The sad fame of Auschwitz

"It is impossible to write about Auschwitz impersonally. The first duty of Auschwitzers is to make clear just what a camp is. . . . But let them not forget that the reader will unfailingly ask: how did it happen that you survived? . . . Explain, then, how you bought places in the hospital, easy posts; how you shoved the “Muselmänner” into the oven; how you bought women, men; what you did in the barracks, unloading the transports, at the gypsy camp; tell about the daily life of the camp, about the hierarchy of fear, about the loneliness of every man. But write that you, you were the ones who did this. That a portion of the sad fame of Auschwitz belongs to you as well."
—from Tadeusz Borowski’s review of a Holocaust testimony

Quoted in Ruth Franklin's A Thousand Darknesses

Portrait of a director - Bimal Roy

I remember watching this program on Doordarshan as a kid. What a nice surprise to come across it again on youtube! I specially remembered the scene where Nutan talks about the famous scene from Bandini. This was my first lesson in auteurism! Doordarshan has uploaded other episodes as well, featuring Raj Kapoor, Shyam Benegal, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Manmohan Desai (!).

Amusing censorship

This is one instance of  censorship which actually made me chuckle. I recently caught hold of a pirated pdf copy of Primo Levi's If This is a Man (which is one of my favourite books) and found this. Someone it seems was offended by the phrase "bloodless female friendships." I can't count the number of ironies here!

World on a Wire

Finally found some time to watch Fassbinder's World on a Wire. It is deliriously shot and designed. So many mirrors everywhere! As the dialogue on the image grab above shows, all of them do serve a purpose in making a point. What I found most interesting was that although it lacks the force and the emotional punch of his melodramas, the themes and ideas which animate this film are the same.

Vasily Grossman - Spanish Book Covers

Two powerful covers from the Spanish edition of books by Vasily Grossman - the most recent entrant to the list of my all-time favourite authors. In English the books are known as Life and Fate and Everything Flows

The First Sherlock Holmes

"A 1916 silent movie featuring Sherlock Holmes - long presumed lost - is due to have its premiere in Paris. It stars a man who changed the way we see Conan Doyle's famous sleuth forever."

BBC magazine has details on how.


Also found another article there in which John Gray tries to explain the long-standing appeal of Sherlock Holmes -

"Aside from a few relics of Victorian rationalism who find a curious comfort in Darwinism, most of us now accept that reason can't give meaning or purpose to life. If we're not content with the process of living itself, we need myths and myths very often contain contradictions.

Holmes is one such myth. Seeming to find order in the chaos of events by using purely rational methods, he actually demonstrates the enduring power of magic."

Olive Kitteridge

I was very, very impressed with the new HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (just four episodes actually, around an hour each). This is really one of the most intelligent films I have seen about depression. Although to call it "about" depression or about travails of aging, or about anything else for that matter, will be doing an injustice to everybody involved in making it. This is really much more than just its subject -- one of those rare films that makes you feel wiser about the complexities of life. "There is nothing like a simple life" - as the tagline of the show says and it shows why that is true. I am short of superlatives to describe what Frances McDormand has done with her character here. It makes you feel angry and depressed just thinking why we don't get to see her more often on screen. Now off to find the original novel by Elizabeth Strout on which the series is based.