Roof Top Film Festival: Sensitizing yourself to movie making

(Photo courtesy:http://flickr.com/photos/dhempe/1359451778/in/photostream/)

It had to be an exhilarating weekend after a long long time. And a gratifying one at that. Couldn't have asked for a better treat on a Sunday afternoon than this, more so when the Saturday turned a spoiler with a dubious display of mediocrity by the Men in Blue.

With only imaginative ideas about BRTFF3, I set out for the place at Koromangala where the event was organized. Otherwise, I had no clue what the event had to offer. On reaching the place, I found myself into a dimly lit, air chilled hall, with some 35 odd people huddled in different groups, which to an unprepared eye, looked like a coterie of occult practicing tribe in black tees.

The projector was flashing a blank lit up screen. The hall exuded a cool and cozy feel with cushioned sofas and chairs spread out nicely. A perfect setting for a perfect movie experience. A clear indicator of the immaculate effort that went in to providing a comfy movie watching ambience.
Settling myself comfortable in one of those central sofas and sipping an energy drink(courtesy distributed by a sponsor), I waited in anticipation for the action to unfold.
What followed next for 4-5 more hours were a string of some exotic movies, each as unique and distinctive as the other. They were a heady mix of short independent movies and some popular acclaimed one's. Movies that were played in sequence were:

• 3-Independent film
  
• Roshomon-Akiro Kurosowa
• Bindi-Sanjay Nambiar's short film
• Bal Krishna-Sanjay Nambiar's short film
• Taxi driver- Martin Sorceces
  

After every movie ended, began a session of cross examining the nuances and essence of the scenes in the movie. I was blown away with the sagacity of the learned audience there. I felt I was the one one with the least movie sense of all. For example, in Roshomon, I didn't even merit a stray thought to the idea behinf the purpose of narrating the story in rain, and in the last shot it was bright and sunny. It only dawned onto me after listening to the discussions that the director intended that when the rain stopped, all the doubts were dispelled and the truth was out. In another case, the cameras kept showing a long shot from the ground up with trees with leaves rustling and sun rays playing peekaboo. What looked to me as an idle waste of time, was in fact the directors attempt to show the shades in humanity and that no one is perfect. The symbolism that each of these scenes expressed had to be discerned with an eye of experience, which till now I had none.
What also lend weight to the credibility of the event was the veteran documentary director Sanjay Nambiar's presence. Budding movie makers and newbies made sure they took the most of the opportunity by interacting and sharing about the technicalities of movie making.



All these years of feeding myself with commercial bollywood crap had insensitized me of the subtleties of cinema making. I have heard about paid courses on film appreciation, but here I had my quota of film appreciation, straight from the genuine movie aficionados, that too for free. Next time, if I see an awkward angle of the camera, I would hope to catch the director's mind.