Amit Singh's ....: Twenty-Three:

Amit Singh's ....: Twenty-Three:: Collection of short stories Paperback:  176 pages Publisher:  Notion Press 1 st edition 2017 Language:  English Writer: Bikram...

Sons of Mother India (Entry 1) | Bikramjit Sen | Alfaaz | Nazmehayat

MY TAKE ON 'KRITI'

Hosted on YouTube, Kriti is an underrated psychological thriller directed by Shirish Kunder, hubby to the well known Indian filmmaker Farah Khan. It was produced by Muvizz.com and the short film released on 22 June 2016. 

 

Time and again, throughout the short film spanning around 19 minutes, we find shocking waves that send ripples down our spine. The chill of psychological horror is way beyond the horror that we are normally used to digesting. I think the filmmakers should have blessed us with a statutory warning before the start of the film. The audience is sure to go on a terrible roller coaster ride of a lifetime with Kriti.

 

I would like to recommend all to keep their minds broad and open while interpreting this short, and their hearts strong, while watching this short. One is vulnerable to a lot of dangers, especially for the elderlies, and the heart patients, watching Kriti seem no less than a dare, that needs to be taken up or played at one’s own risk.

 

We all are vulnerable to a lot of threats and dangers while watching this short which includes Radhika Apte, Manoj Bajpayee, Neha Sharma, and Manu Rishi in lead roles. Terrific and outstanding would be much less if we have to truly define, something of this class that we watch in Kriti. As the concept is mind-blowing, so is the acting, the direction, the editing, the light and sound, the music, the background score and so on and so forth. The overall performance is something to marvel at.

 

Kriti would leave you speechless, in between as well as in the end. It is a thoughtful execution by the filmmaker Shirish Kunder. This well thought of film deserves much more than it has garnered. Believe me, the usual gothic fiction stands at nothing compared to this psychological fiction in audio-visual art. Goosebumps is trivial; expect something more to happen to you. Kriti is a masterpiece.

 

In these tough times, that the world witnesses today, there is a lot of space for psychological horror to enter in our lives. In this frenzied situation of the globe, if you want to stay away from depression, the best way is to face the brute that causes so. Watch Kriti, for yourself and no one else. You won't repent. And, you dare not forget. If by chance you do forget, remember everything is spread across the narrative of this film, something you could comprehend, and some things are bound to bounce over your head. This is the scenario of the world for ages. Each age has a villain, so it does have to have a hero to counterbalance the existence of the villain.

 

Whatever we see around ourselves exists in binaries. Isn’t it so? Even within ourselves, we find dual voices, one, of the good angel, and the other of the devil. Whatever our mind projects, need not to always be, what we have to believe and vice versa, applies as well.

 

The entire game of life is a paradox, an irony. Some of who do understand the same sail through happily and in full contentment and rest remain the same fish out of the water and die not a very easy death.    

Make yourself familiar with Kriti. The link is provided below:

https://youtu.be/b5GGKuK3iEI

I too have made a short in the circumstances we all are familiar with. The link to my short film is given below. I hope, all of you enjoy the same, as much as you do Kriti by the Indian filmmaker Shirish Kunder. I may not match up to his class, due to the lockdown, but I have given my best to bring out what I feel, at the moment….

 

 https://youtu.be/WfS3QY0k_MY

 

Do, give thumbs up if you like, please do share with others and bless them with an opportunity to witness something that is unwitnessed.

 

 

 

 

 

MY TAKE ON AHALYA

Ahalya is a supernatural thriller by the great Bengali filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh. The short film released on July 20, 2015, and was distributed by Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films. From the very first scene, there is a build of suspense; and anxiousness within our hearts and minds starts to climb quite high while we move towards the climax of the film. The proper structure of a Frey Tag Pyramid has been observed in this great work of art. It truly is the work of a smart mind. The concept of this short film is something of a very different level. It truly is a masterpiece, a commendable work of art, done with great precision. Each and every character in this short has been performed with proper dexterity by powerful actors like Soumitra Chatterjee, Radhika Apte, Tota Roy Chowdhury. They are performers of a separate class. Their roles speak for themselves what master performers they are. The film is sure to completely blow away your mind. It is completely out of the box, multiple times watch. It seems, with every new watch, you derive newer meanings as if you have seen something completely new. This is the USP of the film.   

The short film ‘Ahalya ’ makes you reach those heights you never imagined or thought of. This work of art is as powerful as its performers. There will not be a single moment you would feel let down on your expectations for this film.

The script demanded some stellar performances and that was truly fulfilled by the protagonists in the film. The film demands a little bit from its viewers also. It demands a sound knowledge of the field of necromancy (black magic) and of course that of the Indian Mythology, ancient Hindu epics such as The Ramayana. What makes the craft more beautiful is its execution. How beautifully Hindu Mythological Characters are intertwined, woven together with characters from our everyday life, in an everyday setting in a contemporary plot, is something amazing to witness.

Truly, only with a  limited set of characters, this type of response is so far difficult to achieve for anyone. Only filmmakers of the stature of Sujoy Ghosh can pull something out of nothingness that surrounds the plot. The film has garnered a warm and welcoming response post-release from the critics and the audiences of different tastes. It seems, be it the possessor of a peculiar taste bud, s/he also would give this short film, nothing but a thumbs up in response, or as a review.

As a lot of blood and sweat goes into the making of such a masterpiece spanning only fourteen minutes, the feedback is important, indeed a necessary one  for each and everyone associated with Ahalya; the workforce, the crew members, the light and sound department, the editor Namrata Rao, the maker(story & screenplay writer, director, producer) Sujoy Ghosh and every masterstroke player who plays their part on or off-screen with full intent to do justice to their performances i.e. in front of the camera or  behind the scenes. They all are commendable, their efforts deserve unending appreciations and praises, as they all are an integral part of such making. It not only gives them a boost in their spirit to further outperform themselves, but also encourages them to bring something much new, and never thought of, for all of us, the audience.     

A spectator might relate the characters of this short film to Ahalya, Gautam Maharishi, Devraj Indra, just to name a few. SURPRISE AWAITS YOU….There is so much more to explore with every watch. Ahalya is on the YouTube channel and the link to the film is given below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff82XtV78xo

 

MY TAKE ON 'TWO'

Two is a masterpiece by the master himself, the pioneer of Parallel Cinema in India, the torchbearer of a new vision in the film world, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The silent film is available on the YouTube channel safely maintained by the Academy Picture Archive.

TWO: SHORT FILM BY SATYAJIT RAY

A short-film worth watching in a lifetime. The film hardly spans some twelve minutes but presents a picture of the wide gap that rests between the humans belonging to two different classes, the rich and the poor. The class divide does not end up making any of the two classes happy is a hardcore message of the film.

In every shot of the film, childhood exuberance is crafted beautifully. The film rests on the concept presented to the world by the great Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto, where class-conflict is a continuous struggle. Amidst, this clash between the classes, natural selection and the survival of the fittest, concepts provided to this world by the great biologist Charles Darwin in his magnum opus 'The Origin of Species', published 1859, plays a key role in shaping the future of the next gens, and also considerably helps us to comprehend the depths of the dialogue-less short film 'Two' by the master craftsmen Ray himself. The short film stars two actors from their respective rich and poor real-life backgrounds.

On an average, if we look around ourselves, we find, only five per cent of the world is rich, and here, by rich, I mean materially rich, materialistically rich solely, and not intellectually rich or spiritually rich. What does this demonstrate? The majority of the world is in a continuous struggle, a constant feud with these five per cent people for the resources that exist in the world.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, rightly remarked once, "There is enough resources for everyone's need but not for anybody's greed." Moreover, human greed is insatiable mostly in those humans, who are already the possessor of a lot of material things. What greed would a poor have? He has hardly been able to make ends meet. The world is an endless treasure, only when we work upon our Superego and Ego, and not on our Id(Impulse) that works on the pleasure principle drive, unlike Ego and Superego, that work on the reality principle, and morality respectively.

Keeping in mind, the viewpoint of the poststructuralists, or the deconstructionists, anyways you say, there is no fixed centre, the centre keeps on moving, the centre keeps on rotating, one place thereafter to the next, it keeps on changing from one position to the other. When talking about the other, let us try to understand the concept of 'The Other.' The other can be anything and everything, that is sidelined from the mainstream and is not considered as the ideal mark or parameter for comparison. Whosoever is in power, is in the centre. The power, the throne, the authority itself is the centre. Whosoever is away, far away from the centre, i.e. on the margins or the bordered outlines, is nothing but the other. The popular instance that could be drawn from our history is the position of the poor as subalterns, like the ones on the margins, who do not exercise any rights of their own, not even the basic or fundamental ones. If we go through the pages of Animal Farm, the allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England in 1945, we would find, whosoever gets the power in one's hands, starts to rule like a dictator, an overexploiting ruler, a snatcher of the happiness and well being of the majority earlier talked of.

In this whirlwind of the world, even kids are not an exception, they are also tagged as subordinate, subaltern, the other, if not economically and financially that strong as the ones they are keeping touch with. Although, ultimately, as the result of the unhappiness caused to the so-called other, whom the rich think is not one of them, the rich also suffer and end-up being in misery(emotional), being a loner, or only standing with a handful of companions, who are more or less in somewhat the same state as he is in.