Review: Sachin: A Billion Dreams

Sachin: A Billion Dreams

Sachin A Billion Dreams 2017 is not a movie. Neither it is not a docu-drama. It is pure documentary. A traditional documentary. A dull, flat and insipid documentary. How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me this life story of Sachin Tendulkar.

Director James Erskine has made several docu-dramas on sport personalities and events. The battle of Sexes on Tennis, Shooting for Socrates on Football, Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist on Cycling. He is experienced in dealing with sports personalities and making documentaries on them. However, this is not so impressive attempt.

In his interviews he said he wanted to capture 'the boy who became God'; 'the human behind the God' and the culture of time.

Well, that sounds interesting!

This 'God' idea is though provoking. Who was the first to call him so and thereafter who went on celebrating him as God - and Cricket as Religion - the sports which unites all Indians who are like broken pieces of mirror? Was it merely Mark Mascarenhas's celebrity management gimmick which nested in collective consciousness of all cricket lovers? Had these questions been unearthed and interpreted, the documentary would have redeemed itself.

The economic culture of India - the LPG moment of 1991 - and rise of Sachin and along with it the billions of dreams of middle class Indians to be rich and successful. The documentary began well with this concept. Nevertheless, this stimulating concept neither had its 'middle' nor an 'end'. This fascinating metaphor is lost in the hagiography of Sachin Tendulkar.

The family culture of India wherein a good wife sacrifices her joys and career for the success of husband, makes his problems hers - is very well captured. It is director's success to make Anjali speak this in documentary. The middle class Indians grow their girls with such nonsensical stuff to condition their minds wherein they are constantly ready to sacrifice for husbands. Things are changing in India. Those were nineties. The cultural dynamics, so far as, man-woman relations are concerned, are undergoing tremendous upheavals. The director should be appreciated for this success.

The documentary gives a few more seconds to the frame when Sachin is out in 2011 World Cup Finals and Virat Kohli is entering to bat. Virat is today’s Sachin. Culturally speaking, Virat is not Sachin. That God-element is missing. One shall be culturally right, to be considered God in this country. Virat Kohli, with his 'insulting' temperament, love-affair, tatoo - cannot be God for Indians.

Something pinches. The way documentary mentions Mohammad Azharuddin as the conflicting ‘power center’ which did not allow Sachin to settle as captain when he was very young to carry the responsibility - and - the villainous portrayal of Greg Chappell; there is no mention of the much wanted aggression to Indian cricket team which was given by Saurav Ganguly and the charismatic victories in all forms of cricket under captain-ship of M S Dhoni. After all, the dream which has its beginning in 1983 World Cup win, ends in 2011 under leadership of M S Dhoni.

Indian cricket passed through one of the worst phase of match-fixing allegation and IPL corruptions. The documentary is completely mum on these controversial issues.

People like me share almost common birth year with Sachin. We have lived with Sachin and his batting. He has given great many cherishing moments. Even when i write this, it gives goosebumps. Whenever he batted well, and he did it innumerable times, we felt confident in what so ever we were doing. We thought, today Sachin has played well, things can’t go wrong.

However, it is disappointing to write that this documentary fails - absolutely fails - to recreate those moments.

Sachin, though was model of so many products, never had appealing screen presence except when he was on ground with bat in his hands - doing nothing but batting. He narrating his story is one of the weakest point of this documentary.

It seems the documentary is not scripted and edited with great precision. Somebody has hurriedly chalked out some dots and director wanted to connect with lines of economics, iconic personality and culture of India. Somehow, the dots are not connected so well.

Our wait, to watch a film on Sachin like M.S. Dhoni or Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, continues.
Among a few cherishing moments the documentary captured is the beginning of the documentary - motivating message:
"My father always told me you have chosen cricket to play, that is just one chapter in your life. But something that will stay permanently with you, is the person you are."
‘मेरे पापा हमेशा कहते थे तुमने क्रिकेट को चुना है लेकिन आखिर में तुम्हारे साथ जो बात रहेगी वो ये है कि तुम इंसान कैसे हो, और मुझे इससे ज्यादा खुशी मिलेगी अगर तुम एक बेहतर इंसान बन सको.’
And this is very powerful statement. Sachin Tendulkar, so far, has lived his life true to his father's wish. 

The Sachin phenomenon is much larger than life to be justified in documentaries or movies.

Report on Outreach Programme: Feb – March 2017

A Report on Outreach Programme: Feb – March 2017

If the pdf copy of the report is not visible, please click on this link for quick access. You can also download this report from this link:
https://www.slideshare.net/dilipbarad/report-of-outreach-programme-feb-march-2017

REPORT OF OUTREACH PROGRAMME: FEB – MARCH 2017 from Dilip Barad

Rubric for the evaluation of Digital Portfolio

Evaluation Rubric: Digital Portfolio

Digital Portfolios or ePortfolios are very useful pedagogical tool for the 21st century teacher. If the teacher wants to keep record of the academic progression of students, digital portfolios of students is an interesting idea. Having said that DPs are very important, it becomes very important to ponder on the parameters to evaluate DPs. As DPs are not widely practiced as normal academic evaluation, not many teachers or academicians or institutes understand the modes of evaluation. Here is one rubric for the evaluation of DP. If you are trying out DPs for your students, this may be of some help. 

Modernist Literature: Online Test

Check your understanding of the Modernist Literature

Appear in this online test on The Modernist Literature.

Click here to open online test on the Modernist Literature.

Refer this website for reading resources

1. Click here to know more on Dystopian Literature on 20th Century
2. Click here to know more on representation of India in 20th Century European Literature
3. Click here to know more on Fantasy literature and religious literature of 20th century
4. Reasons for hopelessness and nothingness among the writers of this time

Cultural Studies: Media, Power and Truly Educated Person

Short Lessons on Cultural Studies

It is nearly impossible to define Cultural Studies in definite terms. It is difficult because the concept of Culture itself has been made ambiguous. The pendulum of the definition of Culture ranges from Matthew Arnold's idea of "perfecting what was best thought and said" on one extreme to Raymond Williams and the likes of poststructuralist who would love to define it as "everyday life as really lived by one and all, including common-men".

The second problem with Cultural Studies is its scope of study. As it aims to transcend all disciplines and breaks the difference between the high and the low, the elite and the popular culture, it encompasses almost everything under its umbrella. This makes it confusing and the student / teacher with lesser ability to dig deeper in the artefacts to connect it with the 'discourse', sometimes, fails Cultural Studies.

Thirdly, as Cultural Studies reads 'power' with critical insights, it makes the students / scholars 'politically incorrect'. This also makes it difficult for CS to survive in the academia where 'political correct' and 'right-wingers' are in majority.

However, it is but sure that the study of Cultural Studies in incomplete without the study of 'Power'. In addition, as in our times, 'Media' is the tool to control the perceptions and the subject, the Power makes extensive use of Media. All forms of media. Print, radio, TV, electronic, digital, social.

Moreever, the critique of Media studied under Cultural Studies gives an opportunity to provoke our thoughts to understand the how power makes use of media. Here we will see What is Power and how power makes use of media. Watching these videos may help us read power, understand media and thus make us truly educated person.

First of all, let us understand 'POWER':

This video help us understand where power comes from, how it is exercised and how can one read and write power.

Political Power & our sense of judgement:

Do politics make us irrational?

Can someone's political identity actually affect their ability to process information? The answer lies in a cognitive phenomenon known as partisanship. While identifying with social groups is an essential and healthy part of life, it can become a problem when the group's beliefs are at odds with reality. So how can we recognize and combat partisanship? Jay Van Bavel shares helpful strategies. [Directed by Patrick Smith, narrated by Addison Anderson].

Read transcript here: Click here

Secondly,let us see what Noam Chomsky has to say about Mass Media. He gives “Five Filters.” 
1. Media Ownership
2. Advertising
3. Media Elite
4. Flack
5. The Common Enemy

One must read these filters in detail to understand how power makes use of mass media to create the illusion of Democracy. Click here to read about it in details.

Chomsky and Herman’s book offers a surgical analysis of the ways corporate mass media “manufactures consent” for a status quo the majority of people do not actually want. Yet for all of the recent agonizing over mass media failure and complicity, we don’t often hear references to Manufacturing Consent these days. 

This videos explains this - 'Manufacturing Consent'. 

It seems that the media theory and criticism like Chomsky’s, or the work of Marshall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, or Jean Baudrillard (all thought provoking critics of Culture), has fallen out of favor in a 140-character world. Never-the-less, we can understand our times in a better way with their cultural lenses.

Well, if this interests you and if you are hungry to know more, watch this amazing debate between Michael Foucault and Noam Chomsky on 'Human Nature and Power' (1971):

In ’71, at the height of the Vietnam War, the American linguist and French historian/social theorist appeared on Dutch TV to debate a fundamental question: Is there such a thing as innate human nature? Or are we shaped by experiences and the power of cultural and social institutions around us?

40 years later, you can find the classic debate on YouTube. If you need subtitles, make sure you turn on the captions function at the bottom of the video. Thanks Open Culture for this.

Lastly, Cultural Studies makes one truly educated person as the students cultivate the habit of questioning one discipline with the findings of another discipline; as the student unlearn what specific disciplines taught, and more importantly, it it teaches controversies.

However, it is enriching to listen what Noam Chomsky thinks about truly educated person. Watch this video:

Here is the highlights of what he said in this video:

• The core principle and requirement of a fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and create constructively, independently, without external controls.
• A true education opens a door to human intellectual freedom and creative autonomy.
• It’s not important what we cover in the class; it’s important what you discover.
• To be truly educated means to be resourceful, to be able to “formulate serious questions” and “question standard doctrine, if that’s appropriate”…. It means to “find your own way.

Thus to conclude, in this series of short lessons on Cultural Studies, it seems this is enough to understand Power, Media and what it is to be Truly Educated person.

Rivers and Tides: Documentary

Rivers and Tides

A film with Andy Goldsworthy 
Directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer

Watch this documentary: 2 Parts - 45 Minutes each

If above link does not work, click here

Read a brief about the documentary:

Official Website: http://www.riversandtides.co.uk/

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time is the most spiritually literate documentary. It won the Golden Gate Award Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival[1].

Try to picture an art piece that cannot be put in a museum, purchased by wealthy collectors, or displayed in a corporate foyer or boardroom – because it disintegrates in less than a day, perhaps even within 20 seconds. Try to imagine executing artwork through the medium of iron oxide chalk, raw sheep’s wool, flower blossoms, leaves and grass, feathers, random sticks and stones, broken rocks, pieces of icicle, green iris blades and red berries, thorns, bracken, or handfuls of snow. Try to fathom the notion that an artist could a take stroll in the woods, along a riverbank, down a beach, and with no tools at all – no paint brushes, no sculptor’s chisels or knives, no canvases or pedestals or quarried granite or polished wood – manage to create unutterably beautiful art from the objects and materials he finds by chance.

Often it seems that contemporary art has become a largely academic exercise, with artists frantically carving out tiny niches of discrete subject matter or distinctive media in which to say something, show something faintly “original.” But for more than two decades, Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy has quietly been blowing that notion to smithereens. He’s the visual art world’s equivalent of Italo Calvino, who celebrated the wide-open choices available to him as a writer of short stories and novels while others lamented the death of the novel. Goldsworthy calmly demonstrates over and over that the forms, styles, and media available to the artist are approximately infinite.

In the documentary by German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, we watch Goldsworthy build man-sized standing “eggs” of stacked slate on a beach between tides; place a 50-foot spiral “worm” of leaves sewn together with grass in a pond, whence it begins to wend its way down a mountain stream; gnaw at icicle shards in order to piece them into a looping snake that seems to pass repeatedly through a stone promontory like a fat crystal thread; construct an “igloo” of driftwood that is carried away by the incoming tide in a stately galactic whirl.

“Art for me is a form of nourishment,” he tells us. Goldsworthy seeks the “energy that is running through, flowing through the landscape.” Not to capture it, clearly, but to participate in it. He speaks slowly, carefully, and the viewer adjusts to his pace. Not a single abstract spiritual or philosophical term turns up – the sculptor employs direct and concrete words only – but the effect is like a 90-minute session with a Zen master showing us how to “be here, now.”On an icicle job, he notes that heat and melted water created his artistic medium, while the rising sun will destroy it: “the very thing that brought it to life, will bring about its death.” Flying to a commission in Nova Scotia, he says he hates the sensation of travel, and having to go straight to work without getting any time to get the feel of the new locale. Yet he does: “I’ve shook hands with the place . . . and begun.”As we watch the artist make “something from nothing,” usually something startling and gorgeous; as serendipity and the elements (sunshine, wind, water) contribute to the process; and even as pieces he has spent hours on collapse in a heap – one’s concept of what is possible, what constitutes art, becomes as fluid as Goldsworthy’s natural media. Initially the viewer automatically thinks, “oh, it fell apart,” then realizes it doesn’t matter. One feels disappointment a project did not meet one’s expectations, yet rejoices in a different, unforeseen result.

Having isolated pieces of a new environment and formed them into an unexpected artifact, then watched it dissipate back to its component parts in the larger setting, Goldsworthy says, “You feel as if you’ve touched the heart of the place. That’s a way of understanding. Seeing something that you never saw before, that was always there but you were blind to it.” As the tide carries his driftwood igloo out to sea, spinning it slowly and dismantling its structural unity, he remarks: “It feels as if it’s been taken off into another plane, another world. . . . It doesn’t feel at all like destruction.”

The long worm of strung-together leaves reminds the viewer of an emerald green water moccasin, of Chinese dragons, of other references near and far. Subtly, the filmmakers join in the spirit of Goldsworthy’s labor to see things anew. Occasionally the camera takes note of lovely sights and events not immediately related to the artist’s work at hand: a fluff ball walking across the surface of a river, or the subtle prismatic colors in a spray of water.Several times, Riedelsheimer wittily shows us a work in progress, or a piece of the whole, that we don’t understand; or understand in one way, only to see it in a very different light when the camera pulls back. For example, a shockingly bright red-orange liquid trickles down a rock face, plashes into a river, and fans out in skeins of “unnatural color” that we cannot help but associate with blood. (Macbeth’s classic lines come to mind: “this my hand will rather/The multitudinous seas incarnadine,/Making the green one red.”)You think: He’s using applied color! But no, even as Goldsworthy makes the blood reference explicit, you find he has not violated his unwritten law of “all natural ingredients.” He has painstakingly collected red iron ore stones from the river bottom and ground them to a powder, commenting that iron is what makes our blood red as well. When he mixes the powder with water and trickles it across rock or into the stream, the color is a shock: it seems so alien to the river, yet is deeply rooted in it.“I think the color is an expression of life. I am in continuous pursuit of the red. That something so dramatic, so intense, could at the same time be so hidden, underneath the skin of the earth.” A single red Japanese maple tree on a hill of green in Japan “looks like a wound on the mountain,” he says. We set much store by the solidity of stone, he goes on, yet it is only a step in a process that goes from stone to powder to liquid and back to stone. The “stability of stone” is actually a snapshot of fluid, liquid life in which everything, including human beings, participates.This artist’s work might seem utterly apolitical, yet Goldsworthy casually identifies political elements in his projects. At first, when the camera lingers on a Scottish farmer helping a ewe to birth several lambs, it seems a digression into local color. Then Goldsworthy talks about how difficult it is to get past the “wooliness” of sheep to their “dangerous and powerful” qualities: Their status as an economic gold mine denuded the forest landscape of Britain and led to violent labor disputes. While he speaks, he constructs a long, glowing white river of raw wool that gilds the stone walls near his home.(In a similarly subtle political statement, Paul Hawken, founder of the Smith & Hawken gardening chain, chose a Goldsworthy “horn of plenty” sewn from leaves for the cover of his book The Ecology of Commerce: a Declaration of Sustainability.)Not all Goldsworthy’s labor is solitary. “Rivers and Tides” shows us several collaborative projects: one at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York where stone masons build outdoor walls to the artist’s specifications, and another in Digne,France where a crew helps him build an indoor clay wall designed to crack into eye-catching patterns as it dries.With the Storm King project, Riedelsheimer’s camera again starts in close, watching hands place individual stones. Then we get a look at part of the finished wall slaloming between trees. Finally a helicopter shot pulls us high for a breathtaking view of the running wall, which wends its way through forestland for hundreds of yards, and appears to plunge into a lake and out the other side!The documentary is not perfect, by any means. It doesn’t “build a case”; though there’s a lovely coherence and wit to the unveiling of each piece or project, the larger structure seems episodic and disconnected. A brief sequence with Goldsworthy’s wife and kids comes across as garish and out of place. While it’s useful to know he has a family, he himself seems nonplused by them, and having been introduced, one yearns to know how they fit into his life as a professional artist.

Source:

http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/RiversAndTides/

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/9214

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[1] http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/9214

What if Machines Write Poems

What if Machines write poems?

What if Machines write better poems than humans?

Let us ponder over it on this World Poetry Day!

In the seventeenth year of the digital era, it sounds stupid to ask whether machines / computers can write poems or not. We face ever graver and frightening question. What if machines write better poems than humans?

What if human poems sounds mechanical and machine's, humane?

However, if you still have doubt about whether computers can write poems or not, give your 10 minutes to watch this video to change your perception. Oscar Schwartz has some very provoking questions:

Now, if you want to try some poems written by computer, click here: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Poem/
Type first line of your poem and a short poem will be generated by computer!
How easy it is to be a poet!

Such poems are known as Computer Poetry. Want to know more about it? Click here: http://botpoet.com/what-is-computer-poetry/

These days, there are interesting and unbelievable poems written by computer. If you think that computers cannot write poems like humans, check this. Take a test:

Human Or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?

and also try this:http://www.had2know.com/arts/random-poem-generator.html

Was this poem written by a human or a computer?

In coming days, it will no longer surprise, if people will have to differentiate between their favorite 'human' and 'computer' poets!

Be a poet with the help of auto poem generators. Here are some links where computers generate poems for us:

• https://www.poem-generator.org.uk/
• http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.php#.WNFExDuGPIU
• http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/PoemGen/PoemGen.htm
• http://www.had2know.com/arts/random-poem-generator.html
• http://poetry.namegeneratorfun.com/

Generative Literature

The poems 'generated' with the help of algorithm are known as generative literature. Want to know more about generative literature?

What is Generative Literature?

Principles and Processes of Generative Literature

A Text without an Author? - The Nature of Generative Literature

BigShorts - for India of Tomorrow

Short Hindi Films - Do not give a miss!

Thank you India Today for this feast.

1. In Defence of Freedom: A Film by Nandita Das

Saadat Hasan Manto - played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui

2. This Bloody Line – A Film By Ram Madhvani

An amazing short film on a poem by W.H. Auden on the man who drew a line to divide India and Pakistan. An unpardonable act. The karma whose heavy price even today the innocent people are paying with their flesh and blood.

Partition - a poem by W. H. Auden

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
"Time," they had briefed him in London, "is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you."

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.