The Spectrum (write-up on ViBGYOR film festival 2012)

The odds of regular people thinking in wide terms on society’s impoverished, disenfranchised masses are close to zero, especially in this age of corporate culture which feeds our superficial desires rather than our rational needs. Democracy is a concept that’s regularly been twisted and turned to meet the agendas of the people in power or influence. Greed is today’s primary moral, suited of course to meet the ideological mentality of the age that success, a supposed sense of moral high-ground and material gain are the most important elements for self-fulfillment. This is of course absolute nonsense, but that’s part and parcel of living in a culture in which narcissism and self-aggrandizement are moral necessities.

Let’s look at the idea of democracy. Democracy has been an idea that’s been introduced over and over again since before the Ancient Greeks, and is still used now. But it isn’t a perfect concept. For instance, the Ancient Greeks seemed to believe that everyone had equal rights, and everyone should have an equal say in the goings on in a country – except women and slaves. Modern democracies often combine morals, values, ethics, fundamentalism, corporate interests and lobbying, lifestyle choices aided by advertising – by which democracies all over the world have transformed into Corporatocracies, and turned us into a culture of fad-driven, brand and salary slaves.

What humanity needs to understand is that every distinction we create – based on race, culture, country or religion – is a human invention, and perhaps should be considered a bad invention if it harms people more than helping them.

ViBGYOR Film Festival seeks to understand the problems and inconsistencies in ideologies, governance, living conditions and genuine morals – whenever they occur freely in what we ironically term a Free Society. 

Amoeba

You made me dream again...

As corny as this seemingly sycophantic phrase may seem, I’m talking about finding creativity in the least expected place. I’m talking about how someone or something could make one think as they would in a dream state.

Novella

Pastiche

Emotional longing is fleeting. Mutual attraction passes with the passage of time. Wisdom, however, has a capacity for outliving generations and centuries. 

Seven months prior to this moment, I met a boy here. Same bus-stop, at around the same time. Beggars lined up the street, half-drowsily glancing in my direction. Even though their systems were brimming over with cheap booze, they think it's strange a girl sits here at a bus-stop at one in the morning. One of the drunks thinks it's inherently profound to yell incoherent nonsense at the moon. Right next to him, a dog follows suit. Same language, different species. But we are deviating, aren't we?

Seven months ago, I met someone purely by chance. Everyone who knows this story was under the impression that it had something to do with destiny. Either way, I think there's hope yet for humankind, if we learn to trust each other, and do not function within a mentality that recognizes every action and thought directed towards another individual as the result of some ulterior motive.

The Watchful

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetant

Isaac Asmiov 

Everything… is merely the envisaged product of infinite chaos.

Chapter One
2071 AD

Nuclear War is imminent.

The final attempts at Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, have failed horribly. The annihilation of the sole sustainable life-system on the planet, is minutes away.
The United States starts off with nukes sent to Russia, Korea, China, and India. Russia retaliates in the nick-of-time with nukes of their own, sent to the United States, and Israel. The rest of the world watch, and wait, in implausible horror, as they observe Dust-storms, Cyclones, and Floods occur as a chain reaction to these events. Plant and Animal life alike wither away, leaving vast amounts of decaying matter all around the globe. Until the planet is left pretty much a smoldering, flooded junk pile of rubble and phosphorous. 

Culture Shock

I was twelve, when we were liberated from the death camps in 1945. What I watched for five years in those camps probably changed my perspective on human beings. There is no such thing as humane concern. Either humans indulge themselves in exploiting and damaging nature thoughtlessly for their own needs, or doing the same to themselves. What a remarkable species; we seek comfort in knowing some other person hasn’t got the same opportunities as we have, and hence, we’re happy with our own pathetic lives in knowing we’re at an advantage to survive, thrive and prosper in self-importance. Perhaps I just understood the concept of Success wrong.

Bedtime Stories

Chapter One
The Show

Producer: I’ve read your idea. Very confusing, and disjointed. And for a children’s show, the material’s full of anarchic humor. Could you elaborate?

Writer: Well, you’ve given me five episodes… I have five different ideas.

Producer: The more the merrier, and all that… However, there’s bound to be a pattern in even the strangest of ideas. What’s the angle here?

Writer: Well…

Producer: Is it some form of storytelling?

Writer: I suppose…

Producer: Animated?

Writer: Some of it.

Producer: Is it educational?

Writer: Probably not.

Producer: What about set design?

Writer: We need one set. A library.

Producer: I see. So is the show entirely narrative?

Writer: The start of every episode may be. The rest of it is either filmed on location, or animated.

Producer: Do make this easy for me, will you?

Writer: I’m not surprised at your response, it’s written in such a way as to confuse both parents and kids…

Producer: All right, but you’re going to have to explain this to me. Selling an original idea to a corporation isn’t exactly child’s play. What’s the format?

Writer: I introduce each episode like I’m reading from a children’s book, then the camera pans out, the visual fades in and out to reveal the story I’m reading. Sometimes filmed, sometimes animated.

Producer: I’m going to have a long day straddling executives with this one, I just know it…

The Bohemian Inflictive (or) Commonalities

I look out into an infinite universe and know just one thing for certain - We’re never going to know all the answers, ever. I watch political strife, and know a political system that’s applicable to all could simply not exist, because every single person thinks of his/her selfishly-motivated gains at some point, while drafting a manifesto by which the rest of humanity ought to live by. Values are required by its own nature to constantly change with the times, otherwise they become self-imposed, segregated, static morals. I watch the celebration of mediocrity and banality in education, arts and culture, and consider suggesting to ill-informed, self-proclaimed guardians of future generations to come, that aggrandizing narrow, set processes and shunning genuinely unique, remarkable achievements would perhaps contribute in ruining wisdom and higher learning and progress as we know it, but I digress.

Romanticism

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement 

Oscar Wilde

 
“Hello…”

“Penny, it’s me…”

“What is it?”

“Grandfather’s dead.”

“Um… Well?”

“Well, you need to get here for the funeral.”

“Yes, and I have a job to do.”

“I think that charity organization could function a day without you.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Penny, I’m serious, you need to get down here ASAP.”

Monument

The searing white light woke me up from my uneasy slumber. It’s difficult, perhaps, to know for certain what’s going on around me, when I experienced indescribable pain as soon I opened my eyelids. Minutes later, I manages to pry them open, and instantly wish I didn’t.

A Series of Cants

Neo-parable Two

I met him around the street corner, I think I was about eight at the time.
He was a twenty year old street comedian, covered in rags, with dirt caked onto his skin like a face-pack. Broke and starving. The neighbors constantly remained pissed off with this deplorable, unemployed excuse of a young man, and tried driving him off with a garden hose. To their minute astonishment, and immense irritation, he stayed right there, getting drenched on their lawn. Later on, I remember overhearing them talking to my folks about it.

Neighbor: One would imagine that he would be scared of water, judging from what state he’s in, when he comes around the block for his “performance”…

Yes, quite, One may… I heard my bored Grandfather reply.