Category — Film and Technology

From: http://www.kino.com/metropolis/

Film prints that have been lost or damaged are referred to as orphans, and for seven years now, the Film Studies Department at New York University  Tisch School of the Arts, has hosted the Orphan Film Symposium. According to an informative article on the Museum of the Moving Image website, “What once simply identified those film works that have been abandoned (however inadvertently) by their owners, rights-holders, or “parents”—newsreels and ephemera, unreleased and unfinished works, home movies and stag films—now serves as a catchall for any work that exists outside the mainstream of commercial cinema. Indeed, any film whose future is in jeopardy—due to its diminished status in film history or its low priority in the usual operations of the archive—could be classified an orphan.”

It’s a wonderful report of the 7th Orphans Film Symposium. Click here to read the full article.

Last year the Cannes Film Festival had proposed a mini-retrospective of the work of celebrated Indian director Mrinal Sen, but because the prints of most of his films were in ‘poor condition’, it never came through.

This year, Sen’s film Khandar has been selected as one of the films that will be screened in the Cannes Classics section of the festival. Films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel and Volker Schlondroff are part of this selection. Sen is expected to be present for this screening.

The National Film Archive in Pune was given a directive by the Prime Minister last year to restore each of Sen’s films. The screening at Cannes has reportedly been made possible because of the successful restoration.

Khandar was made in 1983 and starred Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur and Annu Kapur. I had written a retrospective piece on the film on the occasion of Mrinal Sen getting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival in 2008 in New Delhi. Click here to access it.

And while the Indian press seems just thrilled at this recognition India has got at Cannes, not one of them has got the name of the film right. All sites have picked up an agency copy which refers to the film as ‘Kandahar’. They have all retained the English title The Ruins, but no one has managed to put two and two together.

Outlook magazine revealed recently that Guru Dutt’s son Arun Dutt has decided to go the Mughal-e-Azam and Naya Daur way and colourise the classic Sahib, Biwi aur Ghulam.

Guru Dutt’s films have always been appreciated for their stunning use of light and as a result the news of colourisation has invited mostly negative comments from the likes of V.K Murthy – Guru Dutt’s cinematographer and also filmmakers like M.S Sathyu and Govind Nihlani.

Click here to read the entire article by Outlook‘s Sugata Srinivasaraju.

With the advent of Paruthiveeran (2007) and Subramanyapuram (2008), there have been renewed hopes of optimism among members of the discerning lovers of Tamil cinema that all has not been lost and departures from the mainstream narrative practices are not only a possibility, but can also be sure winners at the box office. Both Paruthiveeran (Dir.Ameer) and Subramanyapuram (Dir.Sasikumar) have also been labelled as exemplars of violent narratives. [Read more →]

According to Dr Luke McKernan, founder of Screen Research, the website is “designed to be an online centre for anyone interested in the study of the moving image. It is aimed at researchers, lecturers, students, archivists, curators, educationalists, information specialists, scholars of the new media – anyone with a serious interest in screen history and screen practice today. It has news about upcoming conferences, festivals, and publications; [Read more →]

According to this release from Amazon.com, IMDB will be offering popular films as well as provide space for other filmmakers and companies to use it to showcase their films:

users can now watch over 6,000 full-length feature films and TV episodes for free on IMDb.com.

IMDb is also opening its platform to filmmakers and rights owners worldwide, and changing the landscape for filmmakers by allowing them to reach the over 57 million movie and TV lovers who visit IMDb each month. To learn more about getting your content onto IMDb, please visit http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?uploadyourfilm.

A father, daughter, and son star in their own Star Wars. Great tribute. Enjoy!

Image Metrics, a California-based animation company has come up with a modelling technology that allows a face to be recognised in its minutest detail and converted to animation.  The technology, unlike earlier motion, capture works “without markers, make-up, specialised stages, or sets“. The results are stunning. For example, watch Emily: [Read more →]

Following on some previous observations on Indian cinema abroad (for example, the revenues earned by Hindi films in UK, read here, or how much newspapers in the Western world report on Bollywood, read here, or the “popularity” of Bollywood in Africa, read here) Kuhu Tanvir commented that Bollywood was reportedly quite popular in Africa. Now, I don’t question the fact that Hindi films are screened in parts of Africa, thanks [Read more →]

factualTV (http://factualtv.com) is a new online documentary screening and sales service that gives visitors free access to many factual videos and documentaries. These categorised videos and fairly high quality videos (web streaming quality) are free to view online (requires a simple registration) and can be downloaded for a small charge, and as their website states “sometimes free”. The list of films on factualTV’s website is not eye-popping (they [Read more →]