Tag Archives: Films

Introducing Saturday Night Movie Marathons

Saturday Night Movie Marathons

Perhaps the biggest challenge of being off consumption is the difficulty of maintaining an active social life.

When you take away the context in which social interactions happen — eating or drinking out, or going out for a movie or a play — you basically make it really difficult for people to spend time with you.

A home-cooked meal, or a walk along the sea, works well once or twice, but, eventually, your friends are likely to tire of such simple pursuits, even if you don’t.

So, unless you invent new social contexts, not only dating, even meeting friends may become a problem.

It’s less difficult for me, because blogging provides me a context in which I can make new friends and keep up with my old friends. If you read my blog, you already know me, so meeting up for a walk or a home-cooked meal (or even my sleeping on your couch) will probably feel natural.

I’m hoping that Saturday Night Movie Marathons will become another such social context.

The idea is simple. We meet up on a Saturday night at someone’s place and watch four back-to-back movies, from dinner to brunch.

Godard’s ‘Le Petit Soldat’ + Evening With My New Friend From Bollywood

Godard Le Petit Soldat The Little Soldier Movie Poster

Undeterred by my earlier escapade with ‘The French Touch’ festival, I returned to the Alliance Francaise auditorium on Thursday evening to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film ‘Le Petit Soldat’ (’The Little Soldier’).

Set against the backdrop of the Algerian War, the film narrates the tragic love story of Michel Subord and Anna Karina who fall in love in spite of belonging to warring terrorist groups. The film pulsates with the same restless energy as ‘Breathless’, my favorite Godard movie, which was screened at the festival earlier on Tuesday. So, in spite of the little anti-climax at the end, when the DVD stuck and wouldn’t play, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, or at least the part of the movie I did watch.

After the movie I ran into G.K. Desai, a Bollywood actor and producer, who has worked in several of Madhur Bhandarkar’s movies.

GK and I first met each other at a 24 hour film festival a few months ago when we watched six movies back to back on a weekend. We again spent half a day together at the Tri Continental Film Festival in January. In fact, at every film festival I now attend, I almost except to see him in his really cute attire of denim shorts, ‘I love California’ t-shirts and baseball cap.