Soulful Cinema

I came across a news article today in the morning which talked about Reliance launching 20 new TV channels later this year. Of these, 5 are supposed to be movie channels. With Firangi (non-Hollywood movies), World Movies (again non-Hollywood movies), NDTV Lumiere (awarded and critically acclaimed movies) being on the air already or about-to-be-soon (suggesting an attempt to experiment with undefined film genres in order to provide for audience which is frustrated with re-runs of Hollywood and Bollywood biggies) and with perhaps a dozen or more movie channels already doing rounds, I was wondering whether this is not just the right time to launch a Soulful Cinema (Spiritual Entertainment) on at least one of these channels where they can air some existing movies which fall into the category of Spiritual Entertainment for a niche audience. With 400+ channels expected to be on air by 2009, super-micro-niches is something broadcasters CAN and HAVE to look into in order to survive.

With this thought in mind, I decided to start compiling a list of existing such movies, and making it long enough to make business sense. For now, am starting with a list of movies at the top of mind, the details of what will qualify for Soulful Cinema can perhaps form a topic for a thesis, but to sum it up in short, it should be soothing, intriguing cinema which talks about living life fully and tries to wonder about where we come from, where to we go and why we are here. I know the same can be defined in many more ways, and feel free to give your feedback, but in any case, it has to talk of the human spirit(soul-aatma), it's real joys rather than just ephemeral and instant gratifications covered by myopic themes of contemporary Bollywood and Hollywood flicks.

With that in mind, let's get started on compiling the list, without any particular methodology:

1) Samsara by Pan Nalin (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196069/

2) Matrix Trilogy by Wachowski Brothers (1999-2003)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

3) What Dreams May Come by Vincent Ward (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/

4) What the Bleep Do We Know ? (2004)
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5249920845624238647

5) Meet Joe Black (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119643/plotsummary

6) Lord of The Rings (2001 - 2003)
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5249920845624238647

7) The Man from Earth (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/synopsis

8) Good Will Hunting (1997)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/

9) Patch Adams (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129290/

10) Anand (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066763/

11) The Secret (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0846789/

12) Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223/

13) The Butterfly Effect (2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/plotsummary

14) Run Lola Run (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/

15) One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/plotsummary

16) Lost in Translation (2003)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/plotsummary

17) Conversations with God (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489682/plotsummary

18) Forrest Gump (1994)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/plotsummary

19) Before Sunrise (1995)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112471/plotsummary

20) The Truman Show (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/

21) Cast Away (2000)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/

22) Waking Life (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243017/plotsummary

23) A Beautiful Mind (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/

24) Sleepless in Seattle ( 1993)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108160/

25) Serendipity (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240890/

26) Star Wars and Star Trek

27) Pleasantville (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789/

28) Jerry Maguire (1996)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/plotsummary

29) Dead Poet's Society (1989)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165/plotsummary

30) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0338013/

Ok, folks...that's it for now, and I guess a lot for "top of the mind" please feel free to add on to the list and give your feedbacks. While surfing on the net, I also found a lot of like minded-compilations and films which I had not seen. Here's one of the links:

http://spiritual-cinema-source.com/index.php?Itemid=29&id=98&option=com_content&task=view

May be it's time that they are brought to the small screen in an organized fashion.

Here are a few books which make an argument in favour of this genre:

• Spiritual Cinema by Gay Hendricks, Stephen Simon
• The Force Is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives by Stephen Simon
• Reel Spirit: A Guide to Movies That Inspire, Explore and Empower by Raymond Teague
• Cinema Nirvana: Enlightenment Lessons from the Movies by Dean Sluyter
• Movies and the Meaning of Life by Kimberly Ann Blessing, Paul J. Tudico
• The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin

First Script: The Alchemist

I had promised that I would discuss in detail ideas about scripts for films and TV. So having discussed theoretical details about the vision and B-plan, here's the first section of the first script - Alchemist (by Paulo Coehlo).

I look forward to your comments . I have decided to include a lot of quotations verbatim because it in these insightful pearls that the strength of the story lies. As a barebone story it might not sound so impressive.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

This story is about a shepherd boy who listens to his heart, learns to read the omens strewn along life’s path and always follows his dreams without fear. What makes the story stand out is the pithy nuggets of insightful dialogues which have been masterfully planted by Coehlo along the path of Santiago’s journey. The magical journey is captivating and has the potential to be picturized through cinematography which would also require some fascinating special effects in order to bring out the full potential of the author’s imagination.

The story begins with Santiago waking up his sheep and desiring to go back (after an year) and meet the merchant’s daughter with whom he was infatuated. While thinking about the sheep, he thinks about how they trusted him and had forgotten to follow their own instincts just because he provided them nourishment (as is perhaps the case with most of mankind too).

Thinking of his past, he recalls that he had attended a seminary until he was sixteen and having studied Latin, Spanish and Theology his parents had wanted him to become a priest, and a pride to his family, but he wasn’t interested in knowing God or man’s sins. And he let his family know that his dream was to travel.

His father tries to dissuade him saying that people from all over the world to passed through their village, and although they come in search of new things, they leave as the same people as they were upon their arrival. They climb the mountain to see the castle and wonder whether the past was better than the present. They are blonde or dark skinned but they are basically the same people as anywhere in the world. They even wish to stay in their beautiful land forever.

But Santiago isn’t convinced and says that he wants to see those people’s lands and how they lived. His father tells him, that except for the rich, it is only the shepherds who travel the world, and Santiago says, “Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!”

His father finally agrees to let go of him and says that one day he would realize that their countryside is the best and their women, the most beautiful. Even though he says this, Santiago can read in his father’s eyes a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world. A desire that was still alive despite his father having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life.

The boy was happy to able to live out his dream everyday. Whenever he could, he sought out a new road to travel, and exchanged the book he carried for a new one. The world was huge and inexhaustible and he had only his sheep to set the route for a while, and he would discover other interesting things. The problem was that the sheep didn’t realize that they were walking a new road everyday. They did not see that the fields are new and the seasons change. All they thought about was food and water. Maybe we’re all the same way, the boy often mused.

As he was getting excited about meeting the merchant’s daughter, he realized that it was the possibility of a dream come true that makes life interesting.

One day he comes across a Gypsy woman and tells her about his recurrent dream. The woman tells him, “You came so that you could learn about your dreams. And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.”

The boy tells her about the dream of a child who takes him to the Egyptian pyramids and says that he were able to go there, he would find hidden treasure. The old lady makes him promise that he would give her one-tenth of the treasure and that his dream was difficult as he would need to go the Pyramids to seek the treasure.

At first, the boy is taken aback but then the old lady says to him, “I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It’s the simple things in life that are most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. And since I am not wise, I have had to learn other arts, such as the reading of palms.”

The boy asks her, “Well, how am I going to get to Egypt?”

She replies, “I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with.”

The boy was disappointed at no reassurance and he starts roaming around in the city. He knew a lot of people in the city and that’s what made travelling appealing to him. He always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. He thought that when someone sees the same persons everyday, they wind up becoming a part of his life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want him to be, they get angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea about how others should lead their lives, but none about his own.

He started reading a book and an old man comes up and tries to strike a conversation with him. The boy taking him to be an illiterate old man with nothing to do and nothing interesting to talk about, tries to avoid conversation with him. However, he is surprised when after having glimpsed the title of the book, he says, “It’s a book that says the same thing that all the other books in the world say. It describes people’s inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”

Stunned by the man’s wisdom, the boy asks, “What is the world’s greatest lie?”

The old man answers, “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

The boy realizing that he hadn’t let that happen to him gets into a conversation with this mystical guy and come to know that he was the King of Salem. Again the boy is thrown into doubt about the old man. Then the old man starts telling Santiago about his dream and how he could help him. He writes the name of his family members and incidents from his life (which no one knew) on the sand and the boy is finally left in awe of him.

The boy asks why a king would talk to a shepherd. The old man says that it’s because he had succeeded in discovering his destiny. The boy asks, what “destiny” is and the king replies that, “It is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is.”

“At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny.”

The boy asks about this mysterious force (in order to impress the merchant’s daughter with this knowledge).

The old man tells him, “It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to achieve your destiny. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because the desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

“Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?”

“Yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.”

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

The old man tells him about a baker who also wanted to travel but first decided to buy a bakery and put aside some money. Probably as an old man he will spend a month in Africa, never realizing that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of. He too had thought about becoming a shepherd but bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.

At this the boy gets scared that the merchant might marry his daughter to someone prosperous, perhaps a baker!

The old man continues, “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own destinies.”

The boy asks why the old man is telling him all this, and the man replies, “Because you are trying to realize your destiny and you are at that point where you’re about to give it all up.”

“And that’s when you appear on the scene?”, the boy asks.

“Not always, but I always appear in one form or another. Sometimes I appear in the form of a solution or a good idea. At other times, at a crucial moment, I make it easier for things to happen. But most of the times people don’t realize I have done them.”

The old man tells him about a miner who had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. For five years, he had unsuccessfully examined thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone – just one more – he would have found his emerald. Since the man had sacrificed everything to his destiny, the old man decided to become involved. He transformed himself into a stone and rolled up to the miner’s foot. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But it had been thrown with such a force that it broke open and embedded in it was the most beautiful emerald in the world.”

Vision: B-Plan

It is important to define the vision of the genre/channel/films and also to differentiate between the various content categories and their objectives. The overall company/genre vision might be to increase the SQ (spiritual quotient) of audience in order to increase the GNH (gross national happiness) by making people focus more on the INSIDE so that they pull back from the material rat-race and thus decrease unnecessary tensions, problems and creation of sanskaras for themselves. Also focusing on improving one’s own self and moving in the direction of Satchidanand will make people stop focusing on flaws in the outside world unnecessarily. This will also cause decrease of attachments/bondages/maaya which is the cause of all sorrow.

However, we have to clearly define the content categories in terms of objectives as they might vary. For example, films on Paulo Coehlo’s novels might make for good soothing entertainment but may not have the same didactic effect as a program on CWG (Conversations with God – a humorous Bruce Almighty kind of novel) or satsang/gita/shastras/scriptures. Also depicting the biographies of giants like Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramhansa might provide a much better ‘road map’ to spiritual aspirants rather than books/movies which have a high SQ (spiritual quotient) but are not necessarily written by a realized soul. Here, speeches/books by the likes of Vivekananda/Paramhansa Yogananda might make much more sense. Infact, now that so much content is being produced on mythology (including many repetitions of Ramayana etc.), why not make biographies of realized souls?

Then again the real objectives of the content might not be the same as stated marketing objectives for the content, as no financier will put in money for philanthropic reasons, but for a high ROI (return on investment). However, there are a few new channels like Pragya which do seem to have a backing for non-profit reasons for at least a few years.

Now, in both, while defining the objectives for the channel/genre content and in defining it’s marketing strategy one has to clearly identify the target audience. While movies on Alchemist and even a comic CWG might attract a much larger chunk of the mass audience, satsang and biographies of realized souls will be subscribed to only be a select few sadhaks. Now ‘subscribe’ is the instrumental word here, as in the near future PPV(pay-per-view)/VOD(video-on-demand) might justify making content for audience in the long tail (a book by Chris Anderson suggesting that the last 80% of less popular content might bring in more revenues in a personalized digital distribution model, thus enabling finely sliced niche segments).

In fact, the whole genre may be targeted only at a certain segment of the long tail rather than the mass audience. The mass audience is anyways not paying for all the content they watch currently and choose it while surfing in a pretty indiscrete fashion. They mostly buy 24*7 channels (Rs. 50-100) for a month.

So we might be only aiming at a small discerning audience, which luckily for us might also be SEC AB having the necessary money to pay for what they choose. And they might readily pay Rs.300 per month for your limited content (and with their limited time) rather than dishing out Rs. 300 to a MSO where they are just loaded in a plethora on inane and mundane media.

In any case, CAS/DTH will enable people to choose their channels a ‘la carte’ (pay for each channel you want) rather than paying for the whole menu!

B-Plan for a new genre

Before I go on to define the vision for the new genre which needs to be initiated on the small and large screen, I would like to list out a few novels/books which can be converted into films/TV serials and thus give you an idea about what I am talking about:

1) All books by Paulo Coehlo - The Alchemist, 11 Minutes, The Witch of Portobello and all others.
2) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
3) Books by Richard Bach - Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion and others.
4) Conversations with God 1,2,3 - Neale Donald Walsch
5) Biographies of Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Ramakrishna Parahansa and other spiritual giants.

Before I go ahead, let me elaborate some concepts further:

1. Animation Channel/Segment: The phenomenal success of Hanuman, Krishna, Ganesha and other animated sequences in recent times has shown the potential to attract the ‘Cartoon Network’ generation. These young kids are fascinated by whatever is on television as long as it is animated. This ‘captive audience’ can be provided stories and folklores from Upnishads, Puranas and other scriptures which transmit Indian values to thee formative brains. In fact, presence of ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ provides a lot of ready made material to be converted to an animation channel/segment based on Indian values as soon as the necessary resources are mobilized for it.

2. Shastraath – A Talk Show: The Indian television space today faces a surfeit of ‘talk shows’ which move around a bush on social, political, economical and cultural issues. While such programs are necessary to answer certain essential questions, any individual (especially youth) face certain existential questions (which are at the core of all other superficial/material issues) for which there is no platform. These are some very basic questions which the scriptures like Upnishads and Srimad Bhagwat Gita take up in great detail, such as:

a) What is the goal of our lives ?

b) How is happiness achieved ?

c) Why we do get pain in our lives ?

d) Is there a God ?

e) Why does he give pain ?

f) Is there something wrong with the 'system'/us ?

g) Who should/will change it/us ?

h) How ?

Shastraath, a talk show, shall bring on one platform, spiritual giants, acharyas and gurus, on the one hand and worldy and so called ‘successful’ people on the other with these issues at the forefront to debate in the true ancient Indian tradition of ‘Shastraarth’ to find answers to queries raised by participants and audience. The audience shall judge the relative pros and cons of paths suggested by various panelists and how it has affected their lives and that of the society.

3. Spoof of ‘trash on Indian TV’: Give the enormous amount of trash being meted out on Indian television, there is an urgent need to spoof and parody television programs and media content which harms Indian values. For example, the famous ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ series and all its subsequent sequels can be spoofed as ‘Kyunki Sauce Bhi Kami Tamatar Thi’ as a comic series to highlight the shallowness of such programs. Similarly, other media content can be spoofed and parodied to show the hollowness of such programs to Indian audience. In the US, Comedy Central has show swith Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert which take a major dig at discrepancies in US news space. A similar trend can be started through Pragya.

4. Integrating Spiritual Ideas from the Western World: While there is a plethora of content and stories about spiritual journeys in Indian literature and scriptures, the modern day Indian youth is more impressed by similar ideas expressed by western authors. Some such authors, such as Paulo Coehlo, Neil Donald Walsch and Richard Bach (Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion etc.) have written many bestsellesr which have a following of millions in India too. In fact, Paulo Coehlo’s most famous novel, ‘The Alchemist’, a wonderful and captivating story about the life/spiritual journey of a shepherd is being made into a motion picture by Warner Brothers. Walsch’s ‘Conversations with God’, a humorous and insightful book has the potential to be made into a TV series on the lines of the famous blockbuster, ‘Bruce Almighty’ (a major hit among youth given that it touched spiritual issues and was also comical). A short movie has already been made about the same book.

5. Matrix like movie/TV series on Upnishads: The famous English movie ‘Matrix’, a metaphysical quest about a character called ‘Neo’ takes a lot of references from Upnishads and the alst sequel also ends with a shloka from Upnishad, ‘Tamasoma Jyotirgamya…’. The Upnishads have a lot of concepts which given a good creative team, visualizers and animators can be scripted into beautiful stories for both the large and small screen. My research about similar movies made in US revealed that the presence of ‘spiritual issues’ along with ‘special effects’ to symbolize spiritual quests/adventures in motion pictures has resulted in some of the biggest hits of all time, such as ‘Lord of The Rings’ (Christian fable) and Matrix (Upnishads and Nietzsche’s philosophy).

6. Programs on spiritual giants of India: While a lot of TV programs have been made on political leaders or even mythological figures, programs on recent spiritual giants like Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Raman Maharishi and other such names ned to be made in order to inspire youth to follow their footsteps. There is a large number of youth who cannot find heroes with characters strong enough to idolize.

7. Inside India (talk show): India today is fast aping the top-down capitalistic society in the US where all the power is vested in central organizations (private or public) in a few cities. This leads to monopolistic control over both businesses and administration. In US, a less than 10 conglomerates own around 60% of the wealth. In India too, emergence of Ambanis (Relaince) and other business houses which are horizontally and vertically integrated are capturing the businesses of small business houses in many industrial sectors. In addition, the British Raj legacy has completely wiped out the concept of a bottom-up ‘Gram Swaraj’ approach for administration (espoused by Gandhiji also) from the minds of the ruling intelligentsia.

A debate about these systemic anomalies and its implications on the resulting consumerist society is must and should involve not just those in the limelight but also those who are working outside the ‘recognized’ systems as NGOs or individuals to raise these issues.

8. Mall, Multiplex aur Multi-storey: A comic series/film highlighting the monotonous mundane life in cites where people live isolated in high rise building, flooding out on roads to crowd malls and multiplexes on weekends returning to their robotic lives for the rest of the week without any change. The futility of a top-down capitalistic society where the rat-race extracts all and people are driven by the need to outdo what their neighbors have rather than their own true needs.

I shall elaborate more on the vision and the objectives of this genre/channel/programs in the weeks to come. In the meanwhile I look forward to your comments about my ideas so far...

Life in a Metro

Birth.

About two decades of so called education which is today more a rat-race for learning tools to earn money rather than gain any true knowledge. Entering the rat race for about 40-50 years to earn money, at times selling your soul and then the obvious and unavoidable…..death !

In this non-stop, assembly line like transition from one end of the continuum to the other, relationships like parents, siblings, spouses and children and emotions like love, friendship and hatred, and, events like success and failure happen to us.

Whether or not we understand these dearest of relationships, the people we come across and claims to love, emotions, passions and events we encounter or the raison d'être of life itself is no more a concern in the rat-race for more, whether it be for money or material goods.

That joie de vivre is today nothing more than trinkets in malls and that we spend our lives running after something we will lose in less than a century along with the most precious of our gifts, LIFE itself,…is strangely enough not a concern for the PRAGMATIC and WORLDLY.

Where from we come, where to we go and why…the most logical questions a CEO of the biggest Fortune 500 may ask are not asked about the biggest projects of all…LIFE.

The reason for the brief event called LIFE…the reason for its joys and sorrows..the reason why we can never find what we are always REALLY after…that most elusive of all treasures…HAPPINESS…these are some questions we think of all our lives and never have time or opportunity to ask or ponder about...

This blog is an honest and creative endeavour to understand life and spread smiles on the faces of all those we rub our shoulders against by bringing along like minded people. This blog wishes to raise these questions on a platform which will bring on one stage …both believers and agnostics…men of God and men of the world…and a rare few who have bridged the divide to understand how LIFE ought to be truly LIVED.

The long term goal is to develop film scripts, TV serials and media entities which will espouse such ideas in an era of inane and mundane media.

This is a humble beginning in the internet era which has shown the power of ONE.

In the forthcoming blogs I will be discussing ideas for film scripts and TV serials, which I intend to grow into a movement with the sheer power of internet's bandwagon effect. In the future I also intend to include ads on this blog in order to start monetizing for the future endeavours.

So hop in and contribute if you too think out of the box and want a change for the better.