I must have been in class 1 or 2 when I developed this passion for sitting continuously in front of the TV screen and watching films one after the other. That time we didn’t have cable television at our home, but we never quite missed that shortcoming because we were offered everything under the sun on just those two channels, DD 1 and DD 2. There would be quiz shows, detective serials, countdown of songs, family drama, comedy shows, sports such as cricket and football, and of course cartoons. But amongst all those, I loved watching the old Hindi films the most. The channel wouldn’t screen much of the recent stuff on their daily line-up, and as a result I grew up watching stars such as Raj Kapoor, Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Dilip Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty etc etc… most of the films were quite old and in black and white but that didn’t deter my newly developing hobby.
Now when I look back, I realize those countless hours in front of the TV didn’t quite go for a waste. Now that I've graduated from a film school, I relish on the fact, that I was one of the very few who watched Indian cinema right from scratch. I still can remember little scenes form all those movies (some of them I saw more than 4 or 5 times or even more). I can still remember the scenes and the actors when I listen to those old classic songs on the radio.
That hobby developed into a serious passion in the coming years and I further explored the wilderness when I took up Mass Communication and Videography and Film Studies in college. There we dealt with specific genres in cinema and explored them in much detail. We saw Iranian cinema, African cinema, Latin American cinema, French new wave, Italian neo realism, soviet cinema, classical Hollywood, documentaries, surrealist, silent, musicals, slapstick comedy and Indian commercial and parallel cinema.
Films were suddenly unfolding their structure before us and we attended to each aspect to the minutest of details while studying them. We studied how a film is conceived, put on paper, pitched, executed, edited, mixed and rounded off… I really don’t know if any other subject would have made the same impact or generated the same level of interest and commitment within me. For me it was a stark blank drawing book with so many colours in my grasp, and I could run my imagination in any direction I wanted.
And we not just watched films; we also made several films in the brief 3 year period. We made some documentaries and some short films with professional and semi- professional equipments. It was a dream-come-true. For the kid, who once used to hog on cinema all day, could actually get behind the camera and make one for himself. It’s probably the same feeling for someone, who would listen to some music being played on some instrument as a child, and then one day would be on stage in front of a thousand people, and playing the same sound that once had caught his fancy...
Now when I look back, I realize those countless hours in front of the TV didn’t quite go for a waste. Now that I've graduated from a film school, I relish on the fact, that I was one of the very few who watched Indian cinema right from scratch. I still can remember little scenes form all those movies (some of them I saw more than 4 or 5 times or even more). I can still remember the scenes and the actors when I listen to those old classic songs on the radio.
That hobby developed into a serious passion in the coming years and I further explored the wilderness when I took up Mass Communication and Videography and Film Studies in college. There we dealt with specific genres in cinema and explored them in much detail. We saw Iranian cinema, African cinema, Latin American cinema, French new wave, Italian neo realism, soviet cinema, classical Hollywood, documentaries, surrealist, silent, musicals, slapstick comedy and Indian commercial and parallel cinema.
Films were suddenly unfolding their structure before us and we attended to each aspect to the minutest of details while studying them. We studied how a film is conceived, put on paper, pitched, executed, edited, mixed and rounded off… I really don’t know if any other subject would have made the same impact or generated the same level of interest and commitment within me. For me it was a stark blank drawing book with so many colours in my grasp, and I could run my imagination in any direction I wanted.
And we not just watched films; we also made several films in the brief 3 year period. We made some documentaries and some short films with professional and semi- professional equipments. It was a dream-come-true. For the kid, who once used to hog on cinema all day, could actually get behind the camera and make one for himself. It’s probably the same feeling for someone, who would listen to some music being played on some instrument as a child, and then one day would be on stage in front of a thousand people, and playing the same sound that once had caught his fancy...
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