AUGUST 2013 | ISSUE 1 5/SYMPOSIUM 4/INTERVIEW Umbra is a journal of screen culture published by Lightcube Film Society. The present edition carries interviews, essays, opinion pieces, a symposium on film societies and film listings of umbra the month. 02 A TABLOID OF SCREEN CULTURE umbra EXCLUSIVE COLLEGE Film Festo is a film club which is run by the students of Jadavpur University. It first came into existence in the latter half of the year 2011 when a group of students hailing from the Arts Faculty of the university decided to start a club which would encourage serious study of cinema and its peripheral fields among the students. Shounak Mukhopadhyay ilm Festo aspires to not merely just screen films as most university film clubs and societies have done in the past but also to bring into focus, through discussion and debate, the nuances of this art form. We believe this will Fassist any discerning viewer/member of the club in understanding and appreciating the increasingly important role being taken up by cinema in forming our collective perception of the world at large. Kolkata was once a thriving center for the film society movement (as well as one of its founding centers); however, over the years, the fervor for the movement has decreased considerably, leaving thereby a gaping void in terms of any significant discourse among Image Courtesy: Donnabelle Garga, who also generously provided the text below. the people about films. It is as a reaction to this void that our film club has been formed. A film club, as we understand it, is not just supposed to provide people the opportunity In 2010, the Indira Gandhi National Council of Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi approached legendary film of watching films but also to grant people historian B.D. Garga to secure his vast collection of film memorabilia to then house it in their center in the liberty to make their qualms about the New Delhi. To accompany this sea of material, he composed an introductory note and an inventory list. epoch’s cinema be heard in a public forum. It has been observed that such places have given hitherto inexperienced yet extremely enthusiastic film lovers the urge to turn to atyajit Ray was the product not of want my house to be walled in on all sides filmmaking as well. For instance, Satyajit a film school but of a film society and my windows to be stuffed. I want the AN INVENTORY Ray, one of the founding members of the film which he himself helped found. cultures of all lands to be blown about my society in Kolkata, in the days before he was a Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be RE-SILVER GELATIN PRINTS: Gelatin silver film director, once wrote a rather “explosive” Rivette are the “children of Henri blown off my feet by any.” prints are the most usual means of making black and white prints from negatives. They essay on what he considered to be the SLanglois and the Cinematheque Francaise” are papers coated with a layer of gelatin which substandard films churned out by the Bengali where they sat six hours a night, seven While a Film Archive performs the essential contains light sensitive silver salts. They were film industry. The failure of this particular days a week, getting a cinematic education task of spreading film culture and cinematic developed in the 1870’s and by 1895 had essay in garnering much attention amongst unequalled in its breadth and diversity education, its main function is to explore generally replaced albumen prints because they were more stable, did not turn yellow and were the filmmaking or film-watching populace anywhere in the world. Richard Roud, and preserve films- preferably all films, but simpler to produce. Gelatin silver prints remain only copper-fastened his determination to that keen observer of world cinema, says, because of the limitations of resources- the standard black and white print Silver gelatin change the contours of Indian filmmaking. “It seems to me that the significance of the money, men, space- it has to be selective. It is prints are unique for their handcrafted nature, Needless to say, film society, should ideally development of the film libraries of the a fair assumption that more films (of the silent depth of image, quality of tones, overwhelming beauty, lengthy tradition, and the fact that it provide an environment for its members to world corresponds to a certain coming-of- era, at least) have disappeared than survived. utilizes a precious metal. James Reilly, director engage directly with the ideas propagated age of the cinema.. a Bertolucci tells us that How much of Lumiere, Melies, Feuillade, of the Image Permanence Institute at Rochester within the films screened; without these, he was influenced by Von Sternberg in the Ince, Griffith, Pabst, Sjostrom, Dupont, Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, there is hardly any reason for anyone to make lighting of The Conformist. Straub has been Chaplin, Lang, Max Linder and Clair, to tells us that it takes a sophisticated and costly process to manufacture silver paper, and, when films at any rate. Discourse of this sort has influenced by Lubitsch’s films, Godard by name a few have been lost through willful the market becomes so small that companies been replaced with sub-par reviews of films Dreyer. These were not films they saw at their destruction or plain neglect. How many cannot make the profit they want, they will stop in popular newspapers and magazines which, neighbourheed theatres-they were Archive million meters of priceless documentary producing silver paper. in most cases, completely reject an analytical films seen at Cinematheques.” material that could bring alive whole eras SILVER GELATIN PRINT (FIBRE AND RC, mode of reading films and, thereby, render have vanished. In our country, there is no RESIN COATED): Fibre print is a black and cinema powerless. Perhaps, India is in need Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, trace of the films of studios like Ranjit, Sagar, white photograph processed from a gelatin of a Slavoj Zizek to radicalise the way cinema Saeed Mirza, Adoor Gopalakrishnan all Imperial, Maharashtra Film Company and emulsion of silver within the paper. Although is treated in our country. had the benefit of National film Archive umpteen others. As a result, the silent era of much more labor intensive than printing onto RC paper, which can be machine printed, fibre screenings as students of the Film Institute Indian film is a total blank. All that survives prints must be printed by hand. Aesthetically, As a means of keeping this initial premise of India and their works bear traces of are titles and a memory. they produce crisp imagery, detail and greater alive the first ever program organized by Antonioni, Bresson, Godard, Jancso and tonal range when compared to other prints. the club was a discussion on “Nudity and other European filmmakers. Mrinal Sen, Not only in our country but even in the more Archivally, they can endure 100+ years. RC prints are also black and white photographs. the Use of Slang in Cinema”. The speakers Shyam Benegal, M S Sathyu, Govind advanced countries like the United.States The paper differs basically from fibre-based invited to address this topic included film Nihalani, Basu Chatterjee, Aravindan, Girish many masterpieces of the first fifty years have papers in that they have a polyuethylene director Q, Shilajit and Shubhajit Chatterjee, Karnad, Karanth and many others, learnt totally disappeared, some through greed coating, preventing chemicals from soaking a Faculty Member of the University’s Film their craft from foreign films shown by film or neglect, others because of the chemical into the paper fibres. Processing, washing and drying times are far shorter with RC papers. Studies Department. This was followed near societies or at the film festivals. Cinema being properties of the highly inflammable nitrate They have a much glossier surface than fibre- the end of the academic session by a film an international art, we cannot avoid this film. Just one example will suffice. Have based glossy papers. festival organised on the University premises. kind of interaction. Not only film enthusiasts, you heard of Harry d’Arrast (H.d’Abbadie In an attempt to remain true to its original but even the general public has been exposed d’Arrast)? Chances are you haven’t. Yet SYNOPSIS BOOKLET: These booklets printed in English, Hindi and sometimes Urdu aspiration, the next event organised by the to the best products of world cinema in all d’Arrast (who worked with Chaplin and ,contained the film name, complete credits, club was a discussion entitled “Devalue genres, ranging from Cocteau and Bunuel’s Lubitsch) was the creator of “eight of the synopsis of the film and lyrics interspersed by Ghatak”. This was based on the depiction of most abstruse experiments to Busby Berkeley loveliest films ever made by anyone” on the images from the film. legendary film director Ritwik Ghatak in the musicals and Capra’s screwball comedies. The evidence of Fritz Lang. His films are lost C-PRINTS: These are colour prints also known film Meghe Dhaka Tara(2013); supposedly cineaste can get all his cinematic sustenance forever. Suchet Singh, an Indian film maker as dye colour prints, colour coupler prints, based on his life. Eminent film and theatre from Eisenstein’s dynamic montage, Carl who had also worked with Chaplin and chromogenic prints, etc; dye-based prints, director Suman Mukhopadhyay, Professor Dreyer’s rhythmic tension and precision (not who died young made four very interesting where the colour or tone is made up of dyes, Sanjay Mukhopadhyay and Professor not silver crystals (as in silver gelatin prints).