Yogaraj Bhat’s Mungaru Maley (‘Pre-monsoon Shower’) released in 2007 has been called the highest grosser in Kannada cinema. It begins with Preetham (Ganesh) catching sight of Nandini (Sanjana Gandhi) outside a Bangalore shopping mall and being so smitten that he steps accidentally into a manhole. Nandini helps him out but she departs, also leaving behind a jewelled watch. The rest of the film is about Preetham and his mother in Kodagu, where she is visiting a friend – the wife of a decorated Kodava army officer and coffee planter named Subbaiah. Nandini is Subbaiah’s daughter and Preetham gradually learns many facts. Nandini has a disagreeable suitor, an army deserter who has threatened all men who might wish to marry her. Preetham is in Kodagu with his mother to attend her wedding to a junior army officer who once saved Subbaiah’s life. Preetham intends to leave but the girl teases him, coaxing him to remain behind and press his suit. Preetham returns, the girl gradually returns his love and consents to elope with him. Still, events make Preetham eventually realise that Nandini is not for him. After letting the girl understand this and saving the actual bridegroom from the villain, he leaves finally for Bangalore.

In an era dominated by violence and cacophony, Mungaru Maley is singular for having brought back romance and melody into Kannada cinema. The camera work by Krishna deserves special mention because it contributes to the film extraordinary success. The images that return to the spectator long after the film is over is the sense of dampness and desire permeating the film and the culminating sequence shot in Jog in the Malnad region of Karnataka.

Another highlight of the film, which also played an important role in its success is its songs. Penned by Jayant Kaikini, a noted Kannada writer the songs are sung by well known singers to the catchy tunes and these tunes are hummed in almost every house in Karnataka today. The film also bagged State award for the best film.

MK Raghavendra
Member
FIPRESCI-India

Samna
(aka: The Confrontation)
(India / Marathi / 1974 / BW / 120 mins)
Cast: Nilu Phule, Shreeram Lagu, Mohan Agashe, Production: Ramdas Putane, Screenplay: Vijay Tendulkar, Cinematography: Suryakant Larande, Music: Bhaskar Chandavarkar.
Direction: Jabbar Patel

He resorts to dubious means of manipulations in his affairs, including murders, to somehow cling to power. One day a wandering Gandhian arrives in the village. Suspicious as he is always, Hindurao takes him under his umbrella and keeps a constant watch on his movements. There is a confrontation gradually brewing between the two and eventually the Gandhian is able to expose the misdeeds of Hindurao, through Gandhian way which makes him to pay for his crimes.

A Review of the film  
Samna is considered to be a milestone film in the Marathi cinema for many reasons. From the beginning, Marathi cinema faced a stiff competition from Hindi cinema, particularly in Mumbai, It always struggled to maintain its independent identity. Only a very few films numbering around 12-15 films a year were made during the period 1950-2000. While the situation generally remained gloomy, Samna(1974)emerged as a guiding light in the genre of new cinema movement in Marathi cinema. 

It was during 1970’s, a period when new talents in Indian Regional Cinema appeared on the scene at the National level, and in Maharashtra,  Ramdas Putane, a teacher and a poet joined hands with Vijay Tendulkar, a noted writer and a Playwright  to venture into filmmaking. Samna is the culmination of the union of these two stalwarts.

Another significant point about the film is its content. It has a subject that instantly touches the chords of the Marathi speaking people, because of its political sensibility. During the post independence era, rural Maharashtra witnessed a dramatic change in its economic structure when a chain of Sugar factories was established in western Maharashtra under cooperative sector. People who controlled these sugar factories became known as sugar barons, and they amassed wealth and fame in huge proportions, and were catapulted to occupy coveted political power centers. Samna deals with this politically sensitive subject and Hindurao is one such sugar baron who is after power and the diary of this shady character is kept open for the audience to study.

Moving further, the film also reminds us about the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. Master, whose identity in the film is not disclosed is a follower of Gandhi, is disillusioned in life. Because of tragedies in family like death of his daughter, he is now addicted to drinking and wanders from place to place. Rural development was a subject close to the heart of Gandhi. Now after attaining freedom, the very people who are bragging to be the followers of Mahatma are deeply involved in all sorts of criminal affairs to remain in power. This is the most unethical development about which Gandhi always felt apprehensive. Master, a true Gandhian, He  follows Gandhi in spirit to undertake sathyagraha a means so religiously adopted by Mahatma during freedom struggle and  to bring to light the crimes committed by Hindurao.

Samna is the debut film for its director Jabbar Patel, it won National award and it was also the first Marathi film to participate in the competition section in Berlin Film Festival.

H. N. Narahari Rao
Editor

everything is mechanised.” He wonders aloud, “Do the web-cams and CCTV that are constant witnesses to our lives make us any less vulnerable to terrorists than we are to ourselves? Are police and security forces really our protectors?” These are issues he poses in his seemingly light-hearted film.  “It has the kind of storyline that can happen anywhere. The characters get sucked into a vortex of events that may occur in India or Europe, or anywhere else at present,” he says. 

Questioning, analysing and commenting on social issues through the language of cinema mark Dasgupta’s films. His films may be questioning the politics of domination in man to man relationship as in Uttara (The Wrestlers) or bear social comment on women caught in a quagmire by circumstances to take up prostitution and the violence that perpetrates our patriarchal society as in Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (Tale of a Naughty girl). At the same time his deep affiliation to folk art and traditional crafts and music are often reflected in the way he uses the motifs as also his sadness at some of them losing out to modernism. The tiger dancer in Bagh Bahadur, a folk artist impersonating a tiger and the way he is sidelined by a circus party with a real tiger comes into mind.

A novelist and poet to boot, Dasgupta’s style is often allegorical with touches of surrealism  which he admires. He uses magic realism liberally, perhaps one of the rare directors in India today to do so. “Reality is boring sometimes,” he concedes, “so you put magic elements into it,” like Gabriel Garcia Marquez does in his magical novels set in Latin America. 

It has been quite a journey for the director who once taught economics and was actually expected to become a doctor by his father. But moving pictures was what preoccupied him from a young age. Right from his first film Duratwa (Distance) which won the National Award (Silver Lotus) for the Best Regional Film of the year and also the Special Jury Award in Locarno Film Festival, he made his presence felt as an unusually talented director. Duratwa and the subsequent Grihajuddha (Crossroads,1981) and Andhi Gali (Blind Alley,1984) are considered a trilogy, a mirror to the turbulent political period in Bengal of the 70s when rising wave of Naxalism attracted some of the brightest students and idealists in the state who aspired to change the society with power emanating from the barrel of a gun. 

However, there is an impression that many of Dasgupta’s later films are not as overtly political as were these early films. Has he consciously moved from that stance? Dasgupta disagrees: “I don’t think creative people can be apolitical. It may change with time because the creative person is also responding to his time; so even the language may change. But it’s always there.” So how does he see the current situation in West Bengal where the Nandigram- Singur flashpoint over farmers vs the industrialisation policy  of the ruling Left party has created ripples nationwide. Is he going to base a film on this contemporary issue? “I’ve written a poem on Nandigram. I consider it’s against humanity. The conflict has opened our eyes to how the party, any political party which is in power for ages, 30 years in this case,  can develop into something indulging in all kinds of atrocities, corruption and hypocrisy,” he  says vehemently.    

But films are a different matter though most of them are based on his own stories. He takes time to choose a subject. “ It’s not a concrete story that I start working on. Sometimes it’s an image, or some incident that keeps recurring in my mind. I need that space to ruminate and wait for it to germinate in my mind. Then the story emerges through the scenes I frame mentally.”

The diversity of the Dasgupta’s films and his unquestionable hold over the medium has  spawned three books on his work by well-known film critics, including John W. Hood of Australia. After all, his films inevitably win awards at home and abroad.

Dasgupta has also made more than 20 documentaries. He does not see any dichotomy between documentary and feature film making. “Both are creative in their own way, only the format is different.” He finds it very relaxing, he says, to make a documentary after the rigours of making a feature. After Mondo Meyer Upakhyan, for example, he made a documentary on Robin Mandol,  a painter he greatly admires; his sensitive camera is no less evident here. Besides, he enjoys the challenge of making documentaries. As he points out, it is “uncertain” how the film will shape up; the script moves according to the moment. At the same time, a documentary also gives more scope for experimentation. Features need much more planning, the script, location, everything has to be planned to the dot.

Poet-director though he is, Dasgupta is not one to be ensconced in the cocoon unresponsive to the demands of present-day audience. He is very much aware that today’s audience and the audience of the 60s are different. Besides, “It’s important  to recognise that the audience of the multiplexes are different,  their expectations are different from those in the backwaters, for example.” He points out that the makers of ‘best-seller’ films that are hits in the mass-market understand that very well and “they are happy to release their film in so called ordinary cinema halls and don’t care for the multiplexes.”  Which is why Dasgupta feels that in these changed times the director has to decide what kind of films he or she is making and for what kind of audience “otherwise we’ll be failing them.”

He also feels that regional films do not necessarily remain regional in aspiration and even while keeping the essence intact, such films  can be appealing to an international audience. “After all, the language of cinema is the same. If you are true to the medium of film, you get a response, wherever the story is located.” As if to prove it, Dasgupta’s films like Uttara, Mondo Meyer Upakhyan etc. have done exceedingly well abroad.

Meanwhile, the eagerness for Ami…is understandable since two of his last films Swapner Din (though a Golden Lotus winner for the best director) and Kaalpurush were not released commercially in the home state for some logistical reason.

Courtesy: BTW magazine (www.btwmag.com)

ISTANBUL- the city of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Laureate; the gateway to Europe from Asia; the capital of Roman, Byzantian and Ottoman empires. Earlier known as Constantinople, the city of Istanbul is vibrant with film production, film festivals and other cultural activities all the year round.

The 27th edition of the reputed Istanbul International Film Festival (iKSV)was held  from 5th to 20th April, 2008, showcasing around 200 films from 47 countries in 23 unique sections. One of the outstanding festivals of the world, iKSV reflected the latest trends in World and Turkish cinema. Competitions were held in World Cinema, National Turkish Cinema and the films based on Human Right issues.

It is unfortunate that outstanding films are seldom coming out in world cinema in recent times. Even the festivals like Cannes or Berlin disappoint us with no new discoveries. Istanbul film festival, in no way, is an exception. Still, the organizers could project the best out of the available.  Ben X (Belgium- Nic Balthazar), Egg (Turkey- Semih Kaplanoglu), XXY (Argentina – Lucia Puenso) The Wave (Germany-Dennis Gansel), Erik Nitsche- The Early Years (Germany- Jacob Thuesen), Darling (France- Christine Carriere), Hope(Germany- Stanislaw Mucha) were some of the best counted in the competition section of World cinema.

To me the festival provided an opportunity to have a closer look at contemporary Turkish cinema. In turkey also we come across demarcation of films such as mainstream commercial cinema where star system is predominant and the independent personal cinema where the filmmakers are serious to the core. Most of the films in the competition section belonged to the second category.  Summer Book (Seyfi Teoman), Havar (Mehmet Guleryuz), Hidden Faces (Handan Ipekci),My Marlon and Brando (Huseyin Karabey), The Storm (Kazim Oz) , Ara (Umit Unal) and  Dot (Dervis Zaim) provided with a different cinematic experience in terms of content and the treatment.  It is interesting to note  that Havar and The Hidden Faces dealt with the favorite theme of the Turkish directors- the 'Honour Killings’.

The Istanbul festival was unparallel with its finest selection of films as well as the extraordinarily classified sections. ‘Turkish Classics Revisited’, ‘Challenging the Years’, ‘From the World of Festivals’, ‘Young Masters’, ‘American Independents’, ‘ The World of Animation- Alexander Petrov’, ‘ Woman is Her Name’, ’68 and its Heritage’ were some of the not to be missed sections.  ‘Challenging the Years‘ presented the world Masters with their latest productions. The works of Claude Chabrol (France), Andrzej Wajda (Poland), Carlos Saura (Spain), Eric Rohmer (France), Jaques Rivette (France),  Ermanno Olmi (Italy) and  Manoel De Oliveira (Portugel) reveal that these masters are still at their best with challenging films. A panorama of outstanding films screened in other leading festivals of the world was showcased in the section ‘ From the World of Festivals’. The works of young directors who received critical acclaim in Cannes, Berlin and Rotterdam were projected through ‘ Young Masters’. Hollywood is synonymous for mainstream American films. But new styles, trends and stars are brought to cinema since 1990’s by many filmmakers challenging the Hollywood and the mainstream. Some of the best in this genre is highlighted under the title ‘ American Independents’.

Istanbul Film Festival has instituted the Cinema Honorary Awards too. Claudia Cardinale, the dream girl of world cinema whose first appearance was in Visconti’s film, The Leopard and later became renowned through Federico Fellini’s master piece Eight and a Half’, won the Lifetime achievement Award of the year. The Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, acclaimed by the critics as the spiritual inheritor of Andre Tarkovsky, has been bestowed with Cinema Honorary awards along with Turkish actors of yester years Ekrem Bora,  Izzet Gunay, and Ediz Hun.  Egg  and Summer Book bagged the Golden Tulip Awards, Ben X and Summer Book , the FIPRESCI awards and the Chinese film Blind  Mountain (Li Yang), the FACE award in the Human Rights category.

The success of any film festival is always counted in terms of the selection of films, its representative nature, the audience participation and the presence of veterans of world cinema. 27th Istanbul International Film Festival creditably claims all these success parameters.

Istiklal Cadesse is the hub of Istanbul where the cultural life never ends and the Emek theatre by the side of this street is live with the long line of cineastes waiting for the next screening. Istanbul film festival welcomes all art lovers with its immaculate treasures of Turkish Delights.

(Madhu Eravankara served in the FIPRESCI jury  in the 27th Istanbul International Film Festival)

Barbie dolls, not normal people, exquisite but plastic. They do not have the allure of their predecessors who came to us wrapped in saris. 

There is one film that has stayed in mind vividly over the years, Footpath (1953). In that film the leading lady is seen taking a bath, very daring for those days. Meena Kumari was emerging from doing B grade films against actors like Mahipal. Here she had the chance to act with Dilip Kumar and perhaps that was the reason she agreed to do that scene. It begins with a shot of her head up to her bare shoulders. Then the camera moves slowly from her feet to above her knee.
           
At that time, I was experiencing my first onslaughts of puberty and that shot drove me crazy. Romesh Thapar who went on to be part of Indira Gandhi’s kitchen cabinet had a small role in Footpath. Years later, he told me that those legs that I had seen were not Meena Kumari’s. The director, Zia Sarhadi, had used a body double, a film-making trick. He had shot Meena Kumari’s face and then for the legs scene he had used someone else’s legs.

That bit of news came as a jolt to me. I wish Romesh had kept that information to himself. All those years, I thought I had been dreaming of Meena Kumari’s legs when, in fact, those legs belonged to someone else. Incidentally, Zia Sarhadi was an enormously talented leftist. When his career dimmed in Bombay, he moved to Pakistan where it dimmed even further.

There seems to be common consensus that the most erotic scene in the history  our cinema is in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) where Salim (Dilip Kumar) brushes the face of Anarkali (Madhubala) with a white ostrich feather. He is sitting on the ground and she lies stretched out in front of her, clearly aroused. They do not say a word; everything is suggested. Madhubala looks astonishingly beautiful, an incarnation of sweetness and innocence.

Zulfikar Bhutto visited the sets when the film was being shot in Bombay. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. If you have not seen the film, I suggest you rent it in black and white. In the colourised version that was released recently everyone looks constipated.

Meena Kumari matches, almost, Madhubala’s eroticism and sensuality in a scene in Bhabhi ki Chudiyan (1961) where she is saying her morning prayers in a courtyard, moving around a tulsi plant. Her husband’s young brother follows her. The boy is obviously attracted to his bhabhi. Meena Kumari is wearing a white sari, her head covered. You cannot imagine a prettier sight. The song itself is one of Lata Mangeshkar’s best. The rest of the film is quite forgettable. It sank like a stone at the box office. That one scene is its claim to fame.

Many of the actors today have college degrees and come from middle class families. They can repartee with ease in English with Karan Johar on television; they can handle forks and knives. They speak Hindi on screen but take direction in English. Once Madhubala had the misfortune to be seated next to Frank Capra, the noted Hollywood director. She could not utter a word and the cutlery stumped her.

There was a time when women from so-called respectable families would not join the acting profession. There was a stigma attached to it. Today’s stars marry sons of tycoons. That was not an option in those days. Most of them married within the profession, fellow actors, directors and technicians.

Kissing has reappeared. Rani Mukherji kissed in Hey Ram. Aishwarya Rai gave a prolonged parting kiss to Hritik Roshan in Dhoom II just before she got married. Her future husband was livid. A number of actors are reluctant. Ayesha Takiya has refused lucrative roles when the producer required kissing. I don’t think Kajol has kissed. Boy friends and husbands object and some fastidious ladies, Shilpa Shirodkar for instance, consider it jhootha.

One thing that has not changed over the years is the stars’ addiction to affairs. They fooled around then and they fool around today, unmarried as well the married. To paraphrase Arthur Miller, it comes with the territory. There are abundant opportunities in the studios as well as on location. The acting wives bring home the bacon and dependent husbands, sitting at home, have to live with their shenanigans.