Interiority and the Elements

While catching up with a friend, I stumbled upon a potential solution for the content-analysis chapter of my thesis. The trouble so far has been that I want to stay away from traditional film or textual theory, while still talking about narrative through a particular lens. I have done three drafts of the chapter, with the first trying to amalgamate postcolonial and feminist concerns and project them onto a diasporic space, and the second and third spending a lot of word space on the genealogy of diaspora and why reading diasporic work calls for an organic approch. When I coined the 'organic' way of looking at film, I had just returned from a two-month sojourn in monsoon-flooded India, and was quite obsessed with the ideas of a life-like pace and fluidity in the context of representation (which is probably also why the first cut of my doco was unconventionally lingering). Looking back, it was a reaction to an overload of theory and I am now ready to give new life to this chapter.

What is this new life? I will not repress it under new age nomenclature and call it 'organic', but there is a particular kind of spatial and temporal composition in all three films of Mehta's trilogy that plays on binary oppositions like interior and exterior, light and shade, colour and austerity, poverty and wealth etc. There is an engagement with the interiority of the domestic space that is a motif for the interior lives of the characters themselves (and perhaps also a reflection on the diasporic artist's insulation from the present of the homeland, a space/place of memory and re-creation).

When thinking about the films from the point of view of a practitioner, I realised that I was most interested in the choices made by the writer-director. These choices not only pertain to detail and colour, both being aspects that Mehta is admittedly pedantic about. They are also macro choices - Why is the set constructed in a particular city? How is the set put together? What is the vision of the production designer? How does the cinematographer translate this vision? I realised that my documentary is also set in a range of domestic spaces, and I made this decision as I wanted the home of the interviewee to be entwined with the content of our conversation. These choices are crucial to the fabric of the films in question, and an analysis of the same fits in with the essence of my thesis argument. What is this essence? That diasporic creativity is not deterritorialised, but reterritorialised. In other words, a diasporic artistic practice like film is made and re-made at every stage of its conception and production, and viewed and re-viewed in each new socio-economic context. A consideration of both the global and local spaces of meaning-making is significant to a holistic understanding of diasporic creative impulses and pratices. And a consideration of diasporic creativity in turn is intergral to comprehending a world whose cultural and economic capital no longer adhere to east-west distinctions.

Freewheeling Free Will

I haven't written on my blog in a while because of a combination of reasons - I have had no time to write, and no will to create this time. The last couple of weeks have been emotionally and physically exhausting, but also rewarding in a curious way that I can't quite articulate yet. It has been a time when decisions were made and altered from one moment to the next. I would like to think that I exercised my own free will in arriving at and living through these decisions, albeit my free will decided it wanted to freewheel.

The wheel is still rolling, but I'm ready to reflect on its movement. There may be a pattern of sorts and even a particluar colour at certain times. However, I wonder if it is the norm for this wheel to roll, for my will to waver, for my decisions to appear indecisive. Thankfully, women around the world, as Jennifer Fox's brilliant documentary Flying explores, are riddled with choices that are not necessarilly freeing. Fox herself flees from her mother and grandmother, only to find her life is revolving around the poles that are a series of men. She chooses one in the end, and also makes peace with the matriarchal figures. But is she a free woman?

Am I a free woman? The choice I'm making now is, on the surface, more confining that freeing. Scratching the surface, however, I feel it will eventually enable me to freewheel, fly and flout with greater aplomb. I also want to capture this newfound freedom in my documentary. Perhaps film a Skype conversation with my parents, or other moments of difficulty. There is poetry in difficulty. The paisley cannot be contained any longer. It will double over. It's shadow will end the film. This shadow will journey too.

Incubating in the Warm Light of the Academy

I didn't think I would write so soon after the most recent apparaisal of a draft of the introductory chapter of my thesis. I wanted my writing to return to its quasi-authoritative academic tone, one more appropriate for a successful PhD completion and greater publishing potential. I began to wonder if writing this blog for nearly two years now has spoilt me vis-a-vis a career in academia. Why can't a text remain provisional? I understand that my thesis, my film, even my blog have to be 'about something'. But, and herein lies my most demonstrable attempt at writerly assertiveness - I think these 'abouts' are multi- and contextual. Yes, the Academy is progressive enough to encompass the lengths and depths of a particular set of texts or even an entire genre, but it remains uncomfortable with anything that is, by nature, transient. Why this resistance to the ephemeral?

It is 'certainly' my migrant-state that attracts me to transitory form(s). However, temporary residents the world over cannot wait to be 'permanent'. And those in a somewhat settled situation long to get out, to travel. I'm not condoning a gypsy-esque existence for all and sundry, or an experimental discourse for all kinds of writing. It would be mighty nice if the Hegemonic social and academic powers that be began to recognise transience as a healthy expression of thought and emotion rather than consider it a sign of weakness, or dimiss it as just another juvenile phase.

Although I'm still incubating, I will 'probably' continue writing. The cost of not writing is higher than the cost of writing provisionally. Whether (and when) this or any other text will see the light of day that is critical approval is difficult to gauge. But the light here is warm and ideal for a timely emergence from the apprenticeship, a tentative fluttering of slow-growing wings.

Editing = Stripping Down = Confronting Loss = Rebirth

I am not going to include an image with this post because I believe, for once, the writing can stand on its own feet (does writing have two feet, or more?).

The last two weeks have been led at an unprecedented pace, perhaps the rhythm of editing itself has been pacing my life. I have nearly completed a fine edit of my documentary, a process which has taught me a great deal about writing, not just film editing. I now know (not in the way one knows what one has once read, but in a more internalised way) that a holistic text is as much about what is left out as it is a composition of what is included. The frame reigns supreme.

Then there has been the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival 2009, free access to which (courtesy a media pass) has enabled me to not just watch the best and latest in Australian and overseas cinema, but also inhale an environment where I can sense a future. Or some semblance of a future. Yesterday, attending the Screenwriters' Fringe, I felt for the first time in a long time, that I am lucky to be in Adelaide. Premier Mike Rann, in his consummate cinema-speech, seemed to suggest that it is a hub of film activity in Australia. While the question of native audience indifference looms large over the fate of local films as well as the diasporic films that I'm examining for my PhD, I'm confident that conceptual scripts and lyrical editing can turn the tide.

Catharsis in the Dark

When I first watched Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long in a small theatre by myself over the Christmas break, I thought it was the dark intimacy of the cinemascape, combined with thoughts of family and recent emotional turmoil that caused me to bawl. Also noteworthy are the now questionable facts that I rarely cry, or only do so when 'stuff' has accumulated. Although getting teary in public remains taboo, I'm wondering if the enclosed darkness of a cinema hall really constitutes a public place. For my tear glands of late, apparently not.

I cried again today while watching Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, even if it was only in sniffles. However, this time, I was watching with a good friend, in a larger space, after a surprisingly good birthday-week, and with no emotional baggage that I could put my finger on. Perhaps I was drawn to the film because a friend had pre-informed me of its visual make-up. What was this make-up? A combination of Gothic undertones, Indian patterns, African brights - all shot in a Monsoon Wedding style of home-videoesque closeups and amateur pans. I think I was seeking a visual connection of sorts, if not a catharsis. Maybe I have come to expect it everytime I enter that dark space because I have alloted these movie outings the space where I can acknowledge life-affirming details. Is this space inner or outer, public or private, well-lit or dark? What I do know is that it fuels my passion for both the real and reel world(s).

Textiles that Talk Back

Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare stretches the skewed notions of cultural authenticity and class hegemony to the limit in his theory-as-performace art. Indonesian batik textiles, passed off as traditional African gear adorn headless Victorian figures. The patterns, the colours and the entire setting of the installation talk back to empire, as much as they comment on contemporary notions of race and ethnicity (that are in turn intersected, intertwined with class and gender). The visual presence of the figures is omnipotent, but their headlessness usurps them and lets the viewer stare and imagine without fear of rebuke. I am tempted to touch the fabrics, tactile things that they are. But I remain on the border - between the spaces of the maker and the tourist. The hyphen can be a thriving home for creativity and tenacity.

Audience(s)

The Golden Globe glory of Slumdog Millionaire seems to be raising questions regarding audiences (divided along national, religious, geographic, gender, class and countless other lines) all over again. I have been grappling with these questions regarding the Mehta trilogy, but the recent critical acclaim accrued to the Danny Boyle film, as well as Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger is literally pushing the Indian sublatern into the global spotlight. A review from The Australian refers to the gory yet life-affirming movie as 'poverty porn' and blames shallow western audiences rather than filmmakers for their tastes. It also raises the point that the Mumbai-based film has not even been released in India yet, which reminds me of the time Mehta's Water was nominated for an Oscar without having officially being screened in the country of origin. Perhaps critics who write such reviews need to consider the perfectly valid proposition that such films are specifically tailored for the western liberal (and occasionally mainstream) viewers. Maybe I'll revise that statement and say that such films are more likely to appeal to the cosmopolitan viewer, whether in India or overseas. While city-dwellers in India may be aware of the existence of slums, it is largely peripheral to their privileged lives. In other words, the film might be as shocking to a section of Indian viewers as it is to the western viewer. The purpose, then, may not be to reach the slum-dwellers themselves, but shake the rest of us out of our consumerist oblivion. Will the so-called slumdogs object to their onscreen portrayal? David Stratton called in Dickensian, and I think he might be right. The poor are not without agency in this film, so why cast them as victims?

What's in a Voice?

I have to have one for my film as well as my dissertation, preferably the same for both. But, what is a 'voice', leave alone 'my voice'? Also, why is it important?

Maybe it is something akin to a personal style (both aesthetic and political). Perhaps, instead of thinking about all my influences separately, what I need is to think of them holistically. It is how I combine these threads and produce a pattern that transcends the individual colours and textures that will determine the nature of my voice.

Theoretically speaking, I need to stop swimming in the theory. Do I know enough to last once I'm out of the water? Probably, but the water is not going to disappear. It is always there to be used as an aid.

As to the importance of the voice, I know intuitively that it can make or break a movie or a book. This is not to say that texts should be read as per the intentions of the auteur, but more so that the voice will come through more strongly if it is a subtle yet all-encompassing presence.

Foretold Beginnings

e-motion = Emotion?

I was reading about humans in motion, and then I began to wonder if it was possible to conceptualise the post-globalisation flows of people as electronic movements. Why electronic? Because they are occurring at unprecedented levels, more rapid and widespread than at any other time in the course of human history. These flows are also greatly aided by advances in modern technology, be it means of transporting people physically from one place to another or imaginative conduits like the internet and satellite television. Hence the coinage of e-motion.

However, the question now arises - can e-motion encompass the brea(d)th of emotion that accompany this motion? This probably brings us to the age-old conflict between empirical facts and qualitative data, but need this relationship be divisive? I would like to think that science and art can mutually benefit from each other's company, be perfect complements. e-motion may not be equivalent to emotion, but it can certainly gain from the hues and textures of the latter concept. Similarly, emotion may appear devoid of rationale, and thereby gain from e-motion's exactitude.