If you have even a shred of conscience and feel that good cinema is possible in the country, read the following and sign up. 


cut-the-old-crap

THE DELHI MANIFESTO

  • Our cinema screen has become an ill-constructed, and conventional portal to a world we aspire of, rather than a mirror, which reflects us.
  • Our emotions are guided by leitmotifs placed deftly, and religious beliefs exploited.
  • Our spirit of inquiry has become dead and we have been reduced to mere receivers in the process.
  • Cinema and television has replaced interaction with imposition of thought. Its thought. An artificial, fake and ill-created thought, a manifestation of our needs to escape ourselves.
  • The medium has become a symbol of cheap entertainment, devoid of any examination of the form, and a victim of our collective need to create personalities, perfect alternate universes, and images of our aspiration.
  • Our criticism has become trivial. Stories take precedent over the intrinsic qualities of the cinematic medium.
  • Our film lovers are snobs, indulging in their wholehearted pseudo-intellectual diatribe, condemning the ignorant, and the ignorant have become so used to a cinema that’s meager that they are satiated with films from the West.
  • Our parallel offerings remain strictly entrenched in the tradition of the mainstream, and hence, are versions of the same, rather than its replacements

We reject a system that encourages the above, despite its realization, and seek:-

  • a) To incite discussion on the possibilities, limitations and viability of the application of the auteur theory as a critical prism.
  • b) To use criticism and our theories to both champion and strive for innovation and cutting edge in form, form and content.
  • c) To attempt a formulation of a pure love for cinema, a middle ground between the pseudo intellect of the snobs, and the ignorance of the unknowing, and attempt to mobilize their film loves to this new ground.
  • d) To attempt a critical theory that moves beyond the supply of the story and the statistical rating points.
  • e) To observe, notice, and champion upcoming films, filmmakers, and technicians, who remain obscured in the looming shadows of commerce and a faux parallel cinema.
  • f) To champion cinema that creates dissonance, repulsion, interpretation, confusion and discussion rather than loud claps, whistles and scrupulous satisfaction
  • g) To work towards a film love which adopts a middle ground, to reinstate the cinema director to his deserved position, to celebrate Indian cinema of the past and the present, to examine its potential, we propose ”The Delhi manifesto.”

 

– A Delhi Suburb, 1st Jan 2009

Sign up here