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Mad about cinema?
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WEBWARE Join this online group of film goers and makers that discusses and debates films
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HAVE A SAY Film director Anurag Kashyap
Indian cinema, whether Kollywood, Bollywood, Tollywood, evokes strong emotions in most of us; passion, nostalgia, pride, craze, apathy… The average Indian can hold forth fervently and incessantly on the topic. When this inherent tendency is giv
en a public platform, called passionforcinema.com, on the limitless World Wide Web, it takes on a different dimension.
The genesis of PFC (passionforcinema.com) essentially started with a person who goes by the pseudonym Oz, based in Los Angeles, who used to run a general blog called desitrain.com. There were 5-6 people all over the world who used to comment religiously on his cinema posts. In August 2006, he decided to start a separate blog dedicated to cinema for all those readers who followed the cinema posts. Since then, PFC has added on almost fifty authors including ‘celebrity authors’ such as Santosh Sivan, Onir, Anurag Kashyap, Suparn Verma, Sudhir Mishra, Ramu Ramanathan to name a few.
Karthik Krishnan, software engineer cum Passionforcinema author/editor says, “PFC is for you and me. You watch films, you like watching films, you discuss films after watching them, this site’s for you.” Passionforcinema has been defined, on the site as “a passionate attempt to bring together all movie fanatics, cine lovers, and those who eat, breathe and drink cinema.” The posts range from highly esoteric to the familiar … “To be Howard Roark, you have to kill your family” – a weighty essay on creative angst, “Making a mark without any noise” – a post on Nitinsathyaa, or “NTR- Pride of India” – a eulogy to the legend.
Another regular on the site, Vasan Bala, a former IT engineer turned film maker, says, “It is a platform to test our views. You write a post and get reactions from the greatest talent in the industry and the average movie buff.”
Closet film makers
While the site does not claim to promote new talent, all those closet film makers out there, do get an opportunity to share their work. Like it happened with Vasan, “I always wanted to become a film maker and would have tried anyway. But yes, PFC did prove to be a conduit for me.” Vasan participated in the annual festival hosted by the Ability Foundation in Chennai and posted his film on the site. He also got a chance to interact with Anurag Kashyap, and landed an opportunity to assist on Anurag’s next film, “Dev D.”
Interestingly, PFC is running an online contest called PFCRonin – a search for the next generation of movie reviewers.
Says director Anurag Kashyap, a regular writer on PFC, “Most of the mainstream film critics are poseurs especially the ones who also handle the film gossip page. Many are box office pundits predicting hits or flops and most write from a strange POV (point of view) that this film is for masses or classes, PFCRonin is an effort to bring out real cinema literate critics who analyse, then critique a film rather than saying it will work at the box office or not.”
Needless to say, the website conjures a spirit of freedom of speech and camaraderie, with ‘cinema’ playing the protagonist. Karthik adds, “Language is no barrier nor is any viewpoint, however radical.” So do you prefer the new “Billa” or the old “Billa”, or you are not interested in either? Discuss, debate, deliberate and enjoy.
TEJUSVINI VARADACHARI
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