Mixed signals

Posted on by bijalv

http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/film/features/mixed-signals

What’s the city’s most scholarly film critic doing in a short film?

A traffic signal is often a blind spot for commuters – people sigh exasperatedly waiting for the signal to turn green, they hop out of their vehicle to buy a pack of cigarettes or shop from the many vendors who peddle wares at these junctions. Filmmaker Alan Aranha was at one such crossroads in Mumbai when he found himself surrounded by a group of flower-selling girls. An idea bloomed. He talked to his friends Bharat Mirle and Sudhanva Atri. They made a 1.30 min film called Junction. The action, brief as it is, unfolds at a traffic signal.

The movie tells the story of a girl selling flowers on CMH Road in Indira Nagar, when a car pulls up. When the passenger, a slightly taciturn gent in a blazer, finally notices her, the film’s conceit becomes evident to the viewer.

What’s unusual about the film isn’t the choice of subject – the flowers the girl clutches in her hand is, in a manner of speaking, meant to induce a Chekhovian plot twist. Rather it has to do with a casting decision: that of the actor in the car. The role is played by the incisive, sagacious and often vitriolic film critic MK Raghavendra. “This is the first time I have acted in a film,” Raghavendra said. “Anybody can do a oneand- a-half minute film. They [the filmmakers] put together a context in which certain expressions could be exhibited.” For the filmmakers it was a convenient choice. “We needed someone who was a little elderly, and had his own blazer… he fit the bill,” said Aranha. It helped matters, it would appear, that Raghavendra is Mirle’s father.

This is the first time that the three filmmakers have collaborated on a project.Junction was selected for the Berlin International Directors Lounge last month. The story, it seems, has struck a chord. “Incredible things happen in seemingly ordinary places and situations,” said Aranha. “A traffic junction is a treasure trove of fascinating experiences. Once you get out of the rut of life, you discover that what goes on in ordinary life is in fact extraordinary.
Junction can be viewed on www.youtube.com.

By Bijal Vachharajani on March 15 2013 5.46am

 

The idea of arrivals

Posted on by bijalv

When the results of the Fifteenth Indian Census were declared, in March 2011, it became evident that the urban sections of Bangalore were the most populated in Karnataka, growing at a decadal rate of 46.68 per cent. In their analysis of the data conducted soon after the numbers were revealed, social scientists KNM Raju and Madheswaran S of the city’s Institute for Social and Economic Change suggested that migrants to Bangalore constituted a significant portion of this burgeoning population. In the two years since the consummation of that official enumeration, the city has continued to draw a gush of migrants: deposited on its shores by every manner of mechanised transport.

In attempting to create a fragmentary record of this daily arrival for Time Out’s photography special, Selvaprakash L clambered onto trains, boarded buses and journeyed to the airport in Devanahalli, asking each intended subject* to pause for a picture and a breviloquent summary of their journey, a soupçon of a life.

In doing so, he discovered that the air-conditioned coaches in trains, much like the airport bus shuttles, foster exclusion, where people plug into their iPods and shut out fellow-passengers. Buses, he was told, don’t engender neighbourly feelings either: if the onboard movie doesn’t silence conversations, the hermetic confines of curtained sleeping berths force strangers to remain strangers. In contrast, the general compartment of a train, he ascertained, is like a commune: cards are dealt, food distributed, cover drives analysed, and, at the journey’s end, phone numbers exchanged, and lives invented.

*Barring two, the travellers we encountered refused to provide us full names.

Documenting the city’s immigrants

http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/bangalore-beat/photo-essays/idea-arrival

50 classic Bangalore rivalries

Posted on by bijalv

 Here are 50 classic Bangalore match-ups on which we’d gladly place our bets on

As far as we can tell, the first recorded Bangalore rivalry dates back to 1789, when Charles Cornwallis, the Earl of Cornwallis – he of the heavy jowls and mildly dilated pupils – squared off with Tipu Sultan – he of the fearful symmetry. But that was 224 years ago. And as a fortnightly, all we care about is that this Siege of Bangalore resulted in the Madras Engineering Group setting up shop here (go sappers), and the installation of the Wodeyars on the throne of Mysore (more power to Palace Grounds). But don’t get us wrong, we love a healthy brawl just as much as the next tottering, pickled fellow at the local hooch hole – only, the rivalries we are concerned with are the ones embedded in our living memories, not the battles and sieges and crusades recorded in most textbooks. Here are 50 classic Bangalore match-ups on which we’d gladly place our bets. Illustrations Abhishek Choudhury and Malvika Tewari.

The complete story is here: http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/bangalore-beat/features/50-classic-bangalore-rivalries