Patrick Frater | Asia Bureau Chief
SEOUL – Indian director Dev Benegal’s pitch for a dark comedy “Dead End” was named as the best project at the Network of Asian Fantastic Films .
The story of a man who is declared as dead by a shady government department and has to take extreme measures to prove that he is alive, was written by Benegal and Sarat Rao and is to be produced by Satish Kaushik Entertainment and Benegal’s August Entertainment. The Bucheon Award is worth $15,000.
Read the rest on Variety
Screen Daily 23 JULY, 2014 | BY JEAN NOH
The 18th Puchon International Film Festival (PiFan)’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) wrapped tonight with top Bucheon Award going to Dev Benegal’s Indian project Dead, End Or: How I Learned To Stop Living And Love Being Officially Dead.
Jury head Michael Favelle said: “Dead, End may be seen as a surprising choice given that it’s not an immediately obvious, traditional fantastic film in the way fantastic film festivals are known for. It is, however, a brilliant satirical surrealist comedy of a place that no one has seen before.”
Read the rest on Screen Daily.
Published at September 10, 2013
in Films.
Photographs at United Art Fair 2013
Road Movies
Photographs by Dev Benegal
On show at United Art Fair 2013 September 15-17, 2013
Private Preview- by invitation: 5pm Saturday September 14, 2013
Media Preview- 3pm – 5pm Saturday September 14, 2013
GENERAL ADMISSION: 1pm – 8pm September 15-17
Entry Tickets on sale at Gate 7
Gates close at 7pm.
If you want to ask questions, chat or just rave and rant, well, I’m on Twitter.
I’ve decided to put comments on vacation.
I have in the past loved your thoughts, comments and rants. Even when most of them were asking about the DVD of English, August – A torturous process I have written about and will continue to do so until the film is out again to view.
I still plan to write on this site. Though I am thinking about what shape this page can take in the future.
If you have any thoughts or comments you can use Twitter.
Something is brewing.
So everyone – please hang on.
One of my obsessions has been reading production screenplays. Either very early drafts or drafts just before production begins. Somewhere between those two stages is a master class in filmmaking.
I think Emir Kustirica said this; “a screenplay is not the film. A film exists in the white spaces between the dialogs.” If he did not it’s what I’d like to imagine he said.
A screenplay is not a work of art. It’s a document that occupies a strange intermediate space. I’ve always seen a screenplay as a set of coded instructions. But then, “code is poetry.” So, when I write I try to make every word matter like an author would when writing a novel. And as a director it’s that elusive white space between words that I’m in search of.
So, here’s the screenplay of Road, Movie. This is the draft dated August 15, 2008.
Two days before we began filming.
This is for your personal use and I’d appreciate if you did not post this on your site or put up on any services like Scribd.
A surprise package was waiting for me yesterday evening.
Jaya Vasant the gracious Senior Manager from the Prasad Group sent me a disk with a sample of restored clips from English, August.
Here is a sample. It’s a long-long process to get this completed.
Let me know what you think.
English, August Restoration sample from dev benegal on Vimeo.
April 20th.
I get this message from the Prasad Group:
It has been informed that the negative may not be suitable for the restoration work but the Print is usable.
So there. In a single line there goes my first movie.
But as Douglas Adams said, “Don’t Panic.”
Filmmaker Shripriya asks what I did for Road, Movie.
- I moved all the negative to Deluxe Laboratories.
- We scanned our final cut at 2K and made a Digital Intermediate.
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Our original aspect ratio was 2.35:1 at 4 perf. We got a much larger area of negative to scan. The result was way better than a 4k scan of a 2 perf negative or even a 3 perf negative.
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I’d strongly recommend doing this if you are originating on film.
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One of our delivery requirements for world sales was a 35mm Internegative.
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We did that too and it is housed in Technicolor Rome.
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The Indian Distributors have their own 35mm Negative.
- They asked for a drive with the DPX files to create a new Digital Negative and their own copy of the Dolby 5.1 final mix.
I’m hoping all bases are covered and we are in a better position than English, August.
As always fingers are crossed and one holds ones breath.
