You do not exist by yourself. You are not an immaculate identity, created out of nought. It is a dirty process, this shaping of a person, insofar as it involves mingling with the dirt of humans in society. And then you are gradually born, your consciousness determined by life.

The same can be said for films. They are a co-ordinated and social process, involving not only the story but everything that forms it. Points in a 3 dimensional graph dissolving onto the flat canvas when the film is projected. And every aspect of the film represents not only the people who carve it, but also hints at their “dirt” too.

How do you wrestle with this thought? In lieu of a focus on formalism, it is suppressed because the prevalent understanding is of a film existing within itself, free of everything else that might’ve shaped it. The themes remain stuck as just themes to analyze and break down into their constituent parts. The film tends to live and die on screen.The author(s) should be dead, right? And yet, they haunt frames; they linger in the contrast; they want you to engage with the film.

And what about you, the audience? The viewer? The eyeball? You inhabit a certain position in time and space, much like the film. What is your role? You can be a passive viewer, seeing the film just to be entertained. You can be a critic, dissecting it with a cigarette in hand and a pen in the other. You can have an ironic distance from it, as though it exists only to be studied and discarded. Or you can be active.

Birthed from discontent, Indian Parallel Cinema wished to provide new answers to the questions mentioned above. Arun Kaul and Mrinal Sen’s 1968 manifesto starts thus:

“The Indian film, especially Hindi Cinema, is at its lowest ebb today.”

They detail the malaise that affects the production and distribution of the film. It is a vicious cycle, one where formula takes precedence over form, and content has calcified into gloss: shiny toys that stupefy.

This hegemony of mediocrity must be challenged. To wit, they propose the creation of a New Cinema: a cinema that “offers the film-maker, above all, the indispensable freedom to realise his vision, untrammelled by all considerations except creative and aesthetic.” This involves the creation of a cinema academy: where filmmakers can both get grants to film a script, and have a venue for showcasing their movies every saturday and sunday; and of the audience: demanding, participating, exhortive.

This ambitious plan had the even loftier goal of “engaging … in a ruthless search for the “truth””. Kaul and Sen wanted cinema to now extricate man from all four corners, and find “clues to mankind’s riddles”. And they wanted it all to be done on a budget: in order to make films cheaper to produce and distribute, it should be shot on location, with tight framing and everything controlled to such an extent that the “film should’ve been made before filming.”

The Parallel Cinema movement took up this challenge. With Ray’s sometimes-begrudging blessings, it conceived alternative viewpoints that formed the different waves within it. There were the experimentalists in Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, and the neo-realism of Benegal that was termed “Middle Cinema” because it was neither too mainstream but not as unconventional as the experimentalists’. The government-run NFDC acted in this instance as the cinema academy proposed in the manifesto.

This heralded the arrival, finally, of Nihalani at the dawn of the 80s.

Forged in Fire

He grabs hold of you from the very beginning, and doesn’t let you go till the end. Nihalani’s four films here each are a bear hug that demand from you a reckoning: where do you live, how do you live, how do you exist?

This retrospective is built on the premise of the expansion of man into society, and of society into man. We see this evolving in the first film, Ardh Satya (“Half-Truth”), that follows the idealistic police officer whose commitment to justice leads him to a crisis of existence in a city which makes alcoholics out of good men. A man who is, like Abhimanyu in the Mahabharat, lost inside the Chakravyuh till he dies by a thousand cuts.

The villainous city returns in Aakrosh (“Outrage”). While Om Puri has a semblance of power in the previous film, here he portrays the subaltern. Naseeruddin Shah takes up the mantle of the idealist, working as a lawyer who ardently believes in justice and yet sees it crumble before the magistrate. Man is further expanded, from one with nowhere to go but blow up as in Ardh Satya, into someone who catches glimpses of a better world, into political organising that can struggle and lift the wretched of the Earth.

It also bears mentioning that Aakrosh was shot on 16mm to save budget, later blown up to 35mm for the big screen. This cost-cutting measure is quantitative, but it transforms the film into becoming realised. It is the embodiment of the 68 manifesto: by applying innovative methods for bringing the budget down, one can really boldly make for the “truth” where the Adivasi is institutionally oppressed the minute he is brought to court. When Legal Literature triumphs, as myths of the salacious and jealous subaltern are constructed, the only thing that remains is the muffled silence glistening over Om Puri’s pockmarked face.

The question that Aakrosh opens at its end finds an answer in Party, where the Bombay elite of the literary and artistic circles meet to discuss liberation and Marxism. Nihalani minces no words in their portrayal: they are decidedly petty bourgeois who are concerned more with the form of their personality than with society’s problems. They, much like us, sit and talk within a palatial estate with petty rivalries coloring every other sentence. And then, something happens towards the end that renders all of their chatter irrelevant. There’s a movement going on, far away from them, and they cannot ever hope to grasp it.

The deprived and demolished rural India pushes you to consider what you have done to it. Party is not only a representation, but also a reflection of the viewer, the same “enlightened audience” that watches parallel cinema on Sundays and goes about their lives with much panache. Nihalani uses the movie as both a shield and a vehicle to ask: what have you done?

The buck stops with Aghaat (“Harm”), where we see Om Puri again in the role of the idealist. This time, he is a union leader, who quit his teaching job to help further the labour struggle for the communist organisation. The man now wants liberation, and is involved with the dirt, with the process of moulding it.

Made against the backdrop of both Indira Gandhi’s anti-worker policies of the 80s, as well as changes in international labour landscape with Reaganomics, it aims to encapsulate the fault-lines within trade unionism and the limits of politics that gets stuck between being far-sighted and immediacy. It is agonising to see the lead stick to his ideals when clearly there’s a better solution (or is there?), and it is horrifying to capture the aftermath of his betrayal.

The central motif throughout this journey will be an analysis of control: what can the individual really control of their lives? Nihalani’s detractors have a point: he is didactic. His didacticism is his refusal to tell you to accept current reality, which, unlike the Italian neo-realists, creates something seen less and less in an era of either depressive realism or superhero mythologising: hope, that comes from getting your hands dirty against existing structures of power.

These films do have their pitfalls: they are somewhat moral tales, and they’re structured in a normative fashion. One can make the argument that they don’t show living, breathing people but types and amalgamations meant to be representatives of large sections of society. The leads are largely heroic and sympathetic, and due to that, perhaps boring too.

Nonetheless, they are a necessity to watch because they involve you into belonging, against your wishes, in the world. If you seek refuge from the world, perhaps this won’t be the screening for you. For the request is not only that you watch a political film; it is for you to watch the film politically.

Green day were prophets when they proclaimed

‘someone kill the DJ, shoot the fucking DJ’

A chainsaw is taken to our conversations.

In (purposely) dim-lit restaurants

Run by dim-wit managers

A bald man stands atop his kingdom.

A mid-life crisis now everyone’s problem

As he blares his shitty remix

(A pastiche of his disjointed attempt at fixing it)

With a disco ball rotating over us,

An anachronism, like an alien civilisation

Recreating from buried artefacts

The 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s the 00s the 10s the 20s:

The violent collapsing of all eras

as if to say your father grandfather and you are the one and same.

In the light of thousand burning rupees,

All faces are blazoned by spite,

So, ‘It’s great ambience, just click photos’.

The lovers on the left table will break up,

The family on the right will be embroiled

In a bitter dispute over 1.5 crores worth property.

And in all this, I strain my ears to hear Shashank

And only talk to Umang by gestures,

While all others are beyond my grasp.

I have much to loathe in life, but tonight,

Dear DJ, you deserve all my loathe,

Because in this kingdom you have

Banished your mortal enemy,

Our common friend,

The fertile ground for conversations:

Silence.

Bong Joon-Ho is unapologetic. He speaks solely in Korean at American award functions and interviews, beckons their viewers to get over the subtitle barrier, and makes movies that parody their elected President. In Mickey-17, he uses their top billed actor to unabashedly push the “woke agenda”.

Based in the near future where humans have developed cloning capabilities, the film follows the eponymous Mickey on his journey as an “Expendable”, a person who has signed up to be repeatedly cloned upon death(s). He is simultaneously Expendable and Essential, as he is able to help the scientists discover a cure for a deadly virus, create alliances with “alien” species, and save the life of Mark Ruffalo’s character, Kenneth Marshall.

The latter is, quite unsubtly, the lovechild of Trump and Elon: their idiosyncrasies moulded into a concoction of human supremacy that is obsessed with uteruses and spectacle. Ruffalo adeptly moves the botox-filled skin around, and Toni Collette, playing his wife Ylfa, does her job of making the audience squirm with each spite-filled smile.

It is an oft-repeated fact that science fiction speaks more about the current than the future. British critic AA Gill calls the genre a “parable format” that comments on the present, and Mickey-17 is no exception. It is infused with certain post 2020s humour, as when there is a farcical discussion over sharing lovers by two women; the uniforms are reminiscent of Squid Games’ tracksuits; and its pop-culture is enmeshed firmly in the past few years.

Would this movie survive the test of time? It seems unlikely. But that is probably besides Bong’s point: he doesn’t invite you to scratch the surface, opting to dig it out himself for your convenience.

The politics cultivated in the film stands as a testament. At every step of the way, its intention is to derail capitalism’s central arguments with terse remarks from this universe’s Uddham Singh who is distilled in the form of Mickey-18, the clone whose strength is derived from naked derision of Marshall and everything he represents.

This Lenin of Joon-Ho is abrasive and to the point. He is like Mickey-17, but he also is unlike him, and that is about the extent that Joon-Ho is concerned with a character sketch. Because 18 is meant to push forward, by hook or crook, the fight against Marshall’s colonialist capitalism.

In this process, he also draws out 17, who complements his death drive with a pronounced love for life and all the living beings. That is, perhaps, what a revolutionary must harbor: hate for the exploiter, and love for the exploited.

In “Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative?”, Mark Fisher argues that “anti-capitalist” cinema engages in activism on our behalf; it does our anti-capitalist action for us, just so we can go on consuming how we regularly do without the guilt that comes from critically analysing our role in sustaining the exploitative global order, be it actively or passively. Applying this critique on Mickey-17 is somewhat nuanced: the film does offer an alternative in the form of co-operation as against capitalism. It is reminiscent of the ethos that drives Starfleet of Star Trek in its quest to seek out other worlds and cultures, to build bridges of communication and being against colonising them. Indeed, Mickey-17 wouldn’t be out of place as a prequel, as its conclusion is largely analogous with the lore of Star Trek.

There’s also a secret group of moderates who ally with the radical protagonists, doubtless inspired by the annals of anti-colonial history. They come together to fight against techno-colonialism, whose scent is decidedly Musk, with their own technological solution that would aid in co-operation.

This is important to note, as certain sections of the anti-capitalist intellectual class have, not without merit, complete disdain for technology, without any exceptions. Within this turmoil, positive usage of tech affirms the neutrality of it as a tool. It explicates the revolutionary potential within it, when harnessed towards the right causes. At a time when many STEM graduates are either apolitical or turning towards the right, Mickey-17 cajoles them to consider a “left alternative”.

But, it is to be said, that it still engages in anti-capitalism for the viewer. This isn’t to say that it needs to inspire a new generation of radicals, but merely that it falls short of providing a deeper political project. This is a long-standing critique of Bong Joon-Ho, where most of his movies that investigate and explore the class divide end up with simplistic assertions and superficial messaging, never to bring out the crux of capitalism to the fore.

We do see the contradiction of capitalism and the legal system play out when the Multiples are created: that the inherent logic of capitalism (towards monopolisation, for instance) is tamed by laws (like antitrust laws) that only momentarily halt it. The cloning machine is obviously capitalism; Mickey being simultaneously expendable and indispensable is obviously an “essential worker”; and the only way out is to destroy the cloning machine.

Sagarika Ghose, Journalist and Author

One of India’s premier journalists, Sagarika Ghose has become a household name. She is a trailblazer for women journalists everywhere, and is known for her astute questioning of the powerful.

A resident of New Delhi, Ghose began her career as a journalist in 1991. After holding various positions at media firms such as The Times of India, Outlook and The Indian Express, she became a deputy editor and anchor at CNN-IBN. A recipient of the Indian Television Academy Award for Excellence in Journalism, Ghose is also an active personality on Twitter, popular for her views on Indian politics. She has authored two novels as well as the acclaimed biography of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister.

Her talk during Festember ’19 was a part of the Carpe Diem Guest Lecture Series and it was one of the major highlights of the fest. In the interview that followed her thought-provoking guest lecture, she had a few members of Team Festember in rapt attention through her answers which pertained to questions that were resonating in public conscience at that time. Read on to know her candid observations, opinions, and perceptions in one of Talks by The Firelight’s most extensive interview yet.

Disclaimer: The following views presented by the guest are solely expressed in her personal capacity. They do not represent any personal or organizational inclinations of any member, team or community under Festember. Festember bears no affiliation or relation to the same.

This being an engineering college, we would like to know that if one were to make the jump from engineering to journalism, what qualities should they have in order to make it?

“The foremost quality that a journalist must have is courage.”

The job of a journalist is to ask questions, no matter the person in power. We do it not because of malfeasance, but rather, because we are the agents of the citizen. As such, we must hold accountable those in public, irrespective of the amount of power we have. For, ultimately, the citizen needs to know, and we (journalists) are their eyes and ears.

I think another quality that a person must have is a lively interest in current affairs, in what is happening around you. You have to be a bit of a news junkie- you have to follow the news, see how it breaks and its inner workings. An interest in politics and the political environment can also come in handy. I, being a political journalist, emphasize on the political aspect of the world. But nowadays, you have tech, society and agricultural journalism. All it takes is interest.

In today’s world, there’s also an additional quality that you must have: mastering multi-media.

Journalism today is multimedia. It’s not just writing, talking and shooting a picture. You need to write, talk, shoot, blog, tweet, etc. all at the same time. You have to be platform agnostic.

Today’s media is platform agnostic. As such, it is very much the need of the hour.

Are writers free to write whatever they want? Or do editors exercise a lot of control into what goes out to the public as news?

The media today is in a very bad shape. The current atmosphere is anti-journalism. Due to pressure, a lot of news organizations have completely capitulated, with them not publishing anything that might be remotely anti-establishment in nature. It is saddening.

As an example, let’s consider Kashmir. Without deliberating on the merits of the issue, I must still comment that this should have been the media’s finest hour. This should be the time for journalists to cover the region and get the truth out to the people.

Yet, there’s a complete and utter blackout. There’s heavy pressure on the media. This, ironically, leaves us to rely on international media such as Al Jazeera, The Washington Post and others to get the actual truth out.

I would say that while editors themselves do check and put up news according to their mandate, I think it is important to highlight the pressure that the government is putting on mainstream media outlets and newspapers.

Now, I am able to write and speak on these issues because I have reached a certain level of seniority. I am in a space where my voice counts and I don’t face problems because of my rank. However on the junior level, there are issues with many media organizations.

A lot of media houses today have a large share of their capital coming from political parties. As such, it becomes difficult to follow the news which seems greased by the palms of the politicians. So, how hard is it to sustain a media house independent of such infusions of capital?

It is quite difficult for a media house to be independent.

“The business model of media is broken.”

The BBC survives on subscription and is not driven by advertising. The minute you’re driven by advertising, news faces a crisis. Because who’s the advertiser? The Industrialist. The Industrialist wouldn’t want to upset or take on the government because he has his interests, his oil fields, his resources etc. As such, if he’s your backer and he doesn’t want to take on the government, then you’re becoming a slave to the advertiser.

We in the media are now looking at alternate sources of funding. We are looking for some sort of subscription fee. We feel that if you’re paying for something, you’ll demand excellence, or else you’ll stop paying. As such, there will be this onus for us to meet expectations or else we’ll lose both customers and revenue.

There are other methods too, like viewer-funding, crowd-sourcing, etc. Whatever be the case, we have to change the business model. Without it changing, media cannot be free.

On the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, you wrote an article where you talked about how the Valley and the Center must both open themselves up for negotiation. As hostile as the environment is right now, what sort of confidence-building measures must be undertaken by both the government and the Valley?

The government has to end the Kashmiri lockdown. People are being denied their fundamental rights to use the internet. Their businesses, livelihood, services, and so many other things are dependent on it.

The highest amount of militancy in Kashmir happened in 1989, when there was no internet. So, to say that the internet was cut due to militancy doesn’t hold ground. Telecommunication and internet services have to be restored. Political leaders have to be released. Only then can there be confidence building measures.

You have written a book on the life of Indira Gandhi. What was your approach to writing such a complex political figure? And what was the writing process like?

Well, it was a wonderful experience because I loved discovering Indira Gandhi. She was the Prime Minister when I was growing up, back in the 70s. To go back to that time period was definitely exciting.

When it comes to the writing process, it is an enriching one as you get to do a lot of research. Then, when you delve into the research, you sort of begin to form a picture of the person in all her complexity.

In many instances, Indira Gandhi was a dreadful politician. But she was also an attractive human being. She had a dual personality in this regard- being a ruthless, dreadful politician on one hand and a nice, suave person on the other.

For me, I’ve found out that it helps me to write in the morning. 3 hours in the morning is very productive for me. I usually write only from 6 to 9, and I spend the rest of the morning researching. I’m a morning person in this regard.

The writing process is pretty challenging and it takes time. I’d say that whatever and whenever you can write, just do it. Write two pages and print it out.

“Don’t keep thinking about writing, just write.”

You’ve talked about Bengal a bit, and it reminds us of something that’s happening near it in Assam in the form of the National Registry of Citizens. What is your take on it?

19 lakh people have been excluded from the NRC. It doesn’t seem right.

If today, you ask me to find out the birth certificate of my mother, I don’t think I’d be able to. I don’t think there’s a birth certificate of my dad, or my grandparents. These documents may or may not be present with everyone, and are especially difficult to be obtained by the poor, who may or may not have their birth certificates and documents.

What will happen if you implement NRC all over India? Who shall be able to provide documents, and shall not? Are you going to put all the people who won’t provide documents into detention centers?

As a liberal, I believe in open borders. I don’t believe that there should be unlimited immigration, for no country can sustain that. However, there should be a process by which you discourage illegal immigration and rather grant access to those migrants seeking asylum, the high quality migrants and high level migrants, who can become consumers and facilitate trans-border co-operation. No one willingly leaves their homes if they can be well-off, get opportunities and livelihood in their homes.

Indian Sikh techies are being killed in the US due to this sort of similar rhetoric. So, I think a lot is to be said about restricting illegal migration but there should also be a lot of cooperation between nations so as to reduce the incentive for migration in the first place.

How is it possible to change people’s minds when everything now boils down to name-calling?

Without a doubt, it does boil down to name calling a lot.

The way to go about it is to not get angry, and at the same time, not shut down the debate and dialogue.

I think in this regard, the Liberals have been intolerant of this. The Left dislikes dialogue. The Left and the Right are really just caricatures of each other.

They’re sort of these ideological forces that believe in state power, and using state power to decimate the opposition.

That’s why I’ve written Why I Am A Liberal. There was no dissent in West Bengal for 30 years as the Left ruled with an iron fist. So, the Liberals too have been guilty of intolerance.

However, the Right has become extremely intolerant. Unless we allow space for discussion, we aren’t going anywhere with the nation.

This was Gandhi’s great teaching, you know. You can hold on to a set of values with great attachment, but you can look at your interlocutor as a friend. There has to be no enmity, no sort of hatred. You don’t have to be hostile.

Shout, don’t shoot!

As a follow-up to that: the philosopher Karl Popper theorized a Paradox of Tolerance, which says that “for a society to be tolerant, it must be intolerant towards the intolerant”. If someone states that a particular group of people don’t deserve rights, and is openly misogynistic, homophobic and Islamophobic, how do you not do what Popper recommends with them?

Let me preface by saying that Freedom of Speech is governed by Article 19 of the Constitution. However, you can’t allow this for speech that is inciting you to violently kill somebody. That is where you draw the line.

But you have to permit Freedom of Speech. I find Nathuram Godse repugnant and want nothing to do with him. But, when the play “Me Nathuram Godse Boletu” (a Marathi play) came out and the government wanted to ban it, I was completely against that. You can’t ban something just because you don’t like it.

This is a democracy, and one must put up with insult to their icons. One cannot simply ban Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen or MF Hussain. There cannot be a set of bans that is alright for some, but not for another set. There cannot be bans in the first place.The only ban that should be there is to be on bans. Ban the ban.

However, when it comes to physical violence, or assassination threats, that’s where I believe Freedom of Speech has to end.

This article was written in collaboration with G.s. AviNash, Murali Krishna and Festember’s Guest Lectures team.

Talks by The Firelight 3.1: Power to Truth, Truth to Power was originally published in The Festember Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sabin Boykinov is a Senior Concept Artist at Ubisoft Sofia, producer of heavyweight industry titles such as the Assassin’s Creed series, Tom Clancy series and the WatchDogs franchise. Having taken an unconventional road towards his profession, Boykinov has now established himself as one of the elite concept artists in his profession. He has helped develop games that have gone on to garner praise and awards.

Join us as we talk to him about his passion and his work.

From your previous interviews, there’s a mention of a spark that lighted your interest in designing. Did you start with the goal of going professional?

My first touch with professional concept art and design for movies and games come from an interview of 2 of my now good friends — Svetlin Velinov and Kosta Atanasov. Both amazing artist and illustrators. They described their works for game industry in a small article for a local magazine here in Sofia, Bulgaria. At that time I was working as a painter, making exhibitions and working for private clients. My story for entering in the game industry is a little bit different than other concept artists in this way.

My personal path starts with a kind of transition between traditional and digital art over 15 years ago. It was a great step in life.

A great game company saw my paintings and the founder invited me to join the art team; this was my first real touch with the industry.

How was your time working on games outside of Ubisoft, like Victor Vran and Tropico?

The time in Haemimont Games was really great because I learned a lot about the entire process of making video games from scratch, doing a lot of stuff apart from that of a concept artist. It helped me to become a better craftsman in some way. This was a good start in the industry.

What has been the most difficult work you’ve taken up to this date? What made it difficult?

It is difficult to point one specific task because our work is a constant process of learning, creation and problem-solving. Each concept task is special and is important for the project. Every time you face a challenge you try to have as good a result as possible.

Has branching out to other story-telling mediums such as movies and books occurred to you?

Yes, definitely! I had a lot of interest in movies, books and many other creative mediums. I am that kind of person — full of interest connected with art and creation. My personal preference is focused on illustrations and illustrated book novels.

Are there any personal touches in the games you have worked on, which can be seen in the games themselves?

As a big fan of the Assassins Creed series, working on Origins was an amazing time for me and I gave a lot of personal time and dedication to make my works special for the project.

Of course, making games is a team effort and so, the final result is made after great cooperation between many talented people.

Assassin’s Creed games have always required, to a certain degree, an emulation of the historical time period the game is set on. For Origins, what books, artwork and references did you see to in order to get the design down to a realistic setup?

Ancient Egypt is very well represented in art history as books, museum exhibition and articles so we had all the information in the world to make the game looks believable and great for the players.

We read tons of information about time, architecture and life during the ancient Egyptian period. Personally, I love history and really learned a lot of interesting stuff during my concept work.

Apart from the historic references, what were the main inspirations behind the characters and art style used in the games?

I am lucky to work with one of the best people in the industry. My main inspiration during the project was my work with our art director Eddie Bennun, brand director Raphael Lacoste and teammates like Martin Deschambault, Gilles Beloeil and Jeff Simpson.
Also my team in Sofia is fantastic, full of great professionals. For me this is great inspiration.

The Assassin’s Creed series has always had a distinct style of their own. How did you manage to fit your own concepts within their rules? Are there rules as such in the first place?

Every game has a specific art style so it is normal for a concept artist to follow the game guides and rules. We are professionals first and foremost, and so, we must adapt to each game style that we work on.

How have animation and graphics evolved in the games released over the years, both from a creator and consumer point of view?

I am not an animator so it is difficult to give more details for this. Games became more and more realistic following the progress of the consoles and graphic cards innovations.

Every gamer will be happy to see something more realistic. As such, the industry works a lot in this direction.

Digital art has developed over the years and is more accessible than ever, what’s your advice to aspiring concept artists on how to enter the industry and distinguish themselves from the rest?

I think the industry is more open than ever for new talents, so the only advice I have to give the young artist is to learn, search and work and be open to life around them.

Experiencing life around you means to collect impressions from everything, like travelling, reading books, watching movies, listening to music or even communicating with other artists.

Fundamentals are extremely important but everything must be combined with visual memory and curiosity for everything we experience.

To be a good concept artist is to be curious about life. That is my personal opinion and advice to every person who wants to be part of the industry.

This interview was taken in collaboration with Sabharinathan, Rohinee Phatak, Antony Terence and Abhishek Ramachandran.

Talks By The Firelight 2.9: Of Games and Graphics was originally published in The Festember Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He distinctly remembered seeing those photos of stars, constellations, galaxies, what have you, in that one space encyclopedia book. The cacophony of colours, of the Horsehead nebula shaped like its namesake, emerging like dust from a rosy background, as if it were a piece moved in an astronomical game of chess. Or so he imagined and fantasized. And, as he was of an impressionable age at the time, meaning as a kid, he gravitated towards space.

A personal diary, from when he was younger, found after the incident relayed deep insight. His favourite dish became the ground beef sandwich, for it was sneaked up the Gemini III by its crew. He thought it hilarious the calling of a congressional hearing on it and vowed to emulate that. He took that last bit about the hearing a bit to the heart, however, as a future incident would show.

And thus, the obsession continued. Space accessories littered his room, constellations adored his ceilings. At an age where boys were awakening to the wonders of the human body, he was occupied with the annals of space exploration history, finding it infinitely more exciting than anything else.

Where his contemporaries were off skating, in real life as well as in video-games, he kept his eyeballs preoccupied with his trusty telescope. While others sang along to Zach De la Rocha, he was content with listening to quasar recordings, finding in them a certain symphony that touched the innards of his soul in a manner that no other musical combination ever did.

He did not make many friends. Indeed, it is not certain if he made any at all. There were a few people that knew him, but those would be better classified as acquaintances. It is reported, however, that he did have a brief fling with a certain Ms. Hannah Lebowski. Tracking her down for a look into the mystery that was Solomon was difficult, as is the rest of his story. It appears he had intentionally cut-off from socializing with the world.

Ms. Lebowski couldn’t offer anything concrete, at first. She refused to speak, only giving at best vague answers and at worst cryptic messages. But, after constant prodding, she did relent.

Herself a former worker at NASA, she described the chance encounter between the two, stemming from a conference on carbon dioxide sensors in spacesuits which Ms. Lebowski herself hosted. It was here that the quiet astronaut-in-training with an impeccable record, Solomon, approached her about her work. They struck off a friendship which Ms. Lebowski maintains was strictly platonic, while others have suggested they were romantically involved.

It is unclear to what degree she knew about Solomon’s mental health, which could’ve helped shed some light on the issue of his death. She had testified in front of the Congressional committee called to investigate the circumstances of the aforementioned, along with the rest of those involved in that mission and maintained that she had no knowledge of apparent suicidal tendencies on his part.

Of course, it doesn’t need reminding the scandal that erupted in the aftermath of his passing away, with the suit that he was wearing being depressurized while on an Extra-Vehicular Activity, colloquially known as a spacewalk. Live on NASA TV, viewers watched in shock at Solomon through his visor as he gasped for breath and suddenly lost consciousness, his skin bloating due to vaporization of the liquid. In the end, his lungs collapsed, and with help far away, he passed away just as NASA TV cut its feed.

The video went viral, and the enquiry was called as soon as the mission returned to base. At first, thought to be a grievous malfunction in his suit, it was later established that it was intentional sabotage of the PLSS, or the Primary Life Support System. The media frenzy about the supposed space murder brought a lot more attention than NASA had ever experienced, and this was an agency responsible for ending the Space Race.

With suspicion on all the astronauts aboard the space mission, it led to a court case with the establishment of Solomon, led by his (by most accounts, distanced) single mother against the agency regarding the death of her son. However, as the court case got dragged on, with new evidence cropping up, it became clear that no astronaut aboard had so much as tinkered with the suit. Neither was it possible to have been sabotaged from the get-go, considering the suit hadn’t malfunctioned on previous spacewalks on the same mission.

Thus, with all of this out in the open, the case turned on its heel, with the only conclusion left being that Solomon committed suicide by intentionally crippling his suit.

And yet, it begs the question: why? Why would a man with such aspirations commit suicide? Why would he end it all with such little motive to do so? His mental state too was regular, indeed above average, on all the diagnostic tests done during his training period.

Why then, did Solomon kill himself?

Update: A recent, new investigation into the issue has unearthed a note from Solomon. Believed to be a suicide letter, it can be read by clicking here.

Amongst the Cosmos: The Big Bang was originally published in The Festember Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“It seems like a thousand years ago, back when I fought my way out of that cave and became Iron Man.”

Over 10 years since the first movie came out, the Marvel Cinematic Universe now offers the Endgame, the grand conclusion to a monolith of a project that will go down in history as the first of its kind. Spanning 21 films across 3 phases featuring ensemble casts and involving massive production teams, every single character arc in the MCU has been impeccably crafted for this very moment.

The defeated Avengers, or what’s left of them, are seen to be grieving. This plays out as a central tenet in the movie, with different characters in various stages of grief of the Kubler-Ross model, albeit with one stark similarity: none of the characters reach acceptance. An inability on the part of people with superhuman abilities to solve this destruction ultimately signifies the base human emotion of frustration. Their eventual movement out of (and even their spiral back into) this helpless void is a worthwhile emotional investment for the viewer. For that is what the Avengers franchise is: an investment of time, sentiment and intellect.

To pull off a victory lap on a scale hitherto unheard of was never going to be easy, considering the arrays of characters present and the multitudes of worlds that the MCU has expanded into. As such, Marvel has employed a script that trimmed down the cast (by the events of Infinity War) and at the same time increased their sphere of influence throughout the movie, which makes the story less taxing for the viewer. This development helped emphasize the conflicts that plagued the characters and laid the groundwork for the decisions that they had to take. Along with this, the evolution of the said characters throughout the MCU makes the movie feel more grounded than any of its predecessors.

However, even in such a thought-out and thorough creative endeavour, the connection that a viewer requires to rationalize the said choice doesn’t often pan out or is not given enough time to pan out even with a 3 hour long run time. The movie also takes for granted the viewer to have seen the flagship films, leading to the casual (and even some active) fans to be lost for a while on specific motivations and drives of the heroes. However, one can see that it is a shortcoming that is inevitable for this Goliath of a production.

What does pan out smooth in the motion picture are the references to their previous works, a feat that Marvel nails consistently. Its fan service serves both as moments of euphoria or comic relief and as important plot points. The comics are well represented too, with key plot devices borrowed from the iconic Marvel issues of the past. It leaves even the most pretentious of fans scratching their head for superfluous usage owing to the deft manner of its incorporation in the script, which shows that Marvel has learnt from previous criticism on this matter.

While Marvel doesn’t commit the grave sin of over-emphasizing on “awe-inspiring” scenes as its ‘Distinguished Competition’ has been panned for, it nonetheless lets the script loose this time for some emotionally draining scenes. It has also left no stone unturned with respect to the CGI effects and visuals, having employed the world’s top graphic artists to create complex sets.

A roadblock that Endgame solves satisfactorily is the merging of the aesthetically different, sometimes in contrast, styles of the standalone movies while retaining its own signatures. The Russo brothers have done a commendable job on this aspect, as has Alan Silvestri’s score completing the puzzle and taking the viewer for a nostalgic ride, for the general atmosphere doesn’t make any of the characters look out of place in the various set-ups and permutations they have to be in and with one another.

Artistically, the MCU has become a cornerstone of the early 21st century, a filmographic epic that just is sure to find its name in the annals of history going further down the line, and we are witness to it. Endgame, then, in this contemporary timeline occupies a space that makes all other film epics seem tame in comparison. Even the uninitiated will appreciate Endgame, while hard-core fans will certainly be overloaded with constant doses of nostalgia.

What stands out in the end as one makes their way past the seats and into the real world, is the growth witnessed. From simple feature films that showed no connection at first to the zenith that is Endgame, it calls into reflection the ride that Marvel took us on. To not watch Endgame would be considered pop culturally sacrilegious.

So, when Iron Man reminisces about that day in a cave in Afghanistan “thousands of years ago”, he speaks for all of us, about the events that led to the ending and of the trials and tribulations that have occurred throughout the saga. Ergo, the reason why Endgame doesn’t have a post-credit scene is because it, in essence, represents the closure of both the Marvel story as well as a chapter in our collective pop culture lives.

This review was written in collaboration with Pujan Yadav, Murali Krishna, K Shreyas Mahesh, Abhishek Ramachandran and Antony Terence.

Erupt: Avengers: Endgame — Movie Review was originally published in The Festember Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That humans are social beings is a well-established fact. We prefer carrying out most of our ventures in groups and rightly so, as things are always more interesting when we have company. However, this herd mentality can be detrimental to the basic requirement of a functional democracy: a fair and accurate election process. This mentality can be observed in any setting that involves groups of people, like schools, colleges and social media.

At workplaces, there is a general consensus that working together and reaching a collective solution increases productivity, but this isn’t the case during a democratic election. In this era of malicious misinformation, it is very easy for corrupt politicians to manipulate voters into casting their votes for an undesirable candidate. People in a group tend to agree with each other in order to minimize conflict, even if the group’s outlook as a whole is factually incorrect, unethical, or generally not accepted by society. There’s a pretty good chance that most members of a family vote for the same party’s candidate, every single time, almost like tradition.

Social psychologists define something called the Bandwagon effect. According to this effect, a person is highly likely to change his/her opinion when confronted by the fact that the majority of his/her peer group has a different opinion. Ardent political discussions among friends or family can go a long way in deciding whom a person votes for, regardless of the veracity of the information exchanged.

The 42nd Amendment of the Indian Constitution enshrined in it the concept of Fundamental Duties. With the constitution being an ever-evolving piece of social legislation, moral guideline and legal doctrine, it was felt imperative that residents of the nation acknowledge the basic duties that they must follow in order to live in a society of harmony and progress.

Having 11 ideals to follow, they form the notion of what a basic citizen must be; a role model to follow, if you will. In today’s day and age, it has become necessary to examine clause 5, one which intends to promote harmony and spirit of brotherhood; and clause 8, which calls for the development of scientific temper and spirit of enquiry and reform.

Today’s information era makes it easy for obedience to clause 8, owing to the simply massive amounts of knowledge disseminated through the internet. And yet, here comes the paradox: if the truth can be received faster than ever, then so can falsehood.

This ultimately leads to the degradation of the former clause 5, as seen in cases of mobs mobilizing to lynch people on the suspicion of kidnapping. While this can be made to seem like a one-off incident, the fact of the matter is that this affects every atom of our political consciousness. Skewed data, fake tweets, doctored photographs spread like wildfire without critical examination in order to incense sensitive issues close to people’s identity. In the end, it is nothing other than a ploy to exploit the mass to become the master.

Coming full circle to our duties, thus, it is now required to have a sense of journalistic vigour in each one of us, for actual journalists seem to lack in them nowadays. To keep our nation going, we must become a nation of skeptics.

Another factor that could cloud one’s opinion is the availability heuristic.

Availability Heuristics refers to the phenomena where the brain takes a mental and logical shortcut to have an opinion on a person/situation/event. The brain is often extremely lazy and tries to simplify complicated problems, which can lead to loss of context, clarity, and in essence, the truth.

This phenomenon plays a huge role in the development of factionalism of our society. People often make hasty decisions due to lack of proper information, largely contributed by the presence of information from unreliable sites. Under the banner of “different interpretation of data”, these news organisations cherry pick favourable data, manipulate them, use subtle moves (for example, various News channels label people as “Anti-national” when they disagree with them in their live debates) and sometimes outright lie about situations just to make their faction look better than their “distinguished competition”.

This problem is made worse when you consider online sources for information. Taking an example of the 2016 US Presidential Election, various surveys concluded that more than 80 per cent of the people used online news sources, and these sources were infamous for using clickbait, misleading titles, and sometimes outright lying about various facts. These problems can be seen in our nation too, but to a lesser extent.

On the whole, it is high time that we, as responsible citizens, recognize the need to make informed decisions on whom to vote for. Before you cast your vote, take some time to peruse the manifestos of the contesting candidates. Do your research. Take advice with a liberal pinch of salt. Vote for whoever you think has the most to offer; not the one everyone else is rooting for.

This article was written in collaboration with D Rohit, Shreyas Mahesh and Akash Mani.

Get Inked was originally published in The Festember Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.