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4247
A love letter tocinema
Tue Jul 18, 7:30 PM
Rohit/Sasi
Jafar Panahi, one of the contemporary masters of World Cinema from Iran had been imposed with a 20 year ban from film making by the Iranian government in 2007. But Mr. Panahi still managed to make three films viz This Is Not A Film (2011), Closed Curtain (2013) and Taxi Tehran (2015).
And all these three films further explore the docu-fiction style where the lines between documentary and fiction blur so subtly and beautifully. Filmmakers world over, quite a few greats, especially the greats (Orson Welles for instance) have always tried this puzzling technique, trying to throw at the audience something so real that it gets supremely dramatic, otherwise called turning the camera around.Anyways coming to our film - A Love Letter to Cinema, is in a sense a rip off of Taxi Tehran. Panahi's Taxi is about how Panahi disguised himself as a cab driver in Tehran, mounted a camera on his dashboard and went around town for a day, a few of the passengers recognise him, many don't. Panahi's ban and other legal constraints in this scenario kind of push him to make this film in disguise and a camera pointed at life, shooting whatever walks into it.The exciting thing for us when we thought about it, is to put some sort of constraint upon ourselves for the film to look like a blur between what is real and what is staged. And the idea that whatever happens, the camera will never leave the car was the constraint we've imposed upon ourselves and we let the people/actors talk, say whatever, do whatever and the result is the best film we've made so far. Hope you guys love it as much as we do.
And all these three films further explore the docu-fiction style where the lines between documentary and fiction blur so subtly and beautifully. Filmmakers world over, quite a few greats, especially the greats (Orson Welles for instance) have always tried this puzzling technique, trying to throw at the audience something so real that it gets supremely dramatic, otherwise called turning the camera around.Anyways coming to our film - A Love Letter to Cinema, is in a sense a rip off of Taxi Tehran. Panahi's Taxi is about how Panahi disguised himself as a cab driver in Tehran, mounted a camera on his dashboard and went around town for a day, a few of the passengers recognise him, many don't. Panahi's ban and other legal constraints in this scenario kind of push him to make this film in disguise and a camera pointed at life, shooting whatever walks into it.The exciting thing for us when we thought about it, is to put some sort of constraint upon ourselves for the film to look like a blur between what is real and what is staged. And the idea that whatever happens, the camera will never leave the car was the constraint we've imposed upon ourselves and we let the people/actors talk, say whatever, do whatever and the result is the best film we've made so far. Hope you guys love it as much as we do.