A one-day-fine-arts-student and poet Tokon Thaakoor starts his journey in the premises of cinematography with Blackout. Not strictly a biography, though, it is a part of the same. He, here, himself apportioned into two, as does a bacterium; the two main protagonists Rafi and Madol are an artist and a poet respectively. In many way, they are identical with Thakoor- above thirty, unmarried, live on a garret (an attic), smitten with reverie-love-lust... all carnal desires. The way the poet (in the Blackout) is overwhelmed of his childhood, it seems, Thakoor is visualizing his autobiography. Though Blackout doesn’t show us the every details of an autobiography, it is certainly a documentation of a part of contemporary youth lifestyle and practice of dreamy obsession, the worse for intoxicating drug or liquor, unmet desire for sex. Specially, it is the documentation of artistry-love-lust of those fresh-blood youths, within a-some hundred yards between Dhaka Fine Arts Institute and Aziz Super Market, by whom the contemporary Dhaka-based art-culture-literature is being practiced and exercised. Rather the director didn’t follow the usual narrative of conventional documentary or feature-film; he went through the complex experimental course of metaphor-metaphysics in addition to animation. Probably, it is the Blackout presents before us with large-scale experimental relish ever in our country.
The prime criterion of this video fiction is its statelessness; self-perception dominates here as does in experimental short story. A used-to-viewer of simple narrative cinematography doesn’t feel ease here. This is rather an expression of feelings of this transition period youth- as a poetry, or as an artwork, partly revealed, the rest remains unrevealed. Blackout will definitely touch those young afflicted with creativity-love-lust-liquor-agony; also those non-young interested to realize the present-day youth. Others may refuse to accept Blackout, due partly to its unconventional complex type of presentation, and partly to its immoral (!) unaccustomed (!) commentary. Fortunately, it was not captured in celluloid; in that case, the scythe of the censor-board would be sharper. Here, in Blackout, an artist sketches a mature penis and calls it missile; masturbation contexts are there; character here is both homo- and hetero-sexual. Films released from FDC shows raw nudity, unreliably though; even then, those easily pass the censor-board. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, Blackout would be caught by the board.
