“Given that films are so diverse, how do we read something that’s constantly changing?” says Sudhish Kamath, film maker and critic at his workshop ‘How to read a film’.
Through powerpoints, clips from movies such as Room, The Revenant, The Hateful Eight and Mad Max: Fury Road , Kamath told attendees how to understand what’s transpiring on screen. Here are five pointers from the session.
1. The spoken word is not the most important part of the film. Reading a film involves paying attention to what the characters are not saying. And what the storyteller is drawing our attention to.
2. Old-school definitions are being redefined with digital technology and the constantly evolving language of cinema requires a more basic approach. Hence, there is a need to read a film as a series of emotional beats that need to trigger an emotion or thought, rather than old-school parameters of sequences, scenes and shots.
3. Every film is political, irrespective of intention, but it always helps to understand the intent of the filmmaker while reading in these sensitive times of outrage.
4. While you can create your own frame of reference to read a film, it helps to watch it through the lens of representation (characters and what they stand for), technology (how the craft of storytelling affects the story), social relations (how it engages with the world) and context (what happened before and after the film).
5. Films are journeys of a bunch of people and sometimes like people itself. It doesn’t matter how they look or talk, sometimes all it takes is a shining soul that transcends all superficial elements of appearance and language.
(As told to PRIYADARSHINI PAITANDY)
