Skyward Fire

As of this moment, I am with a group of eight people who have assembled at Pharaoh’s Koleos, Twin Towers, Patna, for the state’s first ever IndianAutuer Cinephile Meet, about which, I had previously blogged about in one of my previous posts. Originally, the event was planned at Cafe Olive, but we changed venues after informing everyone due to some technical difficulties. The list of attendees includes:

• Suraj Chandrakar
• Vishal Anand
• Sharad Arya
• Harish Gupta
• Rahul Sehgal
• Vishal Sharma
• Gaurav Dixit
• Ujjwal

Discussions on the following pre-planned agendas took place, in no definite order. The views of the attendees has been presented as-is, and it isn’t my responsibility in case of factual errors or views/opinions from other people that affect another person, group of people or an organization.

1. The Current State of Indian Cinema – As far as Bollywood is concerned, the one and only objective of mainstream film makers is profitability. The audience is fed with what they want, and the bottom-line is all the audience wants is utter masala crap. Indian audience is very naive, and doesn’t really demand much, except for a fairly limited number of media stereotypes. Although independent cinema welfare groups like Indian Auteur have come up are acting as catalysts for bringing about the much needed change, there is still a very long way to go until a revolutionary change. There is a lot of random dancing around trees, unrealistic glamour, hogwash stories, useless item numbers, flat stories and a whole lot of other pile of other steaming bullshit that needs to go away.
2. Cinema in Bihar – The state lacks a proper infrastructure that is much needed by some honest fans in here. Lack of a proper cinema hall in the state adds to the plight of piracy, where people prefer the easy way out, and rent a pirated DVD or other illegal digital media format and get their way it the way they want to. Also, a major cash machine in here is the Bhojpuri film industry, whose number of audience has greatly risen in the past few years, and it’s safe to say the same happened with the onset of the new State government under the leadership of Chief Minister Mr. Nitish Kumar, who continues to head the one-man army in a desperate attempt to carry Bihar to a new era of overall development. In the process, the Government sanctioned huge amounts of money for development of cinema hotspots in town. A recent consequence of the same is the brand new face of Patna’s legendary Mona Theatre, which has been a part of the state’s legacy for decades. The establishment has been given a facelift based on the concept of PVRs in the metros of India.
3. Animated Movies made in India – Basically when it comes to animated movies, us Indians seem to think of something that’s only made for children. This particular feeling amongst the masses is very depressing, since this feeling is what hasn’t given way to proper animated movies in the country, and all we have been left with is bull-vomit like Bal Hanuman, Bal Ganesha, Krishna, and other technically retarded ‘movies’ that were made just for the heck of shaking down cash from the parents’ money while the kids had a forced fun time. There is a tough road ahead for proper animated movies to be made and appreciated in the country.
4. Oscars & Indian Cinema – This particular agenda has been discussed by me personally over here. In depth analysis of all issues concerning Oscars and Indian Cinema comes down to one conclusion. It’s always the most undeserving candidates who have the audacity to challenge something honestly good. Jealousy, controversy and personal ego has no place when it comes to a good piece of work like Slumdog Millionaire, which has been critically acclaimed every where else, but had to face some pointless agonizing controversy for some peoples’ personal reasons.
5. Alternate Ending Brainstorming Session – To make the IndianAuteur meet-up dominate on the fun side too, we decided it would be a nice idea to sign off on a happy note. We decided to come up with alternate endings of our favorite movies. This is the part where we decided to let our brains work free and come up with some crazy ideas. The first movie that came into most of our minds was the unbelievable suckfest called Spiderman 3. It was a universal opinion that that particular movie would have been way better with just Venom on focus, and less of that emo dance sequence. The movie could have ended on Venom’s winning note, instead of what actually happened. Other notable mentions for alternate endings were by Harish (The Butterfly Effect), Ujjwal (Dogma), and not so surprisingly by Vishal for The Dark Knight.

Photography by Oigs

At around 3:30 PM, our pre-planned discussion session came to an end, after which we had the much awaited lunch. Post-lunch, it was time for a very personal screening of City of God on DVD at Vishal’s place. No one except me had seen the movie earlier, and it was loved by everyone. We had also planned a screening of Man on Wire, but time didn’t permit, and that’s how IndianAuteur’s first edition of the Patna meet-up came to an end. And we already have a second edition of the meet-up being planned on a larger scale in the coming months, so watch out this space for details on IndianAuteur Patna Meet-Up 2.0.

Update: On a very important side note, the Indian Auteur website is now online, with the first batch of reviews put up on the launch issue. Do give that a look!