Featured Member: Joel Currier

[ Joel Currier, popularly known as Screamingjay, is a film-buff from Canada. He has been associated with the torrent archives like 'Karagarga' and 'Pass the Popcorn'. He always stands by our initiatives in terms of promotion. As a forum, we are featuring this friend / member from overseas to express our gratification.

The address of Joel's Art blog is http://joelcuerrier.blogspot.com/ ]

          Joel Currier                  

LFEBF: Tell us, what made you interested in films?

Joël: first film that made a huge impression on me was 2001 A Space Odyssey. I was 14 or so and that's when I started collecting movies and started wanting to register in a creative field in college

I went to cinema first, but I already knew more than they were teaching me

so I switched to literature

Another question?

LFEBF: Tell your story...just the story

Joël: I've collected movies ever since... and books, records, even magazines and pictures of paintings. I'm a pack rat of everything related to culture in general. To create a museum in my home, of world culture

I've discovered my favorite movie around 15-16... and that is "Underground" by Emir Kusturica. It's hard for me to decide of a better movie for me since. It's just such a fascinating exposé of modern history

I've discovered many of my great passions through P2P... like screwball comedies and film noir. Would never have seen that many classic movies without these accesses I had to sites like Karagarga and before that, to Direct Connect hubs like the Grand Hub for Everything that released TCM encodes by the dozen while this channel was not available in Canada

I have around 25000 movies, tv series, shorts, documentaries now, which is more than I will ever have time to watch in all my life. But I don't find this to be the point of my obsession. It is more to have access to all movies, at any time, and watch the full filmography of an actor, a writer, a director or a filmographer if I want to

LFEBF:  Now, why do you stand by unknown filmmakers like us

Joël: I am always curious about new things happening in the world cinema, to see what people are coming up with. The last half-century of cinema have seen the birth of cinema for most the rest of the world. That is to say, you use to have powerhouses like the US, France, UK, Russia, Germany, Italy and so fourth... doing much/most of the cinema. Then since the end of world war 2 and the beginning of the breakup of the Hollywood studios through anti-trust laws. When Orson Welles left Hollywood in 1958, everything went downhill for them... and it haven't totally recovered its past glory every since. Sure, it does make some good movies still, but not in such a large volume ever since. But the downfall of Hollywood opened the gate for the rest of the world to make better cinema. Also helped in large part by European festivals promoting cinema from lesser known regions. Now too with modern technology, many aspiring filmmakers can just get together, invest some of their money and make a movie, which open the possibilities for millions to go ahead and make their movies. Sadly, in America, it seem those cheaper means of production have lead to a flood of very poor, very unartful horror movies. But I'm sure we will see our Citizen Kane of "budget filmmaking". There was a few very successful zero-budget movies through the years, that have made stars of their directors. Like "Clerks" and "El Mariatchi", both produced with mediocre budgets and that went on to become cult movies and turned their directors into successful career from that point on. I'm sure we will always see people like that make it on a shoestring.

A Big Loss!!

Abhishek da (Mr. Abhishek Dasgupta) passed away late night yesterday (02.01.11). He was a lively joyous young guy who contributed a lot during our previous production. All the staircase sequence in "...Athoba Bhoy-er Golpo" aka "Or,a Horror Film" by Souva Chattopadhyay was shot at his house in Baje Shibpur, Howrah. He worked as one of the production controllers for the film. Moreover, he covered the release of Five No Budget Films (2010) in last book fair on behalf of electronic media (R Plus).

Just received the sad news today. It's unbelievable. Doctors reported that he was suffering from Liver Cancer not recognized earlier.

We mourn this untimely occurrence.....lost a invaluable friend of ours.....

Resolutions : Taken on 18th March

The annual meeting that was announced earlier on this blog has taken place on the scheduled date and time. Members present at the meeting are Arupratan, Anamitra, Sriparna, Sumit, Snigdhendu and Pratik. Others who couldn't come due to certainly arouse conditions but kept in touch with us are Souva, Abhishek, Mainak and Dhriti. On the basis of all its members' consent, the LBEBF has taken the following resolutions in the meeting.

Resolutions:
1. The members have decided to submit a minimum subscription of Rs.50/- per month to keep the LFEBF running. The fund raised by this monthly subscription is to be spent on keeping all the promotional activities alive throughout the year.

2. The yet unsold 30 copies are the last copies of the '5 No Budget Films, 2010'- packaged edition. After these, the packaged edition will no longer be available. Only the pouch edition will be there to buy.

3. Our next project is to release 8-10 no-budget short films (duration 10 minutes each) in one DVD on the 1st day (Which shall be the 11th January) of Kolkata Little Magazine Fair, 2011. All the members are hereby informed that the last date for submission of rush is 15th December, 2010. Some of the directors have alredy announced their date of completion -------

Arupratan Ghosh - Spring Tale - 31st May
Sriparna Dey - Two or Three Things .... About Visuals - 30th June
Anamitra Roy - Secret Footage - 31st August
Snigdhendu Bhattacharya - (Not Announced Yet) - 30th September
Souva Chattopadhyay - (Not Announced Yet) - 15th December
Pratik Mondal - (Not Announced Yet) - 15th December

But before all these a long awaited film is going to release in the month of July. The film that brought Anamitra, Sriparna, Snigdhendu, Pratik together with Sumit and Abhishek.

Subimal Misra is Dead

(aka) Subimal Misra: Shot @ Underground

(aka) Asole Eti Subimal Misrer Biggyapon Hoe Uthte Parto

A short film on the maverick and audacious experimentalist anti-establishment Bengali author Subimal Misra. An LFEBF presentation in association with Byas (Bengali Little Magazine), Abosardanga (Bengali Little Magazine), www.kalojournal.com and of course Open Secret.

We guess a little surprise is waiting for the readers in the next post of this blog. Keep visiting. Good bye. Best regards from the house of LFEBF

Little Fish Eat Big Fish: As It Stands Today

Before getting into the detailed description of each of the Five No Budget Films, we'd like to clarify that Little Fish Eat Big Fish is an open platform for all the aspiring 'auteurs'. Anybody willing to make a No Budget Film, be it a short film or a full length one, a documentary or a feature, can use our name, with as much as a perfunctory permission from anyone belonging to the group.

The group currently consists of the following members--

Anamitra Roy, Ananda Dass, Arkapratim Mukhopadhyay, Arupratan Ghosh, Avishek Bhattacharyya, Kamal Kumar Roy, Mainak Pal, Puja Ghosh, Pratik Mandal,  Sankha Subhra Ganguly, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, Souva Chattopadhyay, Sriparna De, Sumit De, and Yovik

And we must not forget the continuous support and encouragement of--

Avishek Dashgupta, Kanchan Snegupta, Mahadeb Indu, Pritha Chattopadhyay, and Sukanya Ghosh