Forest of Bliss The scene opening with the dog running on the desert of humans cremains in contrast with the changing landscape of floating in the riverboat. Director trying to introduce us to space, with the longshots of activities on the Ganga river, humans activities in the island of cremains, riverbank, floating boats with dead bodies. All movie narration goes only through the changing scenes, the viewer does not have any text or narration voice that guides us. The movie built-in contracts of death and live in the Hundu tradition of Banaras people on the Ganga river. Even if the movie does not has the narration the sound landscape dives us to the place, we can hear how the dog is walking on the slopes of ash, or man murmuring from pain, ceremonial flowers cut off, sounds of floating boat and wood which used for cremation etc. I suppose for the people who are not familiar with the culture the movie can provoke disgusting and nausea feelings. Ganga river for Banaras is used not only for the burial ceremonies, but also for washing clothes, bathing, and even drinking it's water, for spiritual self-perfecting purposes. The juxtaposition of scenes drives us through the step-by-step burial ritual with all the necessary tools for it. For example, we see the scenes of picking up flowers used during the ritual. Also, a medium shot of a man making at the first impression stairs from bamboo but then we see how it is used as litter for dead bodies transportation. In this sense, if in the written text the reader would get all information at once, Gardner shares with us it step by step, or feed us as a children spoon by spoon. What mostly took my attention is the narrow streets full of people, where life is bustling. In the city of death streets full of life, with its beauty and ugliness, dirt and noise, even the death becoming alive there because it is physically moving through these narrow streets up and down. Also what caught my attention is the understanding of public space and private space in Banaras society, when you see that common street full of trash and animals excrements, where people walk with bare feet. With the big contracts of the private yards where people cleaning it and taking care to maintain it pure. I barely watched the scenes of dead animal bodies dragged down the stairs and on the floor. Do we need any extra explanation apart from what we see on screens in ‘Forest of Bliss’? I do not think this way, the whole narration of the story clearly showed how Banaras interact with death and live every day. But my question would be, why the director chose this topic, this city, this custom? How we, as people who are not familiar with this culture observe it and making our assumptions about it. Do we understand them? Do we have any empathy for it? I felt alien to this topic, I learned more about their burial tradition, but I do know yet who they are, how they live and I might be even judging them for the unsanitary. The first what I checked after watching the movie was checking the sanitary conditions in the Ganga river, not how sacred it for Hindu people. What about you? What was your first thought after the movie?