More pictures from the shoot..

Insipired by your comments , messages and mails , I found inspiration to post more from the shoot :D Here are a few more pictures for your comments, criticisms, brickbats, whatever !

What is that ???

Old man and the tea :P  (@ Comm street)

Once upon a time.. (@ Comm street)

A weekend well-spent

Saturday started at 7am with a stroll through the bylanes around commercial street . The idea was to catch Bangalore before it wakes up to the world. But what I found there was quite the contrary! The place was bustling with activity – milkmen taking the milk cans on their cycle, vegetable sellers hawking, flowers that might eventually make it to your drawing room vase being sold  – It felt like watching the backstage action behind the cosmo act that Bangalore puts up everyday !

 Here are a few shots from that morning -
Morning news at your doorstep

Knock..knock

-

A chance visit to Crossword & a chance discovery of DVD/CD sale happened. Picked up a few good movies. Whiled away rest of Saturday pretending to read a book. Did a quickie to Ramnagaram on Sunday with BWS junta.  Will post pictures soon..

Less is more..

I tried my hand at minimalism. Here is the result - 

Shot at Pondicherry. (But, it could have been almost anywhere :-) )

Comments & criticisms most eagerly awaited ! :)

Pondicherry beckons !

Picture this: A trip down the ECR, walks on the seaside promenade, few hours of shooting, some good wine, a few intimidating professional quality photographers who call themselves amateurs :)  A trip to Pondicherry happened last weekend.

Did’nt shoot as much as I’d like to have, but a relaxed feeling descends on you as soon you get to the promenade and the french quarters. Saturday vanished doing mindless stuff.

Sunday ,though, was great -  an early morning sunrise shoot, a pleasant breakfast with Anupama,SriVidya, Sunil, Danny,Ayan, Tanmoy, Vinu, visit to the Ashram (which I gave a pass since I’d already done that during my last visit), the Church and finally the splendid lunch at La Promenade.

As an aside, I realized I had’nt had wine for breakfast in a very long time. And if I ever was two-minded about it, Danny would take care of the indecisiveness and order one for me :)

But there is so much chilling to do & so much more to capture there ! I did’nt have the time to do any of the things I’d like to have done – the French institute or L’Alliance Française or Kailash Book store. Neither Gingee nor Pichavaram (Magical place for mornings!) nor places nearby Auroville.

 Which is why I will soon spend a longish week in and around Pondicherry very soon :-)

Terracotta jingles - shot from below

Morning beach

Beach again

Old man and the sea :)

Afternoon power nap

Click on the pictures to view them large.

Kahl Veen !!

For all you calvinists, here is some Calvin graffiti in French !

(This is the last frame of the strip I shot roadside in Arles)

I’m two-timing

With ‘La vie devant soi’ and ‘India after Gandhi’.

One thing that puts me off in all these older French novels is the Passé Simple. It is SO hard to conjugate in passé simple, not intiutive at all to find out the infitive form when it is conjugated and gives me a feeling of reading a novel from 14th century. Needs rechristening: Passé-pas du tout-simple. :)

But I’m beginning to like the way Momo narrates the story. Not only does it make for a very warm way of narration, but it also makes it an easier read :)

Guha, on the other hand, is facts and timelines. Big tome, barely scratched the surface.

Fade in and fade out

Thatz how weekend was ! It crept up on me Saturday afternoon and took to a premature closure at 4PM Sunday.  Sat morning and Sunday evening were spent in a train getting myself away from and back to Bangalore. Was visiting Chennai this weekend.. The weather there was both rain and shine. ‘Shine’ by Chennai standards. Rain messed my Metro Plus theatre fest plans. Ok, I’m not complaining. Not a bad trip overall.. Picked up a few books: A book by Ray on films, India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha, much talked about KiteRunner and a DVD of Suraj Ka Sathvan Goda from T Nagar Crossword. (Impressed with Café Brio there). 

Feels very good to be back to waterhole at Indira Nagar though.. Hoping to catch up on weekend stuff on the Aug 15 day off ! Any interesting independence day events in Bangalore ?

Here is a g’morning shot from this weekend trip

Another shot from Chennai Central

Hitting headlines..

BRTFF is on India Today (so am I). There is a photo of the first get together too. Pick up a copy of this week’s India Today and turn to Page 4 on Simply Bangalore too see the gang. And dont forget to look for me in the picture.

To think that I got *this* close to making it to Page3 and missed out by a page :-)  is’nt a good feeling.

BRTFF – The event and the community, as I see it

[This is a long post. Grab a coffee, answer your urgent IM messages,  do the loo]

 The Event:

For those of you who attended the last BRTFF, I’ve to tell you that this BRTFF was a lot different from the last. A lot more independent films, bigger audience. And a very different flavor.  To those of you who didnt, I’d like to say the same anyway. :)

 

Thej did a live blogging of BRTFF2, so I wont repeat that here. Instead will recount a few that caught my interest (and survived my volatile memory) from yesterday’s screening and some thought miscellany J

-         A re-run of Mission Zero that was played in last BRTFF. It was a re-edited version based on feedback from last screening, and was WAY better than the last one. Good one Vatsa ! It is also very heartening to see independent filmmakers using the forum to take back value already.

-         Pawan’s de-brief on Osian

o       Oh BTW, both Pawan and Vatsa have a new LF this time around. Pawan’s cap reminded me of Jimmy B Rabbit Smith Jr J Vatsa’s transmogrification available here: old & new. (Update: Hrish points to a cooler picture of Vatsa in the new get up here. Pix courtesy: Nish)

-         Pawan spoke about his talent campus sessions at Osian. Two hour dissection of a scene in Rashomon. ‘Money’  by Bresson. Layers in film. When it comes to scene composition what works for you: Premeditation or Spontaneity. Funding for first feature by Osian. And a lot more.

-         Pawan re-introduced the ‘Cut- the-producer-out’ concept for the benefit of the new BRTFF participants.

-         Another 30 mins film called Lemon Chai –  ‘Different strokes for different folks’ was the theme.

-         Brainstorming with Vatsa on some ideas around funding commercial films by emerging moviemakers.

      -    Harakiri presented by Mandar. (Film directed by his friend in Pune). It reminded me of this

      movie by Aki Kaurismaki. Mandar  gives an instance of the role of the cameraman in the making of Harakiri and makes a very important point about bringing cameramen and people who are involved in the other aspects of film making into BRTFF community.

-         Use of mobile phone to convey emotions and state of mind was a prop very well used. Something that would have taken a series of scenes otherwise and still might not have been effective enough! – Christina remarks.

Overall , a Sunday VERY well spent ! BRTFF continues to rock.

 

Thanks to Hrish for putting this together, all the people who brought their movies and shared their experiences, Thej for the website (& the tees that are yet to arrive J ), Vinay for holding fort at the laptop and speakers, Hasina from Chungwah for the place, all those who were around for the company ! J

The Community:

So, we have BRTFF – Where do we take it now?  What follows below is my take on BRTFF – What we are and where we could go. It is not what BRTFF essentially is or is’nt, or even needs to be. It is what I wish BRTFF becomes.

 

What BRTFF is:

BRTFF, to re-iterate to what Hrish has already before BRTFF2, is a forum that brings independent films makers of parallel cinema, film buffs, media to provide a platform to appreciate such cinema; a forum that creates a community and audience for such films; and eventually, as a consequence, serve as a support structure to bring out meaningful cinema.

 

What BRTFF is not:

It is not a platform for film marketing or a forum for generating means to produce more commercial cinema. India is the mecca of commercial films, why do we want more? Having said that, I’m not trying to pretend here that the only intention behind making a movie is to serve the larger purpose of the art that is Cinema. One of the primary intentions of filmmaking *is* moneymaking, even if it is for more filmmaking. The spirit of BRTFF is to a) create an audience for meaningful cinema and b) be an incubator inside of which the independent filmmakers find the mettle to make the parallel cinema that they want to make and not be forced into the compromises of commercial cinema. So, anything we do within BRTFF needs to be based on this two-point agenda of BRTFF – selection of films to be screened, appreciation of films that were screened.

In the absence of this agreement, BRTFF could very easily turn into a film marketing platform (and with the wrong audience at that!) or a place to screen stuff that doesn’t have audience elsewhere. I’m NOT saying this is happening with BRTFF. I’m saying that it should not. If we don’t put the right focus into this area , I see this as the default & most probable outcome. This is my number#1 take away from this Sunday.

 

What can be done to improve BRTFF:

-         Independent filmmakers need to bring more than their films to the table. Trust me, the participants at BRTFF are raring to know more about filmmaking , to see the other side of the world. Share your knowledge.

-         You could talk from the insider’s view of film making, talk about historical aspect of film making, talk of basics of film making, painpoints in filmmaking, talk of a particular film makers anthology, talk of tips on making a simple handycam footage, talk of basic editing techniques. Anything. Just anything that you think brings value. The idea here is not to learn filmmaking through these talks (which would be a looooong shot anyway). It simply helps to appreciate cinema better. Before you know it, you would have created an audience for yourself. (We could use the BRTFF wiki to funnel the topics. Participants can pick.)

-         Something I liked about this BRTFF is that we decided to watch ‘Money’ by Robert Bresson and then Pawan sharing his Osian review experience of the movie with us. Would it be a good idea to have an independent filmmakers do a film appreciation session at each screening?

-         Something that we already discussed and concurred: Pre-screening of features/shorts that will be screened at BRTFF. All film makers to write a synopsis of the movie and post it. Once again participants pick what they want to see. We could have a master list for the screening from which we pick depending on how the screening goes.

-         The success of BRTFF depends on one and exactly one person. YOU. Bring your movies, bring your knowledge, bring your thoughts, bring your disagreements. [ Also bring projectors & screens J ]. Make the event vibrant. And if you felt disappointed by a movie, go ahead and say it.

 

Let us put our focus on first building an audience that can appreciate good films. Indie film making wont be far behind.

 

Things I noticed on the logistics:

1/ A lot of floating population – Day time distraction ?

2/ The energy around organizing and registration was far higher. First signs of success. Hrish, you got every reason to be proud.

3/ No of turn-outs from last time’s BRTFF was less. One reason might be the limit we put on the number of people.

4/ Could’nt watch BW movies.  Too much light coming in. We will need to be better prepared with curtains the next time around if we do a daytime screening.

 

Here is hoping I have’nt stirred controversies :) Alternate thoughts welcome.

-Lav

 

A few pictures from yesterday at MyCameraAndEye (My flickr gallery)

Lynx for breakfast

Ok, links instead.. :)

1/ ‘Backbone inside’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdNcCcweL0 - Finally a journalist with a backbone, who CHOOSES not to cover the Paris Hilton story as the lead story. Indian journalists could learn a thing or twenty. Mutiny writes in detail here. 

Dear Indian journalists: Lo and behold, apparently now you can still CHOOSE what you cover. Didja hear that ? My ire was’nt totally inappropriate after all :)

2/ IAF awards were out sometime ago. Some amazing ads archived.