Cinema 299: Prologue
August 29th, 2007 | by Gautam |Quite a while ago I came across a very interesting blog called Very Short Novels. The author of the blog, David B. Dale has introduced a fresh new concept of writing stories by limiting them to exactly 299 words. This leaves no room for idling in the author’s perspective while it remarkably leaves so much to the imagination of the reader. David has written over a 100 very short ‘novels’ and within each one of them there is so much being said that one would generally not expect that much from something like this at first glance.
Another side for trying this new experiment is my long-term urge to write articles on cinema that are not related to any specific cinematic subject but cinema as a whole. I had wanted to write about cinema as a medium of expression for some time now but somehow I never got myself to write something on those lines. So with Cinema 299, I plan to do some journal-style writing about my take, experiences and philosophy on the subject of film.
This little concept created by David has a lot of appeal. These days everything is getting cut short for nobody has the time. I’ve even come across a few ‘Quick-Read’ books that are condensed 100-page versions of larger books that are generally over 500 pages long. Metaphorically speaking, instead of taking an artist’s painting and condensing it to a smaller size, what David is doing is giving the artist a small canvas to work on in the first place. Given the constraints of the space, the artist may only put his best strokes forward, creating a concentrated and much more focused piece of work. Once again, this may not work well with everyone.
Click here to read ‘Father Figure’, David’s latest 299.
