the white ribbon . earth . inception . udaan

in' the white ribbon' the claustrophobia of living in a idyllic village under the eyes of god leads to strange goings on when sudden actors of vicious brutality begin to happen. when the local schoolteacher begins to suspect his students and the kids of the local pastor the world war breaks out. like in cache the other michael haneke film, the tension builds in long silences and spartan conversations. terrific film.

gorgeous black and white heroic iconography in service of state propaganda- 'earth' unashamedly proclaims the victory (if only a moral one) of the workers over the evil landowners. a tractor arrives in the collective farm amid great fanfare and silhouettes of farmers against the sky but does not work until the workers use their own urine to start it; a man dances madly in joy in the evening in the middle of the farm and is shot dead; his body is carried in a funeral procession for a hero as the earth pays homage with rain, fertility and the bough of an apple tree that caresses his face.

chrstopher nolan's 'inception' takes one hollywood action film and puts it inside another and then does it again and again until it does not really matter what's going on. it is a feat of complex storytelling and can be appreciated like one would a complicated matrix- but the characters are all (as in most action genre hollywood films) one dimensional . the problem is that. we have seen all the films before, no matter how complicated the package- at the end it all seems familar territory. but instead of nitpicking on all that i you go in purely for spectacle then the folding of paris into an m c escher; or the levitating action sequence in a hotel corridor are brilliant while the final action sequence manages to play with three time scales in three different spaces.

there is nothing not to like about 'udaan' but there is not much to love. jamshedpur and its industrial landscape along with the perfect planned streets and gardens are the set for an oppressive father and his strained relationship with his son. its all competently played out- no one overacts; no one is brilliant. it all plays out in perpetual good taste- understated, serious, realistic and believable for most of the time. the few flare ups seem implausible and the perpetually scowling father seems like a caricature.

satantango

the satantango seems to be a dance between characters forced to live together on a collective farm in hungary. in this claustrophobic space jealousy, guilt, anger play out between the characters as each looks for ways in which to escape but are held in place by their own greed and insecurity. a saviour arrives in the form of a charismatic partner of their who had disappeared a year and half back. he herds them together like the cattle they are and makes them follow him towards a distant dream. these apparitions of a better future built on collectivism keep each individual in a perpetual state of stillness. nothing is moving here. shot in murky black and white the film moves at a glacial pace through its more than 7 hours of running time. slow languorous track shots linger over the mundane everyday details and their decrepitude; long slow movements reveal crumbling buildings and a vast empty landscape. at the heart of the film is a chilling murder of a cat and a suicide in a church that for me encapsulated the casual brutality of everyday banalities at the end of utopia.

film roundup

fearless – the hunterwali story. arteries of bombay . dharavi – a new beginning . the burning sun. the place promised in our early days . the sky crawlers . underworld evolution . twilight . the sound of music

i should start at the very end- or the last film that we saw last night. ‘fearless –the hunterwali story’- a homage to nadia and her films made by a descendant. like all biopics, overly respectful and loving, but redeemed by the fact that the characters were fascinating and terrific entertainers in real life and on screen, whether that is telling stories of injuries on set or the shots of death defying stunts on trains. reading laura mulvey parallely (courtesy sur) gives those sequences even more meaning.

i also saw a set of films divisions documentaries back to back the previous night- all about the city of bombay. ‘arteries of bombay’ after a voiceover introduction proceeds to follow the local trains as they ferry goods and passengers across the city. made in the year when i was born – the city seems to be the ideal 20^th century city- progressive, energetic and alive. the madness of the city is all brought under control by the machines of the railway. a propaganda film about a citizens and a government officers cleanliness drive in dharavi ‘ dharavi- a new beginning’ is the worst kind of state sponsored film there can be. sanctimonious, badly shot with a terrible voiceover, whom does it think it is convincing. this film was made in the 1990s just before mukesh mehta flew in from american with his bag of goodies for the state and the developers that made them turn dharavi into a hellhole again in their rhetoric. ‘the burning sun’ plays with the distance between imagination (or rhetoric) and reality within the everyday. somehow managing to stay above the cool/cute juxtaposition of rich / poor, the film interviews maharashtra housing board architect, unsuspecting mr kasbekar as he plans efficient block housing for the slum dwellers in his office, and the ground realities of toilets and water on the streets.

another set of films over the weekend were the anime features. ‘the sky crawlers’ are a group of perpetually young fighter pilots kept in an interminable war in a possible future. an undefeated enemy is essential for peace within a society. the film pays obsessive attention towards sounds and silences in the sky and on the empty tarmac of the airport. another film in makoto shinkai’s series about unbridgeable distances between people is ‘the place promised in our early days’. a tower rises on an island in the distance in another country as two boys obsess about building an airplane to get there. a girl with an intimate connection to the tower that connects to other dimensions joins them. when the connection between the three is broken each longs in their own way to complete the circle. like the other films this one too is lovingly meticulous in the way that the light and sound of a space makes into sublime the details of the everyday.

it is amazing how vampire films have moved away form the horror genre that i otherwise keep far away from into others. vampires are good looking in a cold kind of way; and so are werewolves in a more animalistic way. like two poles. so the conflict between them sometimes is an action film like the ‘underworld’ series of which i saw ‘evolution’ yesterday; or a teenage romance/ coming of age (?) like the first of the ‘twilight’ series. in both a strong woman plays the central role. kate beckinsale in black leather plays tough beating up the boys in the first and in ‘twilight’ kristen stewart is not afraid as she is surrounded by and falls in love with a vampire. full of silly lines and predictable plot twists both films are guilty pleasures.

it is impossible to be objective about a film when your school partner through 5 years of school sang ‘raindrops on roses’ for every singing competition and won- every single year. so you are singing along knowing every word and remembering how you were identifying with different characters at different times as you are growing up. last week, it was the sardonic uncle.

KRVIA Fellowship 2010-2011, Call For applications

Call for applications - Krvia fellowship 2010-2011

Since its inception, KRVIA has located its architecture education in a wider format of cultural studies. A multi-disciplinary enquiry and a strong urban focus, form two, often overlapping spines of its curriculum. Rather than limiting architectural practice to a supply-demand logic, it emphasises a theorisation of the contemporary situation. In doing so we hope to see the context in a new perspective and perhaps suggest new trajectories of development.

In order to allow graduates, who have the urge to return to larger questions regarding our discipline, KRVIA has instituted the KRVIA Fellowship Programme. The institute has been running this programme since 1998. KRVIA invites proposals from architecture graduates wanting to explore ideas in the fields of architecture, art, technology, humanities and urban studies. The programme will offer three fellowships of Rs. 8000 per month for a period of nine months. The criteria of selection will be, a well worked out research question and a plan for its execution. The form of the research is open and explorations in various media are encouraged. Fellows will spend 20 hours in the institute including 5 hours of teaching. In addition, the Fellows are also free to join the KRVIA Design Cell, over and above these 20 hours, for which they will be separately remunerated.

The deadline for sending in proposals is July 24, 2010. Shortlisted candidates will be called for an interview on 31st July. The Fellowship programme commences on August 2, 2010 and ends on April 30, 2010. The final report will have to be submitted along with a presentation one month after the completion of the fellowship period. A mid-term report will be submitted in mid November. The institute reserves the right to terminate the fellowship if the work is found unsatisfactory. KRVIA will assign one/two resource persons to each fellow. Fellows will have to regularly report to them.
The proposals submitted should contain the following:
1.Issues that the proposal wants to address along with an overall research question
2.A research plan including methodology, work plan and schedule.
3.A brief curriculum vitae
On the day of the interview candidates should carry with them samples of work. The work may or may not be related to the topics of their proposed research but should demonstrate the candidate’s ability to successfully complete the fellowship.

Kindly send all proposals to
Attn: Rupali Gupte,
Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture and Environmental Studies,
Vidyanidhi Marg, J.V.P.D Scheme, Mumbai 400049.
Email: admn.krvia@gmail.com , cc: rupali.gupte@gmail.com
For any enquires please feel free to call, Rupali Gupte, Fellowship Co-coordinator, 9821012510.

summer hours

the house in 'summer hours' tells the story of every house. through the years every life collects objects associated with it. at the end you are left with a collection of artefacts valuable and mundane, each with its own stories and mythologies that inevitably get passed on to the next generation. these fragments don't mean the same thing to the new owner anymore and should they? every generation makes its own stories shaped only through a refracted history. when the exquisite furniture and art of a house is auctioned off some of the family try and hold on to the past while others move away. unlike other family dramas there is no collection here of eccentric types. instead ordinary people try and deal with their futures while trying to come to terms with the pasts. at the end a coda of sorts replays a fun filled summer day in the beginning. a birthday party. bittersweet beauty.

raavanan . 5 cm per second . rebuild of evangelion 1.0 . raiders of the lost ark . i am legend

it goes to show how much difference an actor makes to a film. a shot by shot clone of 'raavan' but such a massive difference. while abhishek desperately scowls away and his snarls appear more comic than menacing, vikram is the real deal. even the chemistry with aishwarya works so much better and the film is not so much of a downer. still no masterpiece but with flourishes of incredible beauty. the rain drenched mountains and a delicate heroine up to her knees in mud; a villain who might have had more nuances had he not been saddled with those silly manic sounds and a hero who is anything but pure; in a dance ballet of sorts. she falls in slow motion from a branch that protected her fall over and over again.

if 'voices from a distant star' was about unbridgeable distances in the cosmos the triad of related films '5 cm per second' makes those distances those within the everyday. as he waits alone in a train compartment stranded in a blizzard the wheezing, creaking sounds of the tracks and the buzz of the electric bulb keep him company in his impatience. in the second story a schoolgirl crush on a distant classmate in the company of the ocean surrounding the island and in the third the city that does not allow an enounter between neighbours.

unlike '5cm' which attempts much more than a conventional anime film, 'rebuild of evangelion' plays like a long episode of an animax serial. the first of 4 films i read. in this one tokyo 3 is a massive machine that rises and collapses from the ground at the flick of a button. from a city with supermarkets and schools it turns within minutes into a fighting machine against the 'angels' who have taken over the earth and are intent on wiping out humanity.

in 'i am legend' the 'angels' are human beings turned into some kind of nightmarish nocturnal creatures when a cure for cancer goes wrong. will smith is the lone survivor in new york city searching for a cure in 'ground zero'. spectacularly conceived emptiness of streets inhabited only by animals escaping from the zoo. in the end, all of humanities hopes rest on a vial in a commune of humans in vermont. suburbia is salvation.

nowadays with the special effects machinery completely swallowing up a hollywood blockbuster film to see 'raiders of a lost ark' again was to remember that there were once characters and plots that were funny and entertaining and did not always come out of a box. although these characters did end up being boxed later.

shor

i woke up early to finish watching manoj kumar’s over the top philosophical treatise on life’s little ironies ‘shor’. knowing no such thing as subtlety he hammers home bittersweet contradictions- a man who cant stand the noise of the city and ends up deaf, a boy who cant speak and when he does his father ant hear him, a mill workers strike and mill owners debts that end up closing the mill- the perpetual swing between happiness and utter pathos continues unabated throughout, even as our hero suffers through it all steadfast with his hand over his face. even when the rain does finally come it brings with it equal measures of sensuality (how he lingers over those drenched bodies!) and pain (roof tops leak as poor people shiver in the cold). in between incredibly conceived sequences- like the opening montage or the incredible picturization of ‘ek pyar ka nagma hai’ (on the beach with nanda through filters and mirrors) are tedious plot twists underlining and highlighting and making bold (and in italics) the premise of the film. the comedy sub sub plot is unnecessary and annoying. jaya bhaduri plays a role she almost redoes in zanzeer a year later and a sher khan pathan best friend also appears here before the amitabh bachchan film. youtube clip of ek pyar ka nagma here.

also a quick art note; shreyas karle’s pseudo-naïve science about the ordinary in the encounters yesterday. playful and irreverent.

raavan . purple rain . crazy heart . precious . alice in wonderland . its complicated . when in rome

even though by now all agree that raavan is awful, i feel i need to put in my two bit too.. its awful. especially abhishek. aishwarya is bad and vikram is good. the movie is overshot- according to me and the music is ordinary; the politics (?) silly. but everything might even have been bearable if it was not for abhishek the candy floss boy being so out of his depth, thrusting his lower jaw forward and with make up that looks that he is half way through his facial. in comparison vikram reeks testosterone.

my day was made yesterday by ‘purple rain’. early 1980s prince knowing that he is going to be a star. maybe he is just like his father, beating up the women he loves but when he is on stage- he is pure fire. sexy sexual sizzling and singing up a storm. although when doves cry does not have a stage performance it is still a great song; but lets go crazy kicks up manic energy right at the beginning, ‘the beautiful ones’ and ‘darling nikki’ are jaw droppingly good and the title track at the end gave me goosebumps. ‘i would die 4 u’/ ‘baby i’m a star’ at the end are fabulous dance songs.

and then there are the in-flight movies. on the way to amsterdam it was oscar time.’ crazy heart’ with jeff bridges proving he can act asa down and out country star rising out of alcoholism through love. aw. precious- another loser makes it big film. overweight black girl fights prejudice, incest and abuse to lead a normal life. on the way back – ‘its complicated’ that even meryl streep couldn’t save. divorced housewife has affair with married ex-husband. supposed to be complicated- but actually- who cares? ‘alice in wonderland’ that goes tim burton goth for no goddamn reason and worst of all ‘when in rome’ rom com about a magic fountain in rome. what are danny devito and angelica huston doing in bit roles in this piece of fluff? star of the film is the guggeheim museum in new york and its role in helping the lovers discoer true love.

amsterdam

the museum square

van gogh museum

the first walk


hotel

amsterdam school

the welcome lunch


the reitveld academy


the boat ride

irma boom books


the streets

arcam

nemo



the thonik presentation

starters on the wall

the making of pasta to lullaby music

main course - every circle is marked by a distance from the restaurant and has food that comes from that far away - from the backyard through to stardust via finland and australia. the mound of hard salt is to be broken with a hammer to unearth two potatoes.

proef- the restaurant

dessert- to share half a plate

eidenhoven

design academy eidenhoven

the white table for lunch


color exhibition at designhuis

mvrdv at eidenhoven

the amsterdam school?

hotel room

red light walk

red light drink


traveling theater festival at nai

picasso on the streets

kunsthal


the pathe square

waiting at rotterdam station

the farewell song

the farewell

last night bar - sonalee

rembrandtplein

got back last night from a trip for 5 days in amsterdam. we were there as guests of the dutch dfa looking at developing possible networks and collaborations between dutch design fasion and architecture and indian ones. buy also it was fabulous weather in amsterdam and we spent a lot of time walking those uniformly pretty streets in the day and hopping from bar to bar at night. with me were anand, shantanu and srivatsan completing the architects circle. the designers were represented by bhaskar, hridayash, raggu, sonali; while for fasion there was amit, harmeet and the colonel. the first day we spent at the van gogh museum- and no matter what you may see in reproductions in reality the paintings are visceral, bursting with an internal energy that can tire you out. the next days were spent visiting various dutch design organizations including some design schools, the state sponsored design support institutions including the nai in rotterdam.other highlights- the food design restaurant where each course came along with a story, the irma boom book exhibition and the presentation by thonik.

namrata / the coming of the rains