Should films be pure entertainment or be a window to various topical issues:A casual look through

The scenario of cinema in India is vastly changing today which prompts us to ask questions like this one. Cinema originated as a medium of expression in the winter of Paris in 1896 and since then in a 114 years have covered an artistic journey which other art forms have taken over 500.Primarily because, cinema has uniquely a mass appeal. Lots of people can experience cinema at the same time, where as only one person can read a novel at a time. Cinema can thus be very powerful as a medium and precisely for this reason we need to see cinema as a window of handling topical social issues rather than mindless entertainment churners. Or better if they can do both. One of the reasons to support this is the mass appeal of cinema. People follow see and read films with more intensity than any other forms of art. Scientifically film is a medium where we need to use our visual as well as our auditory senses, which is absent in other arts. Literature as well as painting use only visuals, music… primarily auditory. Cinema uses both, hence it is the most impressionistic on the human mind. It can cause a bigger impact than any forms of address. Also the way the silver screen is idolized it is very easy to depict a social ill if that ideal is used to depict that. The mass following a film or a film star has would be able to generate an awareness which is impossible in other forms of art. All the more to induce into production films which are tackling topical issues. Critics may argue does it actually make a difference in reality? Isn’t this assumption an idealization? Well, yes it is. Then again all assumptions are an attempt at reaching the better, chasing the ideal. It is in the follow up to Taare Zameen Par that we saw the film being shown to teachers in Bihar to help them deal with mentally backward children. How many of us actually did know of something called progeria before Paa? In Hollywood examples are rife. The collective amnesia in the US regarding the Vietnam war was shaken by Apocalypse Now. Very recently we had Ranchhoddas Shayamaldas Chhanchad talking of overhauling the education system. Whether we actually do it or not is the question of the government, but the path breaking success of 3idiots shows we are hearing. And after all it is “we the people” who make the government. We as humans can make all well… and it is films that can make us believe we too can make “Aal izz well”.

Knighthood for our beloved Sir Chinmoy Guha: a salutation

My sojourn away from prestigious JU was followed by my apprehensions about  Master's life at University of Calcutta.It was in a way diminished by the thought of classes from the man.When I actually got to see him,his particularly inspirational lecture about the process we were in.The rooms,the classes and even the benches made us feel the legacy we were inheriting.We felt "not only the pastness of the past,but of its presence". Through the Coleridge classes,he shifted the focus to the plethora of mystifying delusions that was Samuel Taylor.A panoramic view unfolded..and I saw before me how the man behind the camera...looks in front of it.The man who directed those class lectures was beheld...in inspiration.We peeped from behind the giant oak to witness Christabel's destiny and perhaps mankind's too...only to be purged of the sins by Thomas Becket.Canterbury Cathedral through Eliot was opened up like a vista in the rooms of Calcutta University.As sir would later say teaching Dryden,"the camera tilted down" and we came to see 20th century's void,the life of slippages was in front of us.We saw within all of us Didi and Gogo.All within this life of futile labour...the bondage of SISYPHIAN connotations culminating in mankind's utmost truth..the absence of everything.This final year of my CU days, we saw through Eliot,the man the poet and the life...the essence of Sidney's Apology and understood that Dryden is not a Dry-den.To go with all is the man behind the camera...the man we see outside the class rooms..beyond the lenses of class lectures...beyond the celluloid of the course...the MAN in the real drama,of university life...a friend...philosopher...and a POLE STAR to us wandering barks,and congratulating on being honoured with the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes académiques. SIR...with all my heart..Je vous salue.