Q and A, Bollywood-style

I’m not quite sure why we were there because we hadn’t seen the film in question, but at some point during the Raindance Festival, Josephine and I attended the Question and Answer session for a Bollywood movie. Although, to be fair, we would not have understood the film anyway, as it was shown without subtitles. and it was not a Bollywood musical-love-story, so we couldn’t have made it up. The filmmakers and producers were deeply apologetic, but something went wrong with the film they were originally scheduled to show, so they showed a different one, and something had gone wrong with that one also, so it didn’t have a subtitle print.

The film’s director - a very shy, soft-spoken fellow - spoke with such a thick indian accent that half the time I was sure he was speaking Hindi. What I did catch was that all his films are about "shoshal ishoes" and that he is considered the indian Tarantino. He is a brand and his films are concept films - thus far removed from conventional indian films. He spoke about his upcoming film "Traffic Light" which is about beggars and eunuchs at a traffic light (in Bombay, I think) and the whole industry that has formed around that traffic light. The distributor of the film wanted to show us the trailer as it is their Next Big Thing. So the Q and A was halted for the trailer and the panelists (Director, Distributor and Film Festival Director) sat down in the front row.

- We waited, but nothing happened.

Eventually, the panelists got up again and Q and A was resumed, whilst the projectionist faffed with the reel. An image flashed on the screen behind the panelists, so the Q and A was abruptly halted and the panelists sat down in the front row again.

But....nothing further happened, so the panelists took the stage once more and the Q and A continued. Due to all the frantic sitting down and getting up again, they kept losing the thread of the discussion and so the Qand A was like something out of a comic film that had us all giggling.

This process went on (we were having fun, so why stop a good thing?) until after the 4th time, it finally worked! We watched the hotly-awaited trailer.... and then we watched the hotly-awaited trailer again. The projectionist must have been so excited that to make up for the wait, he ran it twice in a row. Eventually, just as it was about to start a third time, the distributor got up and called for the lights to come back on. It was surreal... and I suspect very much in keeping with the way these things happen in India (ask Jörg, I’m sure he’ll agree!) Unscheduled film, no subtitles, no trailer and then double-dose of trailer. At the end of the comedy of errors, the famous director sent us off saying: “Tank yoo tu bee a lovely ohwdience” and got mobbed by a crowd of his fellow countrymen outside.

(photo: the T-shirt we were given upon leaving, sponsored by the Indian Distribution Co)

one of life's great ironies

This past weekend, I travelled to London to attend a party. In what can only be described as the Way Things Go, I ended up not going to the very party I had travelled to London for. But never mind - I wasn’t overly upset about it (I could have gone if I had really, really, really wanted to) and I had a very worthwhile weekend without it. And maybe the party would have been a let-down. Who knows? This way, in my mind, it’ll always be a great party that I crossed the Channel for and then didn’t actually go to once I was a 10 min walk away.

The party was the closing night party of the 14th Raindance Film Festival - a festival dedicated to independent film. Whilst living in London I worked for the Festival (the 8th), but this time I came at a friend’s invitation to the party...

I attended a ‘Subversive Screenwriting’ workshop, a panel discussion, three Q&A’s, watched three feature films, and almost two hours worth of short films. I happened to be at the premiere of the winning film, so it meant something to me at the award ceremony and even though I skipped the closing party, we got Fossil watches and sunglasses in a gift bag at the awards. So, see? Even though I didn’t have a cocktail with Dame Judi Dench, Raindance was a very rewarding experience.

And if you don’t want to read a short rant about the world’s crappest underground public transport service, please stop reading now and have a trouble-free day.... byeeeee.

For the rest of you, here it comes: the London -Mind The Gap- Underground is truly a marvel. With tiny, rounded trains, dilapidated tracks, slow service, cancelled trains, gaps between the carriage and the platform and infernal s i g n a l failures, the best thing about it is it’s PA system - at least that is always in use and you get the bad news loudly and clearly. Although they should be warning you to Mind The Crap, as falling through the gap might actually relieve you of your tube-induced transport hell. I’m not suggesting the tube makes suicide look like an attractive alternative, I’m just saying that sliding through the gap could create an interesting diversion. You might find Harry Potter’s platform 9½. But what REALLY gets my goat is that this shitty, shitty service now costs £3 per single trip! They have done away with the Weekend Travel Card and the carnet for 10 trips in Zone 1 for £10 and now all you have is £4.90 for the day, or £3 for each trip. How that can be legal is beyond me. Paris has one of the best subways I’ve ever been on in terms of speed, coverage area and reliability and a single trip costs you roughly 90p, 70p if you buy a pack of 10. And they get you to where you’re going - isn’t that something? Actually, in Paris you’re far better off taking the Metro than trying to get a taxi because 1) there’s never a taxi when you need one and 2) French taxi drivers routinely refuse to take you where you want to go because they don’t understand that the whole and only point of their job is to go where the customer needs to go and not where they can get a good coffee and a fag. But that is a different rant altogether....

[Meanwhile, I’ll just go back to saving the world and talking about important issues, shall I?]