Top Ten City films: India

Instinctively, I dislike these top ten lists of any and everything. Especially when related to the arts, maybe related to a sporting event in athletics it makes sense. So it was with a bit of scepticism that I opened a list of Top Ten City Films in an architecture magazine. The list was interesting in that it added Godard's work to the usual Hollywood films, but nothing else. It was one of those lists that 'pretend' to be international, but are actually very Hollywood oriented. I mean can you really talk of city films without the Italian Neo-Realists (or Antonioni's work even later on- I am thinking of 'Red Desert' ).
But it did set me thinking. Could I try to compile a list of top ten city films from India.  My list would be from my area of knowledge, where my limited knowledge of Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu cinemas would be very evident. But let's try it anyway.
My Top Ten city Films from India would be:

1. 'Neecha Nagar': 1948, Chetan Anand. Hindi. Pretty spectacular script and bits of inspired direction.
2. 'Do Bigha Zameen': 1950, Bimal Roy. Pretty much 'the' film of rural migration in India.
3. ' Apur Sansar': Satyajit Ray. Doesn't need any comment. Still stunning.
4. 'Mahanagar': Satyajit Ray. Good but not a 'great' Ray film.
5. 'Megha Dhaka Tara': Ritwik Ghatak. The greatest Indian family story ever told.
6. 'Subarnarekha': Ritwik Ghatak: the 'big' idea film in India. Matches Godard or any European.
7. 'Sheher aur Sapna': KA Abbas: Not a great film but a damn good city story.
8. 'Footpath' : Zia Sarhadi; Dilip Kumar in a Neo-Realist film set in Mumbai. 
9. 'Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan': Saed Mirza: great film, rarely seen. 
10. 'Chakra': Rabindra Dharamraj: a great story, messed up filmmaking, but it still has the city in it.

I would love to include many others- 'Deewar' and 'Dharavi' come to mind, but the list has ten only. Mrinal Sen's 'Calcutta 71' and 'Ek Din Pratidin' are great city films. As is probably 'Delhi 6', Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's lovely film. And then there is 'Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron'....

Maybe you see only my biases here: I do like the work of the IPTA oriented communist filmmakers, I do like the Neo Realists and I do like structured films that have a clear structure underlying there stories.

What about you? What do you think of this list?

The Life of a Film/Movie

Writing this title became a bit of an adventure: are we talking of films when made on celluloid film? Is it the correct description to apply to projects that are produced and consumed digitally- are they 'films'? If the projects never reach a cinema hall, are they movies?
To anyone who creates or consumes audio visual media, this is a familiar linguistic dilemma.
Traditionally, films- both negatives and prints of celluloid based products, ended up in the bangle making industry. It appears that the 'traditional'/ industrial age use for movies that no one wanted to see anymore or the prints were damaged beyond repair with age was the bangle industry. Of course if your movie was a hit, you protected its prints with your life, as even old ones could be milked in the cinema halls. Some of the movies and their prints did end up in the National Film Archives, but I am sure the number of prints there does not compare with the number of movies produced in India.
If you ask me where are the negatives of my 'film' products: Diploma Film at FTII or short work at Children's Film Society, I would honestly have to say I don't know. (Not that I've tried looking for them, as I do have digital copies).
Then came the age of video, when we did TV and documentary work on various formats of video tape. Work that I had produced on my own had to be finally thrown away as I couldn't find video tape recorders that could play them. A few VHS tapes remain, for the moment I have a friend in Meerut who sells antiques and has a few working VHS machines, so some hope there.
With the internet age I guess everything gets dumped onto youtube/vimeo or some such website where we hope it shall survive for a while. I was reading about the use of Blu Ray DVDs by google for youtube, to archive material that doesn't get seen very often.
But the reason I am writing is not to describe the social phenomenon listed above. I want to ask a more immediate question: when does a filmmaker like me, working on commissioned work, actually stop paying attention to a product, stop updating its facebook page or twitter feed or whatever I do to promote a documentary?
The question came to me as my documentary for PSBT-DD The Caregivers, made over a year and a half ago is generating lots of interest still amongst audiences. Someone showed it in Tirupati (details on the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/documentarythecaregivers), where audiences loved it.  I was again tempted to pay more attention to the exhibition of this project. But I have to earn a living and perforce have to move onto other projects.
What do I do? I honestly don't know. I do know that the documentary is far from dead-the producers have not even put it online.
But to devote time here means I have to cut myself off from other activities.
That is why I'm wondering is there a time when one detaches oneself from a project?
I don't know. Do you have an answer?

Satyajit Ray's Aaranyer Din Raatri

I was saw Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri at FTII, must have been in first year. I thought it was one of the most magical films I'd ever seen. But Ray was not 'fashionable' amongst FTII students in those days, so this was one of those hidden passions- it existed but you never discussed it in public. I am anyway not the kind of person that discusses favorite films with anyone.
Years passed, passions got covered in layers of dust in one's heart, while the mind and body worked away to earn a living.
Last year, looking for something else, I found the script of Aranyer Din Raatri. It was in a blog, can't say if it was transcribed or written by the author. Downloaded the script, kept it on my computer but never read it, planned to do it one fine day.
This week I suddenly opened the script, read it -and found it to be incomplete. So I started looking around on the internet, but no I couldn't find the script anywhere now.
But the movie itself is up on youtube for all to watch.
Watching it now, the magic comes rushing back. Ray's impeccable control over script, actors, camera and sound, is so unusual it's haunting.
To remember that its made in 1969, the same year as 'Bhuvan Shome' and 'Uski Roti', is to wonder why this film is not more highly rated. Ray in his writing seemed to rate it highly. It seems to have recieved the usual dazling reviews Ray garnered worldwide.
But really, its a film to rated very near to the magic of the Apu Triology, the film where Ray steps out elegantly into a more 'modern' structure. Though of course there's Tagore in there-Ghare Bhaire was Tagore's stepping out into a new world.
The film also led me into reading more of Ray's writings on cinema. The way he diagnosed the situation of cinema in India and his own place is crazily relevant even today. Even for small time aspirant's like me.
That's why I seem to go into Satyajit Ray and Aranyer di Raatri. Its inspiration at its purest.
And courtesy of the internet, instantly accessible.

RIP: PK Nair

Another icon of Indian Cinema passed away this week: PK Nair.

 Founder Director of the National Film Archives of India, the pioneer of film preservation in India. There isn't much that I can add about Nair Sahab that is not already well known.

In our days at FTII (in another era!), Nair Sahab was the quiet figure sitting in the back seats, with a torch mounted pen and a pad in hand, silently making notes in every screening. It was the first time a lot of us had seen the device- a torch with a ball point pen. when I asked he said it was given to him somewhere and was useful, and easier to use than the separate devices (torch & pen) that he used till that time.

To the students of FTII, Nair Sahab and the NFAI were of course magic. Every film opened our eyes and minds into new directions, new cultures, new ways of using film language. Before you knew it, we had drifted away from the worlds of Hindi Cinema and Hollywood that we had grown up with.

In the eighties, (the pre VHS, DVD & online days of cinema), NFAI used to get a fair amount of visitors from the cinema industry, some wanting to catch up on movies, others benchmarking themselves against classics. At those times, you got to see the respect that Nair Sahab really commanded. I guess he must have needed that respected, otherwise the producers would never agree to give him film prints for preservation.

If you spoke to him Nair Sahab could tell you fascinating stories of how each print in the archives had been procured. Though to be fair, at that time we were too young to appreciate the value of those stories.

I did see him in Pune in recent years, the physical decline was there but the spirit was there for all to see. I guess the going away of the body was a matter of time.

Like Prof Satish Bahadur before him, PK Nair started a new path. Now that he is no more, we as his students, have to follow on that road.

Can't let the flame die out!