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    Reviews

    “A cerebral joyride”
    Karan Johar, filmmaker on REDIFF

    “Among the most charming and creative Indian independent films”
    J Hurtado, TWITCH

    ★★★★✩
    “You don’t really need a big star cast… you don’t even need a big budget to get the techniques of filmmaking bang on…”
    Allen O Brien, TIMES OF INDIA

    ★★★★✩
    “An outstanding experience that doesn’t come by too often out of Indian cinema!”
    Shakti Salgaokar, DNA

    ★★★
    “This film can reach out the young, urban, upwardly mobile, but lonely, disconnected souls living anywhere in the world, not just India.”
    Namrata Joshi, OUTLOOK

    “I was blown away!”
    Aseem Chhabra, MUMBAI MIRROR

    “Good Night Good Morning is brilliant!”
    Rohit Vats, IBN-LIVE

    ★★★✩✩
    “Watch it because it’s a smart film.”
    Shubha Shetty Saha, MIDDAY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A small gem of a movie.”
    Sonia Chopra, SIFY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A charming flirtation to watch.”
    Shalini Langer, INDIAN EXPRESS

    “Interesting, intelligent & innovative”
    Pragya Tiwari, TEHELKA

    “Beyond good. Original, engrossing and entertaining”
    Roshni Mulchandani, BOLLYSPICE

    * * * * *
    Synopsis

    ‘Good Night Good Morning’ is a black and white, split-screen, conversation film about two strangers sharing an all-night phone call on New Year's night.

    Writer-Director Sudhish Kamath attempts to discover good old-fashioned romance in a technology-driven mobile world as the boy Turiya, driving from New York to Philadelphia with buddies, calls the enigmatic girl staying alone in her hotel room, after a brief encounter at the bar earlier in the night.

    The boy has his baggage of an eight-year-old failed relationship and the girl has her own demons to fight. Scarred by unpleasant memories, she prefers to travel on New Year's Eve.

    Anonymity could be comforting and such a situation could lead to an almost romance as two strangers go through the eight stages of a relationship – The Icebreaker, The Honeymoon, The Reality Check, The Break-up, The Patch-up, The Confiding, The Great Friendship, The Killing Confusion - all over one phone conversation.

    As they get closer to each other over the phone, they find themselves miles apart geographically when the film ends and it is time for her to board her flight. Will they just let it be a night they would cherish for the rest of their lives or do they want more?

    Good Night | Good Morning, starring Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, The Love Guru, Quarter Life Crisis) and Seema Rahmani (Loins of Punjab, Sins and Missed Call) also features New York based theatre actor Vasanth Santosham (Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain), screenwriter and film critic Raja Sen and adman Abhishek D Shah.

    Shot in black and white as a tribute to the era of talkies of the fifties, the film set to a jazzy score by musicians from UK (Jazz composer Ray Guntrip and singer Tina May collaborated for the song ‘Out of the Blue), the US (Manu Narayan and his creative partner Radovan scored two songs for the film – All That’s Beautiful Must Die and Fire while Gregory Generet provided his versions of two popular jazz standards – Once You’ve Been In Love and Moon Dance) and India (Sudeep and Jerry came up with a new live version of Strangers in the Night) was met with rave reviews from leading film critics.

    The film was released under the PVR Director’s Rare banner on January 20, 2012.

    Festivals & Screenings

    Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Mumbai 2010 World Premiere
    South Asian Intl Film Festival, New York, 2010 Intl Premiere
    Goa Film Alliance-IFFI, Goa, 2010 Spl Screening
    Chennai Intl Film Festival, Chennai, 2010 Official Selection
    Habitat Film Festival, New Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Transilvania Intl Film Festival, Cluj, 2011 Official Selection, 3.97/5 Audience Barometer
    International Film Festival, Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Noordelijk Film Festival, Netherlands, 2011 Official Selection, 7.11/10 Audience Barometer
    Mumbai Film Mart, Mumbai 2011, Market Screening
    Film Bazaar, IFFI-Goa, 2011, Market Screening
    Saarang Film Festival, IIT-Madras, 2012, Official Selection, 7.7/10 Audience Barometer

    Theatrical Release, January 20, 2012 through PVR

    Mumbai
    Delhi
    Gurgaon
    Ahmedabad
    Bangalore
    Chennai
    Hyderabad (January 27)

    * * * * *

    More information: IMDB | Facebook | Youtube | Wikipedia | Website

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Archive For September 19th, 2017

All things Side A Side B

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

Publicity stills

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side-a-side-b-teaser-poster

Synopsis

Aiban “Joel” Gogoi, a guitarist and activist who feels strongly about the ground reality in the North East, takes a 44 hour-long train journey to accompany his singer-girlfriend Shivranjani Singh who is moving to Mumbai with their cat to explore a life beyond the mountains, even if it means a nine to five job working for a multi-national corporation.

In the course of the journey between Guwahati and Mumbai, they realise they are headed in different directions. This story of two Indias, separated by distance and ambition, is a collection of eight musical moments from the journey. The actors, hence, have sung and performed all songs live on a train in eight long takes.

Director’s Note

Side A Side B, a real world musical structured like a 90s album, features eight songs, performed and recorded live on the train. The film, hence, plays out in eight scenes (apart from the Intro and the Bonus Track in the opening and closing credits) shot with two phone cameras in eight long takes.

The musical juxtaposes two contrasting worlds and perspectives employing two contrasting narratives from the 90s. The sacred realism of the Dogme narrative (preserved by long takes and live music on location) is intercut with the time and space jumping aesthetic of the music video narrative.

The young musician-actors have sung and performed all songs themselves and the music director plays the musical narrator of the film. Most of the film was shot on the Kamakhya Express that departed Guwahati on July 7th night by an eight people guerrilla unit in 44 hours.

Director Profile

40 year-old Sudhish Kamath, a journalist and film critic with over 20 years of writing experience, has written, directed and produced three independent feature films. His debut film That Four Letter Word (2006) has been remade in Gujarati this year as Pela Adhi Akshar. In 2010, Kamath made Good Night Good Morning, a conversation film about two strangers falling in love over the course of a phone call on New Year’s Eve in New York. The film had back to back premieres at the Mumbai Film Festival (2010) and the South Asian International Film Festival, New York (2010), played at the Transilvania International Film Festival, Romania (2011), Noordelijk Film Festival, Netherlands (2011), Habitat Film Festival, Delhi (2011) and Silk Screen Film Festival, Pittsburgh(2011). Good Night Good Morning released in January 2012 through PVR Director’s Rare.

In 2013, Kamath brought together 10 other Indian directors with disparate styles of storytelling for the experimental serialised anthology X – Past is Present, to build a bridge between the different cinemas of India. X – Past is Present was the Opening Film at the South Asian International Film Festival (2014) and was selected in the World cinema section of the International Film Festival of Kerala (2014) before it released theatrically in November 2015. The film also played at the Habitat Film Festival, Delhi (2016), Bangalore International Film Festival (2016) and the Indie Meme Festival, Texas (2016).

Official Teaser 

What people are tweeting about Side A Side B 

Recording the journey of Side A Side B

Interview with the director – Flickside

Making of Side A Side B – The Hindu

Review of Side A Side B – Flickside

Twitter Reviews of Side A Side B

Why do we not want what we want?

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

What do we all want from a partner? 

Someone who gives us all the attention and love in the world.

What is the biggest turn off when you are looking for one?

Someone who gives us all the attention and love in the world.

What we want is what also turns us off because we don’t want too much of it in the beginning.

When you like someone, you show interest. Unfortunately though, there is no universally accepted right amount of interest.

If it’s too little, the other doesn’t even know.

If it’s too much, then it becomes a turn off.

If it’s moderated & calculated, it becomes a game.

Nobody likes to play games. Yet everybody ends up moderating, calculating and procrastinating when they find someone who makes them nervous.

But the only way to do it right is be yourself.

If they don’t want someone who shows too much interest or too little interest, then it’s obvious they don’t want it. Whatever be the reason. 

You don’t want to get your heart broken over a silly power game. There’s no way anything that begins as a game would end well. 

People who like the chase will stop when the conquest is done. Yet, we encourage the chase. 

I have found myself guilty of this too. The end of conflict is the end of the story. 

This modern dating/gaming system is designed to get hearts broken. 

So what do you do? It has nothing to do with how good or bad you look. Don’t take it personally. It’s just not your size. 

Go back to the beginning & repeat till you find the right one. The extra large heart. 

The best part of being a storyteller is that I always find a story to tell at the end of the day. 

As artists, we are intrepid. 

We know that the heart soldiers on. It needs no armour. Because the more it breaks, the stronger it gets.

You don’t complete me

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

Have seen people fall in love because they feel the need for someone to complete them.  

You don’t fall for someone because you are running out of time or options. You fall for someone when you feel you have all the options and the time in the world. You can be with anyone but you choose to be with this one person. 

Not because he/she is perfect but because he/she makes you happy in ways nobody else does. 

This clarity only comes from self awareness, independence and freedom of being single and not feeling incomplete.  
Broken people finding other people to fix them will fall apart once the purpose is fulfilled.

“You complete me” sounds cute in a movie but in real life, we need to complete ourselves first. And unless we are our complete selves, we cannot expect to find happiness through another person. 

I think I became a complete person only over the last year after I set myself free and lived out of a suitcase. 

When you go around the world, you realise the value of a home. 

Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side but being complete means not ever worrying about having to pick a side. 

Only a life without regrets will set you free.

We don’t communicate any more?

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

I did my M.S in Communication. But I still don’t understand what it has become with the multitude of universes that have opened up with social media… where we are simultaneously denizens of Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube among other worlds. And each ecosystem has its own beasts. 

“Treat people as you expect to be treated” is a thought that I’m still trying to fully understand. 

When we go to meet people who are always late, we go easy on the clock too. 

When we make plans with serial flakers/cloud planners, we make back up plans. 

When we don’t get respect, at some point we stop respecting. 

Because all healthy relationships are grounded in equality. And toxic ones happen because of inequality and gaming – where players of the game try to score over the other. 

I do this exercise – on a lighter note, of course – when I meet people I’m getting to know where I dare them to show me how many Unread (hence unanswered) messages they have on whatsapp. (I don’t want to read them but make them tell me/ show the number) And that number tells me a lot about that person. 

Some people have over a 100 unread messages (not including group messages). 

Going by “the treat people as you expect to be treated” logic, they should be replying to all those messages if they expect people to reply to their messages. 

Yet, they don’t. I understand why. Some are unwanted messages (girls get a lot of these), some promotional and some where they have no desire to know let alone communicate with the person. Also, the more busy we become and get caught up in our own lives and troubles, it becomes difficult to respond to every person. 

So then we filter, prioritise and respond only to those who matter. 

When we SeenZone people, we expect them to understand we are busy and yet, don’t understand when the same is done to us. 

It’s after all the virtual equivalent of looking through someone who just waved at you and pretend that you didn’t see them.

Online relationships are now operating like market forces based on demand and supply. When there is too much demand, you hike your price and when there’s none, you drop everything and take what you get. 

I want to live in a world where relationships are non transactional, unconditional and equal but when time is limited, goals increasing by the day, how can we possibly treat people exactly the way we want to be treated? 

We are always going to prioritise those who matter. But then, we only crave for attention most from where we don’t get it from. Or try to come up with our own sense of fairness to cope with the injustice we think is done to us.

So we unwittingly create this vicious cycle of doing to others what has been done to us. 

“Someone broke my heart, so why should I care about someone’s heart. Or someone gave me a counterfeit note, I just passed it around.”

In an ideal world, relationships should be unconditional and honest but we live in a world that isn’t exactly nice to those who don’t expect anything.

So as a student of communication, what do I do? I communicate. To the best of my ability. As much as I can. Even if it’s something the other person does not want to hear. As honestly as I can. The courtesy of response always makes me feel like I’ve treated people right. 

Communication solves everything. It’s fairly simple too. But we are forgetting how to. Maybe because are too distracted and confused by the clutter of all the windows open. On our phones and laptops. 

It’s as simple as a file you are working on. 

File – Save – Exit works better than turning off the machine in haste and later, realising that you lost it all. 

When we want closure, we need to close some of these windows. And open a few doors in the real world. 

Because there’s no stronger communication than a hug and a kiss. The only kind that makes us truly happy.

Artists are lonely souls 

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

Why do you do what do despite all this struggle? It’s a difficult question to answer every time I’m asked in an interview. 

To be honest, I don’t know. But that’s a boring answer. So I think hard every time.

I want to share my take on things, my experiences in life and love, observations on people, epiphanies and alternative perspectives, cathartic narratives, deeply personal secrets that I can hide in plain sight… to name a few things I feel strongly about.

But the truth probably is not about what I want to share but the why… I think artists are lonely souls. What we can’t share with a soulmate, we put out into the world as art, as stories, as films… hoping that these thoughts and feelings would reach someone in this world who feels equally passionate about these very things. Some day. In the hope that we would be understood for who we really are. Long after we are gone. 

Beneath convenient labels of appearance, race, age, gender, religion, nationalities or bank balance. We want someone to GET us. For what we truly are. 

We thirst for a connect. Maybe why I don’t GET people who aren’t passionate or have no interest beyond the superficial parameters of success, stability, societal codes, systemic standards or loose definitions of who we are. 

As people. Absolutely little nothings in an infinite expanse of time and space… with something to say. Made of the same thing but defined by our art, stories, film and this mad struggle of life itself.

The irony of finding love from options

September 19, 2017 · by sudhishkamath

What brings you to Tinder/Hinge?

I’m not a fan of the job interview format. 
So I have been meaning to write about this question and answer ritual that sucks the romance out of meet-cutes. 

You have just about managed to break the ice and start a conversation and it’s all fun till the other wants to know: What are you doing on a dating app?

I mean, what are YOU doing?

Some feel the need to clarify: I mean, you are good looking and successful, why would you need a dating app? How are you still single?

And there are some who will decide on the basis of this question and answer based interview if they want to meet you.  That’s fine except that most of the questions aren’t text conversation material. I am sorry I am not discussing relationship histories, my plans to get married or to settle down with someone I haven’t even met. For all I know, I’m being Catfished.

To be absolutely honest, I don’t even know if dating today makes much sense because nobody wants to be an option and the very basis of dating apps is that everyone is an option.

If I were an extrovert, I would walk up to chat with random strangers at pubs but personally, I would come across as damn creepy if I tried though I’m kind (of nice), pretty (smart), quite funny (funny-looking at least), very sexy (inner beauty… mentally, if not physically) and super at exaggerating. 

I don’t date people I work with and am not in school or college or an office space to have a circle. 

Since I’m still an outsider to this city, I don’t have many avenues to meet new and interesting people, let alone date them. The last time someone walked up to me in a bar and complimented me on my jawline, I played it too cool to take her number. And now I don’t even remember her face. 

That’s how much of an introvert I am. 

So I’m on dating apps out of hope to meet someone who is as romantic as I am, someone who isn’t a product of a systemic need to settle down but someone who I can grow (and maybe grow old – not a deal breaker) with, explore the world without a care about stability or societal approval. 

Someone who isn’t thinking or overthinking what’s the appropriate amount or kind or frequency of conversation, someone who doesn’t understand the modern culture of gaming or keeping score, someone who knows that life and love isn’t about choosing someone because there’s no one else available who checks out all the boxes but choosing to be with someone even if the person isn’t perfect when you have all the options in the world. Someone who values love and art over materialistic pursuits. 

Because being with his person makes you so happy that you don’t want anything else in life. Your purpose is her and her’s you. I believe that kind of love is possible to find even if rare.

I’m on dating apps to find this person who gets my idea of madness and romance and sees the connection between the two. You can’t be crazy in love without a bit of madness. 

I want to find the person who can understand the whimsy of a love letter written to a person you have never met.

I want an open mind and a clean slate to be able to say:

Dear love of my life,

I can’t say I come with zero baggage. Nor am I expecting you to. We are not kids to walk away carefree from relationships, after all. We have not been kids in a while.

But we deserve to be young again. We deserve to do stupid things together. We deserve to laugh a lot, make out like teens do and fall in love like it’s for the first time ever. We deserve another chance.

Every time we get our hearts broken, we end up carrying a box full of pieces of our heart.

It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of our strength. To love fearlessly, recklessly. A sign that we valued something, no matter how bad it ended, no matter how short it was.

It is a sign of our faith and belief in something. Faith that broke. Which is why it hurt. And every reminder would bring back small shoots of pain.

But let’s not be afraid of this pain. Pain is good. Because that’s how we know we love.

The ability to love today is a superpower. A lot of us are afraid to fall in love again because of the weight of these boxes of broken pieces we end up carrying along.

I say, let’s not fear each other’s boxes.

We’ll find a place for them. I’ll keep a closet, you keep yours. They are a treasure we will cherish for life because they are who we were. They are everything that led us to each other.

I heard barefoot running actually makes feet tougher. I’m sure the heart gets tougher too, with time. Every now and then, when we hang with someone we like, the heart starts pumping extra blood and life into our bodies. It makes us feel young again. And a lot less jaded. We lose a few years. It makes us want to hide the boxes we are carrying. At least, it makes me want to keep my hands free. So, even if you have just one hand free, we can make a start.

May I hold your hand? For a while or a longer while.

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