To
The Scholarship Jury
La femis Summer University Presentation
20th March, 2007
Sub : Application for La femis summer university
Sir/Madam
The cinema, said Andre Bazin is the substitute of our gaze, a word more in harmony with our desire, and France is where cinema was born, even when Louis Lumiere said, Cinema is an invention with no future, Cinema has continued to evolve and redefine meaning.
Even though as Godard famously said, Cinema can’t change the world, but has continued his search for the medium. As Cinema in itself represents an enigma and France has the harbinger of force.
I have grown up on healthy diet of Hollywood, Bollywood and Bengali Cinema, but its my brush with French Masters that changed the way I look and view the world- from the image of Jean Pierre Leaud honoring Balzac, to Jean Paul Belmondo imitating Bogart, and Jean Pierre Melville quoting his ambition to Jean Serbeg in Breathless to be Immortal and to die, I realized the importance of Cinema as a vehicle of self-expression and art form. Whether it’s the citation or quotation Godard makes from litreature and art, to Charbol and Truffaut immense love for Hitchcock, French Cinema and French culture general has had an immense influence on my upbringing. It’s here I realized the importance of form over content, as Proust is never interested in storytelling similarly as Godard is never good at telling his stories straight.
As Jacques Rivetter says, it’s good be influenced and one should be influenced by the directors he/she admires, and as Godard says, it’s does matter where you get influenced from what matter is where you take them to. It reminds me of an anecdote what was told to Jean Renoir from his famous father, that to be in love with something, should be like an urge to pee badly, and in order to make films as Jean Pierre Melville said: One must have a huge cinematic baggage, and for me the baggage and urge lies there, in heart and streets of Paris.
With La femis Summer University Presentation it gives me an opportunity to fulfill some of my appetite for French culture, French film and French lifestyle. It will give me a chance to be physically present in the land of Godard and Trauffaut for a workshop on films.
As a cinephile getting this scholarship and being a part of this program will be “a dream come true” for me.
Thank you
Abhiroop Mazumdar
2007-03-20
23:01:27
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