Day: December 10, 2011

By Subir Ghosh
The rise of the Hollywood system started with companies which developed a way of manufacturing films on a large scale. It went on to be so successful that European companies sent over people to study and, if possible copy, it. Among these American companies was Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, created in 1916 after the merger of Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company — originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays — and Jesse L Lasky’s Feature Play Company.

Eventually eight production companies were incorporated into this giant, which went on to become one of the biggest players of the silent film era. Famous Players-Lasky is best remembered for its vertical integration of the film industry and illegal block booking practices. Famous Players-Lasky reoriented itself as Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation in 1927, later becoming the Paramount Pictures Corporation (now a division of Viacom).

Zukor, who was born to a Jewish family in Ricse, Hungary, and migrated to the United States at the age of 16, was not satisfied with consolidation. The cost of producing films was rising – screenplays cost more to purchase and the rise of the star system meant that celebrities were demanding higher salaries. Zukor needed to increase revenue, and he would do so over the next ten years by integrating film production, distribution and exhibition into one corporation.

The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation defined the system. At the centre of the product package was the featue film – usually about 90 minutes long. Ten-minute newsrools or animated subjects would often complement the feature film, which in turn had to be a story of unusual interest, produced at an average cost of $ 100,000. The success of Italian blockbusters like Dante’s Inferno (1911) in the US market had proved that longer films drew audiences.

This film enlarged the audience: while the average two-reel Motion Pictures Patent Company films would be played for two days, Dante’s Inferno ran for two weeks. The former would be shown in 200-seater Odeons for 10 cents, but the Italian hit was screen to audiences for $1 in a 1000-seat rented theatres. The rules of the game had changed, the industry gave in.

If the length of the film increased, you also needed someone to hold the audience. The Hollywood producers understood this well, and the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation better than anyone else. In fact, to quite an extent the success of the corporation went to Zukor’s deft handling of the star system. Stars like Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, and Gloria Swanson, among others, helped define the Famous Player-Lasky brand.

All promotional efforts of the Hollywood producers centred around the star cast. Publicists had to acquire the art of manipulating the new techniques of mass advertising and mass communication to create a recall value in the minds of the audiences. Stars were also the differentiating factor between one feature film and another. Zukor integrated the star system into his vertical integration plans. He not only bought off stars from other corporations, he also put in place a system to develop his own stars. The plan worked and the salaries of stars rose too. Pickford, who earned $100 a week in 1909 went on to command $ 10,000.

The vertical intergration system had come with its share of problems. In 1919, Famous Players-Lasky faced a boycott from the First National Exhibitions Circuit, a group that controlled 600 theatres in the US. At the core of the Corporation’s bullying tactics was the distribution policy, which required theatres to purchase large blocks of feature films. they were also offered options such as “program distribution”, in which the exhibitor booked a single evening’s worth of entertainment, and “star series” in which the exhibitor signed up for a given number of pictures per year featuring a particular star. This made Famous Players-Lasky go in for its own theatres. By the mid-1920s, it was one of the largest theatre owning concerns in the world.

Most actors, however, remained chained to the big film corporations. The first to break away from the Hollywood system were big names, legends by any standards: Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford joined hands with filmmaker DW Griffith to form United Artists in 1919. UA had it successes but could not match up to the demand. Theatre owners wanted three Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford films in a year, but the group was able to deliver only one every two years. UA provided refuge to filmmakers and actors fleeing from the clutches of their Hollywood bosses, but could not provide assembly-line products.

Within the system producers realised that shooting a story out of order rather than chronologically record it was less expensive. Planned scenes would be filmed, an editor would reassemble them, following the dictates of the script. This pre-arranged plan came to be known as the shooting script. The shooting script would soon become the paper based on which everything would be decided – from whether it would be filmed at all, to how the producer would eventually plan the promotion, based on the stars who would be cast.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/the-hollywood-production-system-and-stars/

By B.G. Verghese
A visit to Pakistan lays bare the uncertain future facing this troubled country despite much bravado and whistling in the dark. The economy is in parlous condition with growth no more than three per cent, 12% inflation, falling FDI, IMF support withdrawn and repayments due next March, public enterprises bleeding, power cuts, a gas shortage, unemployment, a continuing low HDI performance resulting in failure to meet several millennium development goals. With implementation of the 18th Amendment, a structural problem has arisen with increased revenues going to the provinces and “inflexible” expenditures remaining with the federal government. The “War on Terror”, howsoever calculated, is said to have cost the country $60-70 bn whereas US aid has been no more than $18 bn.

The saving grace has been buoyancy in the rural economy with bumper production of wheat, cotton, sugar and milk and a transfer of income from the towns to the countryside.  Defence expenditure accounts for 18 % of the revenue budget and internal security an additional 10 %. The tax to GDP ratio is low and collections lower. Poor governance, mismanagement and corruption are held responsible for this sorry state of affairs.  The extensive 2010 and more limited 2011 floods devastated large swathes of the Indus basin. Independent surveys attribute this not merely to aberrant rainfall, deforestation and consequent heavy erosion in the upper catchments, but poor maintenance of barrage and canal infrastructure that gave way and have yet to be fully repaired.  Despite all of this, opulent (urban) and feudal life styles have not been affected.

Pakistan continues to be afflicted by political turbulence and military assertiveness in governance. The Memogate crisis (following an alleged missive drafted by the former Pakistan ambassador in Washington, Hussain Haqqani, at the instance of President Zardari and handed over to the US military by a controversial Pakistan- born US  businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, pleading for US pressure on Gen Kayani to avert a coup after the inglorious and incomprehensible Osama bin Laden episode, in return for a more zealous Pakistani  role in the War on Terror), incensed the Army and has given it greater ascendancy over the civil government. The Foreign Minister, Ms Hina Rabbani Khar, admitted that Memogate had provoked questions. The Army had “played a larger-than-life role in the history of Pakistan” and the assertion of civil power in the existing democratic set up had to be an “evolutionary process”.

It was at this delicate moment that US-NATO forces bombed a border post, killing 24 Pakistan military personnel in the fog of war. Outrage and fury marked nationwide demonstrations denouncing the Americans for deliberately and repeatedly violating Pakistan’s sovereignty with drone attacks along the AfPak border. The engagement lasted two hours with ascending ferocity despite US-ISAF commands being informed. The Americans aver they were given permission by to engage a Taliban riding party but the Pakistanis assert they were provided the wrong coordinates. The other theory is that the Taliban decoyed the US into action by firing on its aircraft. Both sides have ordered inquiries, pending which Obama has refused to apologise, though senior US officials have regretted the loss of life. 

Many issues arise. US forces have not infrequently been responsible for “collateral damage”. while Pakistan has a long record of violating  Indian (and Afghan) sovereignty through well-established cross-border strikes. Despite its protestations of innocence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the Pakistan Army had sheltered him under its eye in Abbottabad. Since the Army does not admit to singular incompetence, complicity alone explains what happened.

As in Abbottabad, so in the Mohmand border post strike, the Pakistan Air Force or ground forces did not engage the intruders? Why not? In both cases the Pak military presumably thought discretion the better part of valour as it feared escalation would cost it dear. However, Pakistan has closed all US supply routes to Afghanistan and ordered the US to vacate the Shamsi air base in Bolochistan from where it has mounted drone attacks on targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Curiously, but typically, the Shamsi based was leased to the UAE (for what ??) which had in turn sub-leased it to the US. So much for sovereignty!

Pakistan has declared it is reviewing its entire relationship with the US. It will huff and puff but is unlikely to break its military-strategic alliance with Washington. China is not willing, nor militarily able just yet, to take on the US role of playing military godfather and banker to Pakistan. It is already getting all it wants strategically from Islamabad by providing it military supplies, nuclear reactors and assistance to upgrade and extend the Karakoram Highway, build the Neelum-Jhelum and Diamer-Bhasha dams and undertake mining projects in Gilgit-Baltistan. It has also proposed a trans-Karakoram rail link from Tibet and Xinjiang to Gwadar and an oil/gas pipeline along a similar alignment.  

With its economy on drip, Islamabad needs US aid as much as the US needs Pakistan’s cooperation to sustain an effective presence in Afghanistan. Therefore, the current stand-off is likely to be followed by a rapprochement, continuing US aid and more elbow room for Islamabad to position itself as top-dog in Afghanistan when US-IASF militarily pull out in 2014. Pakistan is talking to its own Taliban as a first step. Its formal boycott of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan will not necessarily detract from that meet. The fact is that the US is part of the problem rather than of the solution in Afghanistan. The best option would be to secure a truce in Afghanistan, regionalise a reconciliation and reconstruction programme for it (with Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan and others), with US-European and World Bank backing. The object should be to rebuild its infrastructure and economy and restore to a neutral Afghanistan its traditional role as a thriving crossroads and international commercial hub.

Unfortunately, Pakistan is still caught in a hate-India identity crisis, reflected in its uncorrected school text books, and the fetishism it has developed about J&K. The last week of November saw the Jamaat-ud-Dawa take school children from Faisalabad to Lahore to protest the US/NATO Mohmand air strike. The speeches spoke of plans to Talibanise Pakistan, wreak vengeance on “Christains and Americans” and wage jihad against the US and India.

The decision to extend most-favoured nation treatment to India and promote trade and investment is greatly to be welcomed. But, tolerance for JuD hate rallies suggest that, for some, this could be no more than a tactical move to tide over a difficult time. Hopefully, the opening of trade and investment it will be truly transforming. Some weeks ago, the widow of Moshe Dayan, the Israeli hero of the 1967 war, wrote “Zionism has run its course”. The same is true of the “Ideology of Pakistan”, born of a hollow and divisive two-nation theory. A recent article in Friday Times, Islamabad, commented, “By now everyone in Pakistan should at least suspect that being ‘not Indian’ isn’t a strong enough foundation on which to build a country”.  How true.
www.bgverghese .com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/troubled-pakistans-uncertain-future/

By Joshy Joseph
The moment you are struck with an idea, the search for an ‘adda’ also starts somewhere within you, although the gestation period can vary from person to person. While I  was in my village, Kadamakudy, which happens to be an island in the backwaters of Kochi, the village poet Josekuttan was my lone patient listener.  When I look back, I realize that I was not being fair to him whenever his turn came.  I played the role of my later years’ comrade and critic Vidyarthy Chatterjee in the formative years back in the backwaters.  I was a judgmental listener.

The nearby cinema theatre ‘Sri Durga’ was one and half  hours away by a  country boat ride.  Once in a while my mother with her  gossip gang of friends used to take me along with my younger sisters  for a first show .  At around 4 ‘O’ clock we had to start from Kadamakudy with packed  eatables and drinking water etc.  The  person who used to row  the country boat was known as ‘pottan’ in the village.  He was deaf and  semi-dump.  He  couldn’t speak but used to make some  sounds and was still able to communicate well with my mother .  He was always available for the hard work of rowing for almost  three hours to and fro, for a free film ticket and  some refreshments  .

My mother was a dramatic narrator of stories.  While we row back at night in the lit up backdrop of the Chinese nets which  would be going up and coming down with a creak sound  in the  saline waters and with each rowing of boatman the saline water glows  making  glaaw-glaaaw sounds.  My mother  with her attentive  audience would be re-telling the story of cinema which all of us had seen just half an hour ago.  This  narrative sessions are embedded in my memory like  carvings in a cave,  although I have  no distinct memory  of the original experience of viewing the cinema .  In the midst of  this post-screening  oral cinema sessions, unexpected interventions of ‘pottan’ with a laughter  or an exaggerated facial or hand gesture, stopping  his mechanical action of rowing for a while, slowed down the movement  of the country boat momentarily.  But it added a multi-dimensional   performative  edge to this unique  experience of oral cinema.  My mother would improvise and interpret even pottan’s interventions with enviable creative energy. 

Yes sir, the moment you are struck with an idea, and the moment you feel that compulsion of trying your idea on someone else,  the  definite signs of birth pain of a cinema happens. Later, you might have expanded the original spark into a hardbound or spiral  bound script, but still with each incident of knocking at the doors of an actor or  producer, you might have to still practice some form of oral cinema. Some  may call it, ‘one liner’, or  ‘the thread’ or ‘story line’.  My friend  M. Ravi Kumar, who is a gifted Tamil writer was the executive producer of a Kamal Hassan film- ABHAY – which was shot bilingually both in Tamil and Hindi.  I had accompanied  Ravi  with a show reel of this Kamal Hassan film, to en-number  of distributors’ meetings .  They will be treating you with a cup of tea or soft drinks  and speaking with a Gujarathi or Punjabi accented  Hindi. Ravi first hypes  his film  with its special features .  Then he plays the DVD.   The dance sequences with Manisha Koirala are titillating.  The action scenes are terrific. The technique used is trendy and heady.  The distributor agrees with Ravi on everything .  Now comes the  monetary part.  The accented Hindi suddenly comes out with an observation – “Ravi Sir, everything is fine.  But Kamal Hasanji is not tall enough for Hindi cinema. !”

Poor Ravi was stuck. He could have argued out on any aspects of cinema and convinced  the distributors .  But what  can he do about the height of an actor ! The end result of these comments were obvious.  It    brought down the height of the prices on the negotiating table.

Another city .  Another aura.  Catherine breillat is a popular and controversial figure in both modern French literature and cinema .  She deals with  sexuality  in both her writings and cinema without  any hang ups.  As Vidyarthy Chatterjee is an authority  on Latin  American and European cinemas, I rang him up to get the correct spelling of  Catherine’s surname .  The conversation didn’t  end there.  He said  that Catherine shoots her own novels into films.  The rest of the story is known to me as I had seen her important works, some years ago at Kolkata Film Festival.  Ansu Sur was the Director of the festival then.

At the packed Rabindra Sadan auditorium, Ansu Sur introduced  Catherine to the audience. The mike was handed over to Catherine.  Since you are going to see the film, I should not speak before  it and as the film is being  screened , I  should not speak and  disturb you, and once the screening is over, I need  not  speak at all!  This is how another French director introduced  his film.  But Catherine is Catherine .  She spoke at length.  She did not tell the story.  She did not try to explain the sub-conscious or sub-text.  She spoke about her  way  of making films. Her  cast is unconventional.  She deals  with sexuality as it is done in pornographic films.  She uses experienced  porn-stars.    Ansu Sur was wriggling a bhadralok  wriggle .  Such things are not discussed at a forum like this.  He gave her a sign of ‘time out’,  which did not work. Catherine kept on telling the Rabindra Sadan mob  about  the stark realities of the medium of cinema  which most of us tuck under the carpet.  How difficult it is for an actor to be natural and aroused for an intimate scene in front of the camera.  A male actor turns off when the camera turns on.  So she uses   porn-actors, who could behave naturally and keep it up too! The audience were with Catherine  for her baring of soul without any inhibitions.  She added that, the best cinematographer in the world wouldn’t  be able to  lit up a scene, if the actor doesn’t glow from within.  I have never experienced such testing times for a festival programmer. I could understand the festival director’s discomfort but enjoyed it more,  as an action/reaction shot, live on the stage.  Oral cinema became full blown oral, on that day in Kolkata.

But  oral  tradition is not all about trivia. When a fellow film-maker becomes vocal about his feelings on a work of art and puts it down in some form, somewhere, it attains an inspirational level for any debate on cinema.  It happens in literature without an effort all the time.  In cinema these are rarities.  At the best cinema could be an external expression of an internal  universe and at the worst it is just external and external only. It takes birth in the market .  And the market only knows sales talk. In yesteryears’ Bengali cinema, existed universal artistes, not  just Globalised Manufacturers .  Let me quote : “No one before  Ritwik had made  a film of this kind.  Apparently, it is a dull picture.  The Hero is a driver and the heroine, we can say, is a Car.  The boldness was in the attempt to impose something human on the vehicle which could be termed  as a kind of anthropomorphism.  I do not say that this attempt  to humanize the  car clicked successfully in all the sequences.  But having in mind the Bengali audience, it is simply amazing  that Ritwik had the courage to make such an experiment  .  Besides, in ‘Ajantrik’  what I think really worth noticing, apart from the subject matter, are the cinematic qualities that make a film really meaningful.  Let me give some examples.  There are some particular shots where nothing special is happening and there is very little subject matter.  Yet, in a particular context the shot reaches a lyrical depth and a bold dimension  which is possible only for a very powerful director, such as Ritwik, to create.  A lot of things have been done with the motor-car.  Just the car, quietly standing on the edge of a lake in the evening.  The angle, the composition, is so striking that the car seems  to be talking to us.  Then, in another scene, we see only the bonnet of the car.  On the bonnet is the cap.  Bimal removes the cap, pours water into it and then gives two or three turns  to the cap with his hand and in order to close it properly he gives three gentle strokes with his rough hand.  And that is all. We see against the background of the sky the front of the bonnet and Bimal’s hand.  This is something wonderful.”   Thus spoke Satyajit Ray

Yes, cinema starts with a spark,  organically grows into cinema and finally gets seen.  The circle of oral cinema hits you very badly, in ‘Meet the Press’ programmes of film festivals, where you have  to narrate your own cinema orally and on the basis of your oral rendering, questions are asked.  Thereby  cinema  returns to just an idea again ! What an idea, Sirji.
Is  cinema oral or temporal ?

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/oral-cinema/