rinju rv

Visual Editor ~ ..Technically..

[Prashant Bhushan @pbhushan1]

A heartfelt message by a parent, K Sharad Haksar to Neha Bora.
“When I got married, I knew I wanted only one child. And in my heart, I hoped it would be a girl.
I was blessed with a daughter.
The first time I held her, I made her a silent promise. You will never have to share my time. You will never have to wait for my attention. Whatever I have, you will get all of it.
I had seen families with four or five children. Parents running from morning to night, and still some child was always left waiting. I also felt our country has too many people, and nature is paying for it. One child felt right. It felt responsible.
For years, I never questioned it.
Then this year, I saw Neha Bora.
She is 29, a PhD student at JNU, a theatre artist from Khatima, a small town in the hills of Uttarakhand. When the NEET paper leak happened, she sat down at Jantar Mantar for students she did not even know. Children who had studied for years. Parents who had spent their savings on coaching and still lost.
She did not eat for 23 days.
She was 66 kilos when she started. She lost more than 7. Near the end, doctors were taking her blood three or four times a day.
The night I read that, I could not sleep. I kept seeing my own daughter in her place. On a hot Delhi road. Thin. Tired. A doctor holding her wrist again. And I knew I would not be able to stand there and watch. I would have begged her to stop.
But Neha did not stop until the work was done. And when it was over, she said her body had forgotten how to eat. It had to learn again, like a baby. Even then, still weak, she went to Bihar to meet more than 600 students who had been arrested. She did not go home to rest. She went to the ones who had stood by her.
I am a dowser. Every day I work with energy. I have learned that anger is heavy. It burns out fast. Nobody can live on anger for 23 days without food. Only love can carry you that far.
Then I read that her father was in the Army, and the family kept moving from one posting to the next.
My wife's father was also in the Army. I never call him my father-in-law. To me, he is simply Papa. My wife studied in 13 schools. Thirteen first days. Thirteen times walking into a class where nobody knew her name. Thirteen goodbyes to friends she never saw again. Army children learn to smile, pack their bags and start again. Nobody asks them how much it hurts. I see that strength in my wife every day. I saw it in Neha too.
In Ranchi, a man threw ink on her face and called her anti-national. She said she had already faced pellets and lathis in Delhi. Ink would not scare her.
Ink washes off. In energy work, we say that what people throw at you only stays if you take it in. She seems to know this without ever holding a pendulum.
Her family did not agree with her. There were fights at home. But during the hunger strike, her mother came to Jantar Mantar.
I don't know what they said to each other. I don't need to. I am a parent. I know what a mother feels when she sees her child weak and thin on a road, and still standing. Every argument is forgotten in that moment. All that is left is: this is my child.
Neha said she has not spoken to her father yet.
I don't know him. But I am a father too, and I know how hard it is for men like us to say some things out loud. So if he cannot say it yet, let me say it for him, from Chennai.
Beta, we are proud of you. Now go and eat something properly.
Somewhere in all this, a thought came to me that I never expected. I wish I had one more daughter. One like Neha. This takes nothing away from my own daughter. She is my world. She always will be. But Neha made me ask myself a hard question. We spend our whole lives keeping our children safe and helping them get ahead. Do we ever teach them to look back at who is being left behind? And if one day they stand up for someone else, will we stand next to them as Neha's mother did? Or will we ask them to come home and stay quiet. Our job is to protect that light, even when it scares us.

[Amiya_Pandav ଅମିୟ ପାଣ୍ଡଵ Write n Fight @AmiyaPandav]

Firing on Adivasi people !
#Odisha Police has started firing on Tribal people protesting against the mining of Bauxite by #Vedanta in Sijimali village, Rayagada district of Odisha ! Police attacked at 3AM when they were sleeping ! Many injured @DhanadaKanta @TribalArmy

[JSB @jahanbakshi]

The stunning US trailer for Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan's Sundance-winning doc NOCTURNES: https://t.co/EK0rM5xl6x (via @GhopperFilm and @SandboxFilms)

[Shivendra Singh Dungarpur @shividungarpur]

What a moving moment
as Preeti Sagar sings the famous“Manthan” song to Shyam Benegal before the release of the film tommorrow…just can’t believe she sang “My heart is beating” in Julie before that….

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Very proud to have played a small role in seeding the success of The Shameless...

[RealQuestions @issues_polls]

@historyinmemes Children can be cute and naughty 😅. This is fun to watch

[Sudhish Kamath @SudhishKamath]

An Open Letter to fellow culture vultures

Culture Vulture
(n): A person who is very interested in the arts.

So here’s from one culture vulture to another.

After having been a journalist and film critic for around two decades and a part-time independent filmmaker, I, Sudhish Kamath, made the jump to full time filmmaking eight years ago to focus on telling more mainstream stories - a journey that led me to write for Luv Ranjan and more recently, for Raj & DK - an opportunity to be in the writing team of The Family Man Season 3.

I wouldn’t want to presume you know about the kind of films I have made, so let me start with a quick introduction.

I used to be a journalist and film critic with The Hindu (1999-2015) and produced all my films from savings I had as a journalist and money I borrowed - through personal loans, debt and a little help from friends.

Now, most of you know how much journalists and critics get paid - an average of 10 rupees a word.
In comparison, a mainstream screenwriter gets paid an average of 50 rupees a word.
While I have done both and earned over a crore since doing this full time, it costs us independent filmmakers at least a HUNDRED rupees a word from our pockets to make a film we believe in. And those are the only kinds I have made - self-funded.

Good Night | Good Morning, made on a budget of 35 lakhs, released by PVR Director’s Rare made its way to Netflix - and the licensing fee helped me make the second film in my Retro Love trilogy Side A Side B.
X-Past is Present, which I co-produced with Drishyam Films, was a one-of-its-kind serialised anthology feature film - one man’s haunting love life directed by 11 filmmakers. The collaborative experiment X was on Netflix for six years and on Amazon Prime for a couple years.

My last film Side A | Side B was released by Luv Films in association with T-Series on the biggest YouTube channel in the world after the market for independent films shrunk in 2019 and most OTTs had stopped acquiring indie content.

So when the pandemic hit, I practically knew there was no market or showcase space for independent films.
In fact, when Side A Side B finally dropped in 2022, our publicists could not get journalists and film critics to review the film because “It’s on YouTube na, we’ll watch it soon.” But it’s a film that got me to write a mainstream feature film for Luv Films/Luv Ranjan.

The Side A Side B experience had already taught me that if a film is on YouTube, that’s no reason for a critic to review or preview it. YouTube, at some level, is seen and treated as the lowest class for film distribution. It’s discriminated against because we believe that if it’s on YouTube, it’s probably not that good. After all, there are thousands of videos on YouTube, how could we reasonably expect to be given any space in the media.

Yet, I knew I would go crazy if I did nothing when the pandemic hit.

I had to make the film I had started, the third and the final part of my Retro Romance trilogy after Good Night Good Morning and Side A Side B, Culture Vulture - a modern day stoner retelling of Casablanca - when two exes meet after years - but set in the middle of the pandemic chaos and the media circus around Bollywood allegedly doing drugs.

Since it was the pandemic when most people who work as crew left for home unable to afford rent in Mumbai, I knew I had to do it myself. So I invested in DIY gear - camera lenses, gimbals, sound recording gear, lights and shot the film myself with no crew, no assistants - just a terrific ensemble of actors.

The film features comedian Shaurya Tyagi @notsoshaurya, Rashi Mal @Rashi_Mal, Suchitra Pillai @suchitrapillai, Katie Iqbal @Khatija_Iqbal, Akshay Anand Kohli, Ivan Rodrigues @IvanRodOfficial @allVishal @samirbharadwaj @iabhishekdshah @nishanthievani among others and my mentors filmmakers Nagesh Kukunoor and Cameron Crowe @CameronCrowe in special extended cameos.

Shooting a 140 page script in the pandemic wouldn’t have been possible if not for the commitment of my terrific cast towards workshops and rehearsals for weeks but still, it was always going to be a challenge to shoot it myself with a two camera set up, recording live sync sound, doing production design and costumes via orders on Amazon and finally editing it myself with an assistant initially and later by myself, until I found the tech support in Ivan Avakian, a Russian sound designer who spent months cleaning up Bombay live sound and chipped in with additional score and grade while my Side A Side B lead Rahul Rajkhowa @RajkhowaRahul got together with Augustus Henry to compose the songs - an eclectic jazz and blues album and a bonus Bollywood banger called Dil Hai Chillum.

The post production took longer than the shoot, given the limited resources and pandemic induced financial crunch. And we had no luck with film festivals given the anti establishment political content in the film and the rather light hearted fun tone of the film. Maybe the film doesn’t work, I thought.

Last November, I decided to give the cast and crew some closure by organising a preview. But something magical happened at the preview. Not only did we have a full house, it was an overwhelming experience to see so much love and laughs at the screening. We finally knew we had a good film that entertained those who had given it a chance.

Culture Vulture is the film that gave me a shot to be in the writers room of The Family Man 3, thanks to DK who had come for the preview.

While fortune favours the brave and miracles do happen, it has become increasingly difficult today to be given that fair chance - of being watched as a whole and not sampled for ten minutes or less - in the clutter we find in our lives, on the phones with many distractions and options.

After deciding to drop it on YouTube, we were warned by content managers to not release the film until we had a base of 5000 subscribers. It would be suicidal, they said.

Now, it takes 20,000 impressions on socials to get 100 clicks on any link.

What’s worse is that for every hundred 100 views, the watch hours would indicate barely 2-3 people watch the whole movie because there are so many options to choose from today than some link you clicked on by chance that’s demanding 108 minutes of your time.

A fellow independent filmmaker had dropped his last feature last year and ended up with 7000 views in a whole year. I feel terrible that after all that effort, we would end up with barely 60 to a hundred people if we are lucky, watching the whole film on Youtube in an algorithm controlled world that supports short form videos and channels.
Once the media was increasingly owned by political players, a lot of journalists had to turn to the same YouTube for viewership and eyeballs. YouTube thus became the voice of the independent journalists and critics. We need the same to happen for indie filmmakers and only people like you can make that happen.

My idol Oscar winner Cameron Crowe, who has written and performed the closing monologue of the film, once told me how the studio had almost given up on his debut Say Anything and had skipped the press tour. But luckily for him, Roger Ebert loved it. If there was no Ebert, there would have been no Crowe. Small films need critics a lot more than the big ones. Yet it’s the big ones that get all the attention.

Today, our audience is all online, plugged into phones, with the attention span of Ten Second Tom from 50 First Dates. So how do we get them to give us a chance?

This long old school letter is to ask you for that chance.

Please give our little film Culture Vulture a chance. For 108 whole minutes since the preview audience did indicate that ours is a film that takes a while to get into given the unique grammar that makes sense by the end.

Please give it the same kind of attention you would in a movie hall for the best experience.

I am aware that asking for two hours of your time to watch it and then to write about it is a LOT but as an independent filmmaker, all one can do is ask and hope that our films get seen, our work is evaluated as an equal to any other stories told, in bigger mediums and platforms.

Stories should not ideally be discriminated against on the basis of budgets and platforms but the reality and data paints a very bleak picture.

Culture Vulture is now all yours for a limited period on an experimental basis since it’s most relevant during the election season, fully aware that we might jeopardise its future chances of monetisation. But as an artist, I would have failed in my job if I don’t speak when it matters the most.

In these times where even OTT content is subject to guidelines, the proposed Broadcast Bill and Telecom Bill will make it all the more difficult for independent filmmakers after June 4.

So help us when you can, by previewing and/or reviewing the film over the next couple of weeks. Do give us a chance, a voice and some space in your socials, schedule and hopefully, heart. Join the conversation.

The film is now out on https://t.co/0wr9iZ530n and be available all weekend. Based on demand and increase in subscriptions, we might continue its run till June 4 but this limited window release experiment hopes to drive appointment viewing on the channel.

Thank you for your time and reading this letter. Looking forward to hearing from you here on X and continuing the #CultureVulture conversation during this #CultureVulturePreviewWeekend. Have a nice trip.

[Witness Docs @AJWitness]

For 40 years, @mikeafricajr has advocated for the freedom of his parents and other members of MOVE, a Black revolutionary organisation in the US.

Since their release from prison, Mike experiences life with his parents for the first time. Watch Growing Together by @karenmediamaker: https://t.co/b5krGuA3OC

[Scott Myers @GoIntoTheStory]

Lin-Manuel Miranda: “You write until the rust comes out of the faucet and it’s clear water. Then you write down the clear water.” #writing

[Prasanna S @prasanna_s]

It was a question generally on 'foreign governments' and the first thing that comes to @jack's mind is India.

Nothing to see here...

[Anees Salim @SalimAnees]

This Father's Day, buy them all.
https://t.co/vLdhc7VzQy

[Piotr Toczyński 🎬 ✂ 🎥 @PiotrToczynski]

This is an excerpt from my interview with Walter Murch. I had such a blast talking to him. Regardless of their NLE of choice or experience level, this conversation will be insightful. So if you have 28 minutes: https://t.co/Qt9k006jnn

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

It’s never ‘too late to start’ if you plan on doing it forever.

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

Geoff Green captured an incredible time lapse of a storm in Western Australia

[Inkscape @inkscape]

Read about how free software for art and multimedia like #Inkscape gives design studios more independence and freedom: https://t.co/9zLcviqIvi

Pass the word!

[Bindu @soulonatraipse]

Puliyinji grilled chicken

[Outlook India @Outlookindia]

Kalki, whose film ‘#Goldfish’ is all set to have its premiere at the Raindance Film Festival, talks about the changing taste of the audience in terms of content.

@kalkikanmani

#Entertainment #OTT

✍️ Gurpreet Kaur

https://t.co/G8yyzFgvah

[rinju rv @rinjurv]

@thadiyan_ @arca_dian can i get the private link ?

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

So many use hobbies to distract themselves from a reality they refuse to face.