Sunday Matinée

On the design A few minimal movie posters at the Inspiration Feed pepped me up to create this vertical poster. But there is a problem in using the original-size dimension, which spans the entire width, even after scaling the image on Photoshop at 680 px. In fact, it has been increased to 700 px but the Blogger's composition editor is hell bent on retaining the present dimension. My amateurish skills are no match for it, and are so obvious, here and in the design too! But no worries, here it is below, the set of randomly selected four old Manipuri movies.

Building a Scene

ON MANIPURI MOVIES

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The journey began in 1972, the same year when the consolatory status of a state was recognised by the Indian union. Matamgi Manipur, the first Manipuri movie debuted with style as well as substance so to say, and won the President's Medal in the 20th National Film Festival.

There has been no looking back but a more focus attention at the front, on the lens of this industry.

After a formidable start with a lot of help from outsiders (read Bengalis) in film production and a handful of evergreen movies, there was a hitch in the late Eighties and the Nineties, apparently because of two reasons.

The film makers were finding no market to sell their product; and they were simply busy imitating the Bolywood's melodramatic craps. Perhaps there are also other reasons.

When it comes to Manipuri cinema, Aribam Syam Sharma is just a like a trailer to every movie. This guy is in it all the time all the place.

Significantly, the industry saw a new life when the insurgent groups, citing cultural contamination, put a blanket ban on Hindi films in 1998.

After a mixed response from the eternally confused people — some hurling abuse at the armed land-guards for encroaching on their already molested sense of freedom, while others offering the proverbial boutiques — the boycott heralded the dawn of digital movies.

A digital movie is low cost yet so popular. A local film producer once told me how people, who live as far as the hamlets in Assam would cry for some kind of these movies.

But as in other things, there is always a limit in Manipur. In this case for example, a month ago, the film fraternity took out a routine protest on the street. They did it just like the journalists because they were marching on the street, otherwise it would have been the so-familiar sit-in protest at a street corner.

Their pain in the ass: the intolerable money demands again, from the land-guards. Extortion, they say, is a thriving business these days, provided you have the balls to kill or die, or you are Ibobi.

In the last decade the market has been flooded with digital movies. While there is no question about preserving our ingenuity, which is one thing, the tasteless flicks being churned out every month just like over-measured, overcooked rice is quite another.

THE END 

I'm surprised I was talking about movies

CHECK Uninvited Design: Minimal Film Posters
http://kapilarambam.blogspot.in/2014/02/uninvited-design-minimal-film-posters.html