Why TheFilmProfileBlog?
Prior to the birth of this blog, there has been an incubation period of more than just 9 months I reckon. Films have been a part of my life ever since childhood if I trace it back. It was a simmering fascination at first, with Sundays spent watching movies with the family. With my father, being the movie buff that he is, we ended up watching English classics (Cast Away, Forrest Gump, The Sound of Music, to name a few). While mother being an Amitabh Bachchan fan, introduced me to films like Sholay, Deewar and Anand.
I remember the time when we lived in Bhutan, enclosed in a dreamy-reality with mountains all around. Getting access to new releases then, meant travelling for 2 hours to the only shop that kept a few Hindi and English DVDs/CDs. Sometimes father would get the CDs during his visits to Guwahati, and they would get worn out within months of repeated viewing. Maybe that’s why films like Padosan, Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, Kaho Na pyaar hai (the new release that year), are still etched in my rusty memory lanes, almost two decades down the line.
Even when we moved to Assam a year later, surroundings changed, people changed, but cinema remained a constant. Since there was only one dilapidated cinema where we lived, which did not screen the latest releases, weekends (once/twice a month) would mean going to Guwahati, a 5 hour drive from where we lived to stay at the company guest house. We would eat fish, buy the latest Hotwheels cars, and watch a new flick at the theater.
When we finally moved to Delhi, in 2003, films remained a part of our lives, unconsciously so, but nonetheless. Since father was still posted in Assam, mother started taking driving lessons. Sometimes she used to take me and my brother out for drives to practice her driving skills. One of the many things she used to do to make the rides interesting was play ‘guess who the singer/actor/actress is’, whenever an old Hindi song played on the radio. All these tiny nuggets of memories spanning over two decades invariably had something to do with cinema in some way.
It was only during the end of college, that this simmering fascination with cinema finally reached its boiling point. It extended beyond what I saw on the screen, to what goes behind making a movie. The people attached with a film project, their lives, beliefs, previous professions and the circumstances or chance which led them to their destiny, affecting millions of lives with their contribution to cinema.
Still, the question remains, why yet another blog on the movies, when there exist thousands already? I found my answer in the multiple Wikipedia pages, bookmarked articles, always open or saved on my laptop. In the many sticky notes on my phone about the upcoming films to watch, gathered from hitherto sources as and when I chanced upon them. The numerous news clippings always kept in my plastic folder about some interesting interview article about an actor/singer/lyricist etc., the ongoing/upcoming film festivals in India or abroad, etc. What if I hadn’t read that random article, or seen that small ad space in the newspaper about an ongoing screening? I think my life would not have been as enriched, both emotionally and spiritually.
This blog stems out of the deepest respect I have for cinema and all the people attached with this art. You can even call it an obsession with the movies, although I choose to see a deeper meaning to it. Even though it hasn’t revealed itself yet, writing this blog is the first step towards finding that meaning. Maybe it’s just an outlet for my own thoughts on cinema and its people. There can also be the case that there is no meaning at the end of the tunnel, but taking the journey is important, to get to the other side. Film Profile is the start of my unending passion for getting to know cinema in a very personal way, just the way I watch a film in a theater. Inside a dark room, entering a fictional world which brings out real emotions, with music filling in the silence of the theater, and popcorn.
