Showing posts with label Independent Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Independent Film. Show all posts

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...




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
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Thank you or whatever
Best regards and all that Shit.
Goodbye