Articles by: Joshy Joseph

Painting by Sorei Kesang

What’s that decisive moment in art and life?

“History has become a catechism. You are given a question; you are given the answer. You stick with that question and you stick with that answer. Don’t ask another question and don’t look for another answer”, said Historian Romila Thapar in an interview about contemporary India. I should admit that while attending an online seminar organized by the Visva Bharati[Read More…]

by 13/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
An autofiction Manifesto

An autofiction Manifesto

I was making all kinds of films all these years, but mostly non-fiction films. The idiom of story-telling  in my  films were  more or less indebted to a fictional tradition.  I pushed the boundaries to such an extent that it  becomes invalid after a point if I could hook my viewers. In some  films,  obviously a viewer –  friendly  idiom[Read More…]

by 08/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Photo by Ratan Luwangcha

Camels, Angels and Needle head of Cinema

The quest for the new and the undiscovered has driven mankind all through its existential evidence on the planet. At some point the discoveries and the load of knowledge going with them were categorized into different faculties such as science, arts, history and many more. Even the broader faculties had to be further sub-categorized into finer branches for the sheer[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Razak Kottakkal: A Walk Through The Memory Lane

Razak Kottakkal: A Walk Through The Memory Lane

Razak Kottakkal is identified with artistic photographs. Almost everyone ~ living or otherwise ~ connected with Malayalam literature insisted on accompanying their works with photographs taken by Razak. Writers grew old but they continued to use pictures taken in their youth. Their age was frozen by Razak forever. Razak’s black-and-white pictures of the greatest Malayalam writer (according to me), Vaikkom[Read More…]

by 07/11/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – II

“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – II

My feeling that a poet, who called cinema a sycophant of literature would have approved Aravindan, a director who explored the medium’s possibilities, lends courage to me. This is uncannily similar to the feeling that Tagore, for a moment was stunned by what Wilfred Owen’s mother had revealed to him. I’m sure Tagore would have dumped the NBT calendar. It[Read More…]

by 31/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – I

“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – I

The Symphony  No 5 was inside Beethovan’s brain, when he first conceived it. A group of musicians invoke that experience, aurally, from the atmosphere every time they meet to perform. And a sound, non-existent before, suddenly acquires tones of flesh and blood. The cinema, like music, is an art of time, film makers have said. Rabindranath Tagore called it an[Read More…]

by 24/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Prof M N Vijayan

 In cinema, naked feet are not assigned sounds, but they gain them in poems

It’s better to stay away from poetics to present in prose someone who wrote in verse that his poems have no forewords, critical studies or words of adulation. My patron saint in this endeavour is Malayalam writer N S Madhavan, who dribbles with words when he writes on football,a style interspersed with quotes and blows of vuvuzela. One can take[Read More…]

by 16/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
God’s Own Fools

God’s Own Fools

These are all very Kolkatan in nature and you really won’t get to see or hear them in any other parts of the country. What? Some years back a national daily carried an interesting photograph in their ‘City Lights’ column. It said that at Bowbazar police station, some paintings of Pablo Picasso were replicated and some of the painter’s quotations[Read More…]

by 10/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray And Mani Kaul

Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray And Mani Kaul

Endurance of pain is an idea directly drawn from Christianity. However, in the Indian context, historically, endurance of pain is regarded as un-knowledge, avidya (in Sanskrit an antonym of knowledge, but not ignorance) and nonexistent. It is just not there, here, or anywhere. When the “I, myself” does not exist, who is left to endure pain?  This is how the[Read More…]

by 24/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In search of the common man

In search of the common man

Every time I returned to Mumbai, I looked forward to reading the pocket-cartoons of RK Laxman. Though everything changes around him, the common man, with his studied silence witnessing twists and turns, had looked the same for decades, in the pocket cartoon of THE TIMES OF INDIA front page.  It gave me a sense of permanence. Every time I made[Read More…]

by 24/08/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
John Was More Naked Than Adam

John Was More Naked Than Adam

Hell is not God’s idea, I believe. I also believe that John Abraham and God had an erratic relationship with each other. But then, why the hell didn’t John invest in full the coins that God had entrusted him so dearly ? I first met John when I was a fresh graduate and a culture -vulture apprentice at Kochi. One[Read More…]

by 11/08/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy