“Thunder, lightning and rain” say the witches.
“In what proportions do you want them? Would you like to have it in colour or black and white? Do you need surround effects too?” asks the Director Mr. Willy
“How about my expressions? Would you have additional lights? And what are going to do about Birnam. I CAN’T walk into any forest. You literally bring it here.” Says the actor, Mr. Macbeth
“You won’t have to. Just stand in front of that green screen and deliver your dialogues. We’d bring Birnam to you.” Willy says as he wonders whether his man has even bothered to read the script.
“Ho. Ho. You better check out whether the knife is fake or not. This bloke literally conspires against me.” Mr. Duncan says as he finishes that glass of whiskey.
“Actually he doesn’t have a knife. It is gonna be a torch light instead. Now ENOUGH! Get your act together! Lights, Camera, Action” Screams an irritated Willy.
As the crane lifts up, the witches are busy adding the ingredients of the magic into that pot.
Sketch of the three witches by an unknown artist. (http://hollowaypages.com/welles.htm)
Cinema is the magic that has taken man on broomsticks to lands unheard of sometimes real and many times created. It converted his imagination into tangible forms and gifted him more than his imagination: an evening to celebrate, an experience, a life to look back at or to look forward to.
A dark art, as some called it, as it needed darkness around it to be alive was hated and criticized by some and secretively loved by many. Its power to suck out people’s attention into it for continuous moments of intrigue had created many enemies for it. But then the critics had to accept the power of this magic potion to inform and influence and initiate powerful but latent energy in human minds.
Hate! Love! Sometimes mere numbness! Any of these or more can be felt towards an artist and his work of art in any medium. But the big question is not whether the art made one hate it or love it. But whether it spoke to one through the numbness it injected into one’s mind or whether it entertained the entertainment maniac cells of one’s brain?
A good cinema for me is what made me forget my being for those few hours in which it held all my attention more than what a beautiful girl could demand and at the end of it pushing me down to my seat from that state of willing suspension of disbelief to remind me ‘this can never be real, this might be real, this is real.’ The magic that remains with me for many more moments making me think deeply or smile gently or weep without anyone noticing. This magic would not make me sleep at the peak of its action but rather take me along with it on broomsticks through thunder lighting and rain to the middle of Birnam.
A good cinema begins where it ends. It begins when the doors let in light, and continues to create tales which the magician never told. Thousands of tales, that never ends even a lifetime later. Good cinema projects the intangible imagination onto a huge screen from where it takes off as thousands of little birds of imagination in the thoughts of the viewer. The dark art is perfect when it fails to end, but makes a new beginning in the form of kites without strings blown away by strong winds.
Reelity Bites has been successful in identifying the magic of the medium of cinema and in introducing the best of the lot to young minds where the kites are most beautiful and the winds are storms. Reelity Bites therefore subtly influences the thinking processes of many for scores of years to come which makes the club unique and relevant. Let this brief candle be never blown out and let the fire be passed on to posterity.
Willy says, “Let the show go on”
*Thunder, lightning and rain. The pot keeps boiling*
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A write up for the souvenir of "Reelity Bites", the film club of Selaiyur Hall, Madras Christian College.
