Thursday, May 24, 2012

Positive Attitude: One Morning in the Month of September, 2010

Interactions and exchanges are important. If you are hurt I'd surely apologize to you once I die. But till I'm living this life of mine I'm bound to do things that make you react, and thus join the conversation. Often I tell myself to act and not to react, but it's not possible every time. The worst thing is that you generally open up only after I start shouting. Can't it be the other way round?

I know it's tough for you to understand. You've never been in my shoes. I remember, in 2005, when I joined my grad school in Kolkata, I got a mobile phone from my father. I was about to move to the city. So, it was needed to keep in touch with the family. The next day I woke up and it was 2010. I got an SMS. "Congratulations! Your relationship with Reliance GSM services has crossed 5 years. We are thankful to you for your continued support." Like a dream, I started recalling where I was. Last two days I had two 15 hour shifts. I was involved in a boring commissioned project at that time. Who were my friends in 2005? I found that only 7 are there whom I still can call friends. Where was I? The locked out factory, our home, the estate --- exactly that's when I planned to make Memories... of a Dead Township (2012) --- The film did not cost me even a penny. But there was risk involved. If they could catch me... I don't know... I was afraid for my camera. Hence, that morning in the month of September, 2010 I was at Bhawanipur and I was trying to recall how I came this way. After coming to Kolkata I started living with a batch-mate at his house, Debarghya Mukhopadhyay, probably the only friend who loved me more than himself. But our "commune" did not last for long. I had to move out. The next year, I spent most of my time at Jadavpur University. I was not a student there. In 2006, the campus was the source of progressive 3rd stream politics for me. Yeah, and then in the month of December I was arrested from Nandan and taken to Hastings P.S. My comrades did not want me to do whatever caused this incident, but it made our magazines and literary-political activities get some campaign. The wind carried us for 3-4 months and then friends started to turn their backs. For almost a year, I kept myself locked up in my room and re-invaded Kolkata in February 2008 with Shabdoprokriyakoron. In June or may be July, I got a new registration number and was registered as a student of Film Studies department at the Jadavpur University. Classes, the few I attended, were good. It was the time of our first semester when I received a phone call from someone named Mr. Arupratan Ghosh. He just wanted to check out whether the phone number provided in my book is a real one and whether the names mentioned in the book are of real people. By the end of November we met in a pub, Baraduari at Janbazaar. We both were amazed to find our common feelings about some phenomenons in world cinema. The last film he made was in 2004. It was the fifth year of silence. I was trying to do something on my own. In fact we had already started shooting the infamous incomplete documentary on Subimal Mishra. Sriparna was with me since 2005 and everything was possible just because she got a handycam in 2007. So that's how it all began. On 6th December, 2008, we were in a car. Shooting for a short, obscure, Arupratanistic. Once the film was complete we called our film-enthusiast friends of that period and decided to make it big. Through the year 2009, we just kept on working. I edited five shorts. It was difficult as three of the makers had no idea about what they wanted to shoot or how to handle the smart-ass little-learnt cameraman. Only one of these three turned out to be good (though there was an unintended and inevitable idiotic continuity break). Five No Budget Films (2010) released on the last day of January and 100 copies of the first edition were sold out in just seven days. My film Jean-Luc Godard had No Script turned out to be a bit controversial. The film was made with Rs. 573 /- (The costs of food and transport). Moreover, I could not stand the irritating talk-talk culture of the department and attacked my faculties. By May, 2010, I was kinda banned in my department. They were not really helping our initiative and people who really mattered are still in good terms with me. All these I was thinking in the morning, I don't remember the date, of September, 2010. Suddenly I realized I better move out of the bed and make some phone calls . I borrowed 70,000 cash from my father for some project which I was thrown out of some days ago. My partner was a revolutionary friend (allegedly one of the squad that attacked the lexus motors' showroom in 2006) from old times who has turned into an irritating fraudulent businessman after accepting loan from the prime minister of India . Moreover, my handycam is left at his office. So, I was running on a negative balance of around 1.25 lakhs and since I was an idiot (I still am) I had no papers with me to prove anything.


In 2011, Season Two: No Budget Film released and got wider circulation than Five No Budget Films.

In 2012, 3rd Compilation was out on DVDs in time

Would you still say my attitude towards life is negative? It's just that I know what I had to do, what I'm still doing and how, as I said, you were never in my shoes.

Throughout the production and post-production of Jean-Luc Godard Had No Script we had to face apocalyptic occurrences. A friend of mine suggested me to start a blog and share the experiences. I never really had enough time to do that. During the shoot of Secret Footage (2011) [Part of Season Two], I myself thought of staring a blog named 'Secret Diaries' but my schedule never encouraged my positive thinking. Then during the shoot of Memories... of a Dead Township I really felt the urge to share my experiences with those 239 people on the FB page. How we were proceeding with the shooting --- it would  have been an enjoyable and thrilling story. This time I also opened up a blog, but that was all. The only thing I posted there was the welcome note. But this time, I'm happy that I'm doing what I wanted to do. See, time is changing. Finally plans are being converted into actions. You'll have this feel too, in a better way, once we enter the month of June.

Come, Play the Time...




Monday, May 14, 2012

The Love-Hate Relationship

May 11 : Pageviews 84
May 12: Pageviews 70
May 13: Pageviews 112
May 14: Pageviews 99

Today is the 15th May. We have only 351 days left. I was just scrolling through the stats. We got 365 pageviews in the last 4 days. Who are these people visiting this blog? The blog has only 17 followers and no one really comments here. these must be some random traffic coming in after the popular tags I've used in the previous posts. This traffic has no impacts on the fundraising process at all. By now, I am sure that no one takes this blog seriously. Actually they are right and they should not give a damn. If the film does not release in time it's not going to affect anyone except us. So you better go, by yourself a beer and never come back to this blog. If you ever feel like coming back ask yourself , have you done anything for this film yet! Don't say that you don't know what to do, we have posted often about it. Here is the umpteenth post, the complete thing

                                                   

                             "No Traditional Producers!
                                   No Traditional Distributors!
                                  This is your film!
                                 Step Forward, Get Involved!
                                Share, Donate, Make It Happen!"




well, but who the hell am I talking to? No one has read the post this far. They must have closed the tab and went back to google or yahoo or facebook or whatever! Who cares! All I can see is that I'm getting to sleep 3 hours a day for quite a time. Why am I doing all these fucking talk-talk? I think I should have joined a production house and chopped bloody soap operas! I wanted to serve someone, a group of people maybe. That way I could have served the mega watchers and made some money. But this pain in my stupid ass, I really don't know the source of it, has made me do idiotic things since I was 17. No one is a fucking producer here. Who's going to do what if I don't write this post today? Even one person with "proper intellectual nutrition" is not going to send us a rupee for this post. No one is reading this blog I know. And if you are reading you are certainly a ghost as this act of yours does not make an impact on any goddamn thing on earth. If not a ghost, you are not an alive thing at least. Things move, things do things to make a difference when they are alive. For instance, fucking me! Writing a long long bloody post for god knows what! Am I using the f-words too much? Oh God, look at the post's title! I was supposed to write something else here! Something like how much I love you and how it makes me get mad at you. You know, I used to be a writer and all that I write now are blogposts to convince people to contribute their hard-earned money. It feels like being an insurance agent! Why do I need to make this film? Can't I just kick my ass, accept that I have wasted seven invaluable years of my life for just nothing and try to find me a better job? The problem, as I see it, is that I can cheat on you (if you really exist) but I can't cheat on myself. But why can' I while everyone is doing it? Am I trying to be a messiah? Am I a megalomaniac who thinks that the sole purpose of his life is to save the world and the poor souls that dwell here?






I'm fucking tired (if not a fucking retard) and I need to sleep.


I should have titled this post "On Contradiction"!

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Silence for the Day



That's it

Mama Tumi Buro Hole Keno - Part 2

Jean-Luc Godard is working in 3D. Great news indeed. In 2010, he said that he likes invention of new technologies because there are no set of rules for any new medium. But did he really ever cared about the "rules"? Well, maybe he did and always tried to break them consciously. It's not actually the time for us to say "Goodbye to Language" as we still need to communicate in order to raise funds. Godard fought for his own cause. Rocha fought for his own cause. Mekas fought for his own cause. And we, are just trying to do the same.  If our cause matches with yours, take the step.

A Bengali Feature Length Film made on Financial Contributions from the People, when was it done for the last time?

Taking the step means doing whatever you can do. It doesn't mean just hitting the like button on Facebook. Of course you are welcome to encourage us by doing that, but that's not involvement really. We belong to the forum, Little Fish Eat Big Fish and we believe in those sentences written on our blog header. Mind me repeating that? "We don't believe film-making is a costly affair. For us, Film is not an Industry, rather an activism. It is not all about gloss." You can become a volunteer and be a part of this project. You can help the campaign to reach more people. You can contribute financially. Just let us know if you are willing to do anything at all. Someone said yesterday that she did not contribute because we keep on repeating the same thing. We always talk about the project and funds and almost never talk about the film. Dear friend, if talking was enough we would not have bothered to make a film. But just to clear it up, the film is a self reflexive one. The film is about how it is being made. It's a docu-fiction on the Indian independent film scenario. There are fake Indies in India like Indies promoted by Bollywood, Indies who never tried to do anything other than what industry does with their products. Novices who don't even know who Cassavetes was calls themselves Indies now-a-days. Who cares about what creative independence is? Who cares about whether an independent film be made of a Bollywoodish film language or not? Well, some people did. They were a gang of film activists. The clash between their stand-point and the society pushed them into a big crisis. There was only one way to get out of the situation. Someone needed to come up with a feature length film. Resources were tight and one of these young makers decided to break the wall. He made a film and how he made it is where the film reflects its own story.

Can we hope now you could get a clear idea of it? There are more fragments you'll never come to know until we come up with the film on 1st May, 2013.

So
Share. Donate. Make it Happen.

In 2007, at the age of 85, Jonas Mekas made 365 short films in 365 days. Can't you do this much for a film?
Do you love films?

Friday, May 11, 2012

Mama Tumi Buro Hole Keno - Part 1

" I scream/ You scream/ We all scream/ For ice cream"

So, isn't it better to scream together? Maybe you like the Vanilla, she likes chocolate and I prefer strawberry, but screaming together, you know, well you actually know what screaming together really means. Since we all go to the college named Ogiwawa, I believe one day we'll know to make the awful noise together. Confused? Use Google.
See, life's so easy and we still don't have a payment gateway!

If you don't know what the title means it's actually a dialogue from the last sequence of Subarnarekha aka The Golden Thread (1965) by Ritwik Ghatak. I find this line to be the most suitable title for this post and the previous post could have been titled "Dada, Ami Bnachte Chai" [Ref: Needed? Really? Google]. Sourav Ganguly probably just said good-bye to cricket yesterday. Now, what can we do? We can curse these franchises and sigh recalling that 183 or that debut at the Lord's. Basically that's all that we Bengalees always do and our list goes long from Subhashchandra Bose to Sourav Ganguly. But, how did we contribute really to our society? I believe, it's nothing but the hard work that was required to build up such a long list.
Bravo Tigers, that's why you are the national animal of India!

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine". So, I was not cursing you really. I was just adding some popular tags to this post so that this blog gets noticed. The word must get spread, you know, however possible. This new strategy is certainly better than supplying girls to film producers. You know about this project and you have not donated even as minimum as one rupee till date, how can you expect that people who never heard about it would donate. This is the basic reason I used words like Anurag Kashyap, SRK, Bollywood and DLF IPL in the previous post.
Did you guess it earlier?
Good!
Congratulations! Since you had guessed it before I said, you can now go forward and donate more than 10,000 to our film. Yes, finally someone listed his name in the slab, INR 10,000, the highest amount of donation from an individual till date. We just received it 24 hours ago. Still, this remains the One Rupee Film Project. Don't hesitate, come forward and contribute whatever you can. The first thing you need is to think. "Vabo, Vaba Practice Karo" (Well, Ghatak Again). Once you have read your thought-process, consolidate. Organize. No, I'm not asking you to become a Maoist, it's just how we all can scream together for that ice cream in that opening quotation. Crowdfunding, as we look at it, follows the basic from-the-mass-to-the-mass structure. You don't even need a promotional budget if you work hard and penetrate enough. Now, why should you help us? --- Well, there is no reason, No one should help anyone. Let all the starving people die, we know, they are going to heaven. Forget youthfulness, forget activism and find you voice in your passivity. Someday, your true friend death will be there to hug you because she knows, you've been dead long enough. What a great life! "I Die"--- this will be your final statement, just perfect, like a rhyme! People would say "He/She died" and no one would say "He/She Lived". Does it make a difference to you? Absolutely no.

Jai Shri Ramachandra Muhammad Rasulallah May God Bless You Jo Bole So Nihal and Jay Hind to Conclude!!

The 2nd part of this post will be up shortly

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Nothing Happens in Bengal Now-a-days

I don't know whether I should write or not. I don't know whether I should opt for corporate funds or use political influences to raise funds for the film. If you are really a follower of this blog you must have noticed the silence, how it reigned over this blog for a month almost.
Now it just feels like here I'm again to talk the same shit i.e the shit that you are witnessing quietly since the last week of February, 2012 and the one that might have bored you quite a lot with its "athanni de do bhai, bhagabaan tumhara bhala karega" attitude. You want rock, take this; if you are really a film-buff you must have followed the PassionForCinema website when it was there. I remember a post from Anurag Kashyap (though I don't think he is really "independent") and would like to cite that. It was a time when low budget films like 13B (Madhavan starrerand Straight (Binay Pathak Starrer) were getting released frequently. But people who used to think Bollywood is hopeless and should change never went to the theaters to watch these films. Rather they went for Rab ne Bana di Jodi (SRK- Anushka) just to write about how 'bad' the film was. This is when Anurag made a post and said that what happens on PFC is just "Baakchodi" and all that people do there is nothing but "Baakchodi"!

I liked it. But I had no idea that I'd have to face the same thing within a couple of years. Why do you say 'yes' when you mean 'no'? and if it's yes for real don't try to give excuses 'cause you just said it and never meant it.

See, there are a lots of ways to get money for making a film. But, we love to make it straight and simple. Have you ever heard about DIY (Do-It-Yourself)? Why are we begging? Believe me no one in our bloodlines was a beggar. It's just that if you send us money we'll be sure of your support and would ask for your contact details. Thus, we'd include your details in a database which shall be useful to further independent endeavors. No distributor or no production house can save the real "independent-minded" filmmakers. All the agencies, what they want is business and of course you know the differences between Industry and Art (Shilpo, the Bengali word for both). We are not being hysteric and trying to avoid bankruptcy as every filmmaker should do and we know very well that the proper level of potency can not be reached if you are not self-consuming (Ref: Aesthetics of Hunger, Rocha). What could be a better model than this one? As a forum, Little Fish Eat Big Fish has successfully recovered the production costs of the three DVDs they came up with in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and all we can hope is that ghosts did not buy those copies or ghosts did not download our films using torrent. More than 12k views on our youtube channel were not generated by ghosts, I assume. You make me believe that they were nothing but ghosts since we have only 46 names and 20-25 unnamed contributors on our list. Is it you who talks about how good our Grandfathers used to fuck in the good old days?? Counting from today, The One Rupee Film Project has only 355 days left before it is completed. After the precious DLF IPL is over on May 27th, would you mind to go to the bank and send in some money?? Would you mind telling your friends to do the same??? And if you drink worth INR 10,000 a month please don't send 100 Rs. You better recommend 100 students to contribute 1 Re each. We hope you do have precise idea about the costs of filmmaking. No, we are not making a Titanic or a Robot but we do need INR 300k at least.

The next part of the novella will be posted after we reach INR 50,000 (I mean if we ever reach there). Just today I was telling me not to react, but now I feel sometimes it's better to react. It gives you some comfort and makes you feel alive again
.
Thank you or whatever
Best regards and all that Shit.
Goodbye