Here are some films we recommend you watch:

En Route

On a coastal route in the South of Europe, three compartments of a train hold groups of strangers. In one, a stressed out British couple with a screaming baby find themselves seated next to a wild Roma woman. In the next, a Middle Eastern man having a quarter-life crisis sits with a European woman having a mid-life crisis. He speaks Assyrian and she speaks German. In the last, a deaf brother and sister have to find a way to help an Asian backpacker who is on the wrong train.

Pitstop

Heer who travels thousands of kilometers from home, on her way to a new beginning, a new city she wants to call home. What happened in her past? More importantly, what are the chances that her past won’t follow her to her new home? And if yes what will she do?

Ei Taxi

A middle aged stubborn intoxicated taxi driver, a nonbeliever in deities had spent most of his driving career cheating his passengers especially at night for extra income. One night a mysterious young lady boards his cab and puts him in a tricky situation and the trouble-ride begins. Several encounters on fateful scary night shake him forever.

Goodbye Mayfly

Summer of 2010. Kashmir oscillates between peace and violence. Two tender lives, unsure of their destiny, set forth on a dangerous journey. Only one of them returns.

Firstworld Problems

A tired housewife loses her car in a shopping mall and her world collapses. Thank God there is ice cream. A trolley collector offers her help. Sometimes problems can open a door to a whole new world.

The Catalyst

This film tackles the perennial and perturbing financial inadequacy that blights the people at the bottom of the pyramid. A man’s attempt to find a bit of black or white in this interminably greying society! In short, this is a tale that concerns all of us – it just depends which side we see it from.

Crash

A docu-fiction shot in Cinema Verite style which explores road accidents in India and the people’s perceptions of it through interviews with witnesses of a fictional hit and run case.
(Disclosure: This film was co-produced by High Ninja Media and is directed by longtime dfuse.in member Rajdip Ray)

The post Bangalore International Short Film Festival goes online appeared first on dfuse.in.

Percy Bysshe Shelly, E. E. Cummings, Maya Angelou, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath; you learn that there were notable “others” who felt what you felt and wrote about it to go down in history. Then you read more, you write more and you learn more. But now, you find someone as ordinary as you “performing” a poem so extraordinary and it beats leaving it written down, laying on the face of a page. Well, that was spoken word poetry to me.

Here’s a list of spoken word poems you should be familiar with. And don’t forget to check out our post on urban slam poetry in India.

1. I am not Chinki, Chinese or Nepali by Brian Khamboi

Brian Khamboi, a Manipuri student in Delhi, protests against the ethnic and racial discriminations that young North Eastern Indians are faced with.

“At night, I watch the orange streetlight dim down,

How my vision spread out like a mirage

Both seen and unseen.

How the story of my life is written in the palm of my hand:

Confused lines crossing.”

2. ‘Nails’ by Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin is part Afro-Jamaican, part Chinese, LGBT rights activist and a renowned spoken word poet. She is open about being a lesbian, in fact shows the world that she wears it proudly. She is also a single mother. Most of her poems express dissent about the treatment of the LGBT community, and also so takes several jabs at politics.

“Those days, I don’t want quiet; I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

I like it when there are screams, and battle scars, and trophies.

That way, before the war begins,

I already know what I’m about to fight for.”

3. The Real Peace Prize by Ekta Sharma

Featured in the Delhi Poetry Slam, Ekta Sharma talks about the problems of several marginalized factions that are swept under the rug, and the hypocrisy nobody notices that follows the Nobel Peace Prize.

“This award is not a reward for keeping the peace.

It’s a prize for the mantelpiece;

A threat in disguise;

A friendly reminder to continue to toe the line,

A design to keep the status quo alive.”

4. Pole Dancer by Andrea Gibson

An award winning poet from Colorado, USA, and the first ever poet to win the title of “Women of the World Poetry Slam” is Andrea Gibson. Her poems talks about gender norms, social reform, activism, politics and the struggles LGBTQ people face in today’s society.

“The key to finding love

Is fucking up the pattern on purpose

Is skipping a stitch,

Is leaving a tiny, tiny hole to let the cold in

And hoping she mends it with her lips.”

5. Omnisexual by Chandrakant Redican

A Pune based spoken word poet, Chandrakant Redican, performs poetry that explores the lives of the different communities in India. In his poem Omnisexual, he turns on the flood lights that tell the tale of transgender communities, stripping down to every dirty detail that could make you cringe. He performs his poetry in Marathi and English.

“Hey, look at me!

I’m a Hijra.

I don’t have anything swinging down there.

The blouses that I wear,

I’m flat!

I can bear my waist and

I can show my back as well as any of them.

I do not have a cunt or nice legs,

But I can show flab like the sexiest woman.”

6. Rape Joke by Belissa Escoloedo and Rhiannon McGavin

Based in San Francisco, USA, Brave New Voices is a poetry slam that is dedicated to youth all around the world. It features young people, making their voices heard with regard to social stigmas and suchlike. These two young women advance an onslaught on how rape is treated as the punch line to several jokes, and long story short, How not to treat a rape survivor.

“And if you do want a healing relationship,

How do you talk about it when the language is rooting against you?

“Hey, wanna bang?”

“Screw!”

“Nail me!”

Everything is so violent!

How to Flirt with a Rape Survivor.”

7. Retail Therapy by Lauren Zuniga

Lauren Zuniga is another award winning and published spoken word poet based in the USA. Retail therapy is one among her many poems.

“When I stand at the register,

When the bags become too heavy.

The clerk scans slowly,

Ma’am, there’s nowhere for you to go;

Ma’am, you can’t buy your way out of your shame;

You can’t eat your way out of your hurt;

You can’t lie your way out of your guilt;

You have to feel this.”

8. The Last Supper by Aashna Iyer

Featured in the Airplane Poetry Movement’s YouTube Podcast, Aashna Iyer talks about her experience when she was overweight, or as she calls it, “One word, three letters, one syllable: FAT!” Hear Aashna’s testimony that could relate to several young teenagers who believe that their appearances are everything.

“Every time I saw pride in my parents’ eyes,

Every time my family said happily,

“She’s our girl!”

Every time I did well;

My parents, my teachers, my friends,

All standing there to support me,

And all I could see was a fat girl in the mirror.

Sticking her fingers down her throat as far back as they would go.”

9. White Fetish by Dark Matter

Dark Matter is a New York City based duo of trans South Asian poets, Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramaniam. These two will tear you a new one with their poems that oppose white supremacy, marginalization of the LGBT community and orientalism. With the pinch of satire (pun intended), Dark Matter poetry voices out the struggles of being trans queer youth who are expected to yield to societal norms.

“Later that night, you will pull me aside

And take nude photos of me,

Like that time you randomly selected me from that airport security check line.

I loved that.”

10. Slam Poetry by Shantanu Anand

Shantanu Anand, one of India’s well-known spoken word poets, is the co-founder of the Pune based Airplane Poetry Movement. Shantanu is an ardent poet with the intent of making spoken word a creative platform in India. Watch him as he turns it inside out in telling you what slam poetry is.

“Even now my mind is telling me that half of you are not listening,

That my words that I direct to you float past your unrelenting ears

Out the door, into the street where they become a message in a bottle

Sent by a forlorn shipwrecked sailor

Except my words don’t float.”

So this is a just a humble list of the several spoken word poems in the plethora of podcasts on the internet. But it should get you started or keep you going the spoken word poetry way!

The post Slam Poetry Mixtape #1 appeared first on dfuse.in.

So, heads up. Massive SPOILER ALERT.

We were having probably the weakest season yet till “Hardhome” came along and knocked three different kinds of stuffing out of us. Somehow they managed to keep it going with the next episode where things got even more heated and made you all question as to how a TV show could afford to make a dragon look so lifelike. And then came episode 10, where everyone barring Tyrion Lannister had their knickers pulled out of their pants and wedged into their heads. Cersei got piss and shit flung at her, Myrcella got poisoned, Dany got jumped by what would appear to be an army of Dothraki Warriors, Stannis got his ass handed to him by Ramsay and poor old Bastard Snow got executed, Caesar style.

Social media was quite rightly filled with outrage, tears and despair.  Funnily enough, that didn’t imply to me at all.

As a matter of fact, I realized that I’d more or less accepted every controversial twist the series took this season without so much as a grumble. That was because years of watching Game of Thrones has made me a cold, heartless, emotionless old fool.

So what I’m going to do is take you down a dark yet slightly humorous path on how Game of Thrones more or less Dementor’s Kiss’d me.

Ned’s Dead, Baby:

When Ned lost his err, head(Unintentional Pun) I had to flit back and forth between two episodes to ingest what I’d just seen. I was in shock. Denial. Anger. What had just happened. How could they kill off the dude who’s the only person ON THE BLOOMING POSTER.  It broke the hearts of the Starks (I swear this rhyming is coming out of nowhere) and made me very sad. But I stuck by it and to my delight watched 3 dragon eggs hatch thanks to Drogo’s lack of personal hygiene and went running around happily for a good year.

Luwin’s not movin’:

It was sad to watch poor Maester Luwin get the chop courtesy Theon Grejoy who also murdered two farm kids( you should be crying about that, those poor kids probably had hopes and dreams to top Westeros’ IITJEE Entrance Test or something). Poor Renly died too but this time I was cool with it cause he was just plain annoying to begin with.

The One Where Ros Dies:

Someone please tell me you got that reference.

I really like Ros whilst she was on the show. She brought beauty, wit and a lovely sense of humor in a show plagued by death, incest and misery. So when Joffrey decided to write the textbook that Christian Grey would more or less borrow from millennia later, it pissed the holy bejesus out of me.

Sigh, if only Unagi were a thing.

Wedding Rob’bry:

I knew about this but when it did eventually go down, it disturbed me even more than Ned’s death did. I mean I thought Rob was badass, but dear god that accent was the stuff of legends. There’s no one else I know that could pull off “Moothur” and  “I donwt wish to mahhrry the Frrey Girll” and not come off as a laughing stock. When they killed his unborn child, his wife and his mother, it more or less began the dissolution of my soul that I’d cherished for years.

It also taught me that life was cruel and unforgiving, but that’s for another day.

She’s my Pigeon Pie!:

By now, I’d caught up with the books and was more or less in sync with what was happening. So when Joff did choke on his Pigeon Pie and die(Dem Rhymz) I was neither sad nor was I ecstatic like my sister, who may have screamed an expletive of joy or maybe two.  Joff just lay there with TV audiences cheering and I walked off mildly amused.

“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You”:

I read the tale of the Mountain vs The Viper on a plane to Mangalore. I’d really taken to Obyern. He was smart, didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything and was just plain bad-ass. So imagine my delight when I found out that after close to 10 pages of battle during which he took Clegane to school for the most part, that Clegane would miraculously turn it around and use Oberyn’s  face like the pillow I pound when I need to vent. No sooner had I finished that particular passage, than we hit a spot of turbulence. It was the biggest middle finger the universe had ever sent my way at the time and I realized that I’d fallen for the series’ allure, yet again.

So when it did air, it was pure torture. I love Pedro Pascal, but the showrunners never gave us a chance to connect with Oberyn the way the book enthusiasts did. Even then, as the viper danced menacingly around The Mountain, I had my head in my hands, waiting for the inevitable. Clearly the showrunners believe that a picture is worth a 1000 words, as I watched Oberyn’s skull get smashed in, on celluloid. The image stayed with me for days, with Oberyn’s screams echoing in my ears. Dang, had they done a good job of it.

I was still thinking about it when Olly let fly an arrow into Ygritte’s chest.

That goes to show you how much I cared about Ygritte’s death.

Theon’s Sansa-nite:

See, you want to point a finger at someone, you point it at  Baelish. What do you expect when you marry a lunatic who likes to chop off penises for fun and makes people live in stables? Tyrion was one of a kind, a true gentle-imp. Ramsay is what he was unabashedly all his life; a bastard. So when he forced himself onto her and made Theon watch, as uncomfortable as it made me feel, I kinda understood that Ramsay felt what he was doing was his right.  Princesses were married off at an extremely young age during the medieval times and more often than not against their will, so kudos to the show for bringing to light what has been quite conveniently lost in the pages of history.

I wasn’t shocked by it. Years of watching the show had turned me into the cynical old fart that I currently am.

So when Cersei did her best Jenny Agutter impression from Walkabout in the season finale, I was mildly shaken but not too scarred like the rest. The fact that I was thinking of Coupling references when she was made to go through what she had to, spoke volumes about what an asshole I am.

However, the one that clinches it was when Olly aka Westerosi Brutus struck the fatal blow into Jon’s chest.  As he lay dying in the (ironically) snow, I couldn’t help but wonder if Olly’s heart did indeed skip skip skip skip skip skip skip, a beat.

So, thank you Martin, Weiss and Benioff. Life is clearly a lot brighter with you buggers around.

Pricks.

Originally published at Pot Full Of Mold

The post How Game Of Thrones Turned Me Into A Soulless Bastard appeared first on dfuse.in.

[ Check out our interview with aswekeepsearching along with their debut album here]

Along with Chennai based Alt-Rockers(?) Skrat, Uddipan and his band is hitting the road on a multi-city, DIY tour. Uddipan sent us the official press release which we’ll quote verbatim (cause that’s slightly more honest than rephrasing and calling it ‘an article’) –

The first edition of the 2Stroke Tour will ride through 5 cities over 5 days from June 17th to 21st, 2015. Uddipan had long thought of exploding the touring scene in India and bring it in line with what happens in Europe and the U.S. but had been held back by the vexing question of financial investment. In March earlier this year, he had a long conversation with Bengaluru-based music enthusiast and blogger, Ramakrishnan Krishnan (Ram) about this. Ram, who has been supporting Indian Indie music in his own way for a while now, immediately fell in with Uddipan’s idea and decided to invest in it.

The 2Stroke Tour, as the name indicates, will feature two bands and will be a series. It will span genres and attempt to put together on each edition 2 sets of artists that complement each other either in similarity or as an interesting contrast. Episode 1 of the tour will have the exciting Chennai trio, Skrat playing along with aswekeepsearching in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Skrat has always been a positive, adventurous band and the artists straight away jumped at it when the idea of the Tour was presented to them. aswekeepsearching has always been eager to expanding their boundaries. Although they are not strangers to long tours, Skrat still rates this their toughest tour given its back-to-back schedule. But both bands believe that the excitement of kicking off something new like this more than compensates for the back-breaking work required.

The bands and the organisers are united in their belief that non-corporate sponsored, DIY touring is within the realms of possibility and sustainability. In a sign of their long-term commitment to this endeavour, Uddipan and Ram have already started planning for the next tours. Following a short break after the first one, the 2Stroke tours will resume late August or early September and will be a regular feature in the Indian Indie gig calendar.

So do go out and support what these guys are doing. You can stalk the party on social media to stay connected:

http://facebook.com/studiobluetree

http://twitter.com/studiobluetree

Instagram : #2Stroketour

EVENT Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1444641165831211/

TOUR DATES & VENUES FOR 1st Episode

SKRAT & aswekeepsearching

June 17th – Wednesday – blueFrog, Pune

June 18th – Thursday – blueFrog, Mumbai

June 19th – Friday – Antisocial, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi

June 20th – Saturday – Hard Rock Cafe, Hyderabad

June 21st – Sunday – Indigo Music Bar, Bangalore

Ticket links here: http://bluetreestudios.in/tour/

The post 2 Stroke Tour: Skrat & aswekeepsearching go around the nation appeared first on dfuse.in.

At the young age of 20, Meera has been crooning about love and life with the maturity and authenticity that even experienced songwriters struggle to emulate.
She has been performing since 2011 and sings in English, French and Spanish, her speciality being kick-your-feet-back/pour-yourself-a-glas­s-of-wine kinda music.

Mixing by Tejas Menon

Special thanks to Khodu Irani and Abhijit Jagtap.

Crew –
Episode Producer : Rajdip Ray
DOP- Udit Chaudhury

Post Production: Swathy Sethumadhavan

Series Producers : Aniket Dasgupta, Swathy Sethumadhavan & Rajdip Ray

Produced by High Ninja Media
www.highninja.com

The post OffTheRecord: Spaghetti by Meera Shenoy appeared first on dfuse.in.

The average urban Indian woman leads a multi-faceted life: family, education, marriage, husband, career, kids, in-laws, kitchens, cleaning, cubicles, etc. You hear about the stay-at-home mom who quit her job a few years ago to take care of her family or the mom who decided to stick with her job, suiting up every morning for the 9 O’ clock meeting. But it doesn’t stop with them. There are several varieties to Indian women, taking up different roles in society’s prescription. Scattered Windows, Connected Doors (2013) is a documentary film that features the lives of eight women from different parts of India to tell the tale of the urban Indian woman. The documentary progresses with an array of shots that capture lights, colours and storytellers giving an account of their lives and how they live it.

The makers of this documentary – Roohi Dixit and Ziba Bhagwagar – give you a first-hand, in-depth portrayal of the way these women lead their lives, their jobs and their families. The film begins with a montage of shots that depict several scenes you would find aptly describing an Indian city. The iridescent bokehs of the night-life in cities, long shots traffic with vehicles leaving behind yellow light trails, a time-elapsed shot of the sky, places, people; the montage takes you by the hand and leads you into the film. Accompanying the montage is the voiceover of a woman talking about herself being a ‘strange’, unique flawed person, assuring the viewers that if there are ‘strange’ people like her, they are not alone. It slowly progresses to Shabnam Virmani – one of the eight – singing a Sufi song, playing an instrument. The beginning of the film breaks the ice with its viewers preparing them for the next seventy-four minutes, and thirty seconds.

The film goes beyond dog-tag introductions, making it more interactive by having the women introduce themselves as though in a conversation. In fact the documentary film maintains a very congenial narrative throughout. After getting on an unofficial first-name basis with the women, the film begins to follow an unscripted dialogue that they carry out. Coming from different states, professional backgrounds and age groups among many other variables, these women chart out that the course their lives have taken with respect to marriage, individuality, motherhood, fear and love among several other aspects of being a woman.

The women featured in this documentary are people with intriguing personalities who have a stronghold around their beliefs and womanhood. It might seem like the filmmakers arbitrarily handpicked these women, but it goes to show that it could not be without reason. They are distinguished professionals and excel at what they do. The eight women are Shabanam Virmani, a ‘Kabir’ enthusiast and an artist; Anusha Yadav, a thriving photographer and archivist; Shilo Shiv Suleman, a wandering traveller and a noted illustrator; Preeti Shenoy, a rabid blogger and published writer; Vidhya Pai, an LGBT activist and entrepreneur; Rekha Menon, Managing Director at Accenture, India; Swati Bhattacharya, a creative director and Sapna Bhavnani, a celebrity hair stylist and owner of a hair salon called Mad O What.

Through the course of the documentary, the women speak about their lives in the midst of the pre-occupied, noisy and ever-lively city space, and how they find an escape from its mundane, humdrum routines. The film encapsulates issues and realities of their lives, revealing their strengths and weakness, their aspirations and the following challenges. And, of course, what’s a documentary about women without raising the issue of gender inequality. There are countless things that fall under the list of woes due to such issues. But, surprisingly, some of these women gave another side to this story. They recalled how their fathers supported their ambitions and encouraged them to be independent woman. Although, the dogmatic side of society did show up in Sapna’s account of her experience growing up as a rebellious teenager. These women also emphasise on the importance of self-love and self-worth, coping with solitude and making challenging choices.

This film is one that not only tells the stories of these women, but sends out an empowering message. It shows that women are not exactly what the stereotypes depict and that they are no more entitled to stick to societal norms. Roohi Dixit and Ziba Bhagwagar delivered a brilliant documentary that was visually appealing, aesthetically composed and narratively smooth. By means of their production house – Zero House Rules and support from Accenture, the dynamic documenting duo wove this film together. The film was a product of two years of travelling and documenting the lives of women living in six different cities in India. It is worth the watch and a huge break from the boredom that is mainstream cinema.

This film can be viewed on Fliqvine for Rs.100 : http://df5.in/FQWatchSWCD

The post Review: Scattered Windows, Connected Doors appeared first on dfuse.in.

The song featured here is ‘Living In A Dream’ from his upcoming EP ’Songs I Couldn’t Sing’.

Check out Saahas ‘ Channel : https://www.youtube.com/user/ctnssx

Shot at Nathaniel School Of Music, Bangalore.

Series Producers : Aniket Dasgupta, Swathy Sethumadhavan & Rajdip Ray

Produced by High Ninja Media
www.highninja.com

The post OffTheRecord: Living in a dream by Saahas Patil appeared first on dfuse.in.

Spoken word poetry, among many staged performances, is where poetry meets performance. It is basically enacting a poem you wrote, expect it needn’t adhere to the routine poem structures that you find on paper. In one of her TED Talks , Sarah Kay, a spoken word poet from New York says, “ Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry… it involves creating poetry that just doesn’t want to sit on paper; that something about it demands it (spoken word poetry) be heard out loud or witnessed in person.”

In order to pull off a spoken word poem, you’ll need “a heavy use of rhythm, improvisation, free association, rhymes, rich poetic phrases, word play and slang,” states The Nelson-Atkins Museum Of Art in Missouri, USA, in their website.

Reminiscent of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance in Harlem, USA, spoken word poetry came up as a form of rebellion among marginalized African –Americans who were subject to racial discrimination. It later caught on with feminists and the queer community as they voiced out their lyrical contempt to unfair conservative social constructs. Spoken word poetry also started taking ground when a recognized group of poets and musicians of the African-American Civil Rights movement called The Last Poets came around in the 1960s; they are said to be the pioneers of Hip Hop and slam poetry. The Last Poets derived their name from the poems of a South African poet named Keorapetse Kgositsile who believed in “writing poetry before guns and battles would take over”; the African American society shared the same sentiments. With much cause to fight for and to express a community’s grief, spoken word poetry found its place in urban culture. As of now, there are several clubs in Major American cities that carry on the slam poetry culture.

In India, spoken word poetry has started taking ground with several poets and groups coming together to voice out their perspectives of several things. With things like political or social issues, the stuck-up cultural stigmas, poets make their comments on society as we know it. Groups like the Delhi Poetry Slam, Pune Poetry Slam, and the Airplane Poetry Movement (APM), have taken the initiative to promote performance poetry in various cities all over India. Major cities like Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore have spoken word poetry programmes open to the public. There are your usual open mic performances, the feisty poetry slams and workshops for those who are new to the subject. Among these, poetry slams bring in the competitive edge to spoken word poetry where poets perform to win the slam. Such poems are performed without props, costumes or music. After such a performance, the poets are judged by the audience with and applause or ‘polite silences’.

Spoken word seems to be well received all over. Shantanu Anand, one of the lead organisers of APM – the initiative powered by Campus Diaries, believes so because it is a platform for people a platform to be completely honest about they’re thinking and feeling. “From what I’ve seen, people – particularly college students and young professionals are very receptive to spoken word as an art form, both in terms of performing and listening to it,” he adds.

The scope for such a form of creative expression in India embellishes its freedom of speech. Shantanu thinks that people are going to enjoy using spoken word. “I think it has a great scope for growth. And that’s because people in our country have a lot to say – they just need a place to say it. There are thousands of creative minds out there, waiting for an opportunity to speak their mind, and I think they’re going to enjoy using spoken word as a medium to do that,” he said.

This place where “page” meets “stage” is a growing form of expression that is starting to form part of India’s urban literary culture. World renowned spoken word poets like Sarah and Phil Kaye, and the USA based rapper-poet George Watsky have performed in Indian cities in the recent past.

But our very own spoken word poets are growing in numbers. Shantanu Anand, Nandhini Verma, Mayank Susngi, Janet Orlene and Priyam Redican are few among the many spoken word poets in this this proliferating pool of poetry-struck youth.

Featured image by Christian Senger

The post Urban Verses appeared first on dfuse.in.

Self pity, somebody once mentioned, was a very satisfying form of indulgence. Us, with our shining bright eyes and throbbing names and perfect dictions, celebrating the enigma of Kerouac and the kick in a sharp, clean Red, us with our 4 am sleeping pills and three day cocaine benders buying into an empty promise of a much needed oblivion. Where marketing compensates for a lack of talent, when you slice your thumb open by mistake and realize that’s the closest you’ve come to feeling anything in ages, where the big cats are discussing the tops cats while everybody else discusses them, where big cars hold broken families together and kissing is a luxury. Where self pity is a commodity – to be traded for stories over stiff Bloody Marys and the only way to catch a moment to breathe is to light a cigarette.

And we scroll through our Facebook newsfeeds, our Twitter timelines, our iPhone filters and Instagram, hoping to feel an inkling of the joy we seem to splash over social media like a teenager chancing upon masturbation on a bored afternoon. Childhood wonders lost, as emblematic as your first dog being put down, we grow up in a hurry, chasing the first years of our twenties like the last rays of the sun cruising like sharks on an ebbing ocean, let’s talk, let’s talk of art as we know it, allusions and imagery of heartbreak, and let debate existential questions on hot Sunday afternoons, let’s fuck our basics up and talk of Sartre, let’s listen to the blues and validate our depression with poetry. Somewhere, someone is hurting over the loss of a limb or the splinter of heartbreak lodged in their throat, but we’ve got lines to chase, Friday nights taken care of, and words spill over like grotesque shapes drawn in the hand of a child, giving meaning to things that don’t exist.

Let’s walk out to the nearest store, purchase another piece of our souls with the latest jazz quartet in town painting a grim soundtrack for the lack of tension in our routines. The curtains have fallen down, and the actors have long left singing tales of Aspirins and co-dependency. What has the taste of exclusivity to it – theatre or film? The existential questions plaguing the morning coffee, sprinkling our vocabulary with big words like it’s supposed to give the listener the impression that we we’re blessed with special genitalia, with our intelligent laughter and pointless banter, gnawing at the base of the human pyramid, it sounded so right when Ginsberg talked of it, but I sound like somebody far too stuffed for their own good on sophisticated Gymkhana evenings, chasing the sweet idea of utopia, not realising dystopia seems to be the norm of the age.

Featured photo by Aniket Dasgupta.

The post Dystopia appeared first on dfuse.in.

Q. Who’s Haider Hussain Beig? You are a rocket scientist… and a filmmaker?

A. Haha well technically I’m still not a ‘rocket scientist’ since I haven’t graduated yet. But I’m 23, I’ve been born and brought up in Delhi to an Indian father and a German mother. I live/work/study in The Netherlands right now. Yes, I do study Aerospace Engineering, but that’s more of a ‘side-project’. I’m pretty much mainly a filmmaker (with whatever time there is remaining in a day). Also, I haven’t made anything of note yet, so I’m not sure how warranted I am to call myself a filmmaker. But whatever, it feels nice to say haha.

Q. Do you do wedding videos? 

A. Not exactly professionally, but I did shoot one. It was for my sister’s wedding. It was more of a personal thing and a lot of fun since I wasn’t ‘on the job’. Plus, It was my present to her for her wedding, because I’m a cheap bastard haha.

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