Andrei Tarkovsky on art.

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

The Flute player by the roadside

A small touristy town which I call a cosmopolitan in transit is home to many refugees who are living in exile. It is weird that you cannot live where at your innocent best you once had created your house with the mixture of soil and water.

Life however, continues.

We adapt and adjust to the world and survive. It would have been better if Charles Darwin was an economist, at least that way we would get an idea about how we would evolve to survive in this world of today.

There are many stories, about many people. This is one such. A man, who isn’t a refugee and yet is in exile of sorts because this is where he survives alone away from his family and homeland.

The hands help him carve the most beautiful flutes and the breath creates a magic of sorts. And how the artistry, the business, the survival, the life goes on…. by the roadside.

The Little Prince

The introductory story of the Little Prince ( by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) where he experiences art and life as society sees it.

This is juxtaposed with our take on Life’s phases of Birth, Creation and Death and shot at the Bring Your Own Film Festival (BYOFF) held every year at Puri, Orissa/ Odisha (India).

[Low Res.]

Sonapani

Arrival at the Film Festival

We first arrived at this place unannounced and almost broke. All we knew was that there was an independent film festival being held there where the directors come along with their movies. We  arrived.

This Himalayan village called Sonapani lies in the middle of nowhere so to speak, but once here we were in the middle of everywhere, so to feel. This place along with its owner Ashish Arora accepted us with arms wide open and we realized something that we hadn’t realized up until that time- Goodness exists.

And what do the men with a movie camera do? 

One of our earliest editing practices resulted in a sort of movie- Sonapani Film Festival. 

An artist on another

The greatest on the greatest in the greatest way

Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease.

I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how.

Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.

– Ingmar Bergman on Andrei Tarkovsky