For film buffs in India the festival season in any academic year starts with Osian Cinefan Delhi where the showcasing of selected Asian and Arab cinema takes place in July, then the baton in the relay race is taken up by Asian Film Foundation Mumbai in October  where again we have the cream of Asian cinema.  Come November and hectic schedules begin with Kolkata Film Festival. This is followed immediately by IFFI Goa which has its own identity carved out over a period of forty years. And in December it is IFFK Trivandrum a place unimaginable without the long serpentine queue waiting to enter the theatres. Then follows a series of satellite festivals at Chennai, Pune and Bangalore. The season normally concludes with MAMI Mumbai, but this year this has been postponed for some valid reasons.  

The purpose of my mentioning these events here is to stress the point that there is enough justification for conducting these festivals at different centers. This is evident because their relevance is increasing every year since it gives ample opportunity for both the filmmakers around the world and audiences with individual tastes gather to at one place, interact and view cinema to understand human relations that exist in different parts of the world. India is a huge space and it needs to be stressed that, ultimately, every state should have its own international film festival. While IFFI Goa is both centre and state sponsored, Kolkata and Kerala are purely state government sponsored film festivals. In Chennai, Bangalore and Pune the respective state governments have come forward offering support. Similarly, arrangements can be put in place in other states to see that they have their own film festivals. In the long run this could have the additional advantage of improving the quality of our regional cinema to bring it up to international standards, and simultaneously open new avenue for marketing these films in foreign countries.  

I am very optimistic that this growth of film festivals is good for promoting and spreading a healthy film culture in the country. 

Yours truly
H. N Narahari Rao

available woman in the area to get himself a flock and become a sheep-herder. The film benefits from its authenticity – when it shows the life of these nomads - and the vast steppes of the land that was once overrun by Genghis Khan add to the atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in the tent house that is shared by Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov), his brother-in-law Ondas (Ondasyn Besikbasov), his older sister Samal (Samal Yeslyamova), and three children. Ondas is not very happy with Asa and finds him a burden. Asa knows this and, in a fit, tries to leave. But the predicament of a pregnant sheep that is trying to give birth to a lamb sees him concerned - and he decides to stay on.

While the film is extremely appealing, a word should be said about portraying rustic folk as ‘simple’ people. There is a touch of condescension in such portrayals but even apart from this, it would make for more complex cinema if rustic folk are recognized for what they are: as akin to city folk in their psychological traits although their way of life seems very different. The ‘simplicity that films like Tulpan attribute to rustic folk fetches them awards but the simplicity is more a quality of the director’s vision than that of the people who are its subjects.

life of misery. The film depicts the irony that the owner of the factory, a feudal lord, earns huge profit by selling and even exporting beautiful silk fabrics and the men who produced them never given their due share. This awareness dons on the employees, when Vengadam, one of the weavers embraces communism and takes up the leadership, and forces the mill to shutdown as a revolt against injustice.  This poor weaver without realizing its implications makes a promise that he would present a silk sari to his daughter at her marriage. But when he finds it is quite impossible to accomplish his dream he resorts to dubious methods. Ultimately he loses his wife, then his daughter and lands up in police custody. This struggle and sacrifice does not go in vain. The silk that remained rough for several decades, to those who created it eventually had to smoothen over the years.

Introducing the film at IFFI-08, Goa, Prakash Raj, the noted actor who plays the main role in the film made a statement that he had to unlearn many things to perform in this film. After seeing the film one has to agree with him that it is a film that has brought an air of freshness into Tamil Cinema. It is not often that we find such deftness in achieving cinematic excellence in an issue based film which fulfills the wishes of discerning Indian film goers. One unique thing that is observed is the use of Karnataka classical tunes in the music that blends with the mood of the film very aptly. This is a film that needs to be promoted judiciously at the national and international level and it will definitely receive a good response that it fully deserves. 

and also taking up a role in the film provided much needed authenticity for the script and the screenplay. The film was also subsidized by the Algerian Government. Except for a couple of professional actors from France, most of the cast is from the local residents, non professionals, who make their brief appearances in the film. Even in such small roles they have shown their grit, determination, anguish, defiance writ large on their faces which makes the audience to take sides with the rebels.
 
The Italian director, Gillo Pontecorvo has done a marvelous job in giving a very fair treatment to the film without showing any undue bias to either side; though the film by itself is a narration against the colonial oppression. The film begins with Ali, a petty criminal who voluntarily inducts into FLN after witnessing an execution in the prison. The city has two clearly demarcated colonies, one Casbah where Algiers’ Muslim population lives, the other one is the European quarter where the French and the Europeans live. The economic disparity between the two is clearly visible. The Casbah becomes the shelter for the FLN. There are barricades put up by the French between the two blocks, the FLN group reacts by shooting down French policemen on the streets, then they resort to planting bombs in thickly populated areas like cafes and bars. The FLN successfully launches guerrilla warfare in an organized manner. The French army is called to control the situation. The military men retaliate by bombing a civilian locality in Casbah and then systematically dismantling the leadership of different groups of FLN.  The scenes of torture perpetrated by the French on the FLN members are abominable and it shows the French in poor light. It is not out of place to refer to what happened in India when the British committed the Jallian Wala Bagh massacre against poor civilians. It is no denying of the fact that colonial powers wanted to cling to power at any cost as though it is their birthright. The film ends with the death of Ali, the battle is won by the French army but the struggle continues. It attains monstrous proportions when the entire population makes demonstrations screaming and wailing with shrieking voice “Allah is good, long live Algeria”. Ultimately the French lost the war, but not before half a million innocent lives were lost. The film makes a very strong political statement. 

The Battle of Algiers, has an astonishing relevance today even after forty years of its making. Many learned historians have commented that this film is like a handbook for conducting guerilla warfare and it had its effect spread to different parts of the world, Vietcong, Latin America, Palastine and Israel, South Africa, and presently in Iraq. Even in India terrorist activities continue unabated taking toll of innocent lives even to this day. It is quite strange and interesting to study the history of those countries which have put up struggle for freedom. France had a taste of what it means to lose independence when they were under the German occupation during Second World War. They had another bitter experience when they were driven out from Vietnam. But they doggedly insisted to stay in Algeria despite vociferous demand from the people to quit resulting in heavy loss of lives. This happened in other countries also. In India the loss of lives were less because the means adopted was different, it was a non-violent struggle. 

As a film, The Battle of Algiers undoubtedly remains one of the great classics of the world cinema. Gillo Pontecorvo, the director has never used any newsreel footage or clippings to establish the reality. Instead he painstakingly recreates every scene to make it a legitimate documentation. The film has won a large number of international awards including Golden Lion for Best Direction at Venice in 1966. The film was a big success in the film society circuit in India in the early 1970’s. In the recent years the film was screened to packed houses in several International Film Festivals in India.  

The Criterion Collection have released a three disc DVD set consisting of the main film, a profile of the director Gillo Pontecorvo in the second and the third one a documentary on making of the film with interviews of key personalities including Yacef Saadi, who was directly involved in the battle and in making of the film as well and other important historians of the period. This documentary gives a clear picture of what exactly happened during the period of the struggle. One should see all the three features to appreciate this timeless movie.

Since the days of Chen Kaige, the famous Chinese director who made major break-through with his film Yellow Earth (1984) across the globe with its powerful story touching China's contemporary socio-political culture and Zhang Yimou winning the Golden Bear in the Berlin Festival for his debut film Red Sorghum(1987), Chinese cinema has always been making waves with its unique narrative style as well as its eye-catching cinematography. Two films which were part of this year’s New Currents Section at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival, South Korea, perhaps carry the legacy of that tradition.

Director Ye Zhao's Jalainur was one of such film, which shone bright with its nuanced portrayal of a crisis - both individual and social. The film however reflects the hopelessness of the situation, which makes it even more haunting. Here the cameraman Yi Zhang, said to be his debut film seems 'painting emotions with light' as Bergman famously said about his cameraman Sven Nykvist with more emphasis on gaze, gestures, expressions and even silence, making every moment heart-wrenchingly evocative. Zhang practically creates a canvass of moods with grimness as an underlying emotion, capturing the hues and colors of a colliery - the billowing smoke of the locomotives and their movements, the texture of snow, the pattern of railway tracks, all in splendid composition and drenched in intensity.

it is on the verge of closure. Its workers will soon be laid off and the steam trains - which have been rumbling for years - will be taken off-track as well. The main protagonist of the film, the aging Zhu has been active there for thirty years as a steam train driver and the other protagonist young Li Zhizhong is his apprentice. They bonded well, had nice times there and their togetherness both at work and around the colliery make them inseparable. The hopelessness of the situation however compels Zhu to retire, and with a deep sense of anguish he takes the road to his home. Young Zhizhong is surprised to the core and finds it difficult to accept Zhu's retirement but follows his companion. Zhu tries to persuade him to turn back but deep in the heart Zhu seems find it hard to really let Zhizhong to go. Every time Zhu tries to persuade Zhizhong to go back he loses the battle and the latter reappears by his side. Wiser after many miles together, Zhizhong finally bids adieu to his master at a remote railway station where Zhu's daughter and son-in-law appear - to escort him to homeward.

The future seeming gloomy - a fact more painful than the loss of his dear companion - young Zhizhong finds himself in a limbo. So, he wanders around the border, misses the train to go back to his work, which he might know well is an exercise in futility. If his old companion has nothing to loose really except his years of attachment to the colliery, young Zhizhong has a bleak future in store and coming in terms with this reality is a hard task.

 The beauty of Jalainur lies however in its ability to carry this concern as an underlying issue - more pronounced than the crisis in camaraderie of its protagonists. Amid these crises of the protagonists, however, the director employs the recurrent, much used Angelopoulosian metaphor of a mobile music troupe signifying hope. In one unforgettable, powerful moment in the film, while the two protagonists get on to a truck, a white tarpaulin attached to the vehicle is torn apart by the wind it drifts away as Zhizhong wanders aimlessly. Throughout poetic and allegorical, director Zhao has really accomplished a great job in completing Jalainur with his deep working class concerns and oblique references to the apathy of the system - at the same time filling every minute of it with visual splendor, which promises a lot from the this young film director of China.

Another film from China - Jin Yang's Er Dong is also remarkable for its simple portrayal of a young drifter, who finds it hard to support his family with all the menial jobs he gets. He starts seeing nightmares about selling his newly born baby to end his woes.

Nobody expected that the mercury level would be down to a record level. But it just happened one night and that too after 74 years. The city of London saw snowfall for the first time since October, 1934 – the year Hitler made himself the ruler of Germany in the backdrop of a critical economic crisis across the globe. Though coincidental it might look, the world at present has been going through an unprecedented financial collapse and recession. But when temperatures plunged to minus 4 degree Celsius, forcing a number of football league fixtures to be cancelled and airport to divert flights elsewhere in London, the British capital city’s most famous film festival witnessed heated argument about whether it was a time for people to be ‘seduced’ by the revolutionary glamour of Che Guevara, Bobby Sands, Ulrike Meinhof and the like.  

It was strange that a major columnist in The Times, the title sponsor of the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival (LFF, 15-30 October 2008), strongly criticized films about armed rebels making it a point that : ‘This is no time for heroes with bad causes’ (The Times, October 28, 2008). But without being led into the debate on whether these heroes are bad or good, we need to judge films on their merits. The biopic on Che Guevara eventually becomes a study on contemporary politics. Made in two separate parts of 126 minutes each, the film is based on the actual diaries of the protagonist. Though at times they looked propagandist, Steven Soderbergh’s Che (Part 1 & Part 2) is humanist in approach. The first part chronicles the successful Communist uprising in Cuba where Che played a pivotal role. His rhetoric on revolutionary change in Latin America spelt out at the United Nations, intercut with flash forwards, are significant. A few scenes where Che (played by Benicio Del Toro) and his comrades proclaim that they are not after unnecessary bloodshed of fellow countrymen, or where Che debars his comrades from using a luxury car after the fall of Batista government, make the viewers believe that these men were poles apart from today’s extremists. The second part of Che is quite different in tone and treatment, as it exposes the failed struggle in the Bolivian jungles. It explores why revolution cannot succeed without a mass support base and why it cannot be exported to an unprepared land. At one point Che tells his deputies that his party will seek Jean Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell’s support for a worldwide fund-raising effort. Here lies a crucial point in perspective, much relevant today - that the instrument of social change must adhere to intellectual manoeuvres, rather than brute force. Soderbergh who made films like Erin Brokovich and Sex, Lies & Videotape has authored a daring and intelligent essay through this film. The colour scheme and sound design in the film is extremely realistic. 

The debut feature from a renowned artist Steve McQueen, Hunger is also about a messy period in history that encompasses the famous IRA hunger strike of 1981 led by Bobby Sands. Winner of a major award this year at Cannes, the film begins in a locale in Belfast. A prison officer checks under his car for bombs while his wife stares on in mute anxiety. Then the focus shifts to two Irish Republican Army prisoners who endure beatings and humiliation daily.

disturbing events shown through the eyes of both prisoners and prison officers. The abstract quality of life inside the infamous Maze prison is eerily silent except for quite a long dialogue between Sands and a Catholic priest about the former’s decision to go on a hunger strike and about the rationale behind extremes of protest. The whole sequence involving these two characters inside the visitor’s room of the prison is captured only in two shots by a static camera. The effects of this uncompromising stance on Sand’s body is palpable till the end of the film – his body getting horribly thinner till he breathes his last. This film however does not justify the morality or efficacy of the method taken by the IRA prisoners or its activists outside the prison. It does not glorify terrorism – violence from both sides is shown as equally repulsive, grief equally devastating – as evident from Sands’ ordeal and the prison officer’s murder. 

The Baader Meinhof Complex on the other hand deals with the left wing militant group headed by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. The group was up in arms against ‘American Imperialism’ and the West German establishment throughout the 1970s.

makes the film a strong critique of armed activism in the name of democracy and justice. The main characters are seen establishing a rapport with West Asian terror-factory. Their individual life is also shown in utter disregard to moral bindings. This film too is least likely to glamorize terrorism.  

Bank account dating back to 1948. But she learns that the accounts in the bank were wiped clean following the partition of Palestine and creation of Israel. Angered by these developments, Soraya (played by Suheir Hammad, herself a poet) robbed the bank with the help of a local waiter whose visa application to study in Canada was rejected. The two young souls fight to create a home for themselves amidst the most unlikely of situations. Soraya’s exultations after seeing the sea is not inexplicable : keeping in view the beginning sequence in the film which saw people removed from Jaffa and their boat moving further away to some place where they would be denied visit to the seashore. Within the film, it could be felt that the images often get away from ‘story’ to reveal that the locations have their own faces. The director’s aim was to picture history of the land – both past and present, without propagating violence – that comes alive in the spaces created. The sub-plot of the bank robbery, in fact, was inspired by an incident which took place in Ramallah. I talked to the director herself during ‘Filmmaker’s Breakfast’ at the Sofitel Hotel in London and Jacir explained how the difficulty and risks involved in the shooting of the film had actually turned it to a kind of ‘road movie’. So without doubt one can easily assume that Salt of this Sea is very much a Palestinian film.

History takes more vivid cinematic form in The Betrayal. It is often told that cinema always narrates what the image’s movements and times make it narrate. Here this film oscillates between facts and narration, documentary and story, first person accounts and enactment of events involving an Asian-American family.

also allowed to be observant in the world around them. It is made possible by the director’s long association with the protagonist Thavi Phrasavath, whose father was involved with the US military’s covert operations in Laos. After the Government was taken over by the Communist Party, Thavi’s father was sent to re-education camp and Thavi’s entire family including his mother, brothers and sisters took political asylum in the US. But they had to go lots of hardships facing poverty, deprivation, discrimination and threats from the underworld. The film has richly layered visuals with testimonials such as the US Army’s atrocities that saw about 3 million tons of bombs dropped in Laos which is more than World War I & II combined. The footage of President Nixon legitimizing the US role is one of the images that gave credence to the construction of The Betrayal.  

The year 2008 saw one of the finest filmmakers of the older generation, Agnes Varda back with a very personal film. For more than five decades, she has been making short, feature and documentaries. Now leaving back all her experience she has made a bold attempt to look at herself. In her new film, The Beaches of Agnes the grand old lady of French New Wave, in her own words, ‘tried to find a style and a form to tell’ memories, encounter, the ups and downs of her life.

frames and images in this auto-biopic or a sort of ‘auto-filmo-documentary’. All throughout her life, the beaches have played significant part and they are filmed, juxtaposed as part of natural setting or simply made to appear as an unseparable part of installations using open frames and mirrors. Seeing this unique film allows meaning of the filmed materials to be experienced, rather than viewed.  

Oliver Stone’s much talked about film W. is another biopic which stirred debate about the dos and don’t of the film. Stone’s earlier films about powerful contemporary political figures (Nixon and JFK) cannot be compared with his latest film, because this one is about the President of the United States of America who is very much on power at the time of making and releasing of the film.

unsympathetic to Bush the junior, very often the protagonist is mocked at : whether in the highs or in the lows of his career especially when he found himself dumbstruck as his administration failed to find ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq.  W. takes a dig at the President’s didacticism claiming himself a saviour of democracy and justice. The subtle humour running through the narrative made the difference in this respect. Bush has a family interest in oil business and the US administration’s eye on the oil reserves of the Central Asian countries is not spared either.

One most extraordinary movie in the 52nd LFF was Louise-Michel. It is a typical black comedy and its peripheral view on contemporary anarchism forces us to assess everything from a different perspective. The film deals with an middle-aged woman and a mercenary hired to kill the boss of the factory where she works. The children’s clothes factory is closed leaving Louise and her female co-workers jobless. What follows is some abstract developments as Louise and the hitman Michel embarks on a mission and ultimately they kill the factory boss in his own manor. The way they executed the task, the incidents leading to the climax and the jubiliation followed were most absurdist of histrionics. The film reminds the ‘Dogma’ style of Lars Von Trier. The filmmaker duo of Gustave Kervern and Benoit Delepine are equally known for their absurdist narrative form. Incidentally this unique film is dedicated to a 19th century French anarchist Louise Michel. The all-pervading anarchism is running throughout the film – Michel accidentally killing a cow while practicing shooting, his chanting of ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ prior to setting foot on the adventure, a stranger playing with a replica of WTC twin towers being ravaged by toy planes in a crude remembrance of 9/11, and so on. 

These are only a few films which merit serious discussion. But there are others too, demanding separate consideration. Each of them invites the viewer to see through the blurred lines between storytelling and reality. History is recreated, memory sharpened and politics reinterpreted in many of the recent celluloid creations.

black student. The changing scenario of the country, the emerging dynamics between the new rulers and the ruled who were once the boss, is itself like a character silently watching from the background. Lurie’s relation with his daughter, who chooses to live in the outback despite being robbed and raped - because she regards it as her place, and his slow transition into accepting her stand despite initially opposing it violently, makes for a strong, if difficult, film. 

Steve McQueen's “Hunger” on the hunger strike of Irish prisoner Bobby Sands in 1981 during the days of the Northern Ireland conflict and the way the political struggle affected people in general got the Diesel Discovery award voted by the 1000 international media present. 

A film that created a big buzz and won the Cadillac People's Choice Award “Slumdog Millionaire” by UK’s acclaimed director Danny Boyle is set in India, rather the slums of Mumbai. It’s an interesting way to take on the ‘Bollywood-genre’ yet tell a very moving story of human suffering due to circumstances. Even the format is unusual, with Q & A episodes inthe once extremely popular telly show in the country, “Kaun Banega Crorepati,” 

boy he was and works as tea-boy in a call centre. So when he answers all the questions correctly, people cannot believe it and even the police hound him. The tragic-comedy of the situation is that every question, whether the make of a pistol or what is written on an American dollar is related to some unsavoury incident in Jamal’s life. But the ending is happy, like in Bollywood films, he gets the money and reunites his lady-love. So in life, anything can happen! In Toronto, the audience also seemed to celebrate with spontaneous applause with the parting scene with Bollywood-style song and dance sequence. “Slumdog Millionaire” shows how even the same kind of film, which is often regarded as frivolous, can be scripted with a twist to make it something different. 

At a time, when film festivals in India and Abroad are competing with each other to raise the prize bar, thanks to their newfound corporate patronage, Third Eye Asian Film Festival, a relatively small and cozy festival has a distinctive warmth attached to it. The forever crowded Dadar market of central Mumbai had a charm nothing less than the Bercy Street of Paris, for a week during the festival. Keeping in the spirit of the defiant city of Mumbai, the central venue, Plaza Theatre remained abuzz with film enthusiasts, filmmakers and festival regulars, despite the political unrest in the city.

Over the period of last seven years, the festival has developed a very loyal following among the film lovers, however, according to the organizers this year saw a significant participation from students of various city colleges.

As any festival regular will vouch for, s/he remembers a festival for its programmed sections more than anything. And Third Eye this year had aplenty to offer. Director in Focus section of Kim Ki Duk was an instant hit with the audience. The South Korean director with his eastern sensibilities, wooed the audience with his meditative cinema that explored issues, ranging from overtly political like unification of two Koreas, essentially philosophical like karma and emancipation and existential such as a quest for true human identity.

A focus on Japanese director of the last century Keisuke Kinoshita was another treat to remember. Kinoshita has a style that thrives on melodrama, quite different from Kurosawa and Ozu who are better known among film enthusiasts in India. This retrospective certainly opened a new vista to Japanese cinema for Indian cinephiles.

It was nothing less than incredible on the part of the festival to have managed to screen a package of Egyptian master Youssef Chahine, who passed away in July this year. Chahine, who also acted in many of his films, was known for his lighthearted criticism of Western cinematic sensibilities; his subdued sense of humour often included laughing at himself. His unique style of filmmaking though won him many accolades at various European film festivals and he was regarded as one of the pillars of Arab cinema. Chahine's three films: The Egyptian Story, Land and Choice presented three facets of the original cinematic style of the master. 

Festival also paid tributes to Vijay Tendulkar, who played a key role in taking cinema closer to the people through his scathing yet passionate investigation of social realities during 70s and 80s. Festival showcased films written by Tendulakar: Ardhasatya, Umbartha and Manthan which are considered milestones of Indian cinemas for their portrayal of the disillusionment and hopes of pre-market economy era.

A focus on Korea was imminent from the day one, when one of the founding members of Korean New Wave Park Kwang-su was honored with Asian Culture Award for lifetime achievement. His film "Single Spark" was showcased as the festival centerpiece later. Park also had a brief interaction with the delegates, where he humbly acknowledged that "he is two young to receive such an honour and it motivates him to work even harder".
  
P K Nair, the grand old man behind the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) thanked the organizers for according him an honour bearing the name of the great master Satyajit Ray, who not only played a pivotal role in giving a new dimension to Indian cinema but also set up the federation of film societies of India. Satyajit Ray Memorial Award, is one of the most widely recognized honour in India (and probably only) that recognizes work towards spreading better understanding of the medium of cinema.

Israel has emerged as a key filmmaking nation in Asia. One of the leading contemporary Israeli director Dan Wolman, has been a regular visitor to Indian festivals. Festival also showcased his film in the director in focus section. Dan also chaired the jury for the first / second feature film competition.

sections. Co incidentally entries from Iran and Israel emerged as winners in both the competitions. 

In the short film category Babak Amini's Angles Die In The Soil (Iran) won the prize, while Israeli film Zohar, directed by Yasmine Novak received a special mention by the jury. 

The award was shared by an Iranian film "The Unfinished Stories"by Pourya Azarbayjani and Israeli film "For My Father" directed by Dror Zahavi in the first / second feature film competition, while Indian film "Roots" directed by Tzahi Grad received a special jury mention.  

The weeklong celebration of Asian cinema showcased 80 films from 20 countries. Apart from regular venues of Plaza cinema and Y B Chavan Centre, festival also added Fun Republic as the newest venue in the suburban Mumbai in order to reach out.

Madhur Bhadarkar, three time national award winner director was felicitated during the closing ceremony held at Plaza theatre. The ceremony was chaired by renowned filmmaker Govind Nihlani.

In his address, Mr. Nihlani thanked the duo of Kiran Shantaram, chairman, Asian Film Festival and Sudhir Nandgaonkar, festival director for having managed between themselves this undelivered celluloid fare for seven consecutive years that has screened more than 400 films from every nook and corner of the continent and has successfully created an audience for it.

(Bikas Mishra is the editor of DearCinema.com, the first Indian online portal on world cinema.)

It was in 1961 that the Film Archive was started under the administration of the Film Institute. It was granted a separate identity as the National Film Archive of India in 1965 and P.K.Nair then took charge of it as the Assistant Curator. After this auspicious beginning Sri Nair grew in stature – as the institution itself grew – until the day of his retirement.

At the time of his taking charge, the NFAI had in its possession only some 80 prints of National Award winning films acquired from the concerned producers under the policy of the Government. Building a film archive is a skilled job needing a thorough understanding not only of immediate objectives but also a vision and, above all, the missionary zeal to seek out, unearth and preserve prints of important – and sometimes even rarely seen – films for posterity. Sri Nair has all these qualities in abundance. He did not treat his assignment perfunctorily as most people unfortunately regard government employment – because building an archive brick by brick needed engagement of a very high order. He enjoyed every minute of his association with NFAI because he also loved cinema.  He loves cinema so much – for him morning coffee is cinema, breakfast is cinema, lunch and dinner are cinema. Even after his retirement he continues to have the same passion for cinema.
 
Over the years Sri Nair wrestled with obstacles like red tape and with perseverance built the Archive on the firm foundation that he himself had laid. He expanded its activities and increased its acquisitions to a level that makes the NFAI comparable to the best of such institutions anywhere in the world. And from the post of Assistant Curator, Nair rose to the level of Director. 

Spreading a healthy film culture was another task that he performed assiduously. He took enormous interest in helping film societies with films for their monthly screenings, conduct film festivals and Film Appreciation courses. Apart from the annual film appreciation course held at Pune, NFAI has been helping FFSI, Film Societies and other educational institutions in organizing short term film appreciation courses at different centers.  

The most noteworthy achievements of Sri Nair’s career at NFAI were perhaps the completion of the building complex to house the preservation vaults, the gradual building of a huge library of books, the reading room and the reference library facility, individual class rooms and an excellent auditorium with 350 seating capacity, all these completed before his retirement in 1991. It is to the credit of the NFAI, Pune and to Sri PK Nair that most film lovers in India caught glimpses of the films of New Theatres and the Bombay Talkies, the masterworks of directors like Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman and Kurosawa entirely though their auspices. 

The Third Eye Asian Film Festival is immensely happy to honor Sri P.K.Nair with Satyajit Ray memorial award for his untiring efforts in creating a solid foundation for spreading a healthy film culture in India.

The magic of cinema is such that the hunger for it is never satiated. Very few countries are left in the world where there are no film festivals - soon one might even say that there are very few major cities in the world where there is no film festival! Until last year, Malaysia was one of them. Malaysians then had to travel out of the country whenever possible, to see the sort of films not easily available on the normal screens, or on DVDs. No longer is that necessary. A year ago Kuala Lumpur started its own annual festival and November 2008 marked its second edition with an array of features, documentaries, shorts and animation films from across the world.

“Yellow House”, by Amor Hakkar is set in Algeria and though announced as a France-Algeria coproduction, was a European entry.

Perhaps the arts are showing the way to a uni-polar world where nationalities become irrelevant. If only the same could be said of politics as well….

Not content with film screenings only, KLIFF also organized a series of panel discussions and workshops as well as a two-day conference in association with NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) on Asian cinema. With all four sessions of the conference introduced and moderated with a depth of understanding and passion by Nick Deocampo, the Conference covered The Beginning of Cinema in Asia – the forms of pre-cinema cultural expression like Wayang Kulit in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Asian cinema resurgence as it moves from national to regional, to promoting and marketing Asian films. This last raised some controversy with panelists and audience arguing about the imperatives of marketing impinging upon the freedom of creativity. All sessions in fact, were very pro-active with speakers and audience engaged in lively debate, making it into a significant forum for the development of ideas.

Workshops ranged from Appreciating Asian classics like “Rashomon” from Japan to the major but lesser known P. Ramlee’s “The Raggedy Bachelor Warriors” from Malaysia, to Screenwriting, Indonesian Animation and The Relevance of International Film Festivals.

The Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival is a newcomer on the international scene but it is already well-set to emerge as an important event on the film festival calendar.

Indian popular or mainstream cinema mostly panders to the frivolous when it comes to themes and treatment. The allegation, particularly from those who believe cinema as a serious art form, often is that it caters largely to the lowest common denominator when it comes to creativity, a few exceptions here and there notwithstanding.

The allegation may well be true, but the fact remains that this opium of the masses in India is the only popular art form which attracts a frenzy incomparable to any other mass media. Quite expectedly, most of the books written on Hindi cinema, referred to as Bollywood across the world, too end up as celebrity-chasing hagiographies or coffee table books, though there have been honorable exceptions, including some illuminating analyses by the likes of B D Garga, Chidananda Dasgupta, Ashish Nandy, Sudhir Kakar, Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Ravi Vasudevan.

M K Raghavendra's Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema (Oxford University Press) falls in the category of exceptions. Raghavendra's writings more often than not have focused on deconstruction of cinema from the sociological point of view. Examples like this are galore in Deep Focus, the academic film journal of which he was a founder-editor, and in many other publications. And this book is no different.

Raghavendra selects some iconic Hindi films made over the years for his analyse, through which he has sought to offer a fresh perspective to look at them – as a tool that continually soaks in the socio-political situation of the country and in turn offers a commentary on it. And what he has done makes quite an absorbing read, though for the reader, it remains a niggling question whether the sub-text that Raghavendra has read in a particular film was consciously co-opted into the script by the filmmaker or not. It is more likely that it has been mostly a case of sub-conscious co-option, but nevertheless the reading of the sub-text makes the book a highly-interesting read.

The Bangalore-based academic has chosen the films for deconstruction quite carefully. They are more often than not path-breaking films in the Hindi film industry, for either their commercial success or their content that sought to break new ground despite firmly remaining within the parameters of the so-called mainstream formulae. From Mehboob Khan's Andaz (1949) to Bimal Roy's Devdas (1955), and from Suraj Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hai Koun…! (1994) to Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006), Raghavendra scans a vast list of highly-successful Hindi films to offer his arguments. And to put things in a global perspective, he studies the traits of Hindi films of various periods with the cinema made in Hollywood at the same time, contrasting and comparing the trends.

Raghavendra states quite clearly at the very beginning of the book that academic study of Indian cinema has become highly difficult in present-day India because of what he calls a "vast gap" that has opened up between the academic critics and the lay spectator. But he refused to pander to the whims of this majority chunk – as most of the market-savvy chronicler of the story of Bollywood tend to do – and dives headlong into his core strength area of academic analyses.

The author admits that trying to even list out the traits of popular cinema could be a hazardous exercise because "what the critic notices usually depends on his or her agenda". And he also makes it clear that his study of a film is focused on its narration from the point of view of representation of space, time and logic.

Some of the analyses offered in the book – of films made by the likes of early filmmakers like Baburao Painter, Franz Osten and Ardeshir Irani to recent filmmakers like Ramesh Sippy, quite fascinating to read if one is interested in reading more into popular Hindi cinema going beyond its primary role to entertain the masses. For example, it says that Khan's Andaz, made just after India attained its independence, makes an attempt to provide the image of a modern India, even though it by itself does not have any historical marker to contextualise it in those terms. Or in Mahal, it argues that Ashok Kumar's and his characters belonging to the legal professions suggests that they belong to the ruling class and the fact that the former was reincarnation of an earlier ruler suggests that the ruling class of independent India are just a continuation of the class during British India.

Divided into decade-wise chapters, the book argues that mainstream Hindi cinema is able to permeate the farthest corners of India because it follows an idiom in which all localised references are avoided so that everybody can connect with the characterisations through specific melodramatic and generalised societal traits.   

Seduced… makes a highly-intelligent reading. It is definitely not a book for readers who look for the frivolous, but it is certainly a must read for anyone who is well-versed about and loves mainstream Indian cinema.  

(Seduced by the Familiar; by M K Raghavendra; OUP; Price Rs 695; pp 362)   

Mrinal Sen, the maverick maestro of Indian cinema, turned 86 on 14th May,2008. He was conferred the Life Time Achievement Award on the 12th July this year by the Osians Film Festival for his immense contribution to Indian Cinema. Once again this critic has spent a couple of hours with the maestro, winner of Dadasaheb Phalke Award, and Osians’ Connoisseur Award, at his South Kolkata apartment. Mrinalda speaks to this critic about his cinema and commitment.
      
Mrinal Sen, the maverick maestro of Indian cinema, seems to have grown young with times. He has so far directed twenty-eight feature films and the most of them won international and national awards in various film festivals of the world. Standing at 86, he looks more confident and an incorruptible optimist. In his frivolous mood, he says: "I am growing younger and you should count my age in reverse order".
   
On the Life Time Achievement award, Mrinal Sen Comments: “Awards mean something for a director. I think `Award’ can equally enthuse and again corrupt the recipient. In the recent years, crazy rat race for highest National award among some directors seems to have vitiated the very aim of such honour. Such manipulation hurts me.”  Nowadays awards do not attract me so much, he adds.
    
For him cinema and the city of Kolkata are Siamese twins. Says he: "Calcutta is a city of glaring contrasts and that is me - restless, nervous, unpredictable, intimidating, infernal; and I have grown in this state of confusion, this chaotic situation".

When asked how he serves his time and medium, he replies: "I still continue to serve my own time, do a kind of introspection, self-searching, self-criticism to be more exact, pulling myself by the hair and making myself stand before the mirror. I identify with the class from which I come. It is the class of the underprivileged. But there again I confront a crisis."

Talking about his attitude to audience, he says: "I am one director who likes to force the audience to confront the issues and questions raised in my films. Since I also give the answers or suggest some answers, a synthesis emerges. My films contain question to the audience. What I have been doing for some time is to keep an open ending. All that we can do is to analyze the situation so that the audience starts asking questions till they find an answer.

For him reality is something that cannot be retrieved as it is. He informs: "I have a different take about reality and realism, the central focus of my cinema. My films in general are agit-prop in nature and I continued the trend till I made Ek Din Pratidin, a film about soul-searching and self-criticism". He thus started a process to find the `enemy' within which he deems more important. He adds: "Now it is much more important to identify the enemy lying within. This is the time for soul-searching because we need to know, after so many years of conflicts and struggles, where we stand as creative directors".

His understanding of physical reality absorbed in his cinema is a bit different. He says: "What you can do is to project your understanding of the reality. In other words, you cannot project a slice of reality physically on the screen. I want to invest the physical reality with my sensibility, my own contemporary sensibility. Reality with a comment", he adds

Do you live in the past or…? In his freewheeling mood he comments: "To connect is the thing. Connecting the past with the present. An example, minuscule, comes to mind. An incident of no consequence, apparently. But deep within me, it is something that catches me unawares and suddenly opens the door between the past and the present".