Tales from Planet Kolkata

一部分是小说，一部分是骗局，一部分是文章，一部分是纪录片，这部电影将不同的线索编织在一起：对西方媒体从20世纪60年代到90年代加尔各答作为“黑洞”和“世界上最糟糕的地方”的建设的批评；对加尔各答伟大的知识分子特立独行者之一迪帕克·马朱姆达尔的“挽歌”，一位教师和F。与乔希和许多其他人成为朋友，他们在电影拍摄期间去世了；还有一位传统的孟加拉卷轴画家帕图亚的肖像和歌曲。从《启示录》的开场变奏开始，通过对卷轴画家、电影制片人本人和一位来自纽约的非裔美籍视频艺术家的表演诠释，这部电影提出了关于一个人的位置感和归属感、记忆和图像之间的联系以及永恒性和跨文化的问题。我们称之为“文化”的东西。 　　当提到好莱坞电影《欢乐之城》中加尔各答的重建（这部电影是根据多米尼克·拉皮埃尔的畅销书改编的）或是编织一个关于让杰克·尼科尔森在一部关于后者生活的电影中扮演少爷的幻想时，这部电影问到：“世界上最糟糕的地方”除了在你和你的眼睛里之外，还能在其他任何地方吗？艺术？ 　　Part fiction, part spoof, part essay, part documentary, the film weaves together disparate strands: a critique of western media’s construction, from the 1960s to the 1990s, of Kolkata as ‘the black hole’ and ‘the worst place in the world’; an ‘elegy’ to Deepak Majumdar, one of Kolkata’s great intellectual mavericks, a teacher and friend to Joshi and many others, who died while the film was being made; and the images and song of a patua – a traditional Bengali scroll-painter. Starting with a variation on the opening of Apocalypse Now, moving through the performance-interpretations of the scroll-painter, the filmmaker himself, and an African-American video-artist from New York, the film asks questions about one’s sense of place and belonging, about the links between memory and image, and about the permanence and transience of this thing we call ‘culture.’ 　　While referring to the reconstruction of Kolkata in the Hollywood production of City of Joy, (the film based on Dominique Lapierre’s bestseller) or weaving a fantasy about getting Jack Nicholson to act as Majumdar in a film on the latter’s life, the film asks: can ‘the worst place in the world’ be anywhere else but in your eyes and your heart?