M.F Hussain (1915-2011)

The world renowned artist M.F Hussain passed away on June 9th at the age of 95. The Mumbai-based painter has been living in exile for the past few years, in Dubai, Doha and finally in London.

M.F Hussain started off as a hoarding painter for movies in the 1940s. This product of prestigious J.J School of Arts went on to exhibit his works in Europe in 1950s which won him many accolades. In subsequent decades, he became the most valued and sought-after painter of modern India. Also known as 'India's Picasso', no drawing-room of the elite was complete with out an 'M.F Hussain'. Till the 1980s, he was largerly known among the art-lovers,the elite and intelligentsia.

M.F Hussain and his muse , the renowned Hindi movie-star Madhuri Dixit during the 90s. Both had great respect for each other.

The advent of 1990s saw M.F Hussain making news for all the wrong reasons. With the rise of Indian extremism, where each and every issue has been viewed through a communal angle, M.F Hussain became their favourite punching-bag. The centre of the controversy were his few paintings, he did decades ago, now misinterpreted as ' hurting religious sentiments'. The shows of his paintings were attacked and destroyed, numerous law suits were filed against him and there were even threat to his life. In such an atmosphere of blind-hate, even a genuis like Albert Einstein had to flee for life. M.F Hussain too fled from his country for good.

M.F Hussain made foray into film-making, directing two avant-garde movies . Gaja Gamini (2000) starred the legend herself : Madhuri Dixit.

Even during the times of persecution and intimidation, M.F Hussain silently continued his work and let his brush do all the talking. Infact those who were familiar with his works did not doubt his integrity and the artistic circles of India stood firmly behind him. He continued to produce many classic works even during the twilight of his career and made foray into the movies, directing 'Gaja Gamini'(2000) and 'Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities' (2004). He accepted Qatari citizenship but his home-country, especially his home-state Maharashtra where he spent most of his life, was always dear to him.

The second and final movie he made - Meenaxi : Tale of Three Cities (2004) was also in the genre of avant-garde.

The M.F Hussain episode is a example for those who spread hate and intolerance to advance their own causes. As the old saying goes, 'a lie has no antique value and truth will prevail sooner or later'. About a 100-years ago, Hitler unleashed a campaign against Jews based on some false allegations and propoganda. Now where is Hitler and where are Jews ? The former has been dumbed into the dust-bin of history, while the later became powerfull and influencial group in the world.

The great master's long eventfull creative life came to an end. But his art-works will continue to tell many tales in the years, decades and centuries to come. As M.F Hussain said in a recent TV interview : "Only the titles of the paintings were told, the real story takes a life time".

Frontline magazine has issued special features in their latest issue remembering the great M.F Hussain, which can be seen here:
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2813/fl281300.htm

Asian challenge

China's Li Na becomes the first Asian -male or female - to win a Grand slam title. She defeated the defending champion Francesca Shiavone 6-4,7-6(7-0) to win the French Open. Early this year Li Na came close to winning this distinction in the Australian Open but Kim Clijsters dashed her hopes. It is remarkable that Li Na's top form has not affected by the change of surface - from hard-court to clay-court.

But is Li Na the first ethnic Chinese to win the Grand slam ? I doubt it. If my assumption is right, that distinction goes to Michael Chang of U.S who won the French Open way back in 1989.

Mean while, Sania Mirza came close to become the first Indian woman to win a major doubles title. Infact, she was having a great run this year in the doubles partnering Elena Vesnina of Russia. So their presence in the finals hardly came as a surprise. But in the final they were beaten by unseeded Czech pair Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in straight sets 6-4,6-3. Anyway, best wishes for the rest of season, including Wimbledon and U.S Open.

Tagore : a romantic ?

Danseuse Sudha Chandran and renowned Bengali actress Rituparna Sengupta in a recent event to mark the 150th birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Interview with the great Bengali film-maker of yesteryears, the mercurial Ritwik Ghatak (Excerpted from the book Ritwik Ghatak On cinema.) :

Tagore music (Rabindra Sangeet) has an important functional role in most of your films. Could you explain your affinity to Rabindranath Tagore ?

I cannot speak without him. That man has culled all my feelings long before my birth. He has understood what I am.

In spite of the considerable influence of Rabindranath Tagore on you, we find that there is a qualitative difference between the works of Tagore and your films. Don't you think that he was excessively romantic ?

Romantic ! What do you know about him ? Rabindranath is not a romantic, his is a completely variegated affair. He is the performing monkey of Bengali literature. And you call him a romantic ? Have you read Chaturanga ? He is a mystic, agnotic, everything. He was also a great rogue and a great one for using vile language. He also wrote in the language used by street urchins. So do not try to sidetrack him as a romantic. Read the full range of the man's work. The structure of his writings is extremely tight. He is, as I said before, the performing monkey of Bengali literature. You must have seen the toy which has a ladder and a small monkey on the top. When you hold this toy upright the monkey rolls down. When inverted it slides down again. Rabindranath is like this toy monkey.

He can get to the top, step by step, and climb upside down as well. So, it is a great blunder to label him a romantic. There are some people who want to sell Rabindranath, and that is why you have this image of him impressed on your minds. You people have not read Rabindranath. You are yet to know of his anger. From the lowest rung of society to the highest he spared none. You can call me rogue, a rascal, but he was a greater one. Maybe he knew more four-letter words than I do. Do not have a distorted notion about him.

book : Rows And Rows of Fences - Ritwik Ghatak on cinema.

Haiku on celluloid :

the films of Yasujiro Ozu

Friday Review interview with Donald Richie :
When did your interest in Japanese cinema begin ?

Ever since I went to Japan in 1947, I have been watching Japanese films. Even before I had met Kurosawa and Ozu in person, I was well-acquinted with Japanese cinema. I was then the film critic of the newspaper "Stars and Stripes". After the war, I joined "Japan Times". By then , I had fallen deeply in love with Japan. Moreover, I was not much interested in returning to Ohio, my homeland for several reasons.

In 1968, I returned to the U.S to join the New York Museum of Modern Art as film curator. Six years later, I flew back to Japan. I like the Japanese. They are orthodox as well as progressive.

I took only two months to write my book on Kurosawa. I stayed at the Hot Spring Resort at Kyosho in southern Japan to work on it. It took me much longer to finish my book on Ozu. I admired Kurosawa, but loved Ozu. It is difficult to write about someone or something you love. Your emotions stand in the way of your intellectual evaluation.

Ozu himself had believed that his subjects were too abstruce for the West to follow ....

True. Ozu had once said that. But on another occasion, he had told his cameraman that foreigners will one day rave about his style.

Why did the Japanese like Ozu ? Because they could see themselves in Ozu's films. Stylistically, he was unparalleled. I took Satyajit Ray for a screening of Ozu's "Tokyo Story" in Japan. I heard Ray sobbing as the reels rolled on.

Ozu has been a great influence on film makers in several countries. He has inspired some Kerala film makers. I am currently compiling a package, titled "Ozu's children", consisting of the works of such film makers as Jim Jarmusch and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who had been profoundly influenced by Ozu.

A still from Yasujiro Ozu last movie An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Had not Ozu, for whom oriental culture was as precious as his breath, been little incomprehensible for the westerner ?

So had been the belief. But I have proved that it is not so. My book shows how much I have understood Ozu. Infact, foreigners understand Ozu better than many young Japanese of today

do.

Compared with Ozu, Kurosawa was less popular in Japan....

Ozu was quintessentially Japanese, so people liked him. Kurosawa was also a genius.

I first met him in 1947. He was then shooting "Drunken Angel". Once I was with himon the sets. He was fiddling with a faulty pen. Yet, he would not give that upand use a new one.

Toshiro Mifune (actor in most of Kurosawa films), who was with us, called me aside and said, " I am that pen. See how carefully and painstakingly he works on it."

What is your assessment of contemporary Japanese cinema ? (as in 1998)

There are a few good serious film makers, who include Mitsuo Yanagimachi("Fire Festival") , Hirokazu Kore-Eda ("AfterLife") and Makoto Shinozaki ("Okaeri"). But they are quite a small group. People seem to prefer Hollywood movies to native ones.

But during the time of Ozu or Mizoguchi, there was an audience for serious cinema....

Ozu and Mizoguchi belong to the pre-TV era. Cinema was then the sole means of entertainment. They lapped up the movies and thus production companies ran profitably. As the money was coming, the companies gave an Ozu or Mizoguchi a carte blanche.

courtesy : Friday Review - The Hindu Daily 1998.

Satyajit Ray & Akira Kurosawa

Two great film makers of the 20th century, Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray meets at a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo - Extracts from the book Our Films Their Films by Satyajit Ray.

Like Ray, Kurosawa was also an accomplished artist who designed his own posters & story-boards.

As it turned out, the venue for the meeting was a Chinese restaurant in a quiet back-street of Tokyo.

'A favourite of Kurosawa's' said Mrs Kawakita, my hostess and a close friend of the director. Atleast one could face the gastronomic hazards with more confidence here.

Kurosawa turned out to be that rarity - a tall Japanese. He also had a stoop, with an appropriate humility to go with it, kindly eyes which a ready smile thinned into more slits, and a hushed and gentle tone of voice - all of which was in unexpected contrast to the ferocious image derived from his samurai films. But then, it's not unusual to find schizophrenics among people of theatrical profession, and I knew Kurosawa had samurai blood in him. I had visions of his unbridled other self, pitching into that scene of combat with all the controlled fury of a samurai himself.

I started by talking of Seven Samurai, which turned out to be both his and my favourite amongst his films. 'It needs long and hard training to be a film samurai' he said. 'There was so much about the samurai that was stylised - his ride, his run, the way he wielded the sword. A samurai would never be hunched over his saddle when charging. He would stand straight up with feet firmly on the stirrups and knees pressed tight against the flanks of the horse. His body would not be perpendicular, but leaning forward at an angle to prevent being thrown backwards by the force of the charge.'

Kurosawa rose from his chair to demonstrate the stance of the charging samurai.

'And about the sword - it wouldn't cut at all if you only hacked with it. You would have to combine' (more demonstration here) 'a backing motion with a slicing motion. And when the samurai runs, his head shouldn't bob up and down with his footsteps. The effect should be like a swift floating. In other words, the head shouldn't trace a wavy curve, but a straight line'.

Rai and Samurai...Chips of the same block, Satyajit Ray & Akira Kurosawa during the later's visit to Delhi in the 70s.

A stickler for historical accuracy, Kurosawa in his period films, makes his actors put on period costumes obtained from museums.

'But you know where the snag is' he said with a twinkle in his eyes. 'The Japanese as a whole have grown smaller over the last five or six hundred years. It is difficult to find actors large enough for these costumes to fit'.

I asked if he had any more samurai films in mind.

'None' he said. 'And I doubt if I could ever make another one'.

'Why not ? '

'Because there's such a dearth of horses now. You see, most of the horses used in films came from farms. But now farm-work has been machinised, and horses are bred only for racing'.

I heard that Kurosawa had been signed up by the American producer Joe Levine to direct a film in the USA. The news intrigued me, because this would be the first instance of an Asian director with only a rudimentary knowledge of English making an English-language film in the States.

'I had a story in mind' said Kurosawa. 'I had saved up a clipping from an American newspaper which described how a goods train went tearing through Chicago at eighty miles an hour with three men on board but no one at the control. For some unaccountable reason, the driver had jumped off and killed himself. The train as well as the passengers were ultimately saved, and the film will show how'.

But there were snags. Kurosawa had stipulated that he would work with his own Japanese crew consisting of some twenty technicians. Producer Levine's drastic rerms permitted only one non-English speaking assistant. The fact that Kurosawa had to concede could be indicative of either his great urge to film the story at any cost, or of the alarming situation of the serious film maker in Japan. What is true of Kurosawa is also true of Ichikawa, Kobayashi and Shindo.

However, a truly gifted film maker - as has often been proved in the history of the cinema - can rise above his circumstances; so that one can look forward to the The Runaway Train - if it ever gets made - with all the pleasurable anticipation of an authentic Japanese Kurosawa. Let us hope that a charging train will prove just as inspiring as a charging samurai.

chapter: Tokyo, Kyoto and Kurosawa - 1967

book : Our Films Their Films [a compilation of Ray's articles & essays on cinema] authour : Satyajit Ray

The Oscars

BEST PICTURE
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

BEST ACTOR
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

BEST DIRECTOR
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
David O. Russell, The Fighter

BEST EDITING
127 Hours, Jon Harris
Black Swan, Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter, Pamela Martin
The King’s Speech, Tariq Anwar
The Social Network, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

127 Hours, A.R. Rahman
How to Train Your Dragon, John Powell
Inception, Hans Zimmer
The King’s Speech, Alexandre Desplat
The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

BEST SONG
“Coming Home,” Country Strong, Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
“I See the Light,” Tangled, Alan Menken, Glenn Slater
“If I Rise,” 127 Hours, A.R. Rahman, Dido, Rollo Armstrong
“We Belong Together,” Toy Story 3, Randy Newman

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Christian Bale, The Fighter
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Melissa Leo, The Fighter

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The King’s Speech, Screenplay by David Seidler

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Social Network, Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
BEST ART DIRECTION
Alice in Wonderland, Robert Stromberg, Karen O’Hara
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Alice in Wonderland, Colleen Atwood

BEST MAKEUP
The Wolfman, Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

BEST SOUND EDITING
Inception, Richard King
BEST SOUND MIXING
Inception, Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick
BEST ANIMATED FILM

Toy Story 3

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

The Lost Thing, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Inception, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Inside Job, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT
God of Love, Luke Matheny
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Strangers No More, Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
In a Better World (Denmark)

Bollywood : ripe for a revolution ?

In his recent trip to India, the Russian President Dimitri Medvedev took time-off to meet the bigwigs in Bollywood and called for a closer co-operation between Russia and Bollywood. Sharing the podium with Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, President Medvedev even expressed his admiration for Bollywood song and dances. Last November, U.S President Barack Obama too came to Mumbai which has resulted in more joint-ventures between Hollywood and Bollywood.

While the local-media went ga-ga over this wooing of Bollywood by world leaders, the average movie-goer appears to be less enthusiastic. They are wondering how these joint-ventures could bring any visible change in the quality of Bollywood pot-boilers. They are already sick and tired of the 'escapist-entertainment' churned out by Bollywood. For a record, all the much hyped big-banner movies of the previous year - despite their agressive publicity campaign - have flopped. On the other hand, small-budget indie-movies, which deals with real life issues - targeting the middle-class/multiplex crowd - have done brisk business.

In any case , it's a wise move by President Medvedev to court superstar Shahrukh Khan - Bollywood's most talented and popular actors. He is an original actor with a solid theatre-background ( like most Hollywood actors) which enabled him to develop his own style, technique and confidence. Shahrukh Khan is also one of the few actors of Bollywood who is not part of any star-dynasty. But he also made his debut long ago (in the early 90s) much before the star-dynasties began to monopolise the film-industry. In the past decade (2000s), many original and talented actors like Shahrukh Khan have made their debut and where are they now ? Despite winning popular and critical acclaim, these newcomers have vanished (or banished ?) without a trace. In contrast, the good-for-nothing star-kids - in spite of their repeated failure and incompetence - are still clinging to their inherited 'stardom'. As a critique has put it, Bollywood have long ceased to be a film-making industry - infact it's now a 'star-producing' industry !

Once upon a time in Russia (and also in China and other parts of the world), Bollywood movies - or Hindi movies as it is then known - were very popular, thanks to the pioneering efforts of stalwarts like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Mehboob Khan, V.Shantaram, Kamal Amrohi, Bimal Roy etc. Their classics besides entertaining, also dealt with the issues concerning the masses. The current Bollywood , living in their 'castles' have not only lost touch with the common man, they now started looking down upon them. Most Bollywood movies now are either poor parody of earlier classics or a scene-to-scene, shot-to-shot copy of major Hollywood movies.

The present decadent state of Bollywood - with its 'Kings','queens' and 'king-makers'- resembles the Tsarist Russia of 19th century. It's indeed a shame that the largest film-industry in the largest democracy still functions like a bunch of medieval artisants - closely guarding their trade .The scribes of local-media (esp. the beneficiaries of a corrupted system) may claim the contrary, with phrases like - 'this is the most exciting times in the history of our film-industry'. But the average movie-goer cannot be kept under dark for long.

Unless merit and creativity is not given its due recognition, all the boasting and bragging about 'Bollywood becoming the next Hollywood' will always remain a day-dream.