Voici une copie de la présentation que j’ai faite ce matin lors du congrès du CIEF à Grand-Baie dans la session sur le cinéma.
La communication s’intitule ‘Le court métrage de fiction dans la sphère médiatique mauricienne’.
Television & Film
The Mediacom Studio is alive
I am pleased to announce that the Communication Studies Unit is now equipped with a multimedia studio which I have set up with (a lot of) help from Avinash. The studio has been baptised Mediacom Studio and even has a website which we have launched yesterday at www.mediacomstudio.com
The facility has been created thanks to funding from the UNESCO-IPDC which approved my project last year. Avinash has been the mastermind behind the technical setup and has spent a lot of time selecting and fine-tuning our equipment list. We had a lot of constraints such as limited availability of certain items and also the dollar exchange rate which shrunk our budget. But, we managed to have a nice setup nevertheless with:
– Apple iMacs complete with the iLife and iWork suites
– Panasonic HD camcorders with tripods and a lighting kit
– Olympus audio recorders with tie-clip microphones
– Philips LCD TV, DVD player and an Apple TV
– a gigabit local network
The idea is to provide more hands-on practical training to our Communication and Journalism students, to give them the opportunity to come up with professional products and showcase them on the website.
Michael Moore’s Sicko
Yesterday, we went to preview Michael Moore’s Sicko at the Star Cinema (thanks Joanna!). Both Avinash and myself agree that Moore’s last documentary is way much better than Farenheit 9/11 with which we had not been impressed at all. In fact, I had been totally disappointed with the amateurish cinematography of Farenheit 9/11 and thought it did not deserve the Palme d’Or at all. But, I guess at the time, they wanted to reward Moore’s daring in terms of political content rather than his filmmaking skills…
Moore’s mastery of cinematography and story-telling have much improved since then. In Sicko, he does not use any of the facile tricks he used in Farenheit and he succeeds in providing a compelling narrative that casts hundreds of protagonists: the sad clients of health insurance companies in the USA. He paints a very dark picture of the American health care system whose sole objective seems to be money at the expense of their clients. Moore shows a vast mafia-like organisation that lobbies the American Congress and even buys top politicians including his ‘dear’ friend George Bush so that laws that allow them to literally rob their clients get voted. And he visits several countries (Canada, UK, France and even Cuba) to show how the US system is perverse in comparison.
That film made us not want to live in the US, at all. Even made us thankful that we live in Mauritius where there is a quite decent free public health care. And here I’m specially thinking of my mother who had successful major heart surgery for free a few years ago…
PM’s Odyssey in Hull on TV
Every now and then, I try to have a look at the local TV news on MBC just to have a rough idea of what our national emblematic TV station is capable of. This is what I chose to do yesterday evening. So here are my thoughts on our flagship TV news bulletin.
There have been some improvements in terms of the image quality it would seem. Of course, the bulletin was greatly pre-empted by news related to the visit of our PM to Hull in the UK and it would seem that his communication experts have realised that they need to send a cameraman that can hold the camera correctly, provide nice framing and clear image with proper lighting. They have also sent a good journalist. In the past, it always used to be the outright pro-Labour who would benefit from the priviledge of accompanyng the PM on his trips and this has proved disastrous because coincidentally those people were also outright incompetent. I don’t know whether the journalist + cameraman/technician(s) that were sent to Hull this time are pro-Labour but at least they can deliver the goods (technically).
However, of course, propaganda-wise, it still is the same old song: PM is a wonderful person who meets important people in the UK who are all praise for the great guy. Seems that he worked (or completed internship?) for 2 years in a private hospital and he was a great doctor, a wonderful man specially in view of the fact that he was the son of a PM. Lots of people were interviewed from the handyman to the doctors to emphasise his greatness. Of course, mean people will probably say that those interviewed must have felt compelled to say positive things about our PM, that’s the effect of a camera…
But, what made me really smile was how the PM seized the opportunity to sing his own praises. He told a very lengthy story about how he saved a guy’s life and also emphasised how he would have earned 60,000 pounds today if he had stayed at the clinic as a doctor. This great sacrifice is justified by the fact that, as PM, he can transform a whole country. Lucky he didn’t say that he is actually putting Mauritius on the world map…
Badland & Julien Clerc concert
The past week-end has been quite ‘cultural’ for me as I watched a movie in Caudan Star and attended a concert at the Swami Vivekananda Centre. We had received complimentary tickets for both (lucky week-end indeed, thanks to Khersley & Lindsay)…
Badland, the movie
This is a quite long film (almost 3 hours) but you don’t really see the time pass by as it is very poignant and gripping. The scenario is well constructed, acting is excellent as well as film direction. There are some glitches (like a wound in the girl’s hand that appears completely healed in a scene then is shown again with a bloody plaster on it in the next one) but they are very minor.
Overall, it is an excellent film about the traumatic and dramatic results of war on the psyche and life of American soldiers when they come back to the States. Jamie Draven plays the role of Jerry, an American soldier who has tremendous difficulties to adjust to normal life again. To make matters worse, his wife thinks he is an a**hole, they live in a sordid home and environment with three children and a fourth one is in the womb. Jerry commits something tragic (can’t say what… would be a spoiler) and as a consequence, engages in a drama-laden trip in his homeland with a constant refusal to accept full redemption leading to a tragic end for the only thing that could have saved him from himself (can’t say what again;-)
The penultimate flash scene could have been removed as it unrealistically questions the whole story’s existence. Whereas the whole film could shock audiences, that scene tries to come back on that jolt like they were not so sure about going the full length. Anyway, fortunately it was a very short scene which you could choose to ignore…
A word on the audience that night. Apart from me and my sister Liliane, I counted only 20 people in the movie theatre. All those stories about the decline of cinema-going ain’t unfounded!!! Badland is a harsh film though…
Julien Clerc, the concert
Yeah, me and Avi we attended Julien Clerc’s concert! Not really our style of music but it was quite cool actually. The guy definitely has a good voice and knows how to use it and to get the audience to sing too (on ‘Quel Jeu Elle joue’). His lyrics are quite interesting as well, very poetic and the engaged type. Though I can’t stand ‘Femmes Je vous aime’ the other songs like ‘Utile’, ‘Melissa’, ‘Double Enfance’ were enjoyable.
A special word about the two musicians who were incredibly versatile (each one plays at least four different instruments – guitar, bass guitar, flute, synth, piano, melodica, etc.). Julien also played the piano very well (even made a mistake and humbly said ‘pardon, pardon’ before starting again the song…).
The Centre was actually quite packed though there were a number of places left. The technical setup was well done (some glitches in the filming though).
Matrubhoomi – A nation without women
Last Saturday, I was invited by Radha Gungaloo of SOS Femmes to the projection of ‘Mathrubhoomi – A nation without women’, a film by Manish Jha. I was also part of a discussion panel chaired by Daniella Police after the projection.
The film is a must-see that grips your attention from beginning to end. It tells the story of a village in India where systematic female infanticide leads to an utter scarcity of women. The village becomes plagued with bachelors who are all in despair of ever getting a wife so that they are even prepared to pay a hefty sum to secure one, be it an old hag. This is an ironical twist in the Indian tradition where girls’ parents have to pay the dowry to compensate the bridegroom’s family for taking over the ‘burden’.
The film focuses on a family of six men (a father and his five sons) who lay their hands on a beautiful lass named Kalki who was living in hiding. Kalki gets married off to the five who, together with the father, literally take turns to rape her and use her body to satisfy their long-restrained sexual impulses. She only finds solace in the youngest husband and is also befriended by the boy-servant. But her hopes of happiness will not last long…
It is a harsh film which shows the dark side of man, his cruelty towards the female sex, from the newborn to the full-grown. There are denunciations of the caste divisions, religious people and the ‘nouveaux riches’. There are also many allusions to the ‘perversions’ that are present in a supposedly puritan society (a porn video viewing, a priest having homosexual relations, a transvestite, another who f***s with the cow).
Technically speaking, it is very nicely made. No song-and-dance rituals, no crap dialogue, no romantic heroic figure. The very opposite of mainstream Bollywood…