Festival Brochure (Downloadable PDF) - Chao Center for Asian ...

anarchic state. To be completely random is as lowly as being in complete order, a negativeconviction ... when the positive was already problematic. There is a sense of servility to it, likea man who has lost himself to a particular idea, a similar kind of anarchy. To me, when a manopens his mouth, tries to speak, he is trying to establish order, but when he actually speakshe is confronted with chaos. He cannot realise complete order. For this reason, I believe thatshooting takes place in a fully waking state, but when we are editing, it feels as though weare creating some kind of dream, because of how we join time, how we connect spaces,cutting in a way that severs the time-space link that was established while shooting [...]A person lies down on a bed, then falls asleep. It is a strange thing. It is such a fundamentalthing, and people don’t even wonder: at night, how someone will lie down - all ofhumankind, without exception, man or animal - lies down and falls asleep. And then awakes.Only those preoccupied in thought are unable to sleep, and that is a different matter. It isa very strange thing, but most people find it ordinary. They do not even begin to wonder...Now, as we are off to sleep, this altering of states that happens, what exactly is going on?Where are we going? Who has observed themselves transitioning from waking to dream?Who can even see! Until someone is rid of that ‘I’, he will be up all night, turning in his bed.What are you going to see tonight? As I have said, when these three states are joined in oneknot, that is the true form of experience. Film should be like that, where these three statescoexist. Absolutely. They must stay together ... like Halwa! It has flour and sugar and ghee ...there are these three things, but the flavour of halwa is something different. Waking, sleepand dreaming - if they exist separately it does not really work, but when they are cookedtogether and become one, the flavour is different. The experience of film is the combinedexperience of these three states, and this combined experience is the only real experience.Someone who wanders between these three states has this experience. He is the sum ofthese three states that he experiences separately. Where does the ‘I’ come in the middle ofthis?From ‘Uncloven Space’, published by Quiver Books India, 2013. English translation by GurvinderSingh. Original ‘Abhed Akash’ in Hindi, published in 1994.