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The Conversation at 50: A Masterclass in Style | FilmInk

It’s not unprecedented of course: Ingmar Bergman famously made Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal in one year (1957) and Hitchcock would often have two films released in a year and made two of his masterpieces, Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) back to back but still, it’s nothing short of a miracle to think that Coppola, who barely made it through being fired from the set of The Godfather, managed to write and direct this underrated gem.

It was thanks to the huge commercial and critical success of The Godfather and the Oscars that followed shortly after, that Coppola made an offer that the Paramount executives couldn’t refuse: if they want him to make Godfather II, they should let him make The Conversation first.

Unlike The Godfathers, the film was a small indie by the standards of the day (and even today) with limited locations and cast, but anything but small in its artistic vision and ambition.

At first, it might strike you with its politically charged theme of surveillance of the citizens, reflecting the collective distrust and paranoia in ‘70s America, which later dominated American movies. Yet, it was far ahead of the game, as films such as Marathon Man, All the President’s Men and many other seventies cult classics only came after it. It’s also a chilling coincidence that the film was made and released before/during the Watergate investigations and way before Nixon’s official resignation because of the scandal.

Today, the film still stands the test of time due to its masterful formalistic qualities: a paranoid tone and atmosphere mainly achieved through Coppola’s stylistic choices influenced by European modern cinema and specifically Antonioni’s masterpiece, Blow-Up (1966).

The film remains a prime example of a de-familiarising use of sound in cinema history. This strategy is not taken merely as an experimental choice but also cleverly to reflect the sonic perspective of the film’s protagonist and manages to create a unique subjective experience. The Conversation uses sound to change our perception of the images and gradually lets the audience into the mind of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman in a career-high delicate performance), a lone wolf surveillance expert. Harry emphasises in the opening that he doesn’t care what the subjects of his surveillance are talking about, but rather, all he wants ‘is a nice fat recording’. But, as the film progresses, he becomes obsessed with the subject of a particular conversation and embarks on a paranoid search for truth. The more he searches for the truth, the more ambiguous and fleeting it seems to be. This creates an ongoing suspense that escalates by the climax, leading to a great twist in the plot. But more importantly, Coppola manages to put the audience in Harry’s mind and ears and as the film comes to an end, it makes the audience question how we associate sound and images and derive information and meaning from them.

Let’s see what patterns and methods Coppola used to achieve this unique experience: repetition is one of the key formalistic elements that comes with the job of the main character and becomes a motif in the film. The Conversation opens with a long zoom shot, where we gradually understand that a couple is under surveillance and being recorded by a team of Harry’s surveillance experts. We see the same scene from multiple angles, we hear the same recording from different sources of recordings/sonic perspectives, and we later see Harry’s recollection of the recording as he plays it back and forth and tries to put the pieces together.

Disorientation is another formalistic choice in the film that is achieved specifically through the film’s cleverly designed soundtrack. From the opening sequence, the film’s editing makes us work to locate the sources of the sounds, playing with the audience’s perception of what they hear and where it’s coming from. To heighten the audience’s sensitivity to sound, the musical soundtrack is scarce throughout, and apart from a minimalistic piano theme, the film relies heavily on diegetic sounds and music. It then gradually merges the ambient sound with Harry’s mental sound when his obsession intensifies, and he keeps reviewing the recording in his mind (watch the ‘night bus ride’ scene closely as a remarkable example in the film where we share the paranoia that he’s going through).

The film is also a masterclass in visual style and storytelling: there’s a significant pattern standing out in the blocking and staging of the shots; the protagonist is often backlit, which makes him look like a shadow or a ghost surrounded by diagonal or perpendicular lines and harsh shadows that dominate him in the frame. The shots are organically thought of in the mise-en-scene, mostly through a combination of Coppola’s creative blocking, staging, a monotonous set design, and low-key lighting. This creates a striking visual motif that makes the audience feel that the protagonist is trapped in a cold and threatening world, way before he’s told via a telephone call at the finale that he’s under surveillance literally. It seems easy to point out but it’s also surprising how it doesn’t feel forced as you watch the shots in the film.

There’s also a Kafkaesque tone in the film due to the ambiguous nature of the organisations and the assignments that characters are given, which again is emphasised through Coppola’s scarce soundtrack and vast empty spaces in his long shots. A great example of his visual storytelling and ingenious blocking is when Harry, the protagonist is being questioned by his rival about his technique on a famous assignment that he did years ago. What could have been a simple line of dialogue becomes a memorable cinematic moment, Harry moving (very casually) behind a piece of matte glass where his figure is obscured from his rival and the audience, and only then he says: ‘Well, nobody really knows for sure!’

Great films age well, and it’s no wonder that The Conversation feels more relevant than ever in today’s world of CCTVs, face recognition cameras, smartphones, and social media.

Ali Mozaffari is a Melbourne based emerging filmmaker, freelance film critic and full time cinema buff and art enthusiast. He finished a Foundation Film & TV course at VCA in 2018 and been making short films and video essays ever since and often muses on the cinematic form and write on it.

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#Conversation #Masterclass #Style #FilmInk

Dravidian politics and Tamil cinema: The conjoined twins of the Tamil motherland

Post By Entertainment Annadurai, election 2024, elections tamil nadu, Jayalalitha, kamal, kamal politics, Lok Sabha Election 2024, M Karunanidhi, MGR, MK Stalin, politician actors tamil nadu, politics tamil nadu, Rajinikanth, rajinikanth politics, tamil politicial films, Vijay, vijay politics

Cinema, in the form of documentaries, short films, feature films, and even animated cartoons, has long been used as a medium to shed light on major events or social conditions to inform and agitate the masses. Our Western counterparts have been utilising films since the days of World War 1; interestingly, before the war, French cinema had a big share of the world market and its collapse made way for Hollywood to establish its hegemony. In India, films on anti-British propaganda started the movement during British rule and to date, the medium has proved to be a formidable tool for spreading ideologies in the Dravidian states, especially in Tamil Nadu where the lines between the two fields crossover quite often.

For those new to this, two facts could probably comprehend the magnitude of the symbiotic relationship politics and cinema share in Tamil Nadu; the state has had five Chief Ministers from the world of cinema (excluding the current CM MK Stalin who gave a shot with acting in Ore Raththam in 1987), and O Panneerselvam – who took charge as the Chief Minister thrice – was the first without any link to the world of cinema to head the State government since 1967.

Architects of this assemblage

Fascinatingly, the current ruling party of Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was the one that understood the power of stage plays and films after understanding how films like Thyaga Bhoomi (1939) and Mathru Bhoomi (1939) penetrated the minds of the masses before Independence. So much so that Indian National Congress leader K Kamaraj asked if actors can manage presiding over a state. After independence, four Congress leaders — including C Rajagopalachari and Kamaraj — ruled the state until 1967 when the administrative power went to the hands of Dravidian parties and CN Annadurai became the first leader from a Dravidian party to turn CM of TN (then Madras State).

A still from ‘Oru Iravu’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

An excellent orator and writer, Annadurai pushed his ideologies through his writing that were made into films like Velaikari (1949) which was inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, Nallathambi (1949) which was adapted from the Hollywood film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Ore Iravu (1951). The films focussed on tropes such as the disparity between the castes and classes and promoted social justice and education. Speaking of Velaikari and Ore Iravu, their lead actor KR Ramasamy, who previously staged both stories as plays, is said to be the first Tamil actor to dabble with politics. Not only was he a close follower and confidante of Anna, but his plays — which he continued after turning into a film star — doubled as fundraisers for the then-novice party, DMK.

Parallely, M Karunanidhi, who, as a high school student, created the Tamil Nadu Tamil Manavar Mandram (the Dravidian Movement’s first student wing), turned into a screenwriter with the MG Ramachandran-starrer Rajakumari (1947). For MGR, an emerging actor at that time who predominantly starred in romance and action films, it was Karunanidhi’s writing in films such as Maruthanaatu Ilavarasi (1950) and Manthiri Kumari (1950) that gave him a breakthrough.

M.G. Ramachandran and V.N. Janaki in a still from ‘Maruthanaatu Ilavarasi’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Around the same time, a youngster joined a drama troupe and worked his way up to play the lead in the stage play ‘Shivaji Kanda Hindu Rajyam’ written by CN Annadurai in the 40s that was presided over by Periyar EV Ramasami, who was then leading the Dravidar Kazhagam and the Self-respect movement. It was he who christened this young man VC Ganesan… as Sivaji Ganesan.

When the actor made his film debut with Parasakthi (1952) — alongside another actor-politician SS Rajendran — which was penned by Karunanidhi, the film was so politically charged that the then-ruling State government even demanded the film be banned. But the film, which was anti-Brahminical, commented against the caste system, took a dig at Hindu customs and was even cited as a minor reason for DMK overthrowing the Congress party in Tamil Nadu, went on to acquire a cult status. The film also paved the way to stricter censorship for films and plays which the writers bypassed by using puns and ambiguous phrases. By then, many prolific actors such as NS Krishnan and MR Radha made sure their characters were an extension of their personal ideologies which aligned with the Dravidian movement. Similarly, KB Sundarambal, a prominent face of Congress in the state, was later inducted as a member of the legislative council. Another prominent member of the Dravidian Movement was poet Bharathidasan whose writings served as a catalyst for the growth of the Self-Respect Movement.

Sivaji Ganesan in a still from ‘Parasakthi’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

When the mothership bifurcated

MGR, in 1972, founded the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) as a breakaway faction from DMK after an altercation with Karunanidhi and stuck to the policy of socialism and secularism based on the principles of Anna. Unlike fellow actors from DMK, MGR’s persona from films starring him as a friend and saviour of the downtrodden mirrored his real-life actions where he carried out philanthropic services. This led to a landslide victory in the 1977 state elections and MGR ruled the state until his death in 1987.

In this 1986 file photo, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran greets the then propaganda secretary of the party, Jayalalithaa during an event in Madurai
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Soon after his death, the party was split between his widow VN Janaki and Jayalalithaa, a leading actor from 1965 whom MGR had collaborated with multiple times. When Janaki retired from politics, Jayalalithaa joined the two factions and served six terms as the TN CM. Sivaji, who initially was a part of DMK, later joined the Tamil National Party which was eventually absorbed by Congress. When the AIADMK factions broke, Congress decided to ally with Jayalalitha’s fragment, a move that Sivaji Ganesan opposed. This prompted him to leave the party and start his own short-lived political party, Thamizhaga Munnetra Munnani.

The love-hate relationship between Tamil cinema and politics

The direct equation the two streams shared took a back seat after the death of MGR. The 90s, an important decade for the evolution of Tamil cinema, saw very little on the political front by those from the film industry. In the mid-90s, it was speculated that Rajinikanth might take the plunge into politics but the actor decided against it. He also supported DMK in the 1996 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election before which, he famously stated, “Even God cannot save the people if Jayalalitha comes back to power.” Though he would go on to announce his entry into politics in 2017, he eventually dissolved his organisation Rajini Makkal Mandram in 2021 and affirmed that he would not be entering politics.

Meanwhile, his peer and close friend Kamal Haasan formed the centrist party Makkal Needhi Maiam in 2018. His party failed to win a seat in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election, and despite securing 2.62% of the votes, Kamal himself lost in the Coimbatore South constituency by a slender margin. He opted out of the 2024 Lok Sabha election and instead campaigned for the DMK-led alliance.

(L-R) Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth and M Karunandhi
| Photo Credit:
R. Ragu

Over the last few decades, many more actors gave politics a shot albeit with comparatively lesser success. Multihyphenate T Rajendar, a long-time supporter of DMK launched his own party, All India Latchiya Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Vijayakanth formed the centre-left party Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam in 2005 and despite becoming the leader of the opposition in 2011, he could not undo the following slump. Post his death, his party seems to have gotten a new lease of life and was allotted five seats in the recent election.

Khushbu, who initially joined DMK and later Congress, is now a part of BJP. Sarathkumar established the All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi and had previously served as a member of the Rajya Sabha and the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. He recently merged his party with the BJP, and his wife, actor Radhika is contesting as the BJP candidate from the Virudhunagar Lok Sabha constituency. Ramarajan was elected to the 12th Lok Sabha as an AIADMK candidate from the Thiruchendur Lok Sabha constituency in 1998. Actor Napoleon joined DMK and served as the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment from 2009 to 2013. Karthik heads the Akila India Naadalum Makkal Katchi. Veteran filmmaker K Bhagyaraj had a short-lived party named MGR Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam. Director Seeman started the social outfit Naam Tamilar Iyakkam during the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War which has turned into Naam Tamilar Katchi and is now fielding 39 candidates in the Lok Sabha elections.

When cinema reflected the world of politics

While many actors took the political plunge during and after their heyday within the film industry, there are a slew of actors/technicians who used the medium to reflect on the political situations of that particular era. Interestingly, most of them took the satirical route and their lines, which were often tagged as ‘sirikavum, sindhikavum’ (to laugh and contemplate). Cho Ramaswamy was one of the earliest political satirists who infused jabs at that period’s political moves and movers in the films he starred as a comedian, and it was also the underlying theme for his directorial Muhammad bin Tughluq (1971).

Cho Ramasamy in the Tamil film ‘Mohamed Bin Thuglak’

K Balanchander brought in a new wave of films which were centred on social themes and interpersonal relationships mostly with a woman protagonist. His film Achamillai Achamillai (1984) satirises the Indian political system and the toll it takes on small-time politicians while Thanneer Thanneer (1981) dealt with everyday problems caused by political corruption. Probably the most famous film in the genre which has become synonymous with political satires has to be Manivannan’s Amaidhi Padai(1994). With a strong political acumen, Manivannan’s directorial ventures — like Palaivana Rojakkal (1986) which was written by M Karunanidhi — as well as the supporting roles he played — like Thai Maaman (1994), Villadhi Villain (1995), Ellame En Pondattithaan (1998) and Mudhalvan (1999) were replete with political references delivered comically. Speaking of lacing regular film dialogues with political references, SS Chandran also made a name for himself with his witty lines. Sathyaraj also made his fair share of political satires like Maha Nadigan (2004) and Suyetchai MLA (2006) apart from the aforementioned Amaidhi Padai and Thai Maamani.

The late 90s and early 2000s saw a plethora of political films such as biopics on yesteryear political leaders as well as fictional takes such as Makkal Aatchi (1995) and a slew of Shankar films on social issues like Gentleman (1993), Indian (1996), Mudhalvan (1999), Anniyan (2005) and Sivaji: The Boss (2007).

Mohanlal and Prakash Raj in a still from ‘Iruvar’

Mani Ratnam, apart from making films like Roja (1992), Bombay (1995), Uyire (1998), Kannathil Muthamittal (2002) and Aayutha Ezhuthu (2004) that have politics as a canvas on which the plots are mounted, also gave us Iruvar (1997) – inspired by the lives of Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalithaa – which has become a textbook example for political dramas in Kollywood. In the contemporary Tamil film landscape, there have been a fair share of political satires such as Saguni (2012), Joker (2016), LKG (2019) and Tughlaq Durbar (2021) as well as commercial entertainers with a political backdrop like Ko (2011), Kodi (2016), Sarkar (2018), NOTA (2018), NGK (2019) and Kodiyil Oruvan (2021).

A new wave on the horizon

In the last decade, filmmakers like Pa Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj (with films such as Pariyerum Perumal, Karnan and Maamannan) and Vetrimaaran (Visaranai, Asuran and Viduthalai) have introduced audiences to a new wave of socio-political films that talk about oppression, exploitation and lack of social justice, and have put anti-caste politics in the front and centre of Tamil cinema. Ranjith — whose directorials include politically charged films like Madras, Kaala and Natchathiram Nagargiradhu — apart from also producing such films, extends his social work in various forms like Neelam Cultural Center (that led to The Casteless Collective band), Vaanam Art Festival, Koogai Film Movement and the recently concluded PK Rosy Film Festival that’s named after the first Dalit actress.

Director Pa Ranjith and Rajinikanth from the sets of ‘Kaala’

Apart from them, works of filmmakers like Ram, Manikandan, Raju Murugan, Gopi Nainar and Lenin Bharathi and films like Uriyadi, Ka Pae Ranasingam and Nenjuku Needhi have held a mirror to the sociopolitical issues and how they plague the lives of commoners.

Looking ahead to the future on and off-screen

Despite a new breed of filmmakers making it full circle for Tamil cinema and bringing it back to propagate anti-caste concepts with films on inclusivity and anti-establishment, Kollywood’s tryst with its purveyors doubling it as a launch pad into politics shows no signs of stopping. The son of the state’s current CM Stalin, Udhayanidhi, who entered the film industry as a producer and distributor, and turned actor, contested and won in the Chepauk – Thiruvallikeni Assembly Constituency in the 2021 elections before being sworn in as minister in Youth Welfare and Sports Development, in his father’s cabinet.

Udhayanidhi Stalin and Vijay

Probably the biggest announcement concerning the topic in recent times came earlier this year when Vijay announced the launch of his political party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. The actor, who announced his foray into politics at the peak of his career, declared that his party would enter the electoral fray in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.

2024 marks the 80th year of Periyar starting the social movement called Dravidar Kazhagam which gave to the rise of parties that have ruled the state since 1967. Cinema and politics, in various degrees of intensity, have remained intertwined since then. Though a large section of the public might criticise the power those from the film industry wield in the world of politics, what the forefathers of Dravidian politics wrote as dialogues in films back in the 50s still sounds eerily relevant. Need an example? A line written by veteran Karunanidhi, personified by the legendary Sivaji in his debut film Parasakthi, goes, “Kovilile kuzhapam vilaivithen, kovil koodathu enbadharkaga alla, kovil kodiyavarin koodaram-ah irruka koodathu enbadharkaga.”

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Possessed by The Demon Disorder | FilmInk

Post By Entertainment

What is the film about and where did the concept come from?

Steve Boyle: “The Demon Disorder tells the story of three estranged brothers, who reconnect when they believe one of them is possessed. Once unified, they are forced to confront a terrible family secret in an attempt save their brother. We have used possession as a metaphor for dementia in this film, which is something that has affected my family deeply. It’s based around a single idea: What would happen if the deceased dementia sufferer had no memory of dying?”

How did you get the film off the ground?

“After many attempts to get the film made, Producer Ally Muller and I decided to raise the funds ourselves and make the film independently. It certainly helped that Umbrella Entertainment were so interested in the project from early on. We sent them the script plus a concept book which they loved; they jumped on board to help us get the right international sales agent. Once we had those pieces in place, Screen Queensland came through and provided finance through their Production Grant. But it all started with, ‘let’s make a simpler version of the story that we can create for a minimum amount of money’. As it turned out, the simplified script was the best version of itself.”

How did John Noble [pictured main image] get involved?

“The first person I pitched the film to was an actor friend of mine, Dirk Hunter – we met 20 years ago when we worked on the feature film UNDEAD. He loved the script and wanted to be part of the project straight away. His first question was, ‘who is playing the father, George?’ At the time, I didn’t have an answer. Dirk said his agent Tracy LeMin also represented John Noble and we should try and get the script in front of him. I was beyond excited at the prospect, but didn’t think we had a chance! Tracy really worked her magic and John was excited by the story and script. He signed on for less than he would normally agree to, the rest is history! We were so fortunate, and it really goes to show the power of a strong script!!”

What was the highlight in making THE DEMON DISORDER?

“Definitely being able to combine our two companies, Formation Pictures and Formation Effects, in a way we haven’t had the opportunity to do so in the past. Formation Pictures raised the finance and produced the film from development to final delivery. The Formation Effects team was able to demonstrate what they are experts in – combining practical with digital effects and technologies for creating world-class Creature FX. We were not working in somebody else’s machine which allowed holistic decisions to be ours. We were able to take bigger financial and creative risks, allowing us to create way more value on screen. It also allowed our FX artists the opportunity to really flex all their creative muscles and be part of the creative process. It was awesome to see!”

What is unique about this film compared to other possession films?

“I love possession movies! But I also love trying new approaches to existing concepts. For THE DEMON DISORDER, we wanted to bring the possession genre into more body horror and creature-feature territory. Also, in the majority of possession movies, it’s always a young woman that is possessed. In our film, we put a spin on that – the youngest brother is possessed. But what if it wasn’t a random possession? Rather, something more purposeful and personal? And what if the people involved weren’t even religious? Those ideas really intrigued us, and we were able to capture this dysfunctional Australian family involved in something beyond their comprehension.”

What was the biggest challenge transitioning from making SFX to directing your own SFX film?

“This is more of a fear than a challenge! When you do special effects for other productions, the quality of the film is out of your hands. And in that sense, it’s a safe way to work, because you think, ‘all I have to worry about is the FX, the rest of the film has nothing to do with me’. In the case of writing, directing and producing plus providing the FX, there’s literally nowhere to hide. If the film doesn’t work, it’s totally my fault. But thankfully filming was so intense and so busy, I didn’t really dwell on that too much!”

What is your favourite scene in the movie?

“Without giving too much away… the film has a unique birth sequence in the last act which is extremely visceral and hideous. I’m very proud of it. It’s a combination of being an emotional part of the story plus disturbing visuals, and incredible sound by our sound designer Michael Thomas. It’s the perfect storm for a horror movie and I think horror movie fans are going to love it.”

Everything was done in Queensland, Australia. What were the perks of being able to do everything locally?

“Everything and everybody were in close proximity. I was able to collaborate with local artists and crew that I’ve worked with over the years who were excited to be involved with the film. Also, I’m really happy that Screen Queensland showed their support, even though it’s rare for them to do a horror movie! When doing something of this genre, there’s a thought that funding agencies won’t do low budget horror, but the team at Screen Queensland were thrilled to help. It’s been an ongoing relationship which wouldn’t have happened if we had shot anywhere else. I want to always make our films locally. Also, it means I get to go home at the end of the day!”

Where can you watch THE DEMON DISORDER? Is it going to cinemas?

“Umbrella Entertainment is looking after Australia and New Zealand distribution; they have been amazing to work with! The film is currently gearing up to have its world premiere at the Gold Coast Film Festival on the 22nd April which we are thrilled about. The film will be having its North American release later this year.”

What do you hope audiences take away after watching the film?

“I want audiences to be entertained, maybe a little disturbed and grossed out. But more than that, I want them to be thinking about it long after it finishes. THE DEMON DISORDER is an ‘80s style horror film with an onslaught of practical effects. I hope they walk away feeling like they’ve experienced a fresh perspective on a genre they have always loved.”

The Demon Disorder premieres at the Gold Coast Film Festival on 22 April 2024. More info by clicking here

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#Possessed #Demon #Disorder #FilmInk

Australian Screen Industry Body Demands Global Streamers Pay Content Levy

Post By Entertainment

Australian producers are “at risk” of becoming “slaves” to international streamers, a top industry body has warned, as the debate around regulation heats up in the country.

Screen Producers Australia (SPA) made the comment in a statement issued to the National Cultural Policy inquiry hearing today for the government’s upcoming ‘Revive’ plan. Streaming regulation has become the hot button topic since the long-term plan to revamp the arts in the country was first announced in January last year.

SPA, which represents most of Australia’s main producers, has been consistently vocal in its criticism of the global streamers. It is advocating for the likes of Netflix and Prime Video to spend a minimum 20% of their local revenues on Australian content within three years.

The Australian government has pledged to introduce streaming regulation on July 1, but is yet to table a motion in Parliament, leaving producers in limbo over what shape it will take — if it indeed comes to pass.

SPA has laid out four main concerns about the National Cultural Policy, which will contain the legislation around streaming. Along with the 20% quota, it wants a “strong definition” of what Australian content is, that Australian IP should be “secured” for Australians and “treated as a valuable national asset,” and for the indie sector to “retain its independent character.”

“With commercial free-to-air broadcasters all but having been allowed to give up on commissioning any Australian drama or children’s programs, and subscription television commissioning only the minimum amount required under an outdated 1990s era scheme, we are now faced with a situation in which global streamers are increasingly the masters of Australia’s screen industry, and our industry is at risk of becoming their slaves,” the SPA claimed. “For all of these reasons, our members are facing a very tough future.”

The SPA believes streamers have been “threatening” the Australian government that they will “shut up shop in Australia if regulated, with no regard for the viability of the local screen industry that they are exploiting for only their own benefit.”

“Asking streamers to allocate a small portion of the revenue gained from Australian subscribers back to Australian audiences and to ensure a sustainable Australian production industry that can tell our nation’s stories using the most powerful cultural medium we have – our screens – doesn’t seem too much to ask,” it added.

In November, a consultation paper focused on creating one of two models: a revenue-based system that leaves out sport spend and an expenditure-based model that escalates depending on subscriber numbers. However, both left out documentary — one of three genres named by the National Cultural Policy as critical — and the SPA claimed unnamed streamers had since circulated misleading information that docs such as Prime Video’s cricket series The Test and Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles would not be counted as Australian content.

Definitions of ‘Australian content’

The SPA pointed to statistics from an ACMA report that showed “Australia-related” or international spend (including overseas films and TV shows shot in Australia) by the five largest SVOD players in Australia had increased around 60% year-on-year to A$452.9M in 2022-2023, but that spending on Australian content had, by contrast fallen, from A$335.1M to A$324.1M.

It claimed this was because “international streamers will commonly conflate these two figures, to suggest that their spending, whether on Australian stories or international stories filmed in Australia are one and the same thing.”

The SPA said streamers are campaigning for a “loose” definition of ‘Australian content’ that would allow them to declare their spend through several banks of investment that doesn’t ultimately benefit local producers. This was part of an intentional play to “muddy the waters between what is genuinely Australian content and what is international.”

The body also pointed to the “weaponization” of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement “to influence this streamer regulation.”

The SPA alleged through “informed analysis” that around 70% of international streamer revenues from Australia turned directly into “incremental gross profit.”

International streamers believe they are already investing heavily in Australian content, and can point to shows such as Netflix’s Heartbreak High reboot, Disney+‘s drama The Clearing and Paramount+‘s Last King of the Cross as evidence. We have reached out to the main international streamers for comment.

“Not too much to ask”

The SPA also claimed that given current spend was at the A$324.1M ($208.1M) mark, the 20% obligation would only mean an A$17.1M increase. “We think that’s a reasonable ask,” the statement added.

It is anticipated that Australian content spend will fall for the 2023-24 accounting period due to the U.S. writers and actors strikes, a delay in a Location Offset expenditure-based scheme and a streamer commissioning slowdown triggered by the uncertainty over regulation.

The SPA also flagged the global statement on streaming platform regulation that it and 26 other organizations signed in January demanding parity with powerful streaming services.

The joint statement from production bodies from Canada, Australasia, Europe and Latin America called for number of guiding “principles,” the most important of which related to independent IP ownership. Also on the list were demands governments should address how local content is considered, the importance of local stories, financial arrangements, up-skilling and approaches to market failure.

“The Australian screen industry is unanimous in calling for a robust, transparent and incorruptible regulatory model that all Australians can have confidence in and that will take our industry forward, meet the promise to audiences of Revive, and demonstrates an ambition to grow the Australian screen industry as an important future industry for our economy in a screen content-hungry world,” the SPA said today in its submission.

The likes of pubcaster the ABC have called for protections of the Australia’s indie production sector in their submissions to the National Cultural Policy inquiry.

Similar debates around streaming regulations are playing out in countries such as Canada and Ireland.

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#Australian #Screen #Industry #Body #Demands #Global #Streamers #Pay #Content #Levy

Silence 2 Review: Manoj Bajpayee Delivers Another Measured Performance

Post By Entertainment manoj bajpayee, Silence 2, Silence 2 review

A still from Silence 2.

Writer-director Aban Bharucha Deohans expands the canvas of crime to a significant extent in the sequel to Silence: Can You Hear It?, the slow-burn police procedural that she crafted around a murder investigated by Assistant Commissioner of Police Avinash Verma and his team of Mumbai Special Crime Unit (SCU) sleuths. The killing that saw the ACP being pulled out of the anti-narcotics bureau and handed charge of the SCU was driven by a personal motive. It was a heat-of-the-moment response to an act of infidelity. The probe played out in a setting inhabited by a veteran judge, his daughter (now dead), her married bestie and a young politician with a skeleton in his cupboard. The sequel casts the net much wider.

Silence: Can You Hear It? was expectedly a Manoj Bajpayee show all the way. He played ACP Verma, an officer who is averse to leaving anything to chance and, equally important, to suppressing his own instincts (even if they clashed with the will of his boss), with customary finesse. In Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout, Manoj Bajpayee carries on from where he left off and delivers another exceptionally measured performance. He holds the Zee5 film together. Some of the credit for what works in Silence 2 must certainly accrue to the writing of the pivotal role.

ACP Verma is as tough as nails but his armour isn’t without its share of chinks, both in the professional sphere and on the home front. Having separated from his wife, he lives alone. He has moved on but his unseen daughter, away in London, occupies a special place in his life.

His complete immersion in his work as a crime-buster is the officer’s defence mechanism. His hard-pressed team has to keep pace. The crime that he investigates in Silence 2 is a human trafficking racket rather than just another murder case. The perpetrator is not an individual but an organised gang. What complicates matters is that the suspected mastermind is a phantom, a person nobody, not even those who believe they are part of the network, has ever laid eyes on.

The act of unspeakable violence referred to in the title isn’t triggered merely by rage or enmity. There is much more to the case than meets the eye. ACP Verma’s job is cut out but no detail that matters escapes his attention.

Silence 2 is undermined somewhat by the absence of an antagonist strong enough to keep the irrepressible police officer on his toes and provoke the sort of indiscretions that put him in a spot of bother in the past.

The film also lacks intense confrontations and explosive encounters – remember the flare-up between the ACP and the standoffish politician in a hospital when the latter calls the cops “bloody idiots”? – that gave the lead character and the actor playing the part the scope to sharpen the edges of the battle of attrition he is drawn into.

The prime suspect in Silence 2 is a high-strung, Shakespeare-spouting theatre actor (Dinker Sharma) described by ACP Verma as “a cold-blooded, fully functional sociopath”. There are others, too. Among them are a shadowy art dealer Aarti Singh (Parul Gulati) and her husband Rajeev (Padam Bhola). But none of them evolves into a disconcertingly menacing figure.

If the film does not lose its way even when the red herrings and the trails that go cold are visible from many a mile away, it is because the intriguing processes adopted by ACP Verma and the three inspectors in his core team – Sanjana Bhatia (Prachi Desai), Amit Chouhan (Sahil Vaid) and Raj Gupta (Vaquar Shaikh) – serve to keep the audience invested in the inquest.

Silence 2, like its predecessor, is a tough cop movie in which the cops are more tenacious than in-your-face belligerent. They aren’t as trigger-happy and glib as members of the police force usually are on the big screen. They are relatable because they come across as real people doing a real job fraught with risks.

Despite the workload they bear, ACP Verma’s trusted trio would have been better served had the screenplay created space for their individual inner worlds. As things stand, they are secondary, if not peripheral, players. It redounds to the credit of Prachi Desai, Sahil Vaid and Vaquar Shaikh that they still manage to make the most of the limited bandwidth accorded to them.

Several people, including a girl we see in an opening sequence that leaves her with a scar on the face, are killed in a late-night shootout in a Mumbai bar by an assailant whose face is hidden under a hoodie. ACP Verma and his team rush to the crime scene to gather evidence. The murderer leaves behind enough clues but they do not add up immediately.

ACP Verma, working for a system that extends very little to him by way of ungrudging assistance, has to rely solely on his powers of deduction and the unwavering commitment of Sanjana, Amit and Raj. Theirs is a painstaking pursuit sans flash and flourish. They stay rooted even as the stakes grow higher.

At one point, the commissioner of police issues an ultimatum to the ACP pretty much like the one that he faced the first time around – succeed or be prepared to have your unit disbanded for good. So, once again, the officer is in a race against time. Working with their backs to the wall, the investigators keep chipping away and discover a world in which lower middle-class teenage girls from small towns are lured to Mumbai with the promise of well-paying jobs. Figuring out who is behind the crime and what connection it has with the bar shootout takes some doing.

In a good, simple and old-fashioned way, Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout is engaging and intriguing but rarely more so than an episode of television’s C.I.D.

Deohans’ writing is generally steady. But more than anything else, Silence 2 is able to sustain itself through its complement of twists and turns thanks to the solidity that Manoj Bajpayee lends the film. The control and coiled energy that he generates appears to seep into the performances of his co-actors.

If you liked Silence, there is no reason why you wouldn’t dig Silence 2, too. It has everything that the 2021 murder mystery had. Well, almost.

Cast:

Manoj Bajpayee, Prachi Desai, Shruti Bapna, Parul Gulati

Director:

Aban Bharucha Deohans

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Review: Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ is an Exercise in Narrative Emptiness | FirstShowing.net

Post By Entertainment alex garland, america war, cailee spaeny, civil war movie, civil war review, discuss, kirsten dunst, review, war movie, war photographer

Review: Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ is an Exercise in Narrative Emptiness

by Alex Billington
April 15, 2024

“What kind of American are you? You don’t know?” Now that it’s playing in theaters, Civil War is one of these movies where everyone must have a very strong Opinion™ about and make sure everyone else hears it. Every moviegoer just HAS to chime in and join the discussion. So here I am throwing my hat into the ring, so to say, with my own critical thoughts. Does it matter? Will anyone care? I doubt it, but of course I’ve got something to say about this movie. We all do. I’m joining the chorus in continuing to emphasize that I really believe Civil War is an empty movie and that’s not a good thing. Aside from the apolitical narrative of “we’re going to follow these supposedly objective war photographers” there’s really nothing else new or interesting or unique it’s saying about war. It is just another bland war movie, regurgitating every last war movie trope but setting in America this time. Thus the pertinent question becomes, “why?” Why set it in America? What is it saying about America’s might-really-happen next Civil War? Not much of anything at all, unfortunately.

First things first, I cannot say Civil War is a bad movie in regards to the filmmaking. Written & directed by British writer & director Alex Garland, and featuring cinematography from British DP Rob Hardy, this war movie is slick and thrilling. The pacing is riveting and unsettling – going from intense, harrowing scenes to quieter, more peaceful moments. Yet the rumbling of war and the threat of what might be waiting around the corner always looms. Just like every other war movie ever made… This time, however, it’s set in the very possible a-second-civil-war-is-now-underway America. Which is especially relevant & frighteningly realistic as a concept, so much so that I don’t think it’s proper or right to call this movie sci-fi. There is not much imaginative fiction in it beyond the idea that this civil war hasn’t actually happened yet. The performances especially from both leads Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny are strong and compelling, even if they are the cliche yin vs yang of experienced vs newcomer war photographers. Stephen McKinley Henderson as the wise and hardened Sammy, though, steals the show and is the only really great character in this movie.

This brings me to my primary frustrations with Civil War. It’s especially ironic to say I “enjoyed” the action in this because it seems the only coherent point that Alex Garland wants to make is that all this killing and all this awfulness of war is bad and we should not enjoy it (as we often do in other war movies) because once it comes to your own backyard it will make you want to puke, too. Such an original thought that, well, every other war movie has had, too. As I feared, Civil War is dangerously careless and unpleasant in its apolitical conceit. It’s so bitterly obvious Garland’s pitch was: “you know all those Middle East civil war journalists-go-there movies, I want to make that but set it in America” though it has nothing more to say anyway. War is bad! Yeah, we know. Your friends will die! Yeah, we know. Journalism is important! Yeah, we know. No side wins when everyone is killing each other! Yeah, we know. Every war movie trope ever + America doesn’t make it interesting. That’s what is so annoying about it… Ignoring the crucial politics of WHY war happens (*continues to happen) and thinking if you show us, for the 1000th time in cinema, that both sides are doing bad things by killing the other side, we’ll all stop fighting and prevent more wars is not helpful nor effective.

Let me make a controversial statement – it’s exceptionally naive for anyone to think that just because there’s another movie in theaters now depicting with cinematic realism how very bad and horrible and violent war always is, we’ll all prevent the next one before it begins. Really? After 100 years of other (better) war movies why are we all still ending up in more wars? Perhaps because refusing to address that “why” more honestly (and, let’s be honest, by clearly showing that there is a good and a bad side no matter what some believe) is the reason we’re still all shooting each other in the streets… Just look around right now – the war in Ukraine, the atrocities in Gaza, shootings daily in America, etc. Did any of these war movies before stop any of this? Does showing someone a war movie not make them want to fight for something in the real world that deeply matters to them? Nope. That’s why setting this in America and making it seem more relevant to those who can only be scared because it is set in America weakens the message and the entire concept. And let’s not be so foolish as to think that the journalism they’re depicting in this movie is making a real difference either. Unfortunately that era is over. When in this movie does their journalism actually make a difference? Never.

In one interview, Garland actually said that “polarization is not a good thing” is ultimately the movie’s entire message. Once again, this isn’t anything new or surprising or revealing. Alas, he refuses to grapple with the polarization, where it comes from, how it grows, etc. He never wants to dig into this topic despite making an entire movie set around Americans fighting themselves because of polarization. Once again, what is there left to consider if it’s not enjoyable to watch this action. I find it especially strange how so many people have reacted to Civil War as if it is the most horrifying war movie they’ve ever seen, which speaks to their myopic bias towards America and refusal to consider anything beyond its borders as being as important as whatever is happening in America. I can watch Come and See or Apocalypse Now or The Battle of Algiers and feel as unsettled about war not in America. Even the last few years there have been more interesting war journalist movies – Bruno Dumont’s France or Agnieszka Holland’s Mr. Jones or Matthew Heineman’s A Private War.

There are a multitude of different interpretations and reactions to Civil War and what it means and what it’s really about. Is it actually about America or just set in America? Is it about war? Is it about journalism? Is it about trying to be neutral? No matter what any of these viewers claim, it never seems to really explain why this movie is more effective or engaging than any other war movie. Nor do these reactions justify the movie’s ultimate message that is supposed to be “both sides are bad, polarization is bad, let’s not let this happen.” Showing war photographers doing their job only reminds us that they are a necessary part of covering war, not stopping war, or preventing war, because in all these centuries of humanity having books & newspapers, we still haven’t been able to stop ending up in more wars. I wish there was something more going on in here. I wish it had something more to say about America – or war, or how to prevent it. Much like his last movie Men, it’s so empty and ultimately meaningless I don’t want to discuss it further. So many other war movies have handled this better, so many other movies about war photographers have dug into this better. After a few months we’re all going to forget this movie and go back to reading real life updates on more war anyway.

Alex’s Rating: 5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing

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Filmmaker Interview with Antonia Bogdanovich

Post By Entertainment

Hi Antonia, Thanks for sitting down with us to chat about your films and filmmaking. Where in the world do we find you today and how are you doing?

I am in Santa Monica, California – about 6 blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. I’m a surfer – so being near the ocean helps.

You’ve just completed a Director’s Cut of your film Sleep No More. Can you give us a little background to the story of the film and say what it was that made you want to revisit it again? What differences can the audience expect from the new version?

I grew up and hung out with troubled teens, as I was one too — the ones your parents don’t want you to hang out with. Many of them were small town crooks, and the more talented ones burglarized homes in Santa Monica – on the nicer side of town – the side of town where my mother owned a home. So the initial inspiration for this story centered around my best-guy friend, who was a first class musician, extremely handsome, and a master thief.

The reason I wanted to revisit this film was for a number of reasons, first and foremost there were a few scenes I felt shouldn’t be in the film and I also wanted to adjust the ending a bit. Originally, we had a different ending, but the producing team felt strongly that the original ending with some adjustments would be best for the film, and I couldn’t help but agree.

Sleep No More also began life as a short film, My Left Hand Man. Can you talk us through some of the process of developing the film from one format to the other? How was that process for you personally?

I wrote My Left Hand Man solo, but I had a partner on the feature length script. Anne Heffron has a dark, unique sense of humor, so she brought in her own unique style. A lot of the bits that are absurd, like Miss Rose sitting at the bottom of her empty pool sun bathing, came from her bizarre and often absurd sense of humor. Also, we added a lot of characters to the feature version, so once we wrote back stories for those characters and determined how they connected and intertwined with the lead characters we had a lot to play with. The plot is still the same as the short though. I remember when I was really young and had told my father I wanted to be a writer, he said that all the plots had already been written by Shakespeare and so my focus should be on creating interesting characters and how they navigate through the story.

You’ve talked before about the film being representative of your time growing up in LA without it being entirely autobiographical. What was it that you saw in the characters that made you want to tell their story?

This film is about my family – it’s actually quite personal – but in a highly fictionalized setting and format. I mean no one can argue that the film industry is not the most moral and ethical industry – and I literally grew up surrounded by film folks. My uncles and step dad were in the industry too. Everyone and everything I was exposed to up until middle school, when I hung out with kids from the bad parts of town, was entertainment industry centric. Not to mention my family went through an incredibly violent and highly publicized murder when I was barely out of elementary school. So even though I wasn’t consciously connecting it – the ending of my film is influenced and connected to the murder of Dorothy Stratten.

Also, Luke Kleintank’s character, Beckett is based partly on myself but mostly on my best guy-friend I mentioned above, the master thief, who quite tragically robbed my mother’s house when I was 16. I found out much later that it was him, and that betrayal crushed me. He apologized and I did forgive him. My group of friends helped me understand the mind of a thief – they get a thrill out of it – some can’t help but steal while others do it if they are desperate for money. My friend’s mother was mentally ill and couldn’t work, so he struggled financially growing up.

There are a strong variety of themes throughout Sleep No More, ranging from Shakespeare to comic books to abusive relationships. Can you talk us through how you used these themes to develop your story and why you wanted to use them in your film?

Great question. So, growing up, cinema was like Jesus or God in our house; great cinema was all-knowing and could teach you anything you needed to know about life, art and humans. Cinema was literally worshipped, and it pervaded everything we did and said. On the flip side of that was TV, there was NO TV at my father’s home, if we wanted to watch something it had to be a movie, and his collection was not contemporary, all but a few were made before 1959. Then at my mother’s home, she took the remote with her to work, so we were rarely allowed to watch TV and she frowned upon it as well. Now keep in mind this was before The Sopranos and what I call the Golden Age of TV which began with that show in 1999 – which, ironically, my father ended up being an actor in.

In general, other things such as traditional school, college and things like morality and how to conduct oneself as a parent were secondary to art. My childhood was anything but idyllic, my parents fought amongst each other and in the media and in books. My father was a huge success when I was quite young, but struggled to work in the 80’s and 90’s, while my mother had huge success throughout the 80’s and 90’s. But still cinema was the WORD.

In Sleep No More, I took these ideas to the extreme – Shakespeare is cinema and comic books are TV. I have studied Shakespeare, read every play, and have gone to see many of his plays whenever I’m in London. I identify so much with so many of his works, perhaps because my childhood at times felt like a never-ending drama and that at times it was very public and a lot like theatre. So, I really wanted to intertwine Shakespeare’s mythos into my first feature. And yes, I would die to direct a Shakespeare play in the UK!

Even though the patriarch is a hopeless gambler and alcoholic, who puts his entire family in jeopardy, he won’t tolerate bad grammar, comic books or state-mandated education. He lives in a fantasy world of Shakespeare and conducts himself like one or several of the Bard’s characters.

You wrote this film with your writing partner Anne Heffron, was this something that you felt you needed or wanted to do from the beginning or was the process of coming together more organic? Is having a writing partner something that you are keen to do again in the future?

This was the second screenplay we wrote together, the first one she asked if I wanted to write a screenplay with her and I was struggling with a novel I couldn’t finish so that sounded a lot more fun. Since I had grown up in the film business, I figured it has to be easier than writing a novel, which it most certainly was, at least for both of us. That first screenplay, a road trip film about a mother who sets out to find a daughter she gave up for adoption as an infant, got a lot of attention in Hollywood and so we naturally wanted to write another script together. Anne went on after that to write a memoir and is working on other prose and I kept writing screenplays, but if there is ever a project where we can write together again, I’d be down.

Before deciding to direct you had already been in the film business for some time. You’ve been an executive producer, producer, production assistant, post production supervisor, writer, director and actor. How invaluable was this experience when you finally came to direct and did you find that you used skills learned from these other roles as you were heading up your own film?

I used all my skills, all of them. I produced mostly after I had directed, and I didn’t enjoy that at all, but I wanted to help my dad get his film made, so I went for it and I was able to help make that happen, which he was very grateful for, and of course I am now too, since it turned out to be his last film.

Most of my other credits you mentioned: acting, production assistant, assistant editor credits were “before”. I quit the business for 11 years, during that time I fell in love, left Los Angeles, got married, and had a child. I actually swore I’d never return to film. Then came “after”. After I began writing with Anne and then I directed my first short, I knew that all along I was destined to direct. The notion of being a director had literally never occurred to me. When I was young, my father had so many ups and downs, so much unemployment and disappointments, I just couldn’t imagine living a life that way. Ironically, I’ve been confronted with similar challenges he faced, but I am so passionate about making films that I will never walk away again. Just like dearly departed father. He was very encouraging, and he would have told me if I was a terrible director or writer, my parents didn’t mince words, or bullshit about talent, not ever.

You grew up and started your career in the Hollywood film industry, but making Sleep No More, and the original short My Left Hand Man, meant that you were now involved in independent filmmaking. How much does the process differ in getting a film made and seen when you are doing it all independently? What do you feel are the benefits/drawbacks of making an independent film?

What I would do to make a studio film! To have access to all the money I need and a support system of trained professionals. I just don’t have that in the indie world. I miss the studios terribly. Independent filmmaking is brutal, I worked at WB, Sony and Paramount and I had no idea at the time how great I had it. It’s become so hard to make a film. There are stops and starts and financiers who pull out at the last minute; there are actors who drop out that cause the picture to fold; and distribution is a killer. The main reason I’m putting out this film now is that the original distributor went bankrupt shortly after buying my film and my film got buried in lawsuits, so it really never saw the light of day. To the best of my knowledge it never got a chance in Europe, so the public at large both here and overseas had no access to it.

Your parents, Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt, were both big players in their own ways in the filmmaking business, your father as a director and your mother as a producer and production designer. Do you feel that the types of careers in the film industry still follow some sort of typecasting in terms of gender? Do you feel that you were more accepted, as a woman in the film industry, when you were working in the more ‘unseen’ roles and was there ever any doubt for you about becoming a director? Were there ever any difficulties that you faced from other people’s perception of women’s roles in film?

My parents taught me so much about filmmaking – SO MUCH. We talked about making movies and how to make movies all the time – at every meal, in the car and while watching films, on set and on vacation. My mother was a genius, I was there the day she brought home Matt Groening’s Life In Hell cartoon and told me she was taking it to Gracie Films as this guy had the goods! There are many, many more stories like that about my mom’s ability to discover talent. I told her I wanted to work in film when I was about 10 and so she took it upon herself to mentor me, even though she often pushed me towards science and college all the time (I was very good at math, chemistry, biology and physics). I think she pushed me towards other fields as she wanted me to have a steady income. But it never stuck.

I think it’s much easier to be a male film director. I have very close friends in the VFX industry who will call me from set and tell me some young male director who has no clue how to direct is at the helm and it’s a disaster. They tell me they wish I was the director, and I wish I were too! I get calls from editors too about the very same thing. When I was working in the more “unseen” roles I thought about editing, but never directing, until I started directing theatre and writing screenplays later in my life. I think all women have been exposed to sexual harassment at work, my mother told me quite a few stories, but kept it to herself, as she would have for sure lost her job back then. I have dealt with those issues and never went public about it, but I don’t tolerate that anymore under any circumstances, and I would certainly deal with any such conduct immediately on my film set. It really has changed ME TOO and I’m so happy about that. The last few years, I have been very fortunate to find a group who are all about the work and I feel safe to create and build projects with them.

You’ve previously mentioned that you learnt a lot through osmosis by watching your parents work, which must have been an incredible experience for you growing up. Since you’ve carved your own path for yourself and come back to filmmaking have you been inspired by anyone else in the filmmaking industry or perhaps by other writers, stage directors or other professionals?

My father was not necessarily attracted to stories about crime, murder and violence, but as a kid I was. Although I love a wide range of films and filmmakers I was always drawn to dramas and dark subject matter. I was obsessed with Francis Ford Coppola’s early works and Apocalypse Now changed my life. Ridley Scott’s early works like Blade Runner is a film I’ve watched over and over, and many other of his earlier films. The directors that have inspired me since right before and after I become a director would be Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson – I study There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights – to me they are both master classes in contemporary cinema. I adore David O. Russell – Three Kings is literally one of my favorite films. And then there is Alejandro Inarritu – he’s got to be my favorite contemporary film maker – from his first film, Amores Perros, which I saw in the theatre in 2000 when it came out, to The Revenant.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to make all gritty and violent films, I’ve actually been leaning towards dark comedy lately, as I feel the world needs to laugh right now.

What’s next for you after this? Are there any projects that you currently have on the go and what are you looking forward to that you can see in your future?

Yes! I am directing a fantasy comedy/drama about a Catholic boarding school for child geniuses, who set out to build a rocket that will get them to heaven. It’s more otherworldly rather than pure fantasy. It’s incredibly unique and very inspiring. My producer, Josh Russell, also happens to be a brilliant screenwriter, and he wrote it. I am very excited to explore this genre and the comedy is what really drew me in – I can’t wait to make people laugh. After that, I have a WWII script that my parents wrote in 1968 – it’s like Schindler’s List meets Ocean’s 11 – it’s unbelievable and I’m going to cast mostly Europeans for this and of course shoot in Poland where the story takes place.

Where can people get to see the new cut of Sleep No More and how can we keep up to date with what’s happening with the film and any other Antonia Bogdanovich projects?

Sleep No More comes out in the US for a limited theatrical day and dates in July – it will be on Prime Video, VOD, Apple + and a few other streamers, too. In the UK, we aren’t sure yet, but after the Cannes film festival I will be able to tell you more, as we are selling foreign distribution there.

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‘Chamkila’ movie review: Diljit Dosanjh gamely anchors Imtiaz Ali’s vibrant musical

Post By Entertainment A.R. Rahman, Amar Singh Chamkila, Amar Singh Chamkila movie review, Amarjot, Chamkila review, Chamkila story, diljit dosanjh, Imtiaz Ali, Parineeti Chopra, punjab

In the 1980s, singer Amar Singh Chamkila — born Dhani Ram in a Dalit Sikh family in Punjab — gained notoriety and fame for his rough musicality and teasing lyrics. His record-setting songs obsessed over incest and illicit love, but were equally attuned to rural class disaffections in the toiling North. On March 8, 1988, while alighting from his car for a performance, he was gunned down by unidentified assailants in Mehsampur. His wife and singing partner, Amarjot, was also killed, as were two other members of his troupe. Multiple theories were floated, but with the state in the grip of a violent insurgency, the case went unsolved.

This haunting episode from Punjab’s checkered past has been mined for cinematic fodder before, most inventively in Kabir Singh Chowdhry’s absurdist docu-fiction Mehsampur (2018). Now Imtiaz Ali, co-writing with his brother, Sajid, takes a crack at Chamkila. Audiences au fait with the bare facts — and assorted gossip — of the singer’s life and death won’t be persuaded anew. Ali’s film does not clear mysteries or exorcise any ghosts. It’s a fairly straightforward reading of the Chamkila myth, more a vibrant celebration than a deep dive. Yet, even in its squareness, it manages to offer a peek into the artist’s interiority.

This happens considerably late in the film. Chamkila (Diljit Dosanjh) has sold out his Toronto show, during his overseas tour of ‘87. His oily impresario is grinning from ear to ear, telling him how, when Amitabh Bachchan performed at the same venue a few nights ago, they had to add 137 extra seats. In Chamkila’s case, he proudly adds, that number has exceeded a thousand. We expect Chamkila to cheer up at this achievement; he’s been, all his life, a devout Bachchan fan. Instead, his smile fades like the morning mist.

Also Read: After Coachella’s success, singer-actor Diljit Dosanjh discusses playing a rural Punjabi musician in ‘Jodi’

No real explanation is provided for his blues: a narrator dryly notes that artists are strange creatures, and that Chamkila’s dejection resembled something like a loss, as though his childhood had suddenly ended. This moment, buried deep in the noise and tumult of Chamkila’s extraordinary life, is the best in Ali’s film, even if it’s wholly fictitious. Far from supplying answers about the slain Punjabi singer, mythologised to breaking point in popular discourse, it asks a gentle question: how comfortable was Chamkila, improbably baptized the ‘Elvis of Punjab’, with his meteoric rise?

Amar Singh Chamkila (Hindi)

Director: Imtiaz Ali

Cast: Diljit Dosanjh, Parineeti Chopra, Anurag Arora, Kumud Mishra, Anjum Batra, Samuel John

Runtime: 146 minutes

Storyline: The life and times of the late Punjabi folk singer, Amar Singh Chamkila

Ali opens his tale with the fateful assassination, then proceeds to jumble up childhood and death, deed and aftermath, fact and hearsay. The lilting soundtrack begins to throb; images alter colour and form; superimpositions appear. The wailing ‘Baaja’ reaches an angry crescendo, complete with spoken lines, like Broadway meets protest street theatre. It is a carousel spin of a start, reminiscent of the grainy dream sequences in Tamasha (2015), or the swirling structural schemes editor Aarti Bajaj devised for Rockstar (2011).

This bracing prologue is followed by a mostly tame assembly of Chamkila’s life and times. An ordinary mill worker, he sweet-talks himself into the orbit of folk sensation Jinda (based on Punjabi singer Surinder Shinda), writing lyrics for him and bringing tea. A chance to open at a seething akhada announces his singing skills. He builds his reputation crooning lively duets, but is soon out of backers and a partner. His high-pitched delivery and endless bookings wear out most, but somehow Amarjot (Parineeti Chopra), tickled pink by his bawdy verses, stays on. They get married.

We know that Amarjot hailed from an upper-caste Jat family; Chamkila’s ancestors, meanwhile, were Chamar. Moreover, he was already married once, a fact he initially conceals from Amarjot (and Ali from us). There were other forces at play. The extremists roaming the countryside as well as religious chieftains had imposed strict curbs on culture and speech; the cops, cracking down brutally in response, weren’t any kinder. Chamkila was branded a baagi (renegade), a corrupting influence on family and youth. This made him vulnerable to all kinds of exactions and threats. There is a darkly telling scene where a bunch of thugs turn up at his doorstep, announcing they love his music before shaking him down for cash.

A still from ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’

Ali barrels through the dark sociopolitical atmosphere of 80s Punjab, as you’d expect from a filmmaker of his (mostly romantic) persuasion. There is a constant softening of mood and tone, be it through the vivid 2-D animation sequences or A.R. Rahman’s pulsing original soundtrack. ‘Ishq Mitaye’ is pained but glorious, with its echoing refrain of ‘Main hoon Panjab’, while ‘Naram Kaalja’ is a perfectly drawn women’s folk number, lyricist Irshad Kamil having fun with the skittish imagery, riffing about “small sickles” and “snakes around thighs”. Despite Chamkila’s inflammatory repute, this isn’t a particularly provocative film, mindful of cultural norms in its chosen time.

Diljit Dosanjh had played a Chamkila surrogate in the Punjabi film Jodi (2023). His vocal prowess comes in handy in Ali’s film, which employs live recordings of Chamkila’s original songs. Here, he portrays Chamkila as a gentle dreamer, diffident and optimistic. It’s perhaps too sweet-natured a performance; the charismatic loucheness, and the searing blaze we occasionally glimpse in Chamkila’s eyes in old photographs, are weirdly amiss. Chopra perseveres in a limited part, and there are few female characters of note in the supporting cast: a version of Aditi Rao Hydari’s parasitic journalist from Rockstar turns up in this film as well.

Samuel John, Anjum Batra and Anurag Arora are memorable in smaller roles. Ultimately, this is less a film about Chamkila than the lives that gathered around him or were altered by him. As with all great artists, he inspired both envy and awe. From rivals to raconteurs to income tax agents, everyone had a Chamkila story to tell. Like moths, they flickered briefly in his light.

Amar Singh Chamkila is currently streaming on Netflix

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Amar Singh Chamkila Review: Diljit Dosanjh Is At His Very Best In Deftly Crafted Ode

Post By Entertainment Amar Singh Chamkila, Amar Singh Chamkila review, diljit dosanjh

Parineeti Chopra with Diljit Dosanjh in Amar Singh Chamkila. (courtesy: diljitdosanjh)

Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila, a lively, deftly crafted ode to the power of song and performance as tools of rebellion, opens with a violent death. The bullets end a music career and birth an undying legend.

The film embraces a range of contradictions. And why not? Amar Singh Chamkila is about a man whose art was dichotomous: entertaining and provocative, immensely popular and unapologetically profane.

The film is mournful and festive, animated and pensive, consciously crafted and seemingly spontaneous. It is an elegy to and a celebration of a songster who revelled in lyrics that frequently objectified women but was always delivered in the form of a male-female duet.

Amar Singh Chamkila mourns the loss of a young life but talks up the defiant spirit of a driven man whose music, no matter how lowbrow it was by orthodox and politically correct reckoning, broke the boundaries of mortality.

The film’s soundtrack is studded with Chamkila’s own songs (rendered by lead actors Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra, among several others) and a complement of original compositions by A.R. Rahman ranging from the ballad-like and the romantic to the forcefully feminist.

Chamkila (played brilliantly by Dosanjh), his wife and co-singer Amarjot Kaur (Parineeti Chopra) and two troupe members were gunned down by unidentified assailants in Mehsampur, Jalandhar district, 36 years ago. That is where the Netflix film begins.

It then moves back and forth between the immediate aftermath of the singer’s daylight murder and the career signposts that see him and Amarjot blaze a trail in Punjab’s akhada (open-air folk music recital) landscape.

Scripted by the director with Sajid Ali, Amar Singh Chamkila captures a brief life and an eventful career that teetered on a razor’s edge and drew strength from the ruffling of feathers.

The high-spirited music he created and the strains of his tumbi contained his message of liberation from societal shackles, a statement of intent that seared itself permanently on people’s minds and kickstarted an exciting new phase of Punjabi pop.

The film tracks Chamkila’s life and explores his unprecedented stardom. Dhani Ram alias Amar Singh was born in the family of a poor alcoholic Dalit labourer. The two names that he bore turned out to be prophetic.

By the time he was 17, he earned both riches and immortality. In the next ten years, he toured the length and breadth of Punjab with his repertoire of songs. There wasn’t a day when the sought-after singer was not on the road.

The biopic spans from the point Chamkila acquires his nom de plume by accident and his initial struggles to find a suitable female singing partner to his quick and dramatic eclipsing of his mentor Jatinder Jinda (modelled on the real-life Surinder Shinda).

Chamkila’s runaway success riles his rivals and irks Punjab’s guardians of morality. His inter-caste marriage with Amarjot – she is a Jat, he a Ramdasia – puts him on a collision course with the village council.

Amid the peaking of militancy in the 1980s, his bawdy, no-holds-barred, double entendre-laden lyrics helped his fans escape the worries of a violence-ridden world. He sang of sexual desire, the female body, drugs, social taboos and illicit liaisons.

A journalist accuses him, and not unjustifiably, of being disrespectful to women. He defends himself. I am an ordinary man, he says, who does not have the option of weighing the pros and cons.

The film has a sequence that culminates in Chamkila mentioning his caste and asserting that no matter where he has emerged from, he is not going back there. I will not starve to death, he asserts. The film, however, shies away from making his social identity the principal narrative axis, opting to focus instead on his run-ins with the hypocrisies of polite society.

The Chamkila-Amarjot marriage crosses two lines – one denoted by the caste divide and the other by his marital status. The singer has a first wife, a fact that he hides from Tikki and Amarjot.

The tale is told principally by two of Chamkila’s surviving associates. His former dholak player and manager Kesar Singh Tikki (Anjum Batra) who, over cheap alcohol in a seedy bar after he receives news of Chamkila’s death, throws light on the singer’s early breakthroughs.

The latter half of the story is pieced together by group member and singer Kikar Dalewala (Robbie Johal). Kikar’s recollections are in response to questions from DSP Balbir Singh (Anuraag Arora). The latter scoffs at Kikar when asked if he has ever heard Chamkila’s songs. The police officer shoots back angrily: Am I a truck driver or a country bumpkin?

The film blends a vibrant palette, visual flourishes and playful tropes to transport the audience to the terrain where Chamkila appeared like a meteor in the sky and lit up the world around him with a sparkle so intense that it was never ever going to dim, let alone die.

The jaunty narrative rhythm serves as a counterpoint to the grim realities of 1980s Punjab. One admirer in an audience waiting to hear him sing shouts: Other artistes are great but you are our own man. He is a people’s singer as an introductory song, Baaja (lyrics by Irshad Kamil), early in the film underscores.

For a semblance of balance, the film stages a trippy number devoted entirely to female desire, Naram Kaalja, sung and performed with gusto by village women who are denied seats in front of the stage on which Chamkila performs. They stand on the terrace behind the arena and watch the performance.

The full-bodied and occasionally frolicsome style – it combines archival footage, family album images, freeze frames, animation, split screens, tinted frames and visual caesuras – seeks to approximate the wildness at the heart of Chamkila’s world even as it slows down occasionally to reflect upon the singer’s mild-mannered, non-confrontationist ways with people around him.

Diljit Dosanjh is at his very best as Chamkila. That, as his fans will vouch, should be enough to make the film a treat. But there is more to Amar Singh Chamkila, including Parineeti Chopra and Anuraag Arora’s modulated interpretations and Imtiaz Ali’s grasp on the material.

Amar Singh Chamkila is a transfixing viewing experience. Its music is the biggest draw but every little bit in the rest of the film is just as rewarding.

Cast:

Diljit Dosanjh, Parineeti Chopra, Apinderdeep Singh

Director:

Imtiaz Ali

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Why Paper Bags Are Gaining Popularity in Australia | FilmInk

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With this heavy reliance on plastic usage. It is no surprise that statistics show that an estimated 3.4 million tonnes of garbage annually with 30% being single-use plastics.

Seeing the adverse environmental impact and how it endangers the country, the Australian government decided to ban single-use plastics in 2016 and is now implemented in all states and territories.

Paper bags are now taking the place of plastic bags,for good reason. This blog post will discuss why paper bags are gaining popularity in Australia.

The Plastic Bag Problem in Australia

The Department of Agriculture, Water, and Environment conducted an Australian Plastics Recycling Survey in 2019. The survey yielded the following results:

5 million tonnes of plastic were consumed between 2018-2019

Those two years showed a 23% increase in plastic recovery with 393,800 tonnes being recycled and 72,000 tonnes sent to energy recovery in comparison to the 2017-2018 recovery.

The survey results prompted several regions to take swift action with changes being implemented based on their locality’s documented plastic usage.

Government Regulation and Bans

To ensure effective and unified action against single-use plastics, Australian environment ministers agreed to phase out eight of the most problematic single-use plastics by 2025.

This program is known as Australia’s 2025 National Packaging Targets. The rules stated in this policy apply to all packaging that is sold, used and manufactured in Australia. In charge of achieving these goals by December 31, 2025, is the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO).

These are the 2025 targets:

100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging.

70% of plastic packaging is recycled or composted.

50% of the average recycled content is included in packaging (revised from 30% in 2020).

The phase-out of problematic and unnecessary single-use plastic packaging.

To make it possible for targets to be achieved by the set date, businesses and consumers are encouraged to do their part to reduce plastic waste. Business owners can join APCO, train their upper management and staff on reducing plastic consumption and implement ecologically conscious practices in their supply chain choices.

On the other hand, consumers can be more selective of the businesses they support and try to be more innovative with how they recycle or repurpose the product packaging from their purchases.

The Rise of Paper Bags as a Sustainable Choice

Paper bags became the best alternative for Australian businesses after the widespread ban on single-use plastics.

Switching to paper bags enforces sustainability because they can be recycled. Depending on the bag’s structure, you may have to remove the handles before putting them in curbside recycling bins.

They are also highly reusable. They can serve as unique gift wrappers, bases for art projects, and serve as containers for small, non-fragile items when moving houses.

Also, we know the value of conserving trees which is why certain technologies were developed to produce paper bags from the fibers of discarded ones and then reinforce them with non-toxic materials to make them more durable.

Benefits of Paper Bags

Biodegradability

Paper bags are made from biodegradable materials and decompose faster than plastic. It decay naturally without creating any toxic gas or leaving harmful residue. A paper’s decomposition also improves soil quality.

Sturdy

These recyclable bags are made from high GSM paper that makes it durable enough to hold groceries, textiles and small homeware. Handles, often made from twisted paper, make it comfortable to carry without falling apart or breaking.

Attractive

The saying “Simplicity is beauty” applies to paper bags. Many customers are drawn to the neatness of paper bags. In terms of design visibility, the brown and white bags are versatile enough to complement the printed logo of a brand.

Space-efficient

Kraft bags can be easily folded and stored. This saves a lot of space during shipping and storage. Consumers can also keep the bags in a small drawer or file them on top of each other on a shelf.

Practical

Paper bags can be ordered wholesale. This is a practical long-term choice because it saves you from shipping delays, inconsistent quality and sudden price increases in packaging materials.

The Future of Bags in Australia

Banning single-use plastics has pushed businesses to seriously switch to paper bags. A Mordor Intelligence study shows that retail bags made from paper and natural fabric can achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.92%, equivalent to a total earning of USD 1.8 million.

This estimate was made considering the 2025 targets set by the Australian government. The increased need for paper packaging will contribute to higher manufacturing of these eco-friendly bags. All businesses from food to apparel will be using paper bags in different forms and this will cause paper bag manufacturers to increase their production of reusable, recyclable and compostable bags.

While there are concerns regarding the production methods for paper and cardboard-based packaging, Australian organisations such as APCO, provide companies with criteria and guidelines that they have to adhere to when manufacturing boxes and bags. The rules are explicit and prohibit any kind of process that involves harming forests, wasting resources and overconsumption of energy. It also outlines how violations will be penalised. With the help of these organisations, implementation of the ban on single-use plastics will be more effective.

In addition, companies will also consider using eco-friendly packing materials like cellulose tape, recycled protective wrap, compostable void fillers and other packing supplies that serve protective and aesthetic functions.

Conclusion

Australia’s war on plastic pollution has crowned paper bags the new sustainable king. Government bans and a growing eco-conscious public fueled the rise of these biodegradable, reusable, and space-saving bags.

As demand for sustainable packaging surges, paper bag production is poised to climb. This shift not only benefits the environment but also fosters innovation in eco-friendly packing materials. With reusability and recyclability at their core, paper bags are on track to become the future of sustainable shopping in Australia.

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Why Paper Bags Are Gaining Popularity in Australia | FilmInk

The Plastic Bag Problem in Australia

Government Regulation and Bans

The Rise of Paper Bags as a Sustainable Choice

Benefits of Paper Bags

Biodegradability

Sturdy

Attractive

Space-efficient

Practical

The Future of Bags in Australia

Conclusion