History of cinema

History of cinema and a bloody spur, two most unique experiences now enshrined in our past for ever. Cinema’s power touched me in a certain uncanny way when I watched Godard’s history of cinema-I, first of the series of 10 films made for French TV after the world war II.

I can’t imagine, any other time when cinema’s art aspect was more palpable than it was during the 50 min screening of history. It was bold and certain; creative and powerful. It didn’t have much of a narrative. In fact it didn’t have any narrative. It had cinematic presence of the most potent kind. One that doesn’t lean on narrative, one that can carry on the weight of pure imagery and sound. It’s one thing to have passing ideas in your head, its another to make a movie out of it. Its one thing to have miles and miles of film stock of the 100 or so years of cinema history and another to comb through it to come up with any kind of sensible narrative. And besides its cinema we are talking about where somebody’s cinematic vision might not “make sense” yet be powerful enough to move you.

What else would you show in history of cinema? What else is there to it if not a concoction of imagery and sound? Take yourself 60 years back to a continent essentially ravaged by the modern warfare of unforeseen proportions and imagine what it would do to a society. We have witnessed wars in recent times in Afghanistan and Iraq. Godard’s words, “Forgetting extermination is the part of extermination.”

Godard was not exactly celebratory, eulogizing or blood thirsty in his conclusions or analysis. He was merely showing us cinema as it were, how it leaves its footprints in time, how it objectively lays bare the truth, how camera cannot cheat. His conclusion, “there is too much known about theater, there is too much unknown about cinematograph”. And the music, how it evolves and permeates deep within the narrative and imagery in an ice-water relationship. The images start to bleed emotions when music plays behind.

Godard sticks to the truth aspect with astute tenacity. You can’t judge whether he is being expository, pedantic or merely chronicler. We can’t attach too much meaning to anything simply because it existed in the past. Out of our overzealous nostalgia we glorify all our past. Past was simply is chunk of time. And just like present it had it own version of deglamorised realities. This is more visible in cinema than anything else. It was evolving, remember?

The film offered a chance to visit past and experience cinema and music the “way it was” and not the way it is made to out to be. It was an incredible experience for its creators, performers, lovers and moviegoers and to quote Godard again, “Histories of cinema, histories of blood, histories of night”.

Silent thunder

One of the challenges of finding good screenplays online is that most of what you see around is actually movies transcribed into written document than the other way round.

I am watching a TV show on super humans where I just saw a guy cut through a bullet using a sword as it flies past him; an incredible feat.

Time after time after time after time, I have trapped myself into the similar situation of self-doubt, inner battles, and warring worlds within me that I fail to be sickened by it any more. I am too sensitive to ignore it. My latent talents have begun to show to the surface and its time for me to shift gears. Be more confident and move forward with a certain assertion to conquer the situation.

I am trying to ramble away my certain anxieties and hiccups. If all goes well I might as well come up with some exciting piece of writing and more importantly actually write something. What a strange state of being, you despise the idea of writing yourself to boredom yet are charmed by it. I guess it’s not unusual.

While riding the elevator today I felt a bizarre loneliness; the kind of ice-cold loneliness that pisses on you. The silent hum of the moving stair shafts, the mundane robotic announcer got into my skin and suddenly I felt imprisoned by my circumstances. I became a little unsure momentarily. I looked around myself but failed to soak nothing but lonely air. The white light of the ambience seems too dull to pour shining into your darkened room. I don’t know whether you have ever been in such a lonely situation. You don’t know what to with it, whether to regard its virtue or be pissed by it or be sucked by it or all of these.

A strong urge to blurt my anger out at someone grew suddenly. If only I had somebody there whom I could take for granted in that moment. For once I didn’t want any niceties. For most part you crave more and more for loose behavior, any loose behavior, and begin to hate the order around you. I guess that’s nature’s way of shaking you out of your comfortable couch. Nature hardly bothers about manicures and embellishments.

The supreme contentment of having someone you can take for granted, treat loosely, without too much care is the most necessary freedom. And it’s a great realization during such utter self-desolation that such a person actually exists! Just when you thought that they don’t come anymore, your mind tumbles into her memories. You feel the power of human bond.

Forefront of an invention

One of those days when my blood has garnered ample rush to force me down on my laptop actually writing about nothing but myself. There have been many important discoveries, life changing experiences in past few days, setting the tone for my own “private revolutions”. Self-expression in words is such an evolved art that no matter how good you are someone has beaten you already. But first, a few lessons about virtues of patience.

I believed in great ideas, ideas glowing like the flash of a thousand suns. Ideas, which jump off the page and stick somewhere in reader’s consciousness. But such ideas would never occur to me. Why?
Am I not imaginative enough? May be not scholarly enough? The answer is rather simple. Not patient enough. It can’t be overemphasized. One of key motives of keeping one alive and poised is to be able to wait for the right moment. It may come or it may not. You might be delayed for several hours. But when it finally does come, you know it’s worth the wait. So why do they call it a block when it’s as natural as a flowing river. Well I guess those who called this block may only be thinking about the block of productivity during those lapses.

Great ideas from great people are highly inspiring. They act like a fuel for your writer’s soul. You got to keep the engine running. The body needs to be oiled regularly and that requires constant work. You work while working and you work while resting. The nature is at work all the time around you. You are a part of nature; hence work comes naturally to you. By work, I mean keep your mind busy and active all the time, because if that machine cranks up, you haven’t got any business being a writer. Just accept your fate. You wanted to be a writer, a writer you will be. But not without its tribulations; long cheerless hours where every tiny metaphor takes ages to scoop up only to be discarded at a later point in time if not by you then by your readers, if not by your readers then by your critics.

Sometimes I ask myself, who and what am I writing for. These are important questions, with no satisfied answers. I only tell myself that you have to write because you have to write. And like all endeavors of artistic pursuit, you will take your own time and energy to reach that state of seamless flow of energy from your brain to the blank screen in front. And no matter how good it feels to write the first time, it will always feel less good, even mediocre the second time. I don’t pay too much attention to “who am I write for” question simply because I feel too trivialized by my own trivial existence. I know it might sound like too much of an existential crisis for an aspiring writer. After all writers are supposed to be Gods and Gods don’t have existential crisis.