The routine is pretty much set. Even before a festival peeks from the horizon the plans are put in place. Large groups of boys in the age group twelve-twenty start moving around in herds ringing doorbells at neighbourhood homes, creating a gherao like atmosphere at the doorsteps. They argue and bargain with gentle intimidation for ‘chanda’ or cash contribution from households. They carry standard receipt books and give out signed copies making the activity seem ‘official’. Niggardly or ill-tempered shooing away can however get a household in trouble. These kids may find innovative ways to punish the members in the coming months unless they decide to create a scene right away.

We have now finally gotten peer-review comments back from a book that I have been co-editing the past year. The book “Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change” will now be published sometime 2010 after a few relatively standard changes / edits / modifications. My chapter passed without any edits required so quite happy to avoid the extra work.

A bomb, is among best media devices. A boogey-man always playing a light and shadow game. It lets you imagine the other with all its brutal contours. It also gives you opportunity to consume and produce passionate arguments. Imagine “we” as me and my neighbor. A kind of loose tribal allegiance.

If the tautology and the alliteration in the title here don’t bother you overmuch, you may not have ever reacted with revulsion at the sight of uniformed schoolchildren spilling out the school gates right into waiting buses – like packaged goods loaded at a warehouse! I always did.

We are back with a few new events so do please attend if you can.  Should be interesting – as always.  Specifics below:
Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies
Department of Anthropology
And Centre for Media and Film
Seminar …

This piece is not so much about ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’ as the numerous controversies that arose in India after the film was released. This by itself indicates that this piece aspires for a special place somewhere above the media din or attempts to clear the Augean stables or what I say must be seen as a privileged. Or does it any of that?

I just saw this video and could not but just smile. Akwardly. On the surface, it seems innocent and banal enough: another Bollywood dance sequence that we have seen time and time again. But then you start looking at the lyrics of the video, something seems ominous and out of place. You cannot just pick on what. Just have a look, even try to interpret it:

In my own attempt of compressing this year’s Oscar-nominated films to full-length 1.44 MB files as part of my Floppy Films project, I also crunched “Slumdog Millionaire” to a 7×3 pixel/8fps/128 colors animated GIF. In such a stripped-to-the-bones rendering, the dominant color palette of the production design becomes quite visible. In the case of “Slumdog Millionaire”, the dominance of red-brown-yellow ‘curry’ colors aptly reveals the whole exoticism of the film. [In contrast, "Milk" uses a bright pastel - milky - color palette while dark sepia tones dominate the 1940s/50s period setting of "The Reader", and a frequent combination of olive greens and magenta violets sets the white trash tone for "The Wrestler". Since everything else seems predictable enough, I didn't bother watching higher resolution versions of these films.]

When my Indian-Canadian friend’s family went to watch Danny Boyle’s (co-directed by Indian Loveleen Tandan) Slumdog Millionaire in Toronto late last year, I had no idea what it was all about. The name sounded strange, if anything. But word-of-mouth raving reviews over the weeks convinced me to watch even a film apparently about the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’.

Familiarity, understanding, a negative sort of nostalgia, the cute youngest Jamal maybe – I’m not sure what it was that really got me about the movie. It definitely wasn’t reliving the actual show hosted by Kings of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. If anything, the host in the film, played by Anil Kapoor, annoyed me no end and even puzzled me to an extent. Perhaps it was a reality I could, if not relate to, at least understand very well. I myself come from a country where, while many prefer to beg on the streets rather than work, others are forced to do so. Children are kidnapped or otherwise compelled to beg.

So testing the video function of Project Carousel (name subject to chance) while digging up my old short film “Philosophy of Dogs” I wanted to re-edit and revive. I did this experimental documentary on Bombay, India, a couple of years ago with my Helsinki-based media production company Negativewarmachine (this was the last section – part III) . I am thinking of using the last piece as a stand-alone to send as a short film to some festivals / exhibitions now as it is quite close to the experimental mix of theory and practice I am interested in. Oh, when time. In any case, this a perfect excuse to test the automated video insertion function of this site – so here is:

Benevolent dictators note: Cross-posting this from Breachcandygroup to get content for the site and the dynamics flowing.  The initial steps of an online community-building are always the most laborious as once the site is fluid …

So its official now: I am currently working on a book for Routledge India with my collaborators Soumyadeep Paul and Angad Chowdhry.  We will write a chapter about some of the more experimental work we …