Category: Cinema
-
On the Challenges of Reading, Writing & Publishing Science Fiction & Fantasy in South Asia
Cover Illustration: “Enclosed” by Ashim Shakya, from Issue 4 of Mithila Review. In my new Strange Horizons column, I talk about Geoff Ryman’s story that inspired the Mithila Review / Asian Science Fiction & Fantasy project and my earliest forays into SF as a reader. My childhood revolved around comics and other things but none as…
-
The Capra Hyperbole : One Man, One Film
Meet John Doe is nothing short of a triumph of Riskin the individual over Capra the institution. The last day of December demands introspection, and I sense a now all-too-familiar pressure to choose the right words for this end note. The year on the calendar upsets my plans. These plans have now become ‘old plans’; plans…
-
Teach Cinema to Children
“The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.” “Who is the father of computer?” I asked my 9-year-old niece. “Charles Babbage,” she replied promptly. Then I asked her, “And who is the father of cinema?” “What is cinema?” the fourth grader asked me. “It’s the art of films,” I tried…
-
Playing With the Viewer’s Mind
“I think that the interactivity of New Media is a false promise. The game is rigged, and what is invited is not honest contemplation, but merely “figuring out the next movie.” Audience Activity A film, without any visible protagonist, plays with the audience and forces them to become active as the invisible protagonist. The audience…
-
Being Charlie Kaufman
ee cummings: To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. “Here’s a recent quote that I found: ‘we do not talk, we bludgeon one another with…