Thinking Screens

Okay! So I think the blog has started fine. Thanks to all of you who have commented; you guys and girls have set the mood and seriously, I really am suffering trepidations about how to keep up with your expectations. Have I gulped more than I can chew?

Phew…should have taken a few.

Dhriti, as I said, your comments on the country-city binary need longer posts for better justice. I will take it up later, we can surely do it in the classroom (or outside it). Speaking is easier than keying it down, specially when it is a legendary lethargic like me.

Actually, I was preparing for a different post. Thought will post something on the Pather Panchali and Godfather III clips. But I am – err – defeated! The Godfather clip was easy to search out, but ‘Durga’s death’ is nowhere in the net. There was one in the Google videos, but turned out to be something in a 3rd party hosted server which has closed down. Therefore thought of uploading the clip myself. Now that turned out to be a whimper of a task. Had a bad CD at my disposal. Clipped it in WMV format. Then tried to convert it into flv, the format YouTube uses. Landed up with a brilliantly rendered soundtrack with no visuals. I liked hearing the track, but it serves lesser purpose you see, that one can’t see. Therefore, converted to MPEG4 next. Uploaded in a ziffy this evening. Happily went to a friend’s house for a longish cinephilic sojourn (my idea of a weekend), came back and YouTube intimidated that the conversion has failed. Oh, well…I was about to write a long laudatory post on online film-archives. Need to attempt it tomorrow again.

As you can see it, this post falls under the category ‘meta’: posts on posts. And the blog is supposed to be a journal, so few posts will be rather random (like, if I don’t get my YouTube clips and if conversions fail). I like planning things more than executing them (thus, I am perfectly happy since I have made many legendary films in my daydreams!). I will be planning how this blog might turn out to be and talk a bit about my affair with films and Film Studies.

To go straight to Anamitra’s being aghast that I am really ‘underviewed’. I know you guys have seen more films than I have. The primary reason of course will be my lethargy and certain situations in life which don’t…well, let you view films. But it is also because of my bringing up in a city which is miles away from Kolkata. During our childhood in Durgapur, an industrial township with a couple and one cinema-halls, cine-going was frowned upon by parents and I was, sadly, an obedient little boy even in my teens. Television arrived late and in those era of 12 hours or so of only national television channel, one hardly saw much films. But I should say that I saw many quality films during those days in TV. Saw the entire gamut of Ray, Ghatak and many Indian New Wave films, for example, and a huge spate of Bengali mainstream classics.

From 1994, my connection with television snapped. Went to the hostel leaving home, was more enthusiastic about music and theater for a couple of years. The flirtation with theater was rather short, actually accompanied few friends who were more engaged. But music – it was the era of Suman and Mahiner Ghoraguli, somehow equivalent to the American ’60s – was heady! ’90s will forever remain musical to me.

But strangely films were an earlier love, a clandestine one, I can recall. I remember, each childhood year when we had our annual visit to Kolkata where all our relatives stayed, the journey from Howrah station to the southern part of the city was a magical mystery tour to me; I would stretch my neck outside the vehicle we were traveling and just ogled at and voraciously devoured all those magical posters and hoardings strewn all over the city (I still remember a huge one featuring Amitabh Bachchan in Yaarana). And also lapped up those shot-to-shot narrations by friends (with their imaginative falsifications, of course!) who were permitted regular visits to Amitabh-Mithun starrers. Cinema to me was largely unseen, a prohibited zone of magic and mystery. Much later, thanks to Satyajit Ray’s writings and lots of film-society journals, I was initiated into the aesthetic/arthouse aspect of cinema. But we had no film-clubs, no DVDs to download (I got a comp and a broadband just few years ago), no arthouse venues like those of Nandan in my childhood places.

Therefore, entering the Department of Film Studies in Jadavpur University was an entry into a goldmine for me (I am a rather newcomer in Kolkata, I settled here permanently in the latter half of the ’90s). I was dazzled! Just to mention, we didn’t have the bigger screen and better DVDs you see today. Smaller rooms, smaller screens, worse VHS tapes were all we had (couldn’t switch on English subtitles in English films, for example) and of course the annual feast at Kolkata film festival for 7 days.

But somehow, even after it became a profession and a career, this involvement with the screen has still not lost its charm for me. I am an erratic viewer. I have my phases when I become engrossed with particular types of films (I am into Noir these days). I can’t venture into other sorts during those phases. My postgraduate years were deep into Godard, Antonioni, Pasolini, Welles and Ghatak particularly, largely European cinema which was new to me. These days, I see less and think more about them. I haven’t watched TV for the last 4 years, believe me. No, not even HBO or other movie channels which I used to watch for hours earlier. Suddenly I outgrew contemporary Hollywood and longed for the classical B/W classics.

Will be happy if I can generate this contagious fever called movies in this blog (expect some loony posts!). Your generation is inundated with it; I think that’s a problem, being overfed.

So, the first ordeal is to unlearn, erase memories and look into her – the screen – and get smitten. Let’s see…