'DIVINE DIGITS...AND BYOFF' by Siddharth Tripathy
Bring Your Own Film Festival
By Siddharth Tripathy
In her nascence, she hung like an adolescent sky full of dreams. And then she constipated, appeared sad, colorless and wearied. My desire to make a film got aborted so often for infinite reasons. Yet interestingly she conceived again, reborn everytime with a fresh fizz, which no longer remained adolescent, still, a dream indeed if I say so.
I say so because I don't quite remember when and how the idea of making a film entered my head. I leaf through my diaries and assert that by the end of Std. 10 th , I did manage to write a script, a boyish thriller, inspired by voracious readings of mystery books, Secret Seven, Famous Five, Hardy Boys to name a few.
Far from those days of innocent aspirations, after three years at a film school, here she stands now, at my doorstep, my desire to make a film, more intimate and eloquent than ever, in divine digits of a dream. A dream because initially it did sound game, and an absurd one later, the mathematics of expressing numbers in 'zero' and 'one'. The binary digits as our teacher explained, veiled all their divinity when I first met them. They didn't provide even the slightest hint of the indelible imprint they were to make in the later stages of my life. And as the academic sessions ended, they sublimed to exist as an oblivious chapter in my maths book.
A chapter, I touch now, as I write, after completing my first film and somehow managing to get it screened before people.
I am talking of BYOFF Puri.
'Bring Your Own Film Festival' thrusts me into an anarchy of thoughtlessness. Just for the reason that I could show my film in an ambience that's informal, unofficial, and intimate. And for the reason that it brings me back to Pink House, to Bulu, Lala, Bhaaina, Akshayaye, and so many others who taught me that a paradise is essentially passive in nature.
I would not like to direct my words into a structured review of the festival. Or in that case, my writing wouldn't actually be a vignette to the last two happenings of BYOFF. And yet, I sense a simultaneous urge to be a tad more objective.
So what is BYOFF?
BYOFF is what it does
And what does BYOFF do?
It gives me a chance to make my film.
Adequate objectivity for somebody like me, who revels in a party called LIFE.
But I believe there would be readers who read this configuration; its for them that I would like to re-arrange a few more words into an analogy of BYOFF and digital cinema.
BYOFF is a schismatic child of an unbridled advance in the technological spheres of movie, which threatens to elude a century old romance of celluloid. Much hue and cry has already been raised in this regard. The conflict between the hip and renegade Digital Films and the nostalgic chemistry of silver halides; traditional cinema in other words. Terming BYOFF as an edge over the traditional norms of filmmaking and distribution would belittle its canvas. Apart from being a digital embryo, this particular fest is a celebration of myriad kinds.
You don't want me to repeat that perpetual trickle of Mcdowells, and the billowing clouds of pot at small circular worlds of talks we create on the sand after a screening. Those inflamed arguments behind a guitar's strum. Deboo's innocent fury and Lulu Bhaai's dalma. Gurpal's oscillations and Rachna's curves.
….I could go endless.
Because: One has to write to become a writer, paint to be a painter, similar tracks for the singer, the pianist, an athlete or a wrestler. The big question enters here.
HAS ONE TO MAKE FILMS TO BECOME A FILM MAKER?
And if so…is it all doldrums for the aspirant. I believe it was. Till the remarkable intervention of a buzz word…digital, coupled with efforts like BYOFF. Filmmakers from Hollywood to the East End are embracing the new digital technologies, because this digital revolution in filmmaking means that there is no excuse in having an amateurish home movie. Now that everyone can get in on the act, shaky sub-Jeremy Beadle camcorder calamities will be frowned upon not just by film critics, but by your neighbor's kid who is fast turning into the next SATYAJIT RAY or RITWIK GHATAK.
This initiates my second point of discussion. The digital revolution, by far has only been marked by supernatural and almost unbelievable special effects. Is digital technology all about pixels, CCD's microprocessors and the state-of-the-art equipment, or is it also impregnated by an irresistible desire to create. Has it within it the decoders of a language still underdeveloped, inspite of such steep and slick advance in it's craft???
It is here that BYOFF delivers.
In my opinion BYOFF as a movement, has in it, all the potential to reflect upon cinema as an art form. It has in it the germs of the spectacle which the Lumiere brothers created in the first ever motion film. The spectacle of cinema, which evaporated due to a vastly advocated notion of mass media. A notion which grossly dismissed the idea of cinema as a pure art form. The inevitability of trade acknowledged it as a composite art, with a congenital dependence on other existing art forms mainly theater and literature. In the times to come this dependence achieved parasitical conditions, with the film making fry aping Hollywood in their linear narratives. The audience so easily forgot the taste of the spectacle; a motion picture to sum up.
An art form died of infanticide to sound crude.
But the resuscitation was prophesied. Perhaps by Jean-Luc-Godard…. cinema wouldn't exist as an art form until it becomes accessible to the common man…
I was as unaware as him regarding this, when the class on binary arithmetic continued. The chapters were obviously boring. And I sneaked out with her, my desire to make a film, on an odyssey, to arrive this age of bedroom auteur, where things like BYOFF don't just happen: they grind you in.
Religions of the sea
Are sand
And BYOFF
Is just a prayer….
Siddharth Tripathy is a filmmaker based in Raigarh in Chatisgarh. His 'Nawa Kamiz, Lal Wala Badhiya' (now retitled as 'Zobro') and 'Bony Kasaya' have been screened in BYOFF. And both the films were critically acclaimed in the festival.
He can be contacted in ripple...@rediffmail.com
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Visit http://www.byofilmfestival.com to know more about and register for the BRING YOUR OWN FILM FESTIVAL, PURI 2006
Also visit the Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/byoffpuri to post your thoughts, suggestions and of course communications with fellow-filmmakers/enthusiasts to make BYOFF 2006 a grand success!