365bet娱乐

[Full title: Aspects of Material Culture (1) Setting and Socio-spatial Structuring]

Setting is a part of the total concept of mise-en-sc猫ne (Mise-en-sc猫ne, originally a theatre term meaning 鈥榮taging鈥�, connotes setting, costume, lighting, and movement within the frame). The setting is literally the location where the action takes place, and it can be artificially constructed (as in studio sets) or natural (what is also termed location shooting). Certain film movements are readily associated with a type of setting: the distorted settings of German expressionist films, the dimly lit rainwashed streets and empty cold interiors in film noir, the natural settings of Italy鈥檚 cities and countryside in Italian neo-realism films (Hayward: 2000: 325). Different film genres construct the setting as per their requirements. Indian films, blanketed under the term 鈥楶arallel Cinema鈥� gave due importance to the aspects of setting. Filmmakers employed time and money to shoot on locations so that the audiences felt the places and happenings to be real unlike the mainstream cinema which preferred creating shots inside a studio. Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia categorically comes under the first group, as all throughout his films, location shooting was given utmost importance. His stories were based on both the rural and urban backgrounds. To create the milieu, he devoted attention towards carefully setting up the frames with as much clarity as possible. In his autobiographies, Dr. Saikia has elaborated the days when he used to search around for the perfect locality and the houses that would fit into his stories. Moreover the aspect of socio-spatial placement of the individual characters of a film, taking into account all the probable spaces in which the character would function, was looked after by the filmmaker with keen eyes. It can be observed that all the spaces in which Dr. Saikia鈥檚 characters carried out their daily life, like the household, the neighboring household groups, neighborhood and city in the spatial context and friends, work and leisure activities in the social context seemed as if they actually took place in reality. To understand a definite pattern of folklife, study of these socio-spatial contexts is very important.

Following the conventional mode of projecting rural life, Dr. Saikia constructs the image of villages in his films with flowing rivers, fishing in ponds, grazing fields, green orchards, mud and bamboo huts, along with bullock carts. Dr. Saikia鈥檚 first film Sandhyarag is a mix of rural and urban settings. The film begins with a shot of Putali and her elder daughter Saru plucking herbs to sell in the village market. They fill bamboo baskets with bunches of the herbs. Saru鈥檚 mother and grandmother are shown going out for fishing with traditional fishing gears called jaakoi and khaloi (Image 1). Saru boils her clothes with khaar, an alkali prepared from ashes of burnt banana peels, and washes them in a nearby pond. While she leaves the village, a man is seen cutting bamboo pieces in front of a house. These components such as the fishing gears, different parts of the banana plant, and bamboo form part and parcel of rural Assamese households. On the other hand, when Saru moves to an upcoming city to work as a domestic help, she turns awestruck while looking at the smoking factories, busy roads with buses and cars, railway tracks, bus stands, multi-storied buildings, markets, electric poles and other objects (Image 2). Moreover shots from the banks of Brahmaputra flowing by Guwahati city have also been included in the film. The director employs these shots to construct an urban landscape.

In his second film Anirban, Dr. Saikia has constructed a landscape where rural meets the urban. The place where the story takes place still has a rural vibe with fishing nets being set up on ponds and the protagonist Rajani preparing soil for a kitchen garden in his backyard. However, the houses are well constructed, roads are concrete, there are adequate schools, even private schools for children, and festivals like Diwali are marked by cultural events held inside auditoriums. These are markers of a phase when a rural area is slowly growing up into a town.

Dr. Saikia鈥檚 third film Agnisnan depicts a pre-independent semi urban society. The society in the film is gradually emerging into urbanity and its markers have been intelligently utilized by the filmmaker in establishing the time period. Mohikanta, the central male character, is the owner of a rice mill which symbolises a growing economy. Other properties used to reflect the environment include the street lamp being lighted by municipality people and horse carts as mode of communication (Image 3).

In all his later films, Dr. Saikia has constructed the urban milieu with a variety of shades, depicting lives of different strata in the society. In Kolahol the filmmaker chose a dusty neighbourhood in the outskirts of a city where people live in haphazardly built messy houses. For a living, they are busy in petty affairs and mostly work as wage earners. Females are shown working in a nearby rice godown, where they are paid daily wages. Trucks and rickshaws are seen plying through narrow approach-roads in the neighbourhood where large vehicles mostly get stuck. However the filmmaker has carefully balanced the environment through humanitarian aspects like the character of an old man who is a singer and people in the neighbourhood who offer helping hands to the female protagonist. Moreover, the use of rice bags made of jute and bamboo baskets in the film also reflect material culture of Assamese society.

Itihaas, on the other hand, is a projection of class struggle in a changing economy. With growing cities, the concept of selling plots of land to builders for high-rise residential buildings became prominent. The film carefully picks up this subject as the text of the narrative to portray a subtext related to a woman and her struggles for existence. This interplay of text and subtext without giving any chance of prediction to the audience stands as a testimony of the filmmaker鈥檚 understanding of the craft. Scenes like women fetching water from a community well, man cutting firewood, children playing outside the houses can be regarded as establishing shots which display the status of the neighbourhood. The film has a muddy well at its nucleus, which stays throughout different phases of the story till the end. In fact the well has been carefully treated by the director as an important character in the film. Similarly, construction of a house has been depicted as the baseline of the film Sarothi where an under-construction house plays the central character in the story. Speaking about Dr. Saikia鈥檚 last film Kaalsandhya, though it was based on disturbed lives in a city during the acute period of insurgency in Assam yet the narrative did not fall short of depicting scenes from villages as well.

The filmmaker did not only construct outer landscapes in his cinema but also dealt with the inner atmosphere of homes in detail. In Sandhyarag, as Saru enters her master鈥檚 house in the city, she carefully looks over everything. The change in the surroundings from rural to urban is depicted by the use of different kitchen equipment like kerosene stove, pressure cooker, and refrigerator along with water taps. Also the use of sofa sets, carpet, a radio and a gramophone player in the living room, and dining table are enough to indicate the social status of the family. When Saru鈥檚 employer鈥檚 daughter Kanta gets married, the filmmaker shows extensive use of bell metal utensils in the ceremony.

In Agnisnan, the well-built entrance of Mohikanta鈥檚 home, the vintage wooden beds, mirrors, bell metal utensils鈥攁ll are elements belonging to well-to-do households. Along with these, the new bride in the film brings along dowry in the form of wooden furniture. Menoka is even seen cleaning and worshipping in front of the household altar.

This kind of projection of elements for portrayal of elite urban families is visible in Itihaas as well. On the other hand, Sarothi is based on the inherent human desire for materialistic pleasure and the rat race in achieving a better standard of living. Mainly the protagonist鈥檚 wife is seen asking for more pleasure elements at home which could make her equal to her kitty party friends. She has been projected as the symbol of greed and an unfulfilled human mind.

Unlike all other of his films, Dr. Saikia explored a world within the worlds in Abartan. Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia was associated for a considerably long time with the mobile theatre industry of Assam. He mentions this time period to be 18 years in his autobiography. He was a playwright and director of innumerable plays staged by a popular mobile theatre group of Assam called Awahan Theatre. Probably a long association with the industry and his deep observation of the surroundings had motivated Dr. Saikia to weave a story around the life and struggles of people working in mobile theatres. Thus Abartan depicts an entirely different environment which is artificially created for the purpose of filming. In contrast to Dr. Saikia鈥檚 other films, where the narrative takes place in the first space of individuals, which is their home and neighbourhood, Abartan has been built in the second space of an individual鈥檚 life, which is the workplace. The interiors of a mobile theatre camp, including the rehearsal spaces, dining halls, bedrooms and kitchens have been used for story development. Apart from these, aspects related to construction of temporary wooden stages, lighting, music room, and makeup room have been included in the film (Image 4).