Video Formats - Milindo Taid

Xiaogang Feng: Ji jie hao. 2007 (China)

Oct 21

Feng Xiaogang‘s ‘Ji jie hao‘ is set around the mid 20th century, during the dying years of the long drawn civil war in China fought between the forces loyal to the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang. To Feng’s credit the film does not follow a straightforward triumphalist narrative about Communist war heroes, but instead builds a complex tale of an individual (Captain Guzidi, played remarkably by Zhang Hanyu) who struggles for the posthumous recognition of the men in his company who laid down their lives on the battlefront. These were soldiers who were terrified and sometimes balked at the clear and present dangers before them – as would anyone – but they made the ultimate sacrifice and, as the only survivor from his company, Captain Guzidi strives long and hard to have their efforts recognized as a unique contribution to the war effort. Like great combat films, ‘Ji jie hao’ ceases to be war porn, and rises above to make a stellar comment on the inhumanity of all wars, and the immorality of taking away lives, in the guise of war. It is also a severe indictment of post-war society and government in China. Watch.

Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz: 17th Century Rationalism

Sep 18

Arguably, Baruch Spinoza, was the world’s most sensible mystic, who constructed the first thoroughly logical, consistent metaphysical system and made the first attempt at an objective, scientific study of human behavior. Spinoza is credited with carrying all arguments to their logical conclusions, even when those conclusions meant trouble! A pantheist and a pure determinist, who believed, as all good mystics do, in the oneness of the universe, in the supremacy of immutable natural law, in the necessity of learning to go with the flow. The other Rationalist, Gottfried Leibniz is considered by many to be one of the greatest logicians of all time, who invented infinitesimal calculus, and founded the first system of symbolic logic. A metaphysician in the tradition of Rene Descartes, he created the famous analogy of the Cartesian Clocks, which postulates that mind and body do not interact, but only seem to, because they are synchronized by God. Leibniz publicly espoused a philosophy that was pious, logical, and, one might say, somewhat simpleminded.

Sanjay Kak: माटी के लाल (Red Ant Dream). 2013

Aug 23

In interrogating the workings of Indian democracy, filmmaker Sanjay Kak‘s माटी के लाल / Red Ant Dream (2013) traces and interweaves three distinct instances of a nation at war with itself: the Maoist movement in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, the Niyamgiri tribal resistance against industrial mining in Odisha, and the resurrection of the left movement in Punjab via the revolutionary spirit of the late Bhagat Singh. At two hours, it does call for your unwavering attention, for the stories that are told in this documentary film, will never find voice in the mainstream media vehicle. Ahistoric, and moving back and forth across the three instances mentioned earlier, Kak manages to wring out some striking voices and peoples who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, of laying down their lives, in resisting oppression that threaten their very lives and livelihoods. In unraveling these peoples and their spirit, (often dubbed by the Government of India as “internal security threats’), Kak incorporates raw ‘found footage’ as well, which puts the audience right into deadly zones of conflict. Some images and content are disturbing, so, mature audiences advised. Watch.

Werner Herzog: Stroszek. 1977. (Germany)

Jul 10

The inimitable Werner Herzog is generally known to take on film projects that are more than challenging, both in terms of production and realization, and that also involves working with actors who are ‘difficult’ to say the least. Herzog’s ‘Stroszek‘ from 1977 is a meditative cinematic triumph and remains a prominent film moment from the last century. Putting together an accomplished actor (Eva Mattes) with a non actor (the unforgettable Bruno S.), Herzog weaves a tale in the mode of a grand existential tragedy, pitching in moments of raw pathos along with reflective soul searching for the truth. In telling the story of characters in the fringes of human society – an alcoholic, a prostitute, an elderly eccentric, and their earnest quest for a more respectable, happy life via the american dream, Herzog paints a USA, and a human condition we would rather not acknowledge. Therein lies his directorial brilliance. Watch.

Jan Švankmajer: Lekce Faust. 1994

May 11

Czech animator Jan Švankmajer remains a rare and remarkable creative force in the motion pictures. For Lekce Faust (‘Faust’) his second feature length film, Švankmajer drew on his personal experience and familiarity with the Faust legend through his work on Czech director Emil Radok’s film ‘Doktor Faust’ in 1958. But, over and above that formative influence, his academic training in puppetry in the Academy of Performing Arts (Prague), coupled with his commitment to surrealist performing art via the Czech Surrealist Group, led him to craft one of the most intriguing films of the 20th century. Marrying his mastery of stop-motion cinematography to a volatile mix of puppetry, human theatre, German opera, Czech folk performance, and dark irreverence Švankmajer’s ‘Lekce Faust’ is an absolute original. Of particular interest is the fact that he manages to loosely weave into the narrative two rather well known tragic plays – Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus‘ (1604) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘Faust‘ (1806), in a spirit of imagination and creative interpretation. In the end, one is left with the feeling, that in all of this, Švankmajer remains the original conjurer, the ‘black magician’. Watch.

Immanuel Kant and the critique of reason

May 01

18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant single handedly put Germany on the map as an intellectual power (and lent it the pedantic tone for which it soon became notorious). British philosopher the late Sir Geoffrey Warnock gives us a glimpse into the mind and manner of the man who made sweeping revisions in nearly all branches of philosophy, thereby inspiring other philosophers to stop bickering among themselves and get serious about thinking again. Certainly effected what Kant called a “second Copernican revolution”: The origin of the world as we know it, he insisted, is the human mind itself, which, far from being tabula rasa (“a clean slate”), has an inherent structure through which we filter all experience and which imposes its own order on the world of phenomena (though not on the real/ideal world of “things-in-themselves – German Dinge-an-sich,” which is unknowable). Likewise, humans have an innate awareness of moral law, in the form of the categorical (i.e., unconditional) imperative (i.e., command), a sort of bottom-line ethical “ought.” In attempting to make the world safe for both god and science, Kant managed to restore some dignity to the idea of the human mind; also to destroy the credibility of traditional metaphysics (since we can’t “know” any external reality that isn’t colored by our own “knowing”), to make modern philosophy more subjective than objective (and to prefigure such radically man-centered movements as existentialism), and to widen the rift between philosophy and the physical sciences.

Hiroshi Teshigahara: Suna no onna. Japan. 1964

Apr 16

Adapted from Kōbō Abe’s 1962 novel of the same name, ‘Suna no onna’ (translated as ‘The Woman in the Dunes’) is the piercing vision of a remarkable film artist, Hiroshi Teshigahara. Trained in the Japanese traditions of ‘Ikebana’ and classical painting, his turn to cinema was distinctly an aesthetic choice. In ‘Suna no onna’, he translates cinematic frames into canvases for his expression, while telling a story resonating with the myth of Sisyphus, within the existential paradigm set up by authors like Albert Camus, whose work Teshigahara was familiar with. ‘Suna no onna’ is both a brooding and scathing critique of human reasoned argumentation (the man-of-science, the urban man, the man governed by explanations for everything), and an emphatic tribute to the intuitive knowledge of nature, that which is instinctive and intrinsic, that which has not undergone the distortions imposed by human reason. Ultimately, ‘Suna no onna’ transcends itself as a cultural product of early 1960s Japan, to make a universal and specific statement about the human condition. Watch.

René Descartes: Philosophy and seventeenth century Rationalism

Apr 05

British philosopher and eminent Descartes scholar the late Sir Bernard Williams talks about the relevance and importance of Descartes as a seminal figure of modern philosophy. René Descartes, as a man of science, mathematics and philosophy, known best for his ‘Discourse on Method’ and ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, certainly marks the point at which the world decided to go ‘modern’. His philosophical system based on deductive reasoning and a priori truths, were the basis for seventeenth century Rationalism. Individualistic, lucid and methodical, he believed in innate ideas, ones that do not come to us through experience, and not to forget his contributions to analytic geometry and the mind-set behind the scientific method, Descartes was determined to make a clean sweep of all the comfortable old assumptions, to take nobody’s word for anything, to doubt everything. We are all better for that.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Uzak

Mar 26

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s ‘Uzak‘ (translated as ‘Distant’) from 2002 adds on to the growing pool of cinema of this century which is distinctly and necessarily in opposition to the mainstream commercial cinematic idiom, typified by the ‘stylized-pop-marketized’ fare out of the Los Angeles area in the USA. Ceylan’s cinema is a cinema of sounds and silences, of doors and windows (our separators from what lies outside, what stays in – who can walk through, who closes, who opens, for what). It is also a remarkably restrained cinema, especially when considering the cinematic excesses that one encounters in the everyday, in the there here and the now. But perhaps more importantly, Ceylan articulates the inevitability of human isolation, the ‘ephemerality’ of relationships (both desired and destructive at the same time), and the potential for urban dehumanization. Watch. (Update: Unfortunately, the full length film upload was taken down by the Tube. This is a trailer, and the ending scene, for you to have a glimpse. I will share the full length film as soon as it is available again.)

David Hume: Human nature and understanding

Mar 12

Australian historian of ideas and philosopher, the late John Passmore, reveals to us the important 18th century figure of David Hume, the Scottish skeptic who took John Locke’s empirical arguments to their logical conclusion (which Locke had neglected to do) and wound up doubting our ability to know anything at all! I personally enjoy Hume’s skepticism and his effective deflation of metaphysical pretensions – making philosophers quite nervous about their assumptions. According to Hume the ‘Age of Reason’ had clearly arrived at a dead end. His rigour, consistency, and, if I may add, his honesty has a lot of undeniable appeal in the 21st century as well.