Archive for the 'indian cinema' Category

Beaux-Arts Magazine: focus on India for lille3000 Festival

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

Beaux Arts Magazine Octobre 2006
The October issue of Paris based Beaux Arts Magazine has just been released. It contains a special focus on India in relation to the lille3000 India Festival, to take place from October 14th, 2006, till January 14th, 2007. Alok Nandi has written the articles on cinema and literature.

More on the magazine at

Beaux Arts Magazine website

Elephants in Lille, France

Friday, September 1st, 2006

India Festival is coming: elephants are already there …

India Festival lille3000 - Elephants

The elephants will take place and form the Rambla: rendez-vous on October 14th, for the opening of the India Festival.
lille3000
Alok Nandi will have activities in the areas of literature, cinema, media art, film (conference & debate), installation: an Indian summer in Lille …

Kino Rasa, Kinorama

Monday, August 28th, 2006

“Rasa” is a concept related to Indian aesthetic which was used in the conference given in Berlin in February at Transmediale 06, to travel in the oeuvre of Ritwik Ghatak.
Alok Nandi will continue this journey (yatra) in Le Fresnoy in October.

kino rasa, kinorama, a talk by Alok b. Nandi

More information on site, meanwhile the announcement in French:

La Cinéthèque du Fresnoy

Les projections de la Cinéthèque du Fresnoy ont lieu chaque lundi à 19h d’octobre à avril au Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains 22, rue du Fresnoy 59200 Tourcoing (Métro : Alsace)

Programmation cinéma et conférences
dans le cadre de l’Inde et de Lille 3000

Mercredi 25 octobre à 19h00
Conférence Alok Nandi
Cinémas d’art et essai en Inde en
compagnie de Ghatak, Ray, Sen et les autres …

Au Bengale, dans le langage courant, le terme “booi” veut à la fois dire livre et film. Cette confusion intéressante, entre le verbe et l’image, entre littérature et narration, permettra d’initier un voyage dans les cinématographies indiennes, en compagnie, pour commencer, de Ritwik Ghatak, de Satyajit Ray, de Mrinal Sen, un trio incontournable, un noyau dur.
Des étoiles du cinéma telles Madhavi Mukherjee, Smita Patil, Aparna Sen … nous emporteront dans des univers qui questionnent le rôle de la femme, l’émergence de la classe moyenne, les conflits urbains, la place de la culture, l’intime, l’universel, le local, l’identitaire dans différentes parties de l’Inde. Dès la naissance du Calcutta Film Society, ces cinquante années ont donné des histoires qui dévoilent les réalités au quotidien, derrière le glamour et les rêves de Bollywood.

Alok Nandi
De la mise en scène web (Cités obscures, Tardi, Moebius, Corto Maltese …) à des installations interactives, Alok Nandi explore les modalités de narration qui mêlent technologie et espace. Japan Foundation Fellow 1996, Prix de la SCAM 1997 pour urbicande.be, Transfiction montrée à Imagina 2000 et 2002. Auteur et réalisateur, il partage son temps entre des projets de création interactive, de scénographie, d’écriture. Il intervient et donne des cours sur des sujets liés au cinéma, à Internet, au design, au rôle des médias, à la
relation entre arts et sciences.
En 1991, il a conçu et publié la photo biographie Satyajit Ray 70 ans, préfacé par Henri Cartier-Bresson, avec des photographies de Nemai Ghosh et des contributions de Kurosawa, Scorsese, Polanski, Attenborough, Rostropovitch, Menuhin, Rushdie, Naipaul, Sen, Antonioni, Carrière, Merchant, Ivory, … Il a fait tourner une exposition à Cannes, Paris, Londres, Nantes, Aix-en-Provence, Bruxelles, entre 1991 et 1993.

Conférence suivie de la projection de

Charulata
de Satyajit Ray
Inde / 1964 / 35mm / vostf / 117′
d’après Rabindranath Tagore avec Madhabi Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Shyamal Ghosal, Geetali Roy, Subrata Sen, Bankim Ghosh

1879, dans une Inde en effervescence et un Bengale en pleine renaissance culturelle… Le riche bourgeois libéral Bhupati s’efforce de lutter contre la domination britannique et rêve d’une défaite des Conservateurs aux prochaines élections qui amènerait un gouvernement tenant compte des intérêts de l’Inde. Pour cela, il consacre son temps et sa fortune au petit journal politique qu’il a créé : ‘La Sentinelle’.
Cette passion, cet engagement, l’éloigne peu à peu de Charulata, son épouse. Vivant dans leur immense demeure victorienne, elle va, menant une vie quasi oisive, de son métier à broder à la bibliothèque, et observe son mari et un monde qui s’éloigne d’elle derrière ses jumelles de théâtre. Conscient de cet ennui, Bhupati, qui vient de confier la gestion du journal à Umapada, le frère de Charulata, se décide à faire venir Amal, son jeune cousin pour la distraire…

from Le Fresnoy website

India Festival lille3000

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Alok b. Nandi will be re-exploring “indianity” in different activities in Lille, North of France, this Fall 2006.

alok nandi in lille3000 india festival

transmediale 06 - Berlin

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

In the transmediale.06 Salon programme, Alok Nandi will be speaking about the construction of filmic reality in the famous Bengali film maker Ritwik Ghatak’s work. The talk and presentation will deal with Ghatak’s filmic artistic methods through which Brecht as well as Marx and Tagore, and Indian epics texts, were remediated into avantgarde films to construct realities catalysing Bengal collective memories.
Furthermore, Nandi will relate this to his new media praxis (fluxtopia.net) and discuss more general film-theoretical considerations about the ‘actualite’ of avantgarde narratives, on the one hand, and the historical background in Bengal, memory, and cultural reflection, on the other.

Speaking in Berlin on Feb. 5th, 2006 at transmediale 06

Interventions

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

This Friday 30th Sept. 05, presentation at Cinema Nova Brussels of the film on Ghatak by Anup Singh, in the India Zindabad ! festival.
On October 1st, conference on sustainable development and conversation platforms, with F. Jégou, in a workshop organised by Oracle, with a.o. Citymined …

India Zindabad ! at Nova Cinema Brussels

Tuesday, September 6th, 2005

Indian Films for Freedom: there is a life between and behind Bollywood. Alok Nandi has been dialoguing with the Nova Cinema team and has worked on the design of the cover as well as the flyer and is preparing a video installation. Also, he will be introducing two films (on 22nd and 30th of Sept., 2005) in the Ritwik Ghatak homage, one of the most inspiring film maker, to be urgently discovered …
The intro in French is on a Ghatak page.
More on the festival at Nova Cinema.

Layouts for INDIA ZINDABAD ! at Cinema Nova Brussels

An Indian summer

Friday, July 15th, 2005

The summer is going to be Indian and active. I am involved in a festival at Cinema Nova Brussels showing independent Indian movies in September and October, where I’ll be specifically contextualising the Ritwik Ghatak films - a major film director. I am working on the visual concept of the festival poster/programme as well as preparing a video installation.
In parallel, a major multi-disciplinary institution proposed me to coordinate the India programme for 2006-2007 in Brussels, in its initial phase (summer 2005).
A long series of Indian summers in perspective ! It began with the Indian Gardens at the Royal Saltworks in Arc et Senans.

Maha Cinema

Monday, May 2nd, 2005

I am getting back to projects related to cinema, and specifically Indian cinema: maha cinema, or great cinema ! The one beyond and behind Bollywood (very à la mode in Paris nowadays) - the wood hiding the magic trees of many filmmakers.

May 2nd, 1921, was the birth day of Satyajit Ray: in 1991, I conceived/edited a homage book, a photo-biography, on the work of this great film director, prefaced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, with photographs by Nemai Ghosh, one of his still photographer, and contributions by Kurosawa, Riboud, Scorsese, Menuhin, Rostropovitch, … [and many others - this list has no specific order]. In parallel, I organised an exhibition of these stills at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, for the 70th birthday of Satyajit Ray.

Book Cover of

More soon.