12th August 2012; Asghar Farhadi's A Separation

A SEPARATION
Written, produced, and directed by Asghar Farhadi
Cinematography by Mahmoud Kalari
Edited by Hayedeh Safiyari
Iran, 2011, color, 123 min.
Persian with English subtitles
Perks Mini Theater
12th Aug 2012 ; 5.45pm

One of the perennial and most fruitful subjects of cinema is relationships, especially those of married couples. Regardless of ethnicity, religion, class, location, or gender, most couples will have problems where the regrettable solution seems to be separation, divorce, or disappearance. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s protagonists, Nader and Simin, have reached such an impasse. After 14 years of marriage, Simin wants to take their 13-year-old daughter and emigrate to another country with or without her husband, to a place where she and Termeh can seek greater opportunities as women.Besides being satisfied with his job and social position already, Nader has to take care of his incapacitated father and consequently refuses to leave Iran. Termeh refuses to join her mother, who definitely will not leave Iran without her daughter. Thus, they have reached an impasse, which could be replicated within practically any country, especially for the “Sandwich Generation” which finds itself taking care of both school-age children and elderly parents. Thus, A SEPARATION is a global film which can speak to all audiences.However, when Simin secures a woman to come clean the house and watch after the elderly, usually bed-ridden father with Alzheimer’s, then aspects of Islamic culture become critical to the story and create all manner of unfamiliar but haunting conflicts and complications. Nader returns one day to find his father tied to the bed and Razieh absent. She has a good reason for this, but Nader doesn't know it and neither do we. He fires her. Meantime she suffers a miscarriage and her husband sues Nader for causing it by pushing her down.The writer-director, Asghar Farhadi, tells his story with a fair and even hand. His only agenda seems to be to express empathy. Although the judge may be tending against our own sympathies, we understand why he does so and may be correct to do so. That a director can make such a sympathetic film in such a troubled time is a tribute to his strength of character.In conclusion, Farhadi has purposely left his film without one. He states very intriguingly and provokingly: “I don’t think it’s important for the audience to know my intention. I’d rather they left the cinema with questions. I believe that the world today needs more questions than answers. Answers prevent you from questioning, from thinking. From the opening scene, I aimed to set this up. The film’s first question is whether an Iranian child has a better future in his or her own country or abroad. There is no set answer. My wish is that this film will make you ask yourselves questions, such as these ones.”

Asghar Farhadi

Asghar Farhadi was born in Isfahan, Iran in 1972. Whilst at school he became interested in writing, drama and the cinema, took courses at the Iranian Young Cinema Society and started his career as a filmmaker by making super 8mm and 16mm films.
He graduated with a Master’s Degree in Film Direction from Tehran University in 1998.
During his studies, he not only wrote and directed student plays, but also wrote plays for national radio and directed for television with such shows as the hit series Tale of a City.
In 2001, Farhadi wrote the screenplay for Ebrahim Hatamikia’s box-office and critical success Low heights.
His directorial debut was with 2003’s Dancing in the Dust. This film went on to participate in the Moscow Film Festival, where it won both the Best Leading Actor and Film Critics awards.
Farhadi made his second feature film, Beautiful City, in 2004 which won the Best feature film award at the Warsaw Film Festival 2004, the India International Film Festival and Moscow’s Faces of Love Film Festival. “Chahar shanbeh souri / Fireworks Wednesday”, his third feature, award winner at the Locarno International Film Festival 2006, has also been successful in other international festivals. The film has been released in both Europe and the USA.
On 19 December 2011, he was announced as being on the jury for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, scheduled to be held in February 2012. On 15 January 2012, his movie Nader and Simin, A Separation won the Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film.The film was also the official Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards where apart from getting nominated[7] in this category, it also received a nomination in the Best Original Screenplay category. On the 26 February 2012, Nader and Simin, A Separation became the first Iranian movie to have received an Oscar for the best foreign language film at the 84th edition of the Academy Awards. This marked Farhadi as the first Iranian to have won an Academy Award in any of the competitive categories.

5th Aug 2012; Thamizh Studio screens Amshan Kumar's Subramania Bharathi & Oruthi

THAMIZH STUDIO
Presents
Lenin Award winner
Amshan Kumar’s two films
SUBRAMANIA BHARATHI
&
ORUTHI 
5th August 2012; 5 pm
Perks Mini Theater

Thamizh Studio is a frontline film movement in Chennai. Their 2012 Lenin award for best filmmaker goes to Amshan Kumar. Prior to the awards function which will be held at Chennai on 15th August 2012 , Amshan Kumar’s two films are being shown in major cities of Tamilnadu.

Subramania Bharati:

Documentary.1999. Script .Indira Parthasarathy. Camera.P.S.Dharan. Music.L.Vaidyanathan.Editing.Gautam.Produced by N.Muruganandam.
Direction.Amshan Kumar.

Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), the renaissance figure of modern Tamil Litreature was born in Ettayapuram, South India.As asingle major force he revolutionized Tamil poetry with great lyrical beauty and brought it closer to people as never before.He was drawn early in his life towards mainstream nationalism and his journalistic writings incensed the British government. Bharati was a true modern championing the cause of nationalism, casteless society and equality for women. He was a unique spiritualist and expressed profound compassion for all living beings.

This is the first full length documentary on Bharati that gives an account of his life and the turbulent times he lived in. Filming is done in Chennai, Madurai, Ettayapuram, Tirunelveli, Pondicherry and Benares, the places associated with his life. Two elderly persons who had acquaintance with him have recounted their memories in this.The documentary has won several awards.

Oruthi2003/91minutes

Story.Ki.Rajanarayanan. Camera.P.S.Dharan. Editing.Satish-Harsha. Music.L.Vaidyanathan.
Produced by. Thara and Gopal Rajaram. Screenplay, dialogues and direction. Amshan Kumar
Cast:Poorvaja, Bharati Mani, Thomas Ober and Ganesh Babu.

The story is set in the late nineteenth century. Sevani, a dalit girl is in love with an upper caste boy Ellappan.Both are shepherds. Plans are afoot to get Ellappan married within his own caste.
John Williams, an English Revenue Divisional Officer arrives in the village to probe into the claim of the Zamindar that people do not pay tax. He comes to know through Sevani that the season was good , people pay tax regularly which the Zamindar has misappropriated for his pleasurable ends.
John Williams effectively intervens and brings permanent relief to villagers through tax reforms.The villagers know that this has become possible due to Sevani but they are helpless to fulfill her single wish of uniting her with her lover.Sevani is finally left with the quill pen that changed the destiny of her people.The film was shown in Indian Panorma and thereafter in several International film festivals. It won the Best film award from Government of Puduchery and Tamil Association of New Jersey, USA.
(Screenings supported and arranged in Coimbatore by Konangal Film Society )

Amshan Kumar

Amshan Kumar is a film maker and writer. His first book EHUTHUM PREGNIYUM published in 1980 deals with topics on writing and philosophy. His book ‘Cinema Rasanai’ written in 1990 in Tamil on film appreciation is the first book of its kind. It is prescribed as a text in many universities in Tamilnadu, Puducherry and Batticaloa in Sri Lanka.

He has conducted film appreciation courses to various age groups and gives lectures to visual communication and Mass Media students in Tamilnadu. Also he co-edited Salanam, a film magazine that was devoted to the study of serious efforts in world cinema. As one who is fond of developing film culture since his college days, he has been associating with and founding film societies like Trichy Cine Forum which was one of the earliest in Tamilnadu and Darshana in Coimbatore. In 2005 he participated in a seminar on ‘Parallel Film Movement in India’ in Kuala Lumpur.
He has directed more than 25 documentaries. His documentary Subramania Bharati the great Tamil poet that won various awards including the Best Documentary Award from Cinesangam, London, Nobel Laureate C.V.Raman, Third Theatre of Bengali Playwright and director Badal Sircar, Ashokamitran, Modern Art in Tamilnadu and Reaching the Unreached are some of his documentaries that have been widely appreciated. His most recent documentary is `Manakkal S.Rangarajan: Carnatic Musician of the Era`
‘Oruthi’ his feature film based on a story written by Sahitya Akademi award winner Ki.Rajanarayanan, was shown in Indian Panorama of International Film Festival of India in 2003 and won the Puducherry State Award for the Best Film and award from Tamil Association of New Jersey, USA.
‘Pesum Porchithram’ his anthology of articles on films was published in October 2007. It was released by Phalke Award winner Adoor Gopalakrishnan at the Chennai International Film Festival in December 2007.
He headed the panel of juries for the Vimbam International Short Film Festival held in London in November 2010.
Amshan Kumar is a post graduate in English Literature and regularly writes on film and other subjects in various Tamil and English magazines. He lives in Chennai.

22nd July 2012; Dardenne brothers' The Kid With a Bike

The Kid with a Bike
A film by Dardenne brothers
Year : 2011
French with English subtitles
Runtime: 83 minutes
22nd July 2012; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2011, "The Kid With a Bike" is another empathetic film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the brothers from Belgium who have strong sympathy for alienated children and young people, and who avoid melodrama and sensation in telling their stories so movingly. There are two things that could go seriously wrong in young Cyril's life, but they don't quite happen. The Dardennes don't wring us out like that. They prefer the drama of ordinary life, in which for a boy like Cyril, things don't easily go right. In straightforward, realistic scenes, they show a boy who fears he has been thrown away, but persists in feeling that his father only lost him and will be happy to find him again.Tightly edited and exciting, not a second is wasted, and every scene has a purpose. Their characters are constantly in motion, both physically and emotionally: In “The Kid With a Bike,” 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret) is somewhere between a human turbine and a wild animal, with so much energy and desire in his preadolescent frame he can’t possibly contain it. Cinematographer Alain Marcoen’s camera flows alongside the characters, but never in a way that focuses your attention on technique.Dardennes are more focused on the redemptive possibilities of their Dostoevskian universe than on its bleak pits of despair. Cyril makes bad decisions and falls in love with the wrong substitute parent, but he’s the toughest kid you’d ever want to meet, better than most grownups at admitting his mistakes and adjusting to reality. The film is only 87 minutes long, lean and efficient, intent on Cyril. It doesn't "explain" him, because he is all there to be seen: his need, his abandonment, his reckless determination, his unprotected youth.
(Source:Internet)

Dardenne Brothers

Brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne (21 April 1951) and Luc Dardenne (10 March 1954) born in Liège Belgium, are a filmmaking duo. They write, produce and direct their films together.

The Dardennes began making narrative and documentary films in the late 1970s, but they first came to international attention in the mid-1990s with La Promesse (The Promise). They won their first major international film prize when Rosetta won the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. All their films since have played at the Cannes main competition and won one of the major prizes. Over the course of their 12-year careers, they have won more awards than any other filmmakers in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2002, Olivier Gourmet won Best Actor at Cannes for the Dardennes' Le Fils (The Son) In 2005, they won the Palme d'Or a second time for their film L’Enfant (The Child), putting them in an elite club of only 7 with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola. Their film, Le silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence), won Best Screenplay at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was released in Europe in the fall. Their latest film The Kid with a Bike won the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[2] Jean-Pierre has been announced as the jury president for the Cinéfoundation and Short Films sections of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

15th July 2012; Mani Kaul's DUVIDHA

DUVIDHA
A film by Mani Kaul
Year: 1973
Run time : 82 minutes
Hindi with English subtitles
15th July 2012; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater

Kaul’s most acclaimed film Duvidha (1973) opens with a rather flat, Godardian image of a woman in a red saree standing in front of a white wall, staring determinedly into the camera, as high-pitched Rajasthani ethnic vocals grace the audio. Like the frozen image of Truffaut’s juvenile delinquent, it suggests a predicament addressed to the audience. Based a folk tale, Duvidha speaks of a love that is beyond time and space.The presence of the ghost, which falls in love with the new bride, is not an exotic delicacy served to us but a given. And so is the ‘story’, which is read out verbatim to us by the narrator, freeing the film from the burden of storytelling, so to speak, instead allowing it to experiment with the imagery.
Employing a number of photographs, freeze frames, jump cuts and replays, which illustrate the film’s central notion of temporal and geographical dislocation (and save on the budget) and manipulating time like an accordion player,Kaul weaves a narrative where the past, the present and the future are always in conversation. (The ghost is simply referred to as ‘Bhoot’ (ghost), which is, of course, the word for ‘past’ as well). The predicament of the title, then, involves a choice between the spiritual and the material, the bride’s past and future, her childhood and adulthood, her freedom and honour and her love and security.Bewitchingly shot like a Dovzhenko film (and composed like Cézanne‘s still lifes), and impressively designed, with a simple yet striking interplay of red and white, Duvidha builds on both Kaul’s feminist leanings and highly personalized aesthetic.
(From: seventhart.com)

MANI KAUL
(25 December 1944 – 6 July 2011)

Those who think of Indian cinema as the glitz of Bollywood on the one hand and the eloquent classicism of Satyajit Ray on the other miss a third important strand, manifested best by the radical director Mani Kaul. Kaul was a totally uncompromising film-maker who never sought popularity but pursued his own concerns, influenced by Ritwik Ghatak, his Bengali teacher and a great director in his own right, and by Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky among the foreign giants of the cinema.
Mani Kaul is undoubtedly the Indian filmmaker who, along with Kumar Shahani, has succeeded in radically overhauling the relationship of image to form, of speech to narrative, with the objective of creating a ‘purely cinematic object’ that is above all visual and formal. He was born Rabindranath Kaul in Jodhpur in Rajasthan in 1942 into a family hailing from Kashmir. His uncle was the well-known actor-director Mahesh Kaul. Mani joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune initially as an acting student but then switched over to the direction course at the institute. He graduated from the FTII in 1966.
Mani’s first film Uski Roti (1969) was one of the key films of the ‘New Indian Cinema’ or the Indian New Wave. The film created shock waves when it was released as viewers did not know what quite to make of it due to its complete departure from all Indian Cinema earlier in terms of technique, form and narrative. The film is ‘adapted’ from a short story by renowned Hindi author Mohan Rakesh and is widely regarded as the first formal experiment in Indian Cinema. While the original story used conventional stereotypes for its characters and situations, the film creates an internal yet distanced kind of feel reminiscent of the the great French Filmmaker, Robert Bresson. The film was financed by the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) responsible for initiating the New Indian Cinema with Bhuvan Shome (1969) and Uski Roti. It was violently attacked in the popular press for dispensing with standard cinematic norms and equally defended by India’s aesthetically sensitive intelligentsia.
(Source: Internet)

24th June 2012; Ritwik Ghatak's SUBARNAREKHA

SUBARNAREKHA

A film by Ritwik Ghatak

Year :1965

Runtime: 124 minutes

Bengali with English subtitles

24th June 2012; 5.45pm

Perks Mini Theater

Ritwik Ghatak's films are deeply haunted by the specter of the Partition of Bengal in 1947, and this sense of dislocation and self-inflicted human tragedy created by artificially imposed social division casts a pervasive sentiment of despair, instability, and perpetual exile through all the rended families and uprooted ancestral communities of Subarnarekha. Opening to the chaotic image of a pair of young, displaced teachers, Haraprasad (Bijon Bhattacharya) and Ishwar (Abhi Bhattacharya) inaugurating a makeshift village school at a refugee colony that has been established on the grounds of landowner's estate, while a low caste woman, seeking alms nearby, is forcibly separated from her son, Abhiram (Sriman Tarun) when she is rounded up into a truck and summarily ethnically cleansed from the colony by the landowner's hired thugs under the guise of religious orthodoxy enforcing caste segregation, the turbulent - and ultimately irrevocable - separation between mother and child serves as a potent metaphor for the trauma of the Partition itself, as Bengal is torn apart by religious and social sectarianism in the aftermath of the country's independence from the British. 

Ghatak illustrates the integrality of history to the interconnected destinies of Ishwar's communal family, initially, through the collapsed hope for reunification embodied in the idealistic Haraprasad's coincidental lament upon reading the news of Mahatma Gandhi's death - "Hey Ram!" (Oh, God!) - the exclamation commonly believed to be Gandhi's own last words upon his assassination, and subsequently, in Ishwar's conversation with his college friend, Rambilas (Pitambar), a wealthy businessman who inherited a foundry from his late father, as Ishwar comments on his dramatic change in fortunes from privileged student to orphan and caretaker of his younger sister Sita (Indrani Chakrabarty) after only six intervening years by reinforcing the contextual timeframe as 1942 through 1948, a profoundly critical period (with particularly great consequences for Bengal) that marked the birth of the 'Quit India' movement (1942), the Bengal Famine (1943) directly caused by the escalation of the Pacific War, national independence (1947), the Partition (1947), and the assassination of Gandhi (1948).

Similarly, the Subarnarekha River (translated as the "Golden Line" River because of its proximity to rich ore deposits) becomes an implicit reflection of the inescapable social (and economic) disparity and cultural marginalization that continues to afflict the displaced refugees of the Partition, as Ishwar, seeking to find a new home and a better life for his young sister, accepts Rambilas' offer to work at the foundry in exchange for a small wage and company-furnished housing on the other side of the eponymous river. 

Leaving the colony - and in essence, abandoning the dream of reunification - with Sita and Abhiram, for whom he had assumed guardianship until his mother is located, Ishwar invariably settles into a life of middle-class comfortability when he is subsequently promoted as manager and given a minority stake in the company. 

But Ishwar's financial stability also betrays a passivity to the profound changes occurring within his own home, an indifference that is reflected in Ishwar's filial criticisms over the melancholy expressed by a now grown Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee) through her sorrowful ballads, and university student Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya) through his unpublished manuscripts that reveal a deeply harbored (and overtly autobiographical) longing to reconnect with a lost mother and an adrift sense of place, as well as through their increasingly inescapable affection towards each other. 

It is this pervasive complacency (if not outright willful ignorance) that inevitably lies at the core of Ghatak's impassioned social criticism on the fateful dynamics that led to the culturally self-inflicted tragedy of the Partition - an inextricable pattern of self-interest, insensitivity, and political apathy from the Bengali middle-class that not only enabled ideological fanaticism and sectarianism to shape the landscape of a post-colonial Indian nation, but also rendered the very idea of home as a sentimental place on an elusive other side that, like the distant, opposing banks of the Subarnarekha River, symbolically represents an idealized, and intranscendible, elsewhere.

(Courtesy: http://www.filmref.com )

RITWIK GHATAK

1925 – 1976

Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). He belonged to an illustrious family. His father Suresh Chandra Ghatak was a district magistrate and also a poet and playwright, mother's name was Indubala Devi. He and his family moved to Kolkata just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic 1943 famine and the Partition of India in 1947. Identification with this tide of refugees was to define his practice, providing an overriding metaphor for cultural dismemberment and exile that unified his subsequent creative work.

In 1948, Ghatak wrote his first play Kalo sayar (The Dark Lake), and participated in a revival of the landmark play Nabanna. In 1951, Ghatak joined the Indian People's Theatre Association ( IPTA ). He wrote, directed and acted in plays and translated Bertolt Brecht and Gogol into Bengali. In 1957, he wrote and directed his last play Jwala (The Burning).

Ghatak entered film industry with Nemai Ghosh's Chinnamul (1950) as actor and assistant director. Chinnamul was followed two years later by Ghatak's first completed film Nagarik (1952), both major break-throughs for the Indian cinema. Ritwik Ghatak directed eight full-length films. Ghatak moved briefly to Pune in 1966, where he taught at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and John Abraham, Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul were among  his students .

Ritwik Ghatak Filmography:
• Nagarik (The Citizen-1952)
• Ajantrik (Pathetic Fallacy-1958)
• Bari Theke Paliye (Runaway-1959)
• Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud Capped Star-1961)
• Komal Gandhar (1961)
• Subarnarekha (The Golden Line-1962)
• Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Named Titas-1973)
• Jukti Takko aar gappo (Arguments and a Story-1974)

17th June 2012; Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

A film by Werner Herzog

Year:1973

Country: Peru

German with English subtitles

Runtime:95 minutes

17^th June 2012; 5.45 pm

Perks Mini Theater

On this river God never finished his creation.

The captured Indian speaks solemnly to the last remnants of a Spanish expedition seeking the fabled El Dorado, the city of gold. A padre hands him a Bible, “the word of God.'' He holds it to his ear but can hear nothing. Around his neck hangs a golden bauble. The Spanish rip it from him and hold it before their eyes, mesmerized by the hope that now, finally, at last, El Dorado must be at hand. “Where is the city?'' they cry at the Indian, using their slave as an interpreter. He waves his hand vaguely at the river. It is further. Always further.

Werner Herzog's “Aguirre, the Wrath of God''  is one of the great haunting visions of the cinema. To watch "Aguirre: Wrath of God" is to encounter one of those rare films that sits with you long after you've finished watching it. The powerful and near demonic screen presence of Klaus Kinski, combined with the very real danger of the nature that surrounds him and Herzog's gift for making every shot count, is quite remarkable.

Kinski is Aguirre and it is hard to imagine better casting. He is part of an expedition of conquistadors, sent to find the fabled El Dorado, the city of gold. When the going becomes too tough for the leader Ursua, he overthrows him and leads his men on an odyssey to hell. His rousing call that "Fortune smiles on the brave and spits on the coward" is the last comfort that he can offer as the uncharted jungle territory claims its victims.

 Much of the adventure takes place on rafts as Kinski urges and pummels his men to their destiny. The Peruvian river settings are in truth deadly dangerous, and Herzog expertly captures the immense power of nature against man. It is to Kinski's credit then that he is able to produce a performance of such invincible intensity. And while he stands firm, the madness around him grows as the other men are picked off one by one by the seemingly invisible Indians that hide on the jungle banks.

 Despite the haunting and hypnotic power of the film, it runs at only 95 minutes. Herzog doesn't indulge himself despite the tempting locations and cast. The pace is fast and the destructive and ominous theme of power confused with madness, strong and powerful. But while it is over quite quickly, the film sits with you far beyond the running time. 

-          From Roger Ebert and BBC reviews 

Werner Herzog

One of the most influential filmmakers in German Cinema and one of the most extreme personalities in film per se, larger-than-life Werner Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in the history of the medium, but for pushing himself and his crew to absurd and unprecedented lengths, again and again, in order to achieve the effects he demanded.

Werner Herzog (Werner Stipetic) was born Sept. 5, 1942 in Munich. He grew up on a farm in the Bavarian mountains. After his parents' divorce, Herzog and his mother moved to Munich where he attended High School (graduated in 1961). He travelled through Jugoslavia and Greece, worked in Manchester and - fact or fiction? - as a rodeo rider.

In 1974, he walked from Munich to Paris to see the sick Lotte Eisner. He wrote a dairy about his pilgrimage entitled Vom Gehen im Eis (Walking on Ice) for which he received a literary award (Rausirer Literaturpreis) in 1979. He said that when he was 14 years old, he knew that he would be making films. His first short was completed in 1962 (Herakles) and one year later he founded his own production company.

Herzog studied history, literature and drama in Munich and Pittsburgh (Fulbright) but not for very long. He never attended a film school and had no formal film education. 1964 he won the Carl Mayer Prize for the screenplay that was to become his first feature film, Signs of Life (Lebenszeichen), which was financed by the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (300.000DM) and won the Bundesfilmpreis for best first feature.

Among Herzog's most popular films, though not an immediate success, was Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) with Klaus Kinski, who also starred in Nosferatu (1979),Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). One of his biggest successes was Every Man for Himself and God Against All / The Mystery (Enigma) of Kaspar Hauser (1974), which won the Special Award in Cannes (1975) and several Federal Film Prizes (1975).

Herzog is famous for dealing with marginalized figures and for his choice of 'exotic' sets (Peru, Brazil, Australia). Herzog, the "visionary" of the NGC, insists that "film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates."

In recent years, Herzog released a number of documentaries and directed various operas. His latest feature film is Invincible. He lives in Munich and Los Angeles.

9th June 2012;Art Documentary:The Day Pictures Were Born

Contemplate & Konangal

Art Documentary screening

The Day Pictures Were Born

Episode Two of BBC’s How Art Made the World

Runtime:59 minutes

9th June 2012; 5.45pm 

Contemplate Art Gallery

 There are two big questions in this second episode of the BBC’s acclaimed art series ‘How Art made the World’. One is why homo sapiens, who have been around for over 150,000 years, only began creating representational art about 35,000 years ago.

 The debates among biologists, evolutionary linguists, paleo-anthropologists, etc., wage on about what has been called “The Great Leap Forward,” or in Dr. Spivey’s words, “The Creative Explosion”, which includes the development of language (around 50,000 years ago). That question is left a mystery, and the second big question is, what do these 35,000 year old paintings mean and why did humans start making them? 

 The episode leads us through the discovery of Altamira and Lascaux and then through several theories regarding the origins of cave painting. The most famous of these proposed that they were hunting rituals preceding the hunt; problematically, people around the world seemed to eat different animals than they painted.

Using anthropology from South Africa and the San people, Spivey and a couple experts theorize, rather plausibly given their evidence, that these early cave paintings were part of solitary shamanistic rituals, and very likely were produced after trance states. A neurologist at London’s Institute of Psychiatry demonstrates a really cool machine that produces trance-like responses in the brain through the visual cortex, and show that our brains are hardwired to receive certain kinds of geometric patterns and that trance states actually turn those into hyper drive. 

Spivey hypothesizes that for this reason, different cultures around the world had trance-visions of different objects and animals. Scientists who study altered states of consciousness suggest the answer lies in the hard-wiring of the brain. People didn't just one day decide to invent making pictures. Rather, prehistoric artists where experiencing sensory deprivation deep within their caves—in a sort of trance state—resulting in powerful hallucinations. These hallucinations were of such powerful emotional importance they felt compelled to paint them on the walls. According to this theory, these artists were simply nailing down their visions.