Review by Vinoo.

Author : David Eagleman

What a wonderful read this book where the author takes us through forty possibilities of life beyond death. His questions on life, death, love, technology, god, communism, capitalism stay with you long after the book. Insightful, irreverent and hilarious all packed in one book. What better way to illustrate than quote from this book that is wonderfully imaginative.

‘Sum. In the afterlife you relive your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together.

You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet.

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Review by Vinoo
Language : Hindi
Director : Muzaffar Ali

 ‘Gaman’ is about urban migration, about people who are forced by circumstances to leave their home and family in search of that elusive dream, a good life. As always happens it takes Ghulam Hassan (Farooque Shaikh) to Bombay, the land of opportunities. Ghulam Hassan lives a simple life with his wife and mother in a small little village in Lucknow. They just about manage to get by. Ghulam Hassan wants to give his family a comfortable life, not one of luxury. The little land that he and his family lives of gets usurped by the landlord. Ghulam Hassan has no choice but to heed to his friend, Lallulal Tewari’s (Jalal Agha), words and try his luck in Bombay. He leaves behind his wife Khairun (Smita Patil, beautiful as ever) and his mother. He becomes a taxi driver and quickly sees life in Bombay through its streets and through his passengers. The underbelly of Bombay, the lifestyle of people there and the plight of migrants are all well summed up through the eyes of a taxi driver. When a driver dies it is announced that ‘Colaba mein 4143 ka accident ho gaya / No.4143 has passed away in an accident in Colaba’ and life goes on. The total apathy at another’s plight and the fact that life has to just go on, no matter what, is put across so brutally.

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Abhaya Simha was born and brought up in Mangalore (Karnataka, INDIA). After his graduation, got into Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Abhaya Simha finished his direction course in 2006 and went to Bangalore to pursue a career in Kannada Film Industry. His first film Gubbachigalu (2008) won him the National Award for the Best Children’s Film and was screened in several International Film Festivals. His second feature film was a Kannada and Malyama bi-lingual film titled Shikari (2012) starred Malayalam Actor, Mammootty. Third film Sakkare (2013) was a Kannada film which was a romantic comedy starring Ganesh. He has also done documentary films, corporate films and campaign films in all these years.

As a child what were your early influences towards cinema? Art, literature, graphics, photography?
My grand father, G.T Narayana Rao was a well-known science writer in Kannada. My father had a bookshop and a publication house in Mangalore. Both of them had interest in theatre, literature etc. I think this had great influence on me during my formative years. Being from a small town, Mangalore the exposure to world cinema was not much at that time. Cinema interested me later when I took up photography.

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Vantage Films, famous for their Hawk series of Anamorphic lenses, have recently announced their breakthrough series of spherical cinema lenses, all at T1: Vantage One.

The focal lengths are 17.5,  21, 25, 32, 40, 50, 65, 90, 120.

All T1. These should satisfy the demand for most narrative features, of course, along with the mandatory 25-250 zoom.

Vantage has also released a set with a ‘red stripe’, that has an uncoated element to enhance flare and reduce contrast.

All these years at the Institute and I never noticed. There are so many birds on campus. Here are a few that I managed to shoot one November morning at the Canteen. Details are from Wikipedia.

Ashy Prinia (Prinia socialis)

The Ashy Prinia or Ashy Wren-Warbler (Prinia socialis) is a small warbler. This prinia is a resident breeder in the Indian Subcontinent, ranging across most of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and western Myanmar. It is a common bird in urban gardens and farmland in many parts of India and its small size, distinctive colours and upright tail make it easy to identify. The northern populations have a rufous rump and back and have a distinct breeding and non-breeding plumage while other populations lack such variation.

Oriental Magpie-Robin  (Copsychus saularis) juvenile

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The Gemini 4:4:4 is a professional, high-definition video recorder that fits in the palm of your hand. Gemini 4:4:4 functions as a high-quality monitor, a recorder, and a playback device.

As a recorder, Gemini 4:4:4 records in the ultimate highest quality possible—uncompressed, which can easily be incorporated into virtually any workflow using your favorite CODEC. Gemini 4:4:4 is also capable of recording, combining, and playing back 3D video (with paid upgrade).

Gemini 4:4:4 records to specially certified and tested 1.8” solid-state hard drives that can be purchased from Convergent Design through your local dealer.

Data Rates

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With all the reliability you expect from a Codex recorder, only in a smaller package, the Codex Onboard S Plus Recorder can record ARRIRAW, Canon Cinema RAW, uncompressed HD or wavelet encoded HD material – plus audio and metadata – onto a removable, solid-state Capture Drive. It is weather-resistant and weighs only 2.4lbs/1.1kgs.

With a Codex Media Station or Vault, shots can be delivered from the Codex Capture Drive in multiple industry-standard formats.

More product details here. Workflow for various cameras like Arri Alexa, Red, Canon, Sony are explained here.

The Samurai is a portable touchscreen-operated HD recorder, monitor and playback device for video professionals. It captures pristine 10-bit 4:2:2 video and audio direct from any camera with HD/SD-SDI output. The Samurai consumes very little power, ensures long recording times (up to 16.5 hours on a 750GB disk) and the efficient use of batteries.

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AMIRA features the same sensor and exceptional image quality as the ARRI ALEXA, recording superior HD 1080 or 2K pictures that are suitable for any distribution format. With a dynamic range of more than 14 stops, low noise levels, subtle highlight handling, natural color rendering, breathtaking skin tones and speeds of up to 200 fps, AMIRA will deliver beautiful, life-like images in any situation.

AMIRA records Rec 709 or Log C images using ProRes LT, 422, 422HQ or 444 codecs. By recording to in-camera CFast 2.0 flash memory cards with super-quick data rates, the route into postproduction is made as simple as possible. CFast 2.0 is an open format, easily accessible to anyone and delivering a fantastic price-performance ratio through incredible transfer speeds, long recording times and compatibility with standard IT tools. Costs per GB are brought right down and higher-than-broadcast-quality image pipelines are made available even to low budget productions.

More here..

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“We at GraFTII, the alumnus association of the Film & Television Institute
of India (FTII), express our concern at the increasing manifestations of
intolerance in our country. An immediate example is the brutal attack on
students of the FTII in Pune on the evening of 21st August, after a film
screening held in tribute to Dr Narendra Dabholkar, assassinated the
previous morning.

Intimidating tactics such as beatings and murders not only strike at the
roots of our democracy but get encoded as threats in the minds of all. Fear
places constraints on what might be said, written, read, shared, created,
shown or even funded. Creativity can only thrive if there is no fear in the
minds of those who work in the arts, sciences, social studies and all other
spheres of human endeavour.

Such acts of violence should be condemned by all who value India’s
cultural diversity and see the diminishing freedom of expression as a sign
of worse things to come. We assert that we will not be intimidated by such
tactics. Those guilty of such acts should be brought to justice and the
charges made against the FTII students be dropped immediately.”