure. As a reader, I have always been attracted to capacious, largehearted fictions, books that try to gather up large armfuls of the world. When I started to think about the work that would grow into Midnight’s Children, I looked again at the great Russian novels of the 19th century. (...) And at the great English novels of the 18th and 19th centuries. And at their great French precursor, Gargantua and Pantagruel, which is completely fabulist. I also had in mind the modern counterparts of these masterpieces, The Tin Drum and One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Adventures of Augie March and Catch-22, and the rich, expansive worlds of Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing. (...) But I was also thinking about another kind of capaciousness, the immense epics of India, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the fabulist traditions of the Panchatantra, the Thousand and One Nights and the Kashmiri Sanskrit compendium called Katha-sarit-sagar (Ocean of the Streams of Story). I was thinking of India’s oral narrative traditions, too, which were a form of storytelling in which digression was almost the basic principle; the storyteller could tell, in a sort of whirling cycle, a fictional tale, a mythological tale, a political story and an autobiographical story; he - because it was always a he - could intersperse his multiple narratives with songs and keep large audiences entranced. I loved that multiplicity could be so captivating. (...)

The novel I was planning was a multigenerational family novel, so inevitably I thought of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and, for all its non-realist elements, I knew that my book needed to be a novel deeply rooted in history, so I read, with great admiration, Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel. And, because it was to be a novel of Bombay, it had to be rooted in the movies as well, movies of the kind now called “Bollywood”, in which calamities such as babies exchanged at birth and given to the wrong mothers were everyday occurrences. As you can see, I wanted to write a novel of vaulting ambition, a high-wire act with no safety net, an all-or-nothing effort: Bollywood or bust, as one might say. A novel in which memory and politics, love and hate would mingle on almost every page. I was an inexperienced, unsuccessful, unknown writer. To write such a book I had to learn how to do so; to learn by writing it. Five years passed before I was ready to show it to anybody. For all its surrealist elements Midnight’s Children is a history novel, looking for an answer to the great question history asks us: what is the relationship between society and the individual, between the macrocosm and the microcosm? To put it another way: do we make history, or does it make (or unmake) us? Are we the masters or victims of our times?

My protagonist, Saleem Sinai, makes an unusual assertion in reply: he believes that everything that happens, happens because of him. That history is his fault. This belief is absurd, of course, and so his insistence on it feels comic at first. Later, as he grows up, and as the gulf between his belief and the reality of his life grows ever wider - as he becomes increasingly victim-like, not a person who acts but one who is acted upon, who does not do but is done to - it begins to be sad, perhaps even tragic. Forty years after he first arrived on the scene - 45 years after he first made his assertion on my typewriter - I feel the urge to defend his apparently insane boast. Perhaps we are all, to use Saleem’s phrase, “handcuffed to history”. And if so, then yes, history is our fault. History is the fluid, mutable, metamorphic consequence of our choices, and so the responsibility for it, even the moral responsibility, is ours. After all: if it’s not ours, then whose is it? There’s nobody else here. It’s just us. If Saleem Sinai made an error, it was that he took on too much responsibility for events. I want to say to him now: we all share that burden. You don’t have to carry all of it.

The question of language was central to the making of Midnight’s Children. (...) Writing in classical English felt wrong, like a misrepresentation of the rich linguistic environment of the book’s setting. (...) In the end I used fewer non-English words than I originally intended. Sentence structure, the flow and rhythm of the language, ended up being more useful, I thought, in my quest to write in an English that wasn’t owned by the English. The flexibility of the English language has allowed it to become naturalised in many different countries, and Indian English is its own thing by now. (...) I set out to write an Indian English novel. (...) India is not cool. India is hot. It’s hot and noisy and odorous and crowded and excessive. How could I represent that on the page? I asked myself. What would a hot, noisy, odorous, crowded, excessive English sound like? How would it read? The novel I wrote was my best effort to answer that question.

The question of crowdedness needed a formal answer as well as a linguistic one. Multitude is the most obvious fact about the subcontinent. Everywhere you go, there’s a throng of humanity. How could a novel embrace the idea of such multitude? My answer was to tell a crowd of stories, deliberately to overcrowd the narrative, so that “my” story, the main thrust of the novel, would need to push its way, so to speak, through a crowd of other stories. There are small, secondary characters and peripheral incidents in the book that could be expanded into longer narratives of their own. This kind of deliberate “wasting” of material was intentional. (...)

When I started writing, the family at the heart of the novel was much more like my family than it is now. However, the characters felt oddly lifeless and inert. So I started making them unlike the people on whom they were modelled, and at once they began to come to life. For example, I did have an aunt who married a Pakistani general, who, in real life, was one of the founders, and the first chief, of the much feared ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But as far as I know he was not involved in planning or executing a military coup, with or without the help of pepper pots. So that story was fiction. At least I think it was. Saleem Sinai went to my school. He also lived, in Bombay, in my childhood home, in my old neighbourhood, and is just eight weeks younger than me. His childhood friends are composites of children I knew when I was young. (...) But in spite of these echoes, Saleem and I are unalike. For one thing, our lives took very different directions. Mine led me abroad to England and eventually to America. But Saleem never leaves the subcontinent. His life is contained within, and defined by, the borders of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (...)

Forty years is a long time. I have to say that India is no longer the country of this novel. When I wrote Midnight’s Children I had in mind an arc of history moving from the hope - the bloodied hope, but still the hope - of independence to the betrayal of that hope in the so-called Emergency, followed by the birth of a new hope. India today, to someone of my mind, has entered an even darker phase than the Emergency years. The horrifying escalation of assaults on women, the increasingly authoritarian character of the state, the unjustifiable arrests of people who dare to stand against that authoritarianism, the religious fanaticism, the rewriting of history to fit the narrative of those who want to transform India into a Hindu-nationalist, majoritarian state, and the popularity of the regime in spite of it all, or, worse, perhaps because of it all - these things encourage a kind of despair. When I wrote this book I could associate big-nosed Saleem with the elephant-trunked god Ganesh, the patron deity of literature, among other things, and that felt perfectly easy and natural even though Saleem was not a Hindu. All of India belonged to all of us, or so I deeply believed. And still believe, even though the rise of a brutal sectarianism believes otherwise. But I find hope in the determination of India’s women and college students to resist that sectarianism, to reclaim the old, secular India and dismiss the darkness. I wish them well. But right now, in India, it’s midnight again'.

Khiladi: le riprese in Italia

Nei giorni scorsi la troupe del film telugu Khiladi era in Italia per girare alcune sequenze. Khiladi è diretto da Ramesh Varma e interpretato da Ravi Teja e Dimple Hayathi. Dal 15 marzo i set sono stati allestiti a Torino e dintorni (Villa Cimena, Villa Bria, discoteca Le Roi, Dash Kitchen, Milk, piazza Gran Madre di Dio, Lungo Po, Murazzi, Parco del Valentino, Quadrilatero, piazza Cavour, via delle Rosine, piazza d'Armi, Palazzo di Giustizia). Video La Stampa. Il 25 marzo le riprese sono terminate in Liguria, tra Noli e Varigotti, al Porto Turistico di Marina di Loano, e sullo yacht XO OF THE SEAS. Il 24 marzo Ramesh Varma ha scritto nel suo profilo Twitter: 'Khiladi Italy schedule shaping up really well, Ravi Teja killing it with his energy levels in the action sequences. Wrapping up this schedule by month end'. Trailer. (Grazie a Patrizia per la segnalazione).

Dimple Hayathi

What early Indian sci-fi looked like

Vi segnalo l'articolo Videochats on the Moon, immortality pills: what early Indian sci-fi looked like, di Gayle Sequeira e Ashutosh Mohan, pubblicato da Film Companion il 27 marzo 2021:

'More than meets the eye: early films about invisibility

Most of Bollywood's first few sci-fi outings revolved around the limitless potential that invisibility could unlock for a single person, and the unintended consequences that could follow. Nanabhai Bhatt's Mr. X (1957), considered to be the first Indian science-fiction film, follows a lab assistant who accidentally drinks an invisibility potion. Bad news: there's no antidote that will make him reappear. When there's a spate of crimes in the city, he's the obvious suspect and must prove his innocence. In Mr. X in Bombay (1964), the protagonist gets his hands on an invisibility potion and uses it to solve a problem more pressing than world hunger - his lack of a love life. (...) In 1965 film Aadhi Raat Ke Baad (...) director Nanabhai Bhatt (...) attempts to answer one question: how much harder would it be to solve a murder mystery if the main suspect could turn invisible at will? (...) It's a plot similar to Bhatt's earlier vanishing man film Mr. X. These early films adopted a myopic attitude towards invisibility, with the protagonists often using their newfound powers for selfish reasons rather than the greater good. It took till 1971 for invisibility to serve more altruistic purposes. In K. Ramanlal's Elaan. (...) Mr. India (1987), [is] the first mainstream Bollywood sci-fi film. (...) Another film (...) explored the more nefarious consequences of scientific advancement. In Mr. X [1984], written and directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas. (...) In Malayalam film Jaithra Yaathra (1987) (...) invisibility is used to create chaos and for comic ends. (...) Invisibility, unlike immortality, appears to excite no moral questions. A person who lives forever can probably cause a lot of harm, but how bad can a brief disappearance be?

A whole new world: sci-fi set in space

Director A. Kasilingam's Kalai Arasi (1963) has aliens from another galaxy visit Earth and Mohan (M.G. Ramachandran) follow them back to their home. They look like us except for their sartorial preferences. They like tight shorts and safari helmets. Their spaceship has a distinct steampunk sensibility - levers and crankshafts everywhere. You even hear the periodic puff of escaping steam that apparently powers its cross-galaxy travel. (...) There is, however, one fundamental difference between us and them: the aliens are lovers of art to a fault. They've come to abduct talented artists from Earth and make them better ones. Their spaceship has a tiny screen that's a precursor to Google Earth. (...) What's surprising, especially since this is the first science-fiction film in Tamil, is how people react to a UFO. Mohan is with his friends when a spaceship flies overhead. He practically yawns an explanation, saying that experts believe that aliens from other galaxies would visit Earth at some point in time. His blasé friends are instantly convinced, feeling as much awe upon seeing a spaceship as an odd-looking cow. (...) Hindi film Chand Par Chadayee (1967) released two years before the first manned mission to the Moon, which is perhaps what emboldened director T.P. Sundaram to take creative liberties with the subject. (...) For a film that includes ridiculous scenes such as (...) parachute-wearing Moon women dancing above the clouds, the film was astonishingly prescient in terms of technological advancements. A high-ranking Moon citizen and the king of Mars videochat, and even communicate through a Google Glass-like device in which a real-time video of the caller appears on the lens of a pair of sunglasses. (...) The same year as Chand Par Chadayee's release, Martians visited Earth in Nisar Ahmad Ansari's Wahan Ke Log. (...)

Caution, side effects: medical science-fiction

Just as the vastness of space can be liberating, so can the invention of certain drugs that give their users powers. In P. Subramaniam's Malayalam classic Karutha Rathrikal (1967), the soft-spoken Santhan (Madhu) invents a drug that changes his appearance and gives him the ability to kill people. He's unable to make an antidote (perhaps, because of impure ingredients) which leads to his own death. An adaptation of R.L. Stevenson's Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, KR has an ambivalent stance towards the morality of science. We don't actually see much science, except in a comedy track that explains the concept of an antidote. The idea of an antidote becomes extraordinarily important in this subgenre, in which a scientist (typically out of hubris) invents a drug that gives him superpowers. In Naalai Manithan (1989) [tamil] the fate of the world hangs on Dr. Shankar (Jaishankar). After winning the Nobel Prize for inventing an AIDS drug, he creates another one that wakes the dead. Shankar's hubris prevents him from acknowledging the side effects of his immortality pill: violent and anti-social behaviour. Just as in Karutha Rathrikal, a scientist's individual choices shape how science plays out. By taking moral responsibility for his out-of-control inventions, the scientist ends up as the villain in these films. Both Santhan from KR and Shankar from NM die as a result of pushing the limits of human potential. This, however, isn't the case for the Professor (Anant Nag) from Kannada film Hollywood (2002), which claims to be India's first robot film. If the Professor's humanoid robot US-47 goes rogue, it's the robots fault, not his. (...) The Professor simply dismantles the malfunctioning robot. A rogue invention is only a technical problem, not a moral one. The film doesn't ask, like Naalai Manithan does, whether science leads to progress. Why embargo an invention when you could simply dismantle if it's not useful? Not quite human, not quite machine is the vehicle at the center of Ajantrik (1958), considered to be one of the earliest Bengali sci-fi movies. Director Ritwik Ghatak explores the relationship between a small-town driver, Bimal (Kali Banerjee) and his battered taxi by humanizing the vehicle through a combination of visual and sound effects. (...) Is the taxi sentient, or is Bimal projecting his emotions onto it?

Back to the future: films about time travel

In Aditya 369 [1991, telugu], written and directed by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Professor Ramdas (Tinnu Anand) (...) invents a time machine. (...) What's interesting is when he [Nandamuri Balakrishna's Krisha Kumar] ends up in an apocalyptic-looking 2504 AD. We see a post-World War 3 Earth, where a radiation from nuclear weapons has made the surface unfit for living. It's practically a desert, and humans live underground in hermetic forts. (...) 'Stomach computers' tell people when to eat. But (...) this isn't interpreted cynically. (...) People in 2504 AD are merely amused that their lives are run by machines.

Science fiction is still an underserved genre in our films. Films like Rahul Sadasivan's Red Rain (2013) [malayalam] explore the instinctive terror we feel for something from beyond Earth, but recent films have continued earlier templates, with a bit more realism. Arati Kadav's Cargo (2019), Tik Tik Tik (2018) [tamil] and Antariksham 9000KMPH (2018) [telugu] are space operas but the science is believable. Fifty years after Karutha Rathrikal, Maayavan (2017) [tamil] explores the question of who we really are if we swap brains with someone else. 24 (2016) [tamil] and Indru Netru Naalai (2015) [tamil] are entertaining time travel films that take us to the past and, hesitantly, to the future of science fiction films'.

Q & Ray

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa dal regista Q a Sankhayan Ghosh, pubblicata da Film Companion il 23 gennaio 2021. Q & Ray:

'It's scary to talk to Q - you don't know when you might rub him the wrong way. Besides, is there anything he likes? (...) Or is there anyone who likes his films? Even though 'like' is hardly a word you use when you talk about Q, whose works are designed to make you uncomfortable. (...) This power to offend extends beyond Q's cinema, to his views, one of which is his utter dislike for Satyajit Ray. (...) Now in a twist stranger than meta-fiction, Q is playing Ray. In (...) Abhijaan, a film about the life and work of Soumitra Chatterjee, Ray's favourite leading man, (...) we see Q as Ray, letting his future Apu know that he is too tall to be in Aparajito. He is wearing white pajama-punjabi - something Ray would often wear, and Q never - holding a cigarette and striking that pose as a framed photograph of Tagore hangs in the background. Has there been a more seamless merging of icon and iconoclast? (...) Q (...) lives in Goa, where he's (...) part of the alternative scene. (...) 

Your dislike for Ray is well-known. What's really interesting is that now you are playing Ray, in what must be the first time anybody is playing him on screen.

Well, the first person who told me about the resemblance was Rituparno Ghosh. And it was a very lively chat that we'd had after that, (...) about the resemblance and the general perceptions about image, since we were both image makers. He was also very interested in alternative image making, because, obviously, he is a precursor of all this. So while for instance I never liked Rituparno Ghosh's films, I am sure he didn't like mine. He was very clear at the beginning of the meeting that we are not going to talk about that. And then we proceeded to having a very nice chat.

I would've liked to be a fly on the wall during that chat.

It was a really insane chat because we were (...) hanging out in gay bars in Munich and stuff like that. It was a really cool chat. (...) Like everyone else, I grew up with Satyajit Ray and one of the key things I like about him is his calligraphy. I mean, as a designer I feel he did a lot of work that is far beyond his cinema. That's my perspective. My dislike or my problem is with his films. And he would have the same for mine. Because we are coming from totally different spaces in terms of filmmaking, or making visual narrative. (...) There was an occasion 4-5 years back when someone else had asked me to play Ray in a movie. That movie never got made. But I was in character for a month. And I took that quite seriously. These kind of opportunities are very interesting because you're thinking of image and what it could do. Alternative thoughts, or alternatives. They had some look tests and stuff. Few people who were also on that team got in the production team of the new film as well. And this was something that might have prompted them to think of me. (...)

Were you able to put your dislike aside while playing the character?

Yeah yeah, absolutely. Because then I am an actor (...) not Q the director. When I'm rapping I'm not Q the director. (...) Now I'm Satyajit Ray. An actor has a great advantage that they can hop characters like that. Performers have the best job actually and I'm always trying to, like an imposter, get in and do something - with music, with acting, whenever I can. For instance I've done a fairly major character in a Bejoy Nambiar film, (...) as a villain who was beating up Dulquer Salmaan. Because Bejoy knew I could do some shit like that. But no casting director will cast me, obviously, because they don't know me. Everyone assumes I have a certain kind of character based on a public persona, whatever that might be. (Laughs). And that's constantly being manipulated by me. 

What was your approach to playing Ray? Did you pick up mannerisms and body language and style of smoking and things like that?

Totally. Because it was a period piece, a biopic, I had to. I got myself into that mode. Because otherwise we are extreme polar opposites in terms of how we speak, hold ourselves, and it was a different time. So people used to behave different physically. So that was great fun. I love that process, that I can be someone else.

What are the things you picked up from Ray's persona?

One of the major problems was cigarettes, because I don't smoke cigarettes. So I was continuously smoking and smokers are different people. They hold their hands very differently. When you smoke joints you don't do that. So that and the fact that I would be in those costumes for a long time and trying to be comfortable even in the jangia (underwear). (...)

What's the kind of material you looked into?

I didn't have to, thankfully, watch all his films. I had to watch films made on him. And whatever footage I could get. I surrounded myself with those images. That's the kind of route I took, not the emotional part. The thing was to place the sense of humour, because he had a keen sense of humour. (...)

Is this you trying to be more open? Would you have done it 10 years ago?

Yeah yeah. (...) I don't think the point is that. I am anti his films, and that time, and how that time influences us right now as Bengalis. And is limiting us severely. That's what I dislike. (...) Satyajit Ray (...) is a bourgeoise upper class filmmaker. My politics doesn't allow me to appreciate his films. (...)

Do you not find anything to appreciate in his films?

Films take up a long time. You have to give it 2-3 hours of your life. I would rather watch something made by somebody I like'.

Hip Hop and the Kerala connect

Vi segnalo l'articolo Hip Hop and the Kerala connect: How a new breed of rappers is using the genre to speak of our reality, pubblicato lo scorso 23 dicembre da Film Companion:

'June was a particularly vulnerable time for everyone due to the COVID-19 lockdown, but Neeraj Madhav decided to do something about it - he released the catchy single Panipaali. A newbie to the hip hop scene, Neeraj rapped about boredom, playing ludo, craving for someone who'd sing him to sleep. The lyrics were relatable, and the beats addictive. (...)

The hip hop scene in Kerala has been around since the 90s. (...) In 2009, Rjv Ernesto, also known as Pakarcha Vyadhi formed Street Academics, the first hip hop collective in Kerala. He mooted an idea to form a hip hop group for spoken word poetry and making pause tapes, critical for the evolution of rap. The group initially rapped over beats, and after rapper Azuran joined them, they began to develop underground musical rap. The group also became more flexible with the addition of new members - currently it has six members. (...) Here are some songs you could catch up on. (...)

Chatha Kaakka - Street Academics

Street Academic's first EP had six songs, Chatha Kaakka being the most popular even to this day. CK literally translates to a dead crow, which is a commentary on society's treatment of people who are less privileged. (...) The song is observational and experiential, but if one digs deeper, it's also about the life of those underprivileged. (...)

Voice of the Voiceless - Vedan

Vedan doesn't mince words. In his first single Voice of the Voiceless, he's truthful about the discrimination he and others have faced because of their colour and caste. (...) The music lifts the rage of the rap. The song showcases the anger on everyone who has influenced this discrimination towards those who are different.

Lokam Mayakathilo e Kariveppila Akkiyo - Fejo

A native of Kochi, Fejo has been rapping since 2009. His collaboration with contemporaries Achayan and Blesslee resulted in Lokam Mayakathilo. (...) Kariveppila Akkiyo is another favourite of Fejo. The title literally translates to 'Did you make me a curry leaf?'. (...)

Avastha - ThirumaLi

ThirumaLi is a 25 year old rapper from Kottayam and has been rapping since 2013. His song Avastha is an ironic take on the times we live in - moral policing, social media validation and educated fools. (...)

Aliya - Kaanthari

Kaanthari's second single Aliya is a coming-of-age song about self-awareness in a flawed society. While having a discussion with friends, a man comments - (...) (girls who drink are of loose morals), and that flusters Aliya. She looks into herself and the society's demeanour towards young women for their choices. (...)

Jaagratha - Thakazhi (...)

This is Thakazhi's first single, released during the early days of quarantine with a message of hope and awareness about the virus. (...)

Ennilerinju - RZee e Sithara

Ennilerinju from Vineeth Sreenivasan's Jacobinte Swargarajyam is composed by Shaan Rahman. Sung by RZee and Sithara, the song is refreshing and fast paced. (...)

Minni - V3K e ThirumaLi

V3K is an electronic music composer and collaborated with ThirumaLi for Minni, one of the tracks from his latest EP. He fuses three unusual genres - folk, electronic and rap with ease. (...)

Kalippava - 2XB

2XB is one of the rappers from Malabar Hip Hop Movement, which aims to promote the culture in Northern Kerala. Kalippava, his second single is about (...) victims of police brutality over the world. 2XB comments on the system, and also raps effortlessly in Tamil'.

River to River Florence Indian Film Festival 2020

La 20esima edizione del River to River Florence Indian Film Festival si è svolta on line dal 3 all'8 dicembre 2020. Fra i titoli in cartellone, segnalo Cargo, l'originalissima pellicola di fantascienza diretta da Arati Kadav. Il leggendario Amitabh Bachchan ha dedicato all'evento un messaggio video, imitato da Deepa Mehta e da Kabir Bedi. Ospiti in collegamento, fra gli altri, Anurag Kashyap, Rajat Kapoor e Arati Kadav.

Su Airbnb si può affittare la villa di una superstar di Bollywood

Vi segnalo l'articolo Su Airbnb si può affittare la villa di una superstar di Bollywood, di Federica Maccotta, pubblicato lo scorso 18 novembre dall'edizione italiana di Wired:

'Bollywood incontra, per la prima volta, Airbnb. Il portale per gli affitti brevi lancia un’iniziativa per celebrare l’amore in pura atmosfera bollywoodiana, vale a dire del coloratissimo cinema indiano. Una coppia di cittadini indiani potrà infatti, la sera del 13 febbraio 2021, soggiornare nella villa di Delhi della star Shah Rukh Khan e di sua moglie, la celebre interior designer Gauri Khan. La coppia vip debutta, infatti, come host su Airbnb mettendo a disposizione per una sera la casa di famiglia nel verdeggiante quartiere di Panchsheel Park, nella parte sud di Delhi. La location è, per i fanatici del settore, una chicca. Oltre a essere curata nel design e negli arredi, la magione raccoglie ricordi e oggetti frutto dei numerosi viaggi fatti da Shah Rukh e Gauri, una collezione d’arte, fotografie di famiglia, negativi originali di film, lettere d’amore, arazzi colorati e lampadari scintillanti. E non manca (...) un ampio giardino ricco di fiori. Oltre a godere della bellezza della villa (per candidarsi online e fino al 30 novembre, bisogna essere residenti in India), i fortunati ospiti di Gauri e Shah Rukh Khan possono scoprire un itinerario curato dalla padrona di casa, godere di una cena a casa e fare una maratona dei film preferiti di Shah Rukh Khan e dei suoi più grandi successi'. 

Festa del Cinema di Roma 2020

La 15esima edizione della Festa del Cinema di Roma si è svolta a dal 15 al 25 ottobre 2020. In cartellone una ricca retrospettiva dedicata a Satyajit Ray, con la proiezione di ben quindici pellicole.

Festivaletteratura 2020

 

La 24esima edizione del Festivaletteratura si è svolta a Mantova dal 9 al 13 settembre 2020. Fra gli ospiti, anche la scrittrice Tishani Doshi, a cui la manifestazione ha chiesto un commento:

'Da danzatrice, la prima cosa che faccio prima di entrare in teatro per le prove è piegarmi a toccare il pavimento prima di varcare la porta di legno. È un gesto tradizionale. Per chiedere la benedizione della terra, che ci dà energia, che ci radica. Ma è anche una pausa. Per riconoscere una soglia. Per dire “mi muovo da uno spazio a un altro”. Lascio il mondo esterno per entrare nel mondo interno del teatro. Lascio fuori le preoccupazioni e le ambasce del mondo esterno in modo che in questo spazio interno del teatro il mio corpo possa fare il duro lavoro che deve fare. Posso provare a creare della magia.

Le soglie sono spazi di confine. Per un libro, questo spazio è la copertina. Forse non la si tocca per avere una benedizione, o non la si bacia con amore, ma non appena si gira la copertina e si legge la prima pagina si entra in un altro mondo, separato da quello che sta fuori. Questo mondo del libro è costituito unicamente da parole e, a volte, anche immagini, ma il paesaggio e le avventure sono costruite solo di parole. Parola dopo parola, frase dopo frase. Come i mattoni e la malta che servono per costruire una casa. Il Lettore, come Alice nel paese delle meraviglie, potrebbe cadere nella tana del Bianconiglio e perdersi, potrebbe mangiare qualcosa che lo rende molto grande o molto piccolo, potrebbe essere assorbito da uno stato surreale di febbre o di apatia o di impazienza, perché un libro sospende il tempo, e quando si è nel mondo del libro si fluttua in un altro universo, che non è creato da noi.

Leggere un libro è, in realtà, una delle comunioni più private che esistano. Il lettore e l’autore non hanno bisogno di incontrarsi per condividerlo. Una delle cose più liberatorie della lettura è che si ha il diritto di immaginare le parole di qualcun altro come si vuole, senza interferenze, senza spiegazioni. Quindi perché i festival letterari cercano di farci conoscere quando, onestamente, c’è il pericolo di restare delusi? Perché rischiare?

Un festival come quello di Mantova, per me, è una grande soglia. Un grande territorio di confine che crea un’interfaccia tra lettori e scrittori, che non si limita alle presentazioni, ma che lascia spazio a qualsiasi tipo di conversazione. Uno scrittore scrive una storia, ma un lettore apporta la sua. Veniamo cambiati dalle storie degli altri. Un festival, come una biblioteca, può facilitare ciò che è misterioso. Ciò che non può essere pianificato. La scoperta del libro che abbiamo bisogno di leggere, ma di cui non sapevamo il titolo, o di cui non sospettavamo neanche l’esistenza, ma che ci ha attirato e che non abbiamo potuto fare a meno di prendere in mano. Oppure ci imbattiamo in un evento di un poeta che non avevamo mai sentito, ma che con le sue parole sblocca improvvisamente qualcosa dentro di noi. È il posto in cui capita di intrattenere una conversazione con una persona che ci racconta che ha settantadue anni e che legge un libro quasi ogni giorno da quando ne aveva sei, e che raramente ha l’impressione di imbattersi in qualcosa di nuovo, ma che nel tuo libro è rimasta sorpresa nell’incontrare un’eroina che era vera e complicata e che parlava direttamente a lei. O potrebbe essere semplicemente per dire: “Hai assaggiato i tortelli amari? Sono molto buoni”.

La mia prima mattina a Mantova sono andata a Palazzo Ducale e ho scoperto che basta una sola persona della famiglia per far crollare l’intero castello di carte (Davvero, Vincenzo, come hai potuto?). Ho visto il furgone poetico del festival in Piazza Sordello, che suonava il clacson, annunciando la sua “merce”, e non ho potuto fare a meno di pensare alle sirene che sentiamo tutti dall’inizio di quest’anno, le sirene delle ambulanze e dei camion della disinfestazione che diffondono gli annunci pubblici. Delle televisioni che ci urlano contro cattive notizie, e di come queste risuonino in ogni stanza immaginaria della nostra testa. E di come un festival come quello di Mantova cerchi davvero di riempirci di suoni diversi. Il suono della poesia, delle idee, del racconto, perché anche la letteratura è una sirena gentile. Può essere una canzone. Può essere un avvertimento. Può allontanarci dal mondo e permetterci di rimanere sospesi in uno spazio di creatività e magia e trasformazione, e può forse fornirci qualche indicazione su come ricreare il mondo che ci aspetta là fuori.

L’edizione 2020 del Festivaletteratura è forse meno esuberante di quelle degli anni scorsi, meno frenetica, più misurata. Ma chi di noi è qui dovrebbe ricordarla come l’edizione di un festival di meraviglia e di speranza. Non dovremmo dimenticare che solo qualche mese fa la Lombardia era la regione italiana più colpita dal Covid. Non dovremmo dimenticare quelle sirene. Siamo qui insieme, e questo di per sé è già un atto di commemorazione, un atto di sopravvivenza. È anche un enorme atto d’amore. A tutta la squadra di Festivaletteratura va un grande grazie per aver reso possibile questa soglia. Credetemi, il mondo ci guarda e si meraviglia. Che fortuna essere qui a sentire la sirena della poesia a Mantova, e a condividerla con gli altri'.

Black Eyed Peas: Action

Il video di Action, il nuovo brano dei Black Eyed Peas, si ispira al cinema indiano, ed offre alcune sequenze - rivedute - di pellicole celebri: Maryada Ramanna (S.S. Rajamouli), Enthiran (S. Shankar), Aambala (Sundar C.), Singham (Rohit Shetty) - oltre al film svedese Kops. Nel comunicato stampa si legge: "The Black Eyed Peas have been inspired by Indian culture from the beginning of our career. From Asha Bhosle to A.R. Rahman, Indian music has influenced our songs on more than one occasion. This video for ACTION shows our LOVE and appreciation for BOLLYWOOD and the imagination and awesomeness it brings to the screen. Thank you INDIA & BOLLYWOOD!!!".

Fahadh Faasil: Make your directors fall in love with you

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa dal talentuosissimo Fahadh Faasil ad Anupama Chopra e a Baradwaj Rangan, pubblicata ieri da Film Companion. Make your directors fall in love with you; you'll never run out of content: Fahadh Faasil:

'AC: It has taken us eight months to get you here.

I think it's because I feel incomplete about my films. I don't know when the right time to talk about them is. I usually talk about them only after a year when I have actually realised what I tried to do and what I achieved. When we start shooting I think, 'Is this how it is supposed to be?', 'Is this right?' or 'Is this how it is in the script?'. And after release, I'm thinking 'Did I get it right?' I always go through that cycle in my head for all my films and that's why I'm always absent from promotions.

AC: You just shot See you soon with Mahesh Narayanan. And you mentioned that this is not a feature film and it is kind of an experiment. 

I met Mahesh 10 years ago when I moved to Kochi. When we eventually decided to do Take off, we knew it wasn't the first film we wanted to do together. But I had to be there for him. That is how Take off, and then Malik happened and then we decided to do an even bigger film and then the lockdown happened. Then, he came up with this idea that we can eventually redesign a film on the editing table. He said he needed three actors who need not be together, it could happen over phone and video and things like that. I thought it was crazy but I did a test shoot for a day and told him to capture the portions with the other actors. (...) When he came back with a rough edit, I knew I wanted to be part of the film. I told him to not worry about the theatrical release or money and to just shoot it.

BR: When Irrfan Khan passed away, you wrote a deeply moving note where you said 'I owe my acting career to him. I don't think I would have come this far in my career had I not picked up that DVD and watched that film'. Which DVD was it and what time in your life were you in when you watched that film and how did it help your acting?

It's a film directed by Naseeruddin Shah called Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota. I saw it in 2005 and it was my third year in America. That was the first time I saw Irrfan on screen and he didn't look like an actor to me. I couldn't stop looking at him, even when other actors came on screen. He looked so graceful. I kept looking at his feet to check whether his feet were on the floor, he seemed to be always floating. No one has made that kind of an impression on me. (...)

AC: In the few interviews you have given, you've mentioned that you don't prep for a role. What is the Fahadh Faasil process? (...)

I think my prep is to costantly interact with my writer and director and DOP on the sets. I never finish my films on schedule because, for me, the filming process takes a lot of time. (...) The prep I do is that I keep interacting. I never stop questioning. (...) I might have a one-liner. Most of the time, we have the climax. We know this is how we want to conclude (...) and that changes like five days into the shoot. I think the drive to shoot is to achieve what we initially thought or the fire we had for the initial idea. So, once we capture that, then that's when things start growing. It's difficult but it is very interesting and I love it. (...) I rarely walk in to sets prepared. The moment I have to prepare, I think I will collapse. When I work in Tamil, the biggest problem is that I don't think in Tamil. I go there and read the script and then translate it into my language and then learn the lines. That process is not easy for me. I want to do a Tamil or Hindi film and speak in Malayalam (laughs).

AC: Is it true that when you shot Take off with Parvathy, you asked her how her character's signature would be? How does a detail like that affect what you are doing? (...)

What fascinated me was that after she read the script, she was talking like Sameera, thinking like Sameera, and we were on sets and I was not able to get it right. So, I tried talking to her and at that time she was fiddling with a pen and then I told her to just sign Sameera, and the way she signed was very vulnerable. (...) Something about it looked vulnerable to me and that is where I picked it from. (...) These are actually very small things that nobody really notices. (...)

AC: Is it true that you take two days to get into character and you request your director to reshoot the first two days later?

Yeah. My first two days are exercise. I never get them right. (...) All my films we have actually gone back and shot the first two days. (...)

AC: Is acting stressful for you or do you find joy in it? And, how do you deal with films that don't do well?

I believe I have become a better human being once I started acting and started taking it seriously, because that is when I started thinking about others. When a film goes wrong, what actually goes wrong is your thought process and what you have been thinking for the last two or three years. (...) That is very difficult to accept for me. I actually get into a defensive mode and I try to explain, 'This is what I tried'. (...) Because I was wrong, the film went wrong and I usually accept that. But that phase is very difficult for me. I usually take time to come out of it. I come out of it when I find something else to be excited about.

BR: [Thiagarajan] Kumararaja said that you knew only three Tamil words and he was completely amazed that you did the dubbing for the film with all emotions intact. He spoke about it as if he had almost sighted a UFO. How do you do that, especially in a language you don't know?

I have to give it to Kumar. I was very sceptical about it. I wanted to do a film with Kumar, but I wanted it to be in Malayalam, to be honest. I actually went to Kumar five years ago, even before he started thinking about Super Deluxe, and told him 'Let's do a film in Malayalam', and I got him all the way to Kochi, but it didn't work out and he went back to Chennai. Then, he called me for Super Deluxe. I was very sceptical, because if you do this film with a person who can think and speak in Tamil, you can do wonders with the character, so I kept pushing him to do it with another actor, but he was adamant and kept saying that it was just language. One thing I realised when I was doing the film is that I started speaking in Tamil. If I spend time there, I'll get used to the language, that is what I realised. The thing about Tamil is that it is a very beautiful language and to learn it by rote is very easy. It's like learning a song. (...)

AC: Which role took the most out of you?

All the roles. (...) It is amazing to get people to react to your emotions or smile at you. And I discovered this much later in my life. I was not ready to be an actor or anything, and I am a person who tasted success much too late in my career and once I tasted it, the entire connection became very beautiful. So, for me, it is very important to feel for the character and the story. I need to believe that this is something that could happen or that has happened and I need to feel the connection to that story or plot.

BR: Your father launched you, things didn't work out, you took a break of eight years and came back. What was your frame of mind at that point?

After my first film didn't do well and I decided to go to the US, I had this conversation with my father. My father introduced Mohanlal. So when I spoke to him, he told me that I have an acting rhythm and that if I was actually planning to take up acting, I should do it in a way that it is happening from my stomach and not from my brain, and that was a very interesting advice. It is about how you see things and how you want to see things. So, I want to feel for the character and then emote. (...) I turned 19 during the shoot. To be honest, if that film had worked, I don't think I would have come this far. I would have been a star for 10 years and then I don't know what would have happened. Because the film didn't work, at least I am trying to be an actor, and that makes a huge difference.

AC: Fahadh, I loved the fact that Nazriya [Nazim, moglie di Fahadh] proposed to you on the sets of Bangalore Days. Please tell us that story.

Yeah, there is another side to it, but okay (laughs). It was new for me to see a girl that wasn't excited about meeting Fahadh Faasil. I had to do things to get her attention and I think I fell in love with that. I would walk into sets and the first thing I would want to see is if she was looking at me. So, I took initiative but she asked me out because she knew that I didn't have the guts to ask her. The two good things that I did after coming into cinema is getting married to an actress and starting a production house. (...)

AC: Now that you have gone to Tamil, would you be interested in Hindi, perhaps?

For me, the fact that my Malayalam films are watched in Mumbai, and that I get these messages and beautiful calls from people in the same industry is itself a big thing. (...) None of my films are made into any other language, because they are very rooted. My cinema is here. I would love to interact with Meghna Gulzar and Zoya Akhtar. There are so many brilliant directors that I'd love to work with, and there are so many films that are so good. If you ask me, Piku was the best film to have released in the last decade. I absolutely love it, the performances and the way it is made. (...)

BR: Speaking of Kumararaja, did he actually make you do 200 takes?

That's his average. With me, it has gone to 500-550 shots and what is interesting is I know I would have done around 60-65 takes for him and he would come and say that 'In the 17th take the look was perfect but in the 12th take, I liked the rendering, but as a whole I liked the 35th take'.'

Anurag Kashyap talks about his fight with KJo, meeting with SRK

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Anurag Kashyap a Mayank Shekhar, pubblicata lo scorso 12 giugno da Mid-Day. Il testo include il video dell'intervista integrale. Anurag Kashyap talks about his fight with KJo, meeting with SRK:

'The first time ever that filmmaker Imtiaz Ali saw what a portfolio looked like (...) was that of an actor called Anurag Kashyap. Back then, Ali was in college in Delhi, helping out a local TV serial crew, when Kashyap approached him with his portfolio. "It was 1992. (...) I had just discovered theatre, and was told that you need to get pictures clicked, if you want work. I did, after collecting Rs 3000, which was a big sum then. And I started doing a lot of acting on stage, and I did some films. (...) Also, (...) Imtiaz (...) was my co-star. (...) We don't talk about it. Imtiaz will kill me. (...) The good thing about being a bad actor is you know how to extract great performances," Kashyap tells me later. Which in his case, I'm told, notoriously involves hardly ever saying "action" or "cut" on set. Often, no lines for actors to mug up, let alone extensive rehearsals, before shoot. It's a process only the best can survive. Ali, of course, played the '93 Bombay bomb blast accused Yakub Memon in Kashyap's first release, Black Friday 2007. He played a bigger role in his life, if you consider that Kashyap used to shack up at Ali's place while the latter was doing a post-grad course at Mumbai's Xavier Institute of Communications XIC.

This is also how Kashyap first met his key associate, Vikramaditya Motwane. (...) "I couldn't get into XIC, and was living in Imtiaz's room. Aarti Bajaj, my first wife and permanent editor for both mine and Imtiaz's films, was a year junior. Vikramaditya Motwane was Aarti's classmate. That's how we knew each other. But we really became friends during the shoot of [Deepa Mehta's] Water. Vikram was an assistant, and I was writing dialogues. The shoot got stalled [due to protests], and we spent a lot of time in Benares. Thereafter, I kept meeting him because he was first assistant director AD to Vishal Bhardwaj in his first film called Barf, before Maqbool - that never got made. (...) That was sometime around 2000. Vikram was one of the sound designers on Paanch. And because I was scared of shooting songs, and he had been Sanjay Leela Bhansali's assistant, I asked him to direct the songs. He had two credits in the film - sound designer, and director of songs. It was a first for many people - Bosco-Caesar as choreographer, (...) Aarti Bajaj as editor. Abbas Tyrewala was the lyricist in the film and Vishal Bhardwaj did the music. Both of them, Vikram, I and others, used to hang out together."

"Then, there was Sriram Raghavan (...) and a whole lot of others - part of another gang. Even Tigmanshu Dhulia, Irrfan and others were all close to my brother [Abhinav]. That was the third gang. I was the centre-point, everywhere. And then I had another friends' circle, with (...) Zoya Akhtar and the lot. When I wrote a script, I had way too many boards to bounce off. And that's what we did! I was a huge fan of Sriram Raghavan's Raman Raghav [a docu-drama on a serial killer that Kashyap remade in 2016]. (...) Then a strange thing happened, with a script I wrote officially, for the first time (...) - with Kamal Swaroop Om Dar-B-Dar as director. For that film, I found an actor I was a fan of from Delhi stage, called Manoj Bajpayee. I put the film together. But it never happened. Nobody was showing faith in Manoj. He was going through a hard time and doing Ram Gopal Varma's Daud, which is when Ramuji said he wanted to make a film [Satya] with Manoj. And asked if he knew of a writer for it. Without having seen any of my written works, Manoj took me to Ram Gopal Varma." (...)

But that he's also a liberal raconteur: "Oh, one of my favourite stories is about Mahesh Bhatt. He happened to me, right before Ram Gopal Varma. He got me to write films. And Mukesh Bhatt [his brother, and producer] was very miserly with money. I was struggling for rent. Pooja Bhatt was the nicest and kindest; I would tell her to talk to her dad. Then I just walked up to [Mahesh] Bhatt saab once and said that I'd rather be a carpenter than work in his office. With his brother [Mukesh] around, he didn't say a word. When I was leaving, he came down, said, - Don't ever change. - And he put Rs 10,000 in my hand. That was big money in 1994-1995." Years later, at a post-screening event in a film festival abroad, Kashyap was narrating the first part of the story above. He heard a voice from the audience. (...) "Bhatt saab was sitting in the crowd. I got so emotional. I have had funny incidents like these." (...) "There was a time when Mukul Anand was making Trimurti 1995. I wanted to work with him as an assistant. I would call his house land-line. Every call was a rupee gone. And he was always busy. Third time I said, - (...) [This is producer Subhash Ghai, tell him not to show up on the sets from tomorrow], - and hung up. Now when somebody trolls me on social media, I just remember my time!" 

There is then the moment he randomly landed up at Shah Rukh Khan's bungalow Mannat he mistakenly calls it Jannat on Bandstand: "I was hungry and I walked into his house, using our college connection [both went to Hansraj in Delhi]. I remember him feeding me. He only knew how to make omelette." And then, there are the more famous spats: (...) "Karan Johar gave an interview calling me a psychopath. Till then we had not met. I called him a fat kid, who still thinks he is in school. (...) I also said something about Anil Kapoor in the interview that became a headline. But people always knew I was childlike." (...) He's gone to the extent of rescuing actor Rajpal Yadav from Andheri railway station, since he was returning to his hometown, having given up. That's when, Kashyap says, he first met the nondescript Nawazuddin Siddiqui, standing next to Yadav. (...) Scorsese, (...) after having watched GoW, invited him to be on the jury of the Marrakech film festival. Before Scorsese walked in, Kashyap was smoking outside with the Oscar winning Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, without knowing it was Sorrentino! Both were nervously puffing away. (...) Or this other time, Kashyap was in the same room as Francis Ford Coppola, "Sophia Coppola, his daughter, was with him. He is old. I kept staring at him for so long that he made me sit on his lap and said, now talk to me!".'

The short-lived glory of Satyajit Ray's Sci-Fi Cine Club

[Archivio] Ma com'è che mi era sfuggito questo incredibile articolo di Sankhayan Ghosh? Pubblicato il 9 maggio 2018 da Film Companion, rivela un aspetto segreto e sorprendente (almeno per me) di Satyajit Ray, maestro del neorealismo indiano: il suo amore per la fantascienza. The short-lived glory of Satyajit Ray's Sci-Fi Cine Club:

'The SF Cine Club in Calcutta began its journey with much fanfare. The kind of attention unimaginable for a film club in India, let alone one that called itself 'a club of devotees of Science-fiction and Fantasy films'. Walt Disney, from Disney Land, California, wrote a congratulatory letter; the Prime Minister and President sent encouraging messages; sci-fi literary legends like Arthur C. Clarke (...) and Ray Bradbury (...) sent their best wishes. The Press Trust of India carried a report, it was in the city's leading papers and the news segment in the radio the next morning. In the inauguration ceremony, on 26 January, 1966, people queued up in the portico of the Academy of Fine Arts, to collect their membership cards - at an annual membership of Rs 6. (...)

Brochures and souvenirs were handed out. All design-related work, from the hand-drawn insignia of the club, to conceptualising the cover design of the brochure, to selecting the type of font, was done by Satyajit Ray, whose feted masterpieces (...) had by then established him as one of the greatest filmmakers in the world, and who was a life-long fan of science-fiction and fantasy. Some of the first stories Ray ever wrote were science-fiction. (...) Ray (...) was the President of the SF Cine Club. "A science-fiction addict for close to thirty years," he wrote in the brochure, "the SF Cine Club may very well be one of the first of its kind - here or abroad". It was the same year that Ray went to Hollywood to pitch his sci-fi script, the ill-fated The Alien. But that's another story, a comprehensive account of which is given in Travails with the Alien by Satyajit Ray: The Film that was never made and other Adventures with Science Fiction, the new book by HarperCollins India - which also features previously unpublished memorabilia of the SF Cine Club. (...) Ray, not new to the workings of a film club (he had co-founded the first film society of independent India in 1947), curated the screenings. (...) 

The film club was the product of the efforts of a group of sci-fi crusaders in Bengal in the '60s. It was led by Adrish Bardhan, its secretary, who had approached Ray with the idea. Bengali sci-fi writer Premendra Mitra was the Vice President. Bardhan (...) had been running Aschorjo, the little magazine dedicated to Bengali sci-fi by local authors, from a room in his ancestral house on 97/1 Serpentine Lane (which would also double as the office for the cine club) since 1963. Ray was the magazine's chief patron and contributor, and together they started producing sci-fi radio plays. (...) Bardhan, in the editorial of 1966 February issue of Aschorjo, wrote, "A Monthly magazine, radio and cinema: these 3 paths now will forge the victory of sci-fi." The issue carried an extensive coverage of the inaugural ceremony; a detailed synopsis of the SF Cine Club's next screening would appear in the last section of Aschorjo - which has been archived by the members of Kalpabiswa - a Bengali sci-fi/fantasy webzine. Many of the stories of the cine club are recounted by Ranen Ghosh, an acolyte of Bardhan, in a Norwegian journal about the sci-fi 'movement' in Bengal, that was published last year. He was an integral part of three bengali sci-fi magazines, which came one after the other, Aschorjo, Bishmoy and Fantastic. Ghosh often wrote stories with multiple aliases, taking names of family members. He is one of the few active members of the cine club who is alive. 

How did the seemingly successful SF Cine Club lose its steam so abruptly, and shut down in 1969, 3 years after it had started? Ray got busier. (...) And Bardhan had his own battles to fight - Aschorjo was in financial trouble, and his wife fell sick. "I think Ray also lost interest in it after a point. Otherwise, he would have managed to keep it running," says Ghosh. The audience, he says, also started dwindling. Many members who weren't accustomed to watching English-language films, wouldn't be able to grasp the films. (...) The problems were identified, discussed in the meetings (which Ray didn't have the time to attend), but never addressed'. 

A proposito del volume Travails with the Alien, nel sito di HarperCollins Publishers si legge: 

'Satyajit Ray was a master of science fiction writing. Through his Professor Shonku stories and other fiction and non-fiction pieces, he explored the genre from various angles. In the 1960s, Ray wrote a screenplay for what would have been the first-of-its-kind sci-fi film to be made in India. It was called The Alien and was based on his own short story "Bonkubabur Bandhu". On being prompted by Arthur C. Clarke, who found the screenplay promising, Ray sent the script to Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, who agreed to back it, and Peter Sellers was approached to play a prominent role. Then started the "Ordeals of the Alien" as Ray calls it, as even after a series of trips to the US, UK and France, the film was never made, and more shockingly, some fifteen years later, Ray watched Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and later E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and realized these bore uncanny resemblances to his script The Alien, including the way the ET was designed! A slice of hitherto undocumented cinema history, Travails with the Alien includes Ray's detailed essay on the project with the full script of The Alien, as well as the original short story on which the screenplay was based. These, presented alongside correspondence between Ray and Peter Sellers, Arthur C. Clarke, Marlon Brando, Hollywood producers who showed interest, and a fascinating essay by the young student at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism who broke the Spielberg story, make this book a rare and compelling read on science fiction, cinema and the art of adaptation'.

È morto Sushant Singh Rajput

È di queste ore la notizia del decesso di Sushant Singh Rajput, 34 anni, il cui corpo senza vita è stato rinvenuto nel suo appartamento di Mumbai. La polizia ritiene si sia trattato di suicidio. Sembra che il giovane attore soffrisse di depressione. 

Zoya Akhtar: Everybody in my family has a National Award except me

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Zoya Akhtar a Mayank Shekhar, pubblicata ieri da Mid-Day. Zoya Akhtar: Everybody in my family has a National Award except me:

'Little is known about her life up until her rather belated directorial debut at 36-plus, with Luck By Chance (2009), although she'd been working as a film professional for around 18 years before that. Very little worth knowing, Zoya casually reckons, jogging back to age 19, when she started interning for a copy-writer's job at a creative agency - simultaneously reading sociology at Bombay's St. Xavier's College. "I remember watching Salaam Bombay! (1988), being madly in love, and going: I want to direct. And I don't know what I'm going to make. Because Hindi films were not my scene then. Out of the blue, when I was about 21, I got a job with Mira Nair on [the sets of] Kamasutra (1996)." You can find her in a cameo appearance as one of the Kamasutra girls, "an extra part," as she puts it, because ADs are frequently expected to fill-in or add to the human backdrop on shoots. Of all her past associates, Mira as director appears to have left a strong impression on Zoya: "Mira is just special, you can see that. When she is talking to you, you are the only person in the world. She makes people feel special. She knows everybody on a crew by name. I love that about her. And I love her aesthetics."

Post Kamasutra, Zoya recalls, "I started working mainly on American projects that came to India. Went to NYU [New York University] for a diploma [in filmmaking]. Stayed back in New York. Got a job, thanks to Ismail Merchant, in a small, cool, indie film called Side Streets, directed by Tony Gerber." She returned to Bombay as a freelance, professional AD, of which there were only four in all of Bollywood, who did a lot of foreign films and Indian work: "Reema [Kagti], [director] Apoorva Lakhia, and me. Then Kiran Rao came in." Zoya's credits during this phase include Mahesh Mathai's Bhopal Express (1999) and Dev Benegal's Split Wide Open (1999). She chose to specialise in the casting department, because there, "you get to direct actors, with a script," and that's what she ever wanted to learn/master anyway. She was the casting director on Farhan [Akhtar]'s first film Dil Chahta Hai (DCH, 2001), and thereafter Armaan (2003), her mother Honey's directorial debut. Okay did she personally pick/cast that balloon-lover boyfriend in Dil Chahta Hai? "Oh that's actually Hassan, a childhood friend of Farhan. But we handpicked everyone, so to speak. There are very interesting cameos. Kiran Rao is one of the girlfriends in Goa. She'd come to do all the extras' casting for the film's Goa leg!"

Between freelance AD-ing, Zoya had been ideating all along for her debut feature. It's mildly ironic that while so cued into casting, she was unable to kick off her first film for want of a lead actor, for almost a decade that she'd been ready to direct. And the one she eventually cast for the lead role, in her directorial debut (Luck By Chance, 2009) was her brother, Farhan, who'd been around all along! "You cannot cast someone, unless they are ready. And feel that they want to do this. It took Farhan a while to get there - that he wants to act, and that he is a really good actor." While practically the entire Bollywood A-list came down for cameos in Luck By Chance, including both Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan (guessing, for the first time in the same film, although not in the same frame), Farhan was the seventh star to read/consider/hear the script. Hrithik Roshan played the second lead. "Luck By Chance is a book that I am going to write one day, about how that film got made," Zoya sighs. Can't wait. It'd be quite a telling tinsel-town tale, given that nobody in Bombay does it. And Zoya is perfectly positioned to - not just as the quintessential insider, but as someone who can surprise you with her adorably random zaniness, on occasion. Recently at an interview she called herself the love-child of directors Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap. What does that mean? "That I am halfway between Indie and commercial, you know." (...)

And while her films primarily deal with real, human, often raw emotions, there is this carefree cattiness that inevitably slips in too. It's only fair that we dig into a couple of stories behind some stellar, surprising choices she's made so far. For example, why/how/when did a ladies' bag, called Bagwati, bag a proper part in the breezy masterpiece Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara? "That comes from Reema and a close friend of ours, Shai Heredia, who's an academic, award-winning documentary filmmaker, and hysterically funny. She and Reema were on a road trip, and they kept talking to Shai's bag. Think they were just tripping! We just put it into Zindagi." It was Zoya's second film, with Farhan and Hrithik back on her frame, but in a much wider canvas, although the script started out in her head as a small, cathartic, road movie, about three boys in a car - for all the road trips she's taken in her life. Over time, of course, the script "developed a life of its own".

The film she co-wrote after was Reema's Talaash. It's a supernatural thriller that, by the way, was based on a true story, that happened to her! "You have to stop. I am going to be the crazy lady that goes on interviews and says all this shit. I know it sounds really crazy, and I don't want to be propagating this nonsense. But, I had a strange experience on Haji Ali, while a bunch of us were driving back from a nightclub. We thought we had hit a naked woman in the middle of the road. Everybody was freaking out. This is something I told Reema about, and where Talaash came from. I am not going to repeat this story, ever again!"

Okay how about the dog called Pluto, who's the narrator/POV of Dil Dhadakne Do; where does he come from? "From my super-smart, intelligent beagle Zen, who passed away last year. You can find him on my Insta page, Zen Akhtar. Zen would look at us as though he is watching National Geographic - that we are the animals, and he is like, 'What are they doing?' That's Pluto. Even the way the film is shot [as a result] is observational - there are no close ups, only 'wides'." After a preview screening for Aamir Khan and his wife, Kiran Rao, both of whom Zoya makes it a point to get a feedback from before her film's final cut, she asked Aamir if he'd like to voice the dog: "He was, like, after these many years, you have offered me the voice of a dog? I said, please do it. He was, like, yeah, totally! And he just came [on-board], like a sweetheart. It was great!"

Is there anything she'd like to change about Dil Dhadakne Do? "I think the title. Would have been nicer [if it had] a little more gravitas." How about the climax (that was rather OTT, compared to the rest of the film's tone)? "I actually liked the climax (of the mom, dad, sister jumping off the ship, with lifeboats to chase down brother/Ranveer Singh's character). The whole metaphor of the trip is that you can't get rid of anyone. Family is what you are stuck with. You can't just walk out the door. Eventually, when shit hits the fan, they are the only ones who will pull you up too. So when everyone tells me, I don't like the climax; I am like, cool, so what would you do? Till now nobody has given me a better ending. If there is one, I'd be like, damn!"

What did upset Zoya even before the release of Dil Dhadakne Do though was people taking the piss out of the picture for it being centred on lives of the super-privileged - intended also as a barb against movies that Zoya had directed thus far. "Firstly I don't think it was criticism. There is nothing for me to take home from it. It is like somebody seeing a trailer of Gully Boy and saying, oh, this is about poor people. And I made Made in Heaven, along with Gully Boy. And that is about very rich people! I was being interviewed by this woman wearing diamonds and solitaires, and she was telling me, it [the film] is about rich people. I was, like: Would it bother you, if your husband has an affair? Why? But you have solitaires on, it shouldn't bother you! What does it even mean?"

Before Gully Boy - set in a Mumbai slum and the city's underground rap scene - released, it got roundly compared to the American ghetto, hip-hop biopic, 8 Miles. Did that bother her? "The two people I spoke to [to base the film on their lives] are living here. You can talk to them. So, no, I didn't get into it. It bothered me, when they compared Zindagi to Hangover [producer Ritesh Sidhwani had to respond to Warner Bros]. Now, I think that's what they do."

Inspirations from dogs and spirits apart, what makes Zoya's filmmaking process special - given what we've managed to gauge so far - is she is capable of working backwards. Where she must know end, before she locks her script. Which isn't true for many filmmakers, who often arrive at the conclusion, as they navigate the story or characters' journeys: "I have to set a goal. That goal may change. But I when I set off, I have to know where I am taking the film. Otherwise I meander. I need a direction I am shooting at, you know!" The other thing is her complete clarity on the point she's trying to make - so much so that she can distill each film into a single line, which is different from a log-line that describes a plot: "Of course Gully Boy is about a Muslim kid from Dharavi, who expresses himself through rap. It is a rags-to-riches, coming-of-age story. You can pin it down in any log line. But at the core of it, the film is about class. Luck By Chance is really about self-esteem. Zindagi is about living, seizing the day. Dil Dhadakne Do is a film about projection - who we actually are, and what we tend to project. It is what lenses the film, creates the base".'