Last year, FilmBuff missed out on one edition. To compensate, this year, Filmbuff is carrying 15 articles of utmost importance. Amidst this atrocious pandemic, writers, critics, journalists and people from various areas of interest came together and contributed generously for this volume. I am enormously indebted to them. FilmBuff seeks to promote new talents in the field of film criticism along with highlighting veteran scholars’ enriching text. Discussions on films have a wider periphery. Film as an academic discipline had from its inception, borrowed heavily from various other subjects and established itself as a separate discipline. But it retained a certain kind of fluidity akin to it. As a result, there has been, over the years, a curious interaction between films and various other disciplines.
Moreover, with the advent of new media, films have taken up numerous new ways to reassert its dominance. The medium of watching filmshas changed so is its forms and contents. Films are becoming more and more experimental, therefore, more and more adventurous. The polemics of Independent film and the burgeoning globalized market economy continued. Film Festivals are still relevant but the tremendous corporatisation at times compromised on its quality of the choice of films. With huge technological development, what seems amiss is profundity in filmic narratives. Increasing democratization of the film making procedures also produced atrocious(Change this word with appalling) creations. Nevertheless, with the blurred distinction between high and low culture, mass consumption and production is inevitable. But, cinema is not a product; it is also about a philosophy, a certain kind of ideology and auteur ship.
With the ‘new normal’ situation, the challenge lies in making films and also screening it widely which for now seems to be a distant dream. The Pandemic re-establishes the importance of art in our lives. What would we have done in its absence!!
Nevertheless, hope the dedicated readership of FilmBuff would savour this particular issue. Do write back, share views and let there be a discourse!!