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The
New Year 2008 greets you with the news that
FIPRESCI-India, the national section of the
FIPRESCI International, in its Annual General
Meeting held at Goa in Nov 2007, unanimously
agreed to adopt this website www.filmfocusindia.com as its mouthpiece for dissemination of information
on cinema in India to the world community.
This is definitely welcome news since we
have reputed film journalists in our group
who are professionally engaged in covering
important film festivals and writing on cinema
in various publications. They have shown
keen interest to post us with latest information
on film activities, reports and reviews of
films to be published in our quarterly e-cineindia.
We take this opportunity to thank all our
FIPRESCI-India members for their kind gesture
and also make our sincere appeal to all of
them to extend their kind cooperation through
their valued contribution to this E publication.
Yours
truly
H.
N. Narahari Rao (Editor)
M.K.Raghavendra (Executive
Editor)
We
have added one more useful link for the
benefit of our readers: FFW (www.filmfestivalworld.com)
through the courtesy of Mr Richard Rosenblatt.
This website gives a complete picture of
the film festivals that take place round
the world all through the year. |
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38TH GOA IFFI GOES HI-TECH
(A report by Sudhir
Nandgaonkar) |
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Director
Golam Rabanny Biplab receiving Special
Jury Award (Silver Peacock+ certificate
+ Rs 2.5Lakh cash prize) for his film
from Bangladesh ‘On the Wings of Dreams’ on
December 03, 2007 at the closing ceremony
of IFFI 2007 at Panaji, Goa |
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Director Adoor
Gopalkrishnan with others at the Open
Forum on November 30, 2007 at IFFI, Panaji,
Goa. |
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The 38th International
Film Festival of India (IFFI) opened
on Nov 23 with the Romanian film 4
months 3 days and 3 hours, the Grand
Prix winner at Cannes.The IFFI is a 10-day
event which continued till Dec 3 and
showed over 200 films.During the inaugural
ceremony, I & B Minister Priya Ranjan
Dasmunshi asserted that Goa would continue
to be the permanent venue for the festival.
The interesting feature at the festival
this year is the use of technology to
streamline and simplify its functioning.
The delegates and the press could enroll
for the festival online. Computerized
tickets were used to allow the delegates
into the theatres. Delegates were given
three tickets to watch films of their
choice each day while the press was offered
five tickets. |
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The other highlight
of the festival was the competition section
featuring Asian, African, and Latin American
directors. The jury was headed by well
known Hungarian film-maker, Ms. Martha
Mezaros. The Entertainment Society of
Goa (ESG) is the co-organizer of the
festival, and in last three years it
has upgraded its infrastructure to handle
the international event. The ESG has
further developed the Inox Complex, adding
two more screens and an additional building
to house the office of the Directorate
of Film Festivals as well as the Registration
Counters, and the Media Centre. Now,
the entire complex is as well-equipped
to handle the rigors of an international
film festival as the Nandan Complex in
Kolkata is. Moreover, the government
has also upgraded the local cinema halls
with the latest technology to make them
suitable to screen international films.
Within four years, it should be acknowledged,
the Goa IFFI and the Goa Government have
established their credibility. |
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Sections
at IFFI - 2007
Cinema of the world: |
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76 Films
from 42 countries.
Competition for Asia, Africa, Latin
America : 14
films from 13 countries
Indian Panorama:
21 Feature, 15 Non Feature Films
India @ 60: 7
Features, 4 documentaries
Tributes: Tapan
Sinha, K K Mahajan, Vijay Anand, Vanmala
Film India World wide:
Three Films
Focus – Country
- Hungary : Seven
Films
Tribute to Bergman : Seven Films
38th IFFI at a glance
Delegates : 4200
Media Delegates :350
including 80 from Goa
Foreign Delegates : 56
Festival Theatres : 9 theatres,
3026 seats.
Film Bazaar 300
delegates registered with Rs. 2500/- each as
fees
Open Forum :
Organized by Federation of Film Societies
of India with good attendance |
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6th Third
Eye Asian Film Festival, Mumbai
(Nov 2-8,
2007) |
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Aruna Vasudev being honored
with Satyajit Ray memorial award by Shyam
Benegal for promotion of Film culture
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Shyam
Benegal, D.G.Phalke Awardee being felicitated
by Dr Narendra Jadhav |
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6th Third
Eye Asian Film Festival initiated by Prabhat
Chitra Mandal,
a leading film society of Mumbai, was
held during Nov 2-8 in Mumbai in three venues
with 80 films. Competition for Debutant Directors
had 14 films from seven countries including
India. Another competition section for short
films (fiction) featured 39 short films. Debutant
Directors’ Competition Jury was headed
by actor-director Amol Palekar. Iranian Film Few
kilos of dates for a Funeral won the best
film award with cash prize of Rs 1,00,000 to
its director.
The
Short Film (Fiction) competition jury was
headed by H N Narahari Rao, Vice President
FFSI –Southern
Region. The Marathi film Vishwanath Ek Shimpi (Vishwanath – A
Tailor) was adjudged the best short film.
The Satyajit Ray Memorial award for promoting
film culture was presented to Ms. Aruna Vasudev
whose life time mission has been propagating
Asian Cinema. She is the founder of Cinemaya thefilm
quarterly devoted to Asian cinema and also
initiated the Cinefan Asian Film Festival.
The Asian Film Culture Award was presented
to Tapan Sinha, Bengali director and a contemporary
of Satyajit Ray. More than 1500 delegates
enrolled for the festival. Shyam Benegal,
the winner of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award,
was felicitated by Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Vice
chancellor,Pune University who was the chief
guest for the closing ceremony. |
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The 13 th Kolkata
film Festival: Variety in essence
(A report by Ms
Ranjita Biswas) |
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The Kolkata film Festival stepped into the 13 th year in 2007. As per tradition, it was held between November 10- 17. Though non-competitive, the festival attracts a good range of contemporary films. The reputation of the city as filmmakers’ haven with some of the most talented filmmakers, past and present, to be proud of, it has given the festival a special place in the circuit. Combined with retrospective sections on masters in the art, seminars, pictorial exhibitions on famous film directors and actors, a film market and not the least, a cinema-literate audience, the festival atmosphere is always vibrant and interesting.
At the hub of the Festival is the Nandan complex which includes Rabindra Sadan, providing five simultaneous screening facilities for the Press and delegates though theatre halls around the city also screen films for film lovers.
Nandan was created by the state government in 1985 to commemorate the Film Society movement in the city and was inaugurated by Satyajit Ray.
In 1995, Nandan organised its first ever independent film festival. It was later recognized by FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers' Associations – Paris), the international authority of film festivals. It attracts filmmakers, journalists of international repute every year.
The recent festival, however, was marred by the absence of many local film directors, actors and members of the intelligentsia as a protest against the arrest of some intellectuals who were demonstrating through a peaceful procession against the violence in Nandigram. Thus the attendance was thinner than usual compared to previous years.
The Festival showcases films under various sections. This year, there were 247 films from 56 countriesdivided into 15 categories.
“Cinema International” is an eagerly awaited section as it screens some of the best contemporary international films. The Wind that Shakes the Barley , the 2007 Palme d’Or winner at Cannes was a highlight of the bouquet of films.
In the “All Time Greats’'category films like All quiet on the Western Front , Closely Watched Train (Czech) were screened.
A “Centenary Tribute” was paid to Sir Laurence Olivier, who died in 2007, with a collection of his films.
In the “Homage” section Brazil’s legendary auteur Glauber Rocha of Brazil was the focus. His controversial Earth Entranced (Terra em Transe), a 1964 film seems to echo many of the home truths in many countries even today- arresting artists, writers, poets, etc. for protesting against atrocities against common people.
The “Great Masters” section had Jean-Luc Godard’s ever-popular films.
A “Special Tribute” was paid to Argentina’s Fernando E. Solanas with films like Tangoes, the Exile of Gardel,The Voyage, etc.
There was also a section under 'Celluloid Diamonds' with films by Karel Kachyna of Czech Republic with titles like Suffering, Coach to Vienna, etc.
“Celluloid Pearl” featured the ouvre of Shyam Benegal who was also the chief guest of the festival. The “Indian Select” section was for showcasing upcoming Indian directors’ works.
Among the documentaries screened, there was even section entitled “Global Warming” films.
Each year the festival focuses on a particular country, region or theme with screenings and events being influenced by this theme.
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| 5th CHENNAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (CIFF) |
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| The 5th CIFF was organised by ICAF. The period of the festival was 14th to 23rd Dec 2007. There were 3 venues. The inaugural film was THE LIVES OF OTHERS, (German film) which won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award. The festival was inaugurated by the world famous Dirctor Dr. K. Balachander. 124 films from 42 countries participated at the festival. COUNTRY FOCUS was France and Hungary. Retrospectives of Julio Medem ( Spain), Im Kwon-teak ( Korea) and Kenji Mizoguchi ( Japan) were presented. The closing film was Adoor Gopalakrishnan's NAALU PENNUNGAL (Four Women). Shri Adoor delivered the Valedictory Address on 23rd Dec on the closing day.
The festival was well attended and applauded by the film buffs of Chennai for most of the films and extensive press coverage was provided. The festival, in all respects, was a grand success like in the previous 4 years. |
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Short Films Competition
at Third Eye-2007
(by
H.N.Narahari Rao, Jury Chairman Fiction Short
films Competition) |
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The
noted Iranian Filmmaker Abbas Kiraostami once
said, “If
I want to deliver messages I would rather be
a postman,” and this is absolutely true,
not only in cinema but in all art forms. But,
one short film in Marathi, Vishwanath
Ek Shimpi (Son of the Soil), winner
of the Best Short Film Award at the recently
held Third Eye, the sixth Asian
Film Festival Mumbai, 2007, is a notable exception.
The story of the film is powerful and relays
a strong inspirational message about positive
thinking. Vishwanath, the only tailor in a village
has become complacent and immune to criticisms;
for so many decades the villagers have been suffering
his inefficiency because there is no other tailor
they may go to. But his business collapses when
a new tailor with a modern outlook appears on
the scene. Vishwanath is advised by one of his
friends to move to another village. But, Vishwanath
as a person does not give up. He takes up the
challenge confronting him and decides to learn
the art. It is not ‘globalization’ that
forces Vishwanath to change – as people
might identify or interpret it; it is simply
a change brought about by time. Wise men believe
that there is always scope for improvement and
that always initiates change. Unlike many other
films which deal with similar subjects, the person
who wants to modernize is not portrayed as a
villain and the victim does not end up as a victim
in a tragedy. Instead the situation becomes a
motivating one for the old man who decides to
train his child in the technology and use a modern
machine to face the competition. This is where
the film becomes hugely pertinent.
We saw 38 fiction-based
short films (of 30 minutes maximum duration)
in the competition section of this year’s AFF Mumbai. The films were
from different Asian countries but there was
a significant number from Israel. While
some of the Asian films like Silent Companion (Iran/2004), Putot (Philippines), Awaiting
a Train (Sri Lanka/ 2006), On the Same
Floor (Israel/2006) were outstanding, the
others were of average quality. There were also
some which were too amateurish and did not deserve
to be in the competition.
The competition section
for ‘Fiction-Based
Short films,’ newly introduced this year,
is definitely a welcome feature. Short films,
like essays in literature, provide a foretaste
of the hidden talent which may blossom at any
time in the near future. It is therefore
evident that such competitions provide a forum
for exhibiting talents and receiving awards,
which enhances the motivation levels of young
filmmakers. When the world renowned filmmaker
Roman Polanski won international awards for his
short film entitled Two men and a Wardrobe (1958),
many critics eagerly waited to see his first
feature film. Of course, the career that followed
is part of film history now and Polanski went
on to make classics like Rosemary’s
Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974).
But if this new section is to get due recognition
at the international level, the prize money should
be raised to make it more attractive. The quality
of the films entered might then gradually rise
to higher levels -- to make this a prestigious
event in the eyes of short filmmakers from around
the world. |
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Review: |
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Ore Kadal
(The Sea Within)
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Based on a Bengali Novel by Sunil
Gangopadhyay, Ore Kadal, a film in Malayalam,
directed by Shyamaprasad is a bold venture that
faithfully recreates a milieu that is fast developing
into a very familiar phenomenon of intrigued human
relationships, being faced by many families today. |
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Deepthi,
a young house wife, is attracted to Nathan,
a middle aged, social scientist, a radical
thinker who is a celebrity in his field.
Nathan never believes in love but enjoys
women and forgets. But his relationship with
Deepthi does not end so easily. She can not
just brush it aside like him and live. Her
life becomes emotionally disturbed when she
gives birth to a child. She even becomes
a mental patient. When she recovers, she
determines to live faithfully with her husband
Jayan. But, this time it is Nathan who is
disturbed. He has become addict to drinking
and is leading a tortured life. He craves
for love now. For Deepthi who lives
with her daughter it is the guilt feeling
that still persists. She can not resist making
a visit to Nathan and is drawn into his arms.
Ultimately it is the bond of love that transcends
all hurdles and obstacles. |
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The film is a saga of events that
reflect the social changes that are taking place
at a fast rate. The ethics of married life, commitment
of love, or the value system that prevailed for
decades are rapidly vanishing in the changed
scenario. The people are just victims of circumstances
and they are forced to embrace and accept whatever
that comes in their way. It is definitely a well
made film.
Shyamaprasad is a very promising filmmaker from
Kerala, who won acclaim for his earlier films
Agnisakshi (1998) and Akale (2004).
H.N.Narahari Rao |
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| The
Failings of Other Systems |
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The
Lives of Others |
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The
Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film
is a prestigious award but like most film
awards it has eluded the greatest films.
The filmmakers who have won it are those
like De Sica, Fellini, Kurosawa, Jiri Menzel
and Bergman while those who have not include
Renoir and the less accessible Bresson, Antonioni
and Miklos Jancso. By and large (and Fellini,
Almodovar, Bunuel and Bergman are exceptions)
the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar remains
in the province of ‘middle-brow’ cinema.
Films that win it are usually ‘human
documents’ that don’t contribute
much to film form and that are therefore
unlikely to become classics. Florian Henckel
von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of
Others (2006) is no exception to this
rule. |
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The
Lives of Others is
set in the former German Democratic Republic
and tells the story of a Stasi (secret police)
agent named Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) who is
entrusted in 1984 with keeping under surveillance
a West-leaning playwright named Georg Dreyman
(Sebastian Koch). Dreyman has a lover, an actress
named Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)
who has also been coerced into becoming the mistress
of the overbearing Minister of Culture. Wiesler
is a conscientious officer but he finds himself
drawn into the lives of those he is watching
and the film is about how he comes to their assistance,
although for Christa-Maria it is too late. Wiesler
is punished for his ‘incompetence’ when
he is transferred to the letters section for
the next twenty years. But the Wall comes down
in 1989 and Dreyman, understanding the help that
this unknown Stasi agent rendered him, dedicates
his new book to ‘Agent HGW XX/7’.
The Lives of Others is
a very engrossing film; it is tightly scripted
and well acted. There are also some sequences
that are genuinely moving. For instance, Dreyman
and his literary friends are involved in the
passing of information to the Western press
and Christa-Maria reveals this during interrogation.
Dreyman doesn’t
suspect this initially but when Stasi agents
look for his typewriter under a floorboard he
knows he has been betrayed. The Stasi agent who
extracts the information from Christa-Maria is
none other than Wiesler but, even before Dreyman’s
apartment is searched, Wiesler enters into Dreyman’s
apartment and removes the incriminating typewriter.
Christa-Maria is however so aghast at her betrayal
of her lover that she kills throws herself under
a passing truck. Another affecting moment occurs
closer to the end of the film when Dreyman spots
the now humble man who secretly saved his life
pushing a cart along a pavement. Dreyman is now
a celebrity but Wiesler, although in reduced
circumstances, spares almost 30 Euros for the
book dedicated to Agent HGW XX/7.
After The Lives of Others has
been duly praised for its moving account of
a policeman’s
good impulses under authoritarian rule, there
is a disturbing aspect it shares with Wolfgang
Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! (2003).
The films are both about life under Communist
rule and have been made when Communism is a specter
of the past. Communist rule in Eastern
Europe produced few films dealing with the immediate
present and a favorite topic was life in the
Nazi period (e.g. some films by Istvan Szabo,
Zoltan Fabri). It was as though the present was
unassailable and did not need a critique. There
may not be anything reprehensible about being
critical of a despised past but it appears to
me that a film cannot be of much interest if
it does no more than criticize a bygone state
of affairs. Szabo’s Mephisto (1981),
I suggest, is important only because it goes
beyond describing Nazi despotism to examine artistic
compromise. Both Becker’s film and The
Lives of Others attack tyranny in the GDR
but do little else; they therefore appear awkwardly
smug about present day ‘freedom’.
In an age when the choice conferred by the market
economy is overvalued, one even detects a touch
of opportunism in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s
choice of subject, which is best described as
the ‘failings of other systems’.
MK Raghavendra |
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the War Film |
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Flanders |
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Film festivals,
I would like to argue, are not the places
where the most radical films will get a fair
viewing today. Film festival audiences (and
juries) tend to approach each film as though
it stood alone as ‘art’, as though there were
not a politics of representation to which each
film is related. Such an innocent viewpoint
unwittingly reduces all kinds of cinema to
consumerist spectacle even if some of this
spectacle is exalted as ‘high art’.
The difference between innocence and awareness |
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in
viewership does not rest in the ‘quality’ of the cinema
watched and/or enjoyed but in the watching itself,
and the intelligence brought to viewership. Bruno
Dumont’s Flandres (2006) was recently
screened at the Bangalore International Film
Festival 2007 to audiences familiar with the
classics but was promptly pronounced ‘absurd’ and
a through-and-through ‘artistic failure’. Flandres is
not a pleasant film to watch but that is only
because it refuses to be consumerist spectacle.
Bruno Dumont has not been a prolific filmmaker
but his films are unlike any other in the history
of cinema. They can be brutal and include scenes
of sex that are explicit without being erotic,
and they are extremely dark. To give the reader
an idea of his films, The Life of Jesus (1997)
is not a biblical epic but is about a youthful
gang of white motorcyclists who beat an Arab
boy to death because he has a relationship with
the male protagonist’s girlfriend. Humanity (1999)
is about the investigation into the brutal rape
and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Twentynine
Palms (2003) is a horror film reminiscent
of John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972)
and set in the Joshua Tree Desert near Los Angeles,
California. Dumont can be regarded as minimalist
in his approach and has been compared to Bresson
but where Bresson is ‘spiritual’ Dumont
is entirely taken up with the body and with the
flesh. Flandres is certainly less polished
than The Life of Jesus but it also has
a political edge that makes it unprecedented.
Flandres is
set in northern France and deals with two loutish
farm hands recruited to fight a war in an unnamed
part of the Middle-East. Demester and Blondel
are both in relationships with the casually
promiscuous Barbe, who says goodbye to them
when they set off with their company. In the
Middle-East they engage in the killing of civilians
and rape. Only, war is not as pleasant as they
imagined and most of their fellow-soldiers
are killed. Barge is, meanwhile, pregnant with
Blondel’s child until she
has it removed and is also interned in a psychiatric
institution. Blondel is executed by the enemy
but Demester returns to Barbe, more animal-like
than ever but also deeply disturbed, and he declares
that he loves her.
Flandres bears
some resemblance to Godard’s Les Carabiniers (1963)
but where Godard is broadly satirical, Dumont
places his emphasis elsewhere. Flandres,
I would like to argue, cannot be appreciated
without a reference to the politics of representation
of the white body in mainstream war films today
and the pertinent films are those like Ridley
Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001)
and Sam Mendes’ Jarhead (2005).
These films belong to the liberal current in
the mainstream cinema but they subscribe to conventions
that Flandres subverts. Where
mainstream war films place a huge value upon
Western lives and show the white body as inviolable, Flandres includes
a sequence in which a falling bomb reduces a
French soldier to what are no more than a few
grotesque lumps of charcoal. The rape of an Arab
woman is followed by a harrowing scene in which
the rapists are captured and one of them is castrated
before being executed. The sequence involving
the rape itself has no parallel in cinema and
we see a close-up of the raped Arab woman’s
hand, clutching semen. Since the two male protagonists
are among the rapists and Barbe is pregnant by
one of them, the film is drawing parallels that
few films would attempt.
Flandres is
not an emotionally satisfying film and we are
certainly not ennobled by it. It does not claim
to be ‘humanist’ but when politics
and political action consistently shun humanism
it is absurd to assert that filmmakers and artists
should continue to embrace it. Flandres is
a profoundly shocking experience but it is unlikely
to be welcomed by Western audiences because of
its unflinching look at their complicity in the
enterprise of war today. It is also difficult
for the rest of the world to appreciate it because
there is so much of mainstream film convention
for it to still unlearn.
MK Raghavendra |
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For informations:
River to River. Florence Indian Film Festival
Piazza Santo Spirito, 1
50125 Florence - Italy
ph. +39 055 286929
fax +39 055 284983
pressoffice@rivertoriver.it
www.rivertoriver.it |
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