frag/MINCE

Andy Warhol thought in the future everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame. Francois Truffaut believed everyone would be running around with tiny little cameras filming everything. They were both only able to look so far into the future. And of course, both were right in their forecast. However, the micro-fame of video-enabled phones and YouTube is merely the precursor to a ubiquitous cinema in real time. What happens when everything becomes fodder to be recorded and recalled? Do we blur the distinction between real life and cinema? And how does that affect movie making? It’s cinema verite run amok.

If everything is being recorded all of the time, what does that say about performance in the public space? What does that say about the construction of cinema in general? If there is no longer a dividing line between real life and what could be a “movie” proper does real life become more like a film? Do the performances of Mr. Oscar infiltrate our world making us less aware of what is real or a performance? Everything becomes a movie in the making. Or even a movie happening right in front of our eyes. Actualizing itself in real time.

What some politicians fear most is that this young, educated population reminds them of the Arab Spring and they are demanding change. They fear what they call “the pink revolution”. When people say, as they so often do, that feminism is the preoccupation of a few white middle-class women in the west agonising over whether to wear lipstick or not, I wish they could see these angry men and women out at night demanding that women be safe, who say rape is always a weapon used to keep women in fear.

For something is happening here, anger is overtaking fear. The dam has burst. The debate the politicians want is one of law and order, but the radical one is about how to change the culture itself. And because this is India we are taking about a myriad of cultures. Somehow, though, through the shock and the trauma, this country is examining itself