Online with Mr. Kamal Swaroop
TRANSITION TRANSFERENCE TRANSFORMATION: UNDERSTANDING FILM SHOT BY SHOT
Announcing 2nd of the Series – with KAMAL SWAROOP.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE!
“This dangerous section of Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills has been nicknamed “The Snake” for its many sharp hairpin twists and turns….” On Mulholland Drive you’ll find at 6342 the home of Madonna, 12721 John Lennon, 12850 Jack Nicolson & Roman Polanski, 15147 Faye Dunaway, 13511 Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, and a 12671 Warren Beatty, 12900 Marlon Brando, where his son, Christian Brando, shot and killed his half-sister’s lover, Dag Drollet…
Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is this noir-narcotic loop of heartbreak in the “dream place” of Hollywood, one can easily see its reflection in Bollywood. One of the greatest masters of uncanny, David Lynch has consistently declined any explanations to the film whatsoever. He simply calls it “A love story in the city of dreams”. Perhaps it is just that, perhaps it is anything but that… Cinephilia and Beyond describes the film as mysterious hybrid of genres, a tale of love and revenge of bizarre, seemingly incomprehensible structure, a terrific—and terrifying—film that stubbornly resists being called a horror film, even though it’s as dreadful and unsettling as anything recorded on the celluloid so far.
Kamal Swaroop has chosen to deconstruct this unyielding world of darkness and confusion for many reasons, primarily for the trapping of the dream and the unconscious in a convention of the cinematic language. He is interested in ‘transference’ as in psychoanalysis. How did Lynch turn this into cinema?
Kamal Swaroop himself is a legendary filmmaker from India known for his surrealist explorations, ‘unassumingly bold, preposterously original and tending to cut against the grain almost by design’. Kamal’s reading of Lynch’s best one – is unmissable.
Kamal will discuss shot by shot, scene by scene this film over 2 weekends (4days)!
SCHEDULE:
(Sat-Sun) 23rd– 24th & 30th-31st January 2021; 2:00 to 6:30 pm IST. (ONLINE on google meet)
The film will be presented to the participants (play-pause-play mode) to run, rewind and re-run as needed, forming the basis of the discourse and allowing room for the discussions. It is recommended, however not compulsory, that the participants watch the film once before attending the session.
Medium of Instruction: English
Method of Training and Interaction: The session will be conducted online on ‘Google Meet’. Details will be shared with selected participants in time.
Suggested Contribution for the session:
₹1000 – For Indian Nationals
$20 – For International applicants from SAARC nations ( i.e Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka)
$50 – From international applicants outside of SAARC association.
Course director: Kamal Swaroop (Director – Screenwriter)
“I don’t believe in sense, but nonsense. I don’t want to connect, but rather to disconnect. How can you show death in films? Nobody dies. Everybody lives. It’s all pretense.” These words spoken by filmmaker Kamal Swaroop in an interview are an indication of the unconventional, impossible to label nature of this artist. As a journalist once described him, “His ideas are unassumingly bold, preposterously original and tend to cut against the grain almost by design.”
Swaroop is a two-time President’s award and Filmfare Award winning film, television and radio director and screenwriter. In 1974 he graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and even his student works met with unusual international acclaim. He continued with postgraduate studies at the Institute. In 1982, he assisted Sir Richard Attenborough in the filming of Gandhi. Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988) is his path breaking masterpiece.
Swaroop’s career, spanning 42 years, covers a broad range of films, channel promos for Channel V India, ads and Radio Spots.
Assistant Faculty: Richa Hushing & Rrivu Laha
Richa Hushing & Rrivu Laha are documentary filmmakers, both alumni of Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Richa specializes in Direction and Editing, while Rrivu’s specialization is Direction and Cinematography. Their films are often character portraits; and portraits of indigenous cultures in face of conflict and at the threshold of change. After a decade-long practice based in Mumbai, in 2017 Richa and Rrivu moved to Auroville, an intentional international township dedicated to the ideals of human unity, free progress and transformation of consciousness. In Auroville, they’ve found Auroville Timelines, a media pedagogy and video arts unit, researching and curating recorded memories of Auroville, creating mnemonics of the dream. Richa and Rrivu are steering now the ‘Auroville Film Institute’ dedicated to the ideal of cinema education, integrating world cinema and world citizenship, experimenting with a new pedagogy, encouraging new practices of conscious cinema.
Certificates: Digital certificates of participation will be issued.
Queries: For queries, if any, please write to: filminstitute@auroville.org.in or call / message on +91 9969879319.
*This session is a part of our weekend series. We are initiating with Kamal Swaroop. Various other filmmakers may join to hold subsequent sessions.
filminstitute.auroville.org 