Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 6 PDF
Chapter 6 PDF
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blew over
catapulted into
played into their hands
heard a bell ringing
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1. A Swedish actress, in 1954 she received an Honorary Oscar for her unforgettable screen
performances. The Guinness Book of World Records named her the most beautiful woman
who ever lived. She was also voted Best Silent Actress of the country.
2. An Indian actress whose performance was widely appreciated in Bimal Roys Devdas. She
won three Best Actress awards for her acting. She is now an active politician.
in the city are said to have been his residence. For his
brief life and an even briefer stay in Madras, Robert Clive
seems to have done a lot of moving, besides fighting some
impossible battles in remote corners of India and marrying
a maiden in St. Marys Church in Fort St. George in
Madras.
The make-up room had the look of a hair-cutting salon
with lights at all angles around half a dozen large mirrors.
They were all incandescent lights, so you can imagine the
fiery misery of those subjected to make-up. The make-up
department was first headed by a Bengali who became too
big for a studio and left. He was succeeded by a
Maharashtrian who was assisted by a Dharwar Kannadiga,
an Andhra, a Madras Indian Christian, an Anglo-Burmese
and the usual local Tamils. All this shows that there was a
great deal of national integration long before A.I.R. and
Doordarshan began broadcasting programmes on national
integration. This gang of nationally integrated make-up men
could turn any decent-looking person into a hideous crimson
hued monster with the help of truck-loads of pancake and a
number of other locally made potions and lotions. Those
were the days of mainly indoor shooting, and only five
per cent of the film was shot outdoors. I suppose the sets
and studio lights needed the girls and boys to be made to
look ugly in order to look presentable in the movie. A strict
hierarchy was maintained in the
make-up department. The chief
make-up man made the chief actors
and actresses ugly, his senior
assistant the second hero and
heroine, the junior assistant the
main comedian, and so forth. The
players who played the crowd were
the responsibility of the office boy.
(Even the make-up department of the
Gemini Studio had an office boy!)
On the days when there was a crowdshooting, you could see him mixing
his paint in a giant vessel and
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lot of raw stock and pancake were used on it, not much
came of the film. Then one day The Boss closed down the
Story Department and this was perhaps the only instance
in all human history where a lawyer lost his job because
the poets were asked to go home.
Gemini Studios was the favourite haunt of poets like
S.D.S.Yogiar 3, Sangu Subramanyam, Krishna Sastry and
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya4. It had an excellent mess
which supplied good coffee at all times of the day and for
most part of the night. Those were the days when Congress
rule meant Prohibition and meeting over a cup of coffee
was rather satisfying entertainment. Barring the office boys
and a couple of clerks, everybody else at the Studios
radiated leisure, a pre-requisite for poetry. Most of them
wore khadi and worshipped Gandhiji but beyond that they
had not the faintest appreciation for political thought of
any kind. Naturally, they were all averse to the term
Communism. A Communist was a godless man he had
no filial or conjugal love; he had no compunction about
killing his own parents or his children; he was always out
to cause and spread unrest and violence among innocent
and ignorant people. Such notions which prevailed
everywhere else in South India at that time also, naturally,
floated about vaguely among the khadi-clad poets of Gemini
Studios. Evidence of it was soon forthcoming.
When Frank Buchmans Moral Re-Armament army,
some two hundred strong, visited Madras sometime in 1952,
they could not have found a warmer host in India than the
Gemini Studios. Someone called the group an international
circus. They werent very good on the trapeze and their
acquaintance with animals was only at the dinner table,
but they presented two plays in a most professional manner.
Their Jotham Valley and The Forgotten Factor ran several
shows in Madras and along with the other citizens of the
city, the Gemini family of six hundred saw the plays over
and over again. The message of the plays were usually
plain and simple homilies, but the sets and costumes were
first-rate. Madras and the Tamil drama community were
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5.
6.
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8.
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An English poet essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and class struggle.
A French writer, humanist, moralist, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.
An American writer, known for his novel Native Son and his autobiography Black Boy.
An Italian writer, who was the founder member of the Italian communist party in 1921, and
is known for the book. The God That Failed, authored by him.
9. A Hungarian born British novelist, known for his novel Darkness at Noon.
10. A well known American journalist and a writer of Mahatma Gandhis biography entitled
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. The Oscar winning film Gandhi is based on this biographical
account.
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1. The author has used gentle humour to point out human foibles.
Pick out instances of this to show how this serves to make the
piece interesting.
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1. Film-production today has come a long way from the early days
of the Gemini Studios.
2. Poetry and films.
Noticing transitions
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Read the text again and mark the transitions from one idea to
another. The first one is indicated below.
Make-up department
Office-boy
Subbu
Writing
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Things to do
Collect about twenty cartoons from newspapers and magazines
in any langauge to discuss how important people or events
have been satirised. Comment on the interplay of the words
and the pictures used.
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TALKING
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SUB-THEME
Discuss
Todays film technology compared with that of the early days of
Indian cinema (comparing and contrasting).
Poetry and films; criticism and humour.
NOTICING TRANSITIONS
WRITING
THINGS TO
DO
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