Following Samiul Karim Shuptak’s historic Best Cinematography win for The Blind Girl and an Elephant in the Asian New Talent Competition at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, Cut To Cinema exclusively spoke with him about the milestone, his creative process, inspirations, challenges faced during production, and future aspirations in filmmaking. The interview was published in the July issue of Cut To Cinema (Vol 2 No 4). First of all, congratulations. On behalf of Cut to Cinema, congratulations on winning the award. How did it feel to receive this recognition? Thank ' ...
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“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.” There is a moment near the beginning of Dead Poets Society that has always stayed with me. John Keating takes his students out of the classroom and asks them to look at old photographs of boys who once studied at Welton Academy. Those boys had plans, ambitions, and futures they probably thought were still far ahead of them. Then Keating leans toward his students ' ...
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There are artists who record history, and there are artists who become part of it. Zahir Raihan belonged to the second kind. Born on 19 August 1935 in Majupur village of Feni, he became one of the major writers and filmmakers of twentieth-century Bengal. His life crossed the struggles that shaped Bangladesh: the Language Movement, the rise of Bengali political consciousness, resistance to authoritarian rule, and the Liberation War of 1971. Raihan did not separate artistic work from public responsibility. He wrote fiction, worked in journalism, studied photography, made films, ' ...
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“From among many kinds of work, an intellectual has to find such a work that he can do skilfully, beautifully. Once the battlefield of work has been determined, then the next task is to find the enemy’s power-base in that battlefield and determine the strategy for striking there.” — Solanas and Getino (1971: 47) April 1971. He was secretly helping the freedom fighters. But he was not satisfied. So he said to his elder brother Shahidullah Kaiser, “Borda, I will leave. I will not be able to do anything ' ...
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Roman Polanski’s cinema is full of characters who can see the world around them, but cannot always escape the frame through which they see it. I think I understand this because I remember a time when I could not escape the way I was seeing my own life. Ever since I began to understand auteurism, I have looked for recurring ideas and stylistic signatures across a director’s work, the things a filmmaker seems to return to again and again. That is how I came to Polanski and began asking what ' ...
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Cut to Cinema is a monthly magazine published from Dhaka, dedicated to exploring the world of film. Each issue dives into the latest releases, highlights visionary filmmakers, and examines the evolving trends shaping both global and local cinema. We invite you—our passionate readers—to join us on this cinematic journey.
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