So, yeah, in a Computer Science Engineering and Research based institute like ours, there are certain humanities or arts courses too for the overall development as a person and for making students learn to appreciate art. There are certain number of credits that you have to fulfill in these humanities courses to get your degree. So, even if you do not give a damn about your overall development, you still have to take a certain number of these courses (not my case though because I love these courses :D).

One such course is Film Studies that I have taken up this semester. It is such a refreshing course because you get to watch movies all the time in the class. 😀 Come on, who wouldn’t like a course where you are supposed to watch movies for marks? But the good things about this course just end here. The gripe is that our teacher, who is very sweet by the way, teaches this course in a very boring manner. If only she taught this course with the same level of excitement as the level of her knowledge, this course would have been so much better. I mean she knows stuff but she cannot put it in a way which is expressive and exciting, although she tries. Anyway, now as we have to make do with what we have, I just have my share of fun by watching movies.:D As this course is coming to an end now, some of the movies that I enjoyed and would suggest watching are as follows. (A warning: I love love love old movies while most of my peers do not, so you might end up getting bored in some of the old movies that I loved. Well, I agree some of them are pretty slow but I like them nonetheless. :)) Anyhow, here’s the list (it is not exhaustive, only what I could think of instantly):

1. Good Morning (Ohayo): It is a 1959 Japanese movie.Everyone must watch this movie no matter what kind of genre they like. There, I said it. 😀 It is so funny in such an innocent way. I loved it to the core.

2. Apur Sansar (The World of Apu): Its a Bengali black and white film. Watch only if you like old Indian movies. Nothing special but I liked it because I love watching these kinds.

3. Good Will Hunting: We were only shown excerpts of this but this felt like such a must watch. I have heard from other people too that this is an incredibly good movie.

4.The Shining: Again, we were shown only excerpts and it was so heart wrenching when this movie was paused. 😛 Must watch material, especially if you are a scary movie lover.

5. The Red Balloon: It is a movie meant for kids. It was shown so that we get a good idea of long shots, tracking shots, perspective etc (film terminology, you see B-)). It was such a cute movie, no wonder its a classic. I am pretty sure every adult would also love this.

That’s all I could think of! However, we were shown excerpts of a lot of movies. Right now, I am watching Charulatha as a homework. It is again a black and white Bengali movie. I like it because of the reason stated beforehand. 🙂 Also, I realized after the first two minutes that I have read that Rabindranath Tagore novel (not whole) as a kid on which this movie is based. The language was very difficult for me at that age (even though I loved both Hindi and English literature)  but I could get the gist. Here’s the link to first part of the movie just in case there are more old movies’ lovers: