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issue No. 09/01/10 |
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January 2010 |
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| A Word With You |
| Greetings and Best Wishes to all our readers |
e-cineindia is back on its tracks after a short lay off. FIPRESCI India members, who attended the recently held Annual General Meeting at Goa, on 29 Dec 2009, evinced keen interest in developing this web magazine as a very pertinent and a standard publication that should receive the attention of discerning film lovers and film journalists.
As assured by the Secretary, the 9th issue of e-cineindia is now released with a good coverage on films shown at IFFI -09, and IFFK – 09.
The next issue is due in April 2010, and we appeal to all our members to contribute articles, particularly reviews of films they have seen so that it would help in selection of films for various film festivals that are being organized in India and also for the film society screenings.
Incidentally, to mark the 50 years of Federation of Film Societies of India, a book THE FILM SOCIETY MOVEMENT IN INDIA compiled and edited by H.N.Narahari Rao and published by the Asian Film Foundation Mumbai was released both at Mumbai and Trivandrum on 10th and 14th December 2009. A review of this book appears in this issue for the benefit of readers.
With best wishes,
H. N Narahari Rao
Editor |
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| IFFI 2009 |
| (23 November to 03 December, 2009- Goa) |
The recently concluded 40th IFFI, its 6th consecutive at Goa, as usual had a large number of films covering almost all the film making countries around the world. Interestingly, among them there were some films having subjects based on rural life. To depict a fictional episode in a village, and make it engage the audience as a full length feature on celluloid, in the midst of a large number of films made with urban based subjects, is quite a challenge. Incidentally, the films that we witnessed not only dealt the subject well, but the stories are subtly blended with plenty of humor.
 Country Poland Film: God’s Little Village U Pana Boga Za Miedza
Director: Jacek Bromski
Screenplay: Jacek Bromski
Music: Ludek Drizhal
Photography: Ryszard Lenczewski
Set Designer: Magda Widelska - Wladyka
God’s Little Village, from Poland, directed by Jacek Bromski is one such film. It is a very well made film that brings to light the social and cultural life in the village King’s Bridge. Staseik, a native of this village returns from America, after his long stay there, with some money that he has saved. We are reminded of the phrase ‘Birds are flying back to their nests’ in this context. He spends all his savings in repairing his ancestral house that is in a dilapidated condition. He is also on the look out for a wife. The police chief, a comic character, and the priest have a big say in the affairs of this village. Suddenly a lady police inspector Marina Chmiel appears in the village to conduct computer courses without the help of computers. And another electrifying event that creates turmoil in this hamlet is the election of mayor. The America returned Staseik is in demand now to develop a strategy for a new candidate who wants to defeat the incumbent mayor who is holding this post for long years now. The electoral politics brings in lot of unrest, fights, shooting, and many incidents follow. Eventually amidst all the humour that it creates there is definitely an under current which makes us to think how the serene atmosphere of a village gets polluted by the entry of many corrupt practices that are commonly found in urban socio-political surroundings. |
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| Fluke Mazli |
 Country: Hungary
Fim: Fluke Mazli
Screenplay: Balint Hegedus
Director: Tamas Kemenyffy
Fluke, from Hungary, directed by Tamas Kemmenffy is another film, in which the village itself becomes a character playing a major role in its build up. The film is intermingled with humour; at some stages it becomes hilarious. One resident among the villagers refuses to sign an agreement with an Oil company. This becomes a blessing in disguise and they find an oil pipe line running through the village. They tap the oil and sell it at a competitive price and the economy of the inhabitants flourishes. But greed
creeps in, creating severe conflict among them.
It is again the entry of the state authorities, the police, and the rich oil companies who storm the village bringing in chaos to the otherwise peaceful ambience. This is again an onslaught by the corporate culture on the lives of villagers that threatens them with disaster. |
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| Beyond the Circle (Britter Bairey) |
 Country: Bangladesh
Fim: Beyond the Circle (Britter Bairey)
Director: Golam Rabbany Biplob
Screenplay: Golam Rabbany Biplob
Cinematographer: Mahfooz Ur Rahman Khan
Golam Raddany Biplob the filmmaker from Bangladesh who won the Best New Asian Director award at IFFI 2007 for his film On the Wings of Dreams makes his entry again with his latest film Beyond the Circle, a film that makes an authentic depiction of blatant assault by vested interests from city on an innocent villager Haripada, who becomes a victim of an unethical scheme. Haripada’s talent as a flautist is brought to light through an interview that appears in a newspaper. A snobbish corporate company pounces on the village and takes Haripada and his adopted son, a Muslim as hostages and the so called event managers try to organize his performance in Dakha with the ulterior motive of making huge money at the cost of this rustic, innocent villager. Haripada is totally disillusioned and falls sick and recovers only to find that he has lost his memory to play his melodious tunes on his flute. He makes several bids in vain to escape. Eventually at the very moment when he was supposed to perform at a star hotel in the presence of specially invited elite audience escapes with his son and return to his peaceful abode. The moment he lands in his village, his loving homely abode, his talent reappears and is back to normal playing his favorite tunes. Biplob chooses to express what he wants to say in a convincing manner and give a decent conclusion to his film without any complications. This is precisely what he has followed in this film also as earlier. |
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Beli Mattu Hola
Flim:Beli Matthu Hola (Fence and the Crop)
Kannada / 105 min/35mm/Colour |
Fence and the Crop, (origin title-Beli mattu Hola), a Kannada film(India) directed by P.R. Ramadas Naidu, his fourth successive to appear in the Panorama section of the IFFI, makes a severe comment on the establishment.
 The system and the establishment, the Police authorities to be very specific act as a devilish force that brings unbearable disaster to a tiny village that reels under their onslaught. Badakotraiah a money lender by profession loses all his wealth and the pawned gold when his house is robbed. Not able to bear the loss the old man dies of paralytic stroke. His son lodges a complaint with the police. Instead of tracing the culprit and recovering the lost property the police harass the complainant and demand huge money as bribe from the beleaguered family. Whatever remains is also lost in the process. The villagers ultimately realize that it is a futile exercise to get any justice from such a rotten system. |
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| by H.N.Narahari Rao, |
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Film Reviews
Yuryev Dan (Yuri’s Day)
Dir: Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia, 2008) |
IFFI ‘09 in Goa was a tepid affair with only a few films worthy of attention but if there was one film that stood out it was the Russian film Yuri’s Day which, it turned out, few people even saw. Russia, in my view, is the premier filmmaking nation in the world today at least terms of the originality of the films. While the rest of world cinema is preoccupied with ‘issue-based films’ Russia is being true to cinema as cinema, exploring the medium in complex ways – even more complex perhaps than in the past because there are so many unknown filmmakers who are making not just interesting but even great films.
Yuri’s Day is about a famous opera singer from Moscow returning with her adolescent son to her native village to see the place where she grew up. Lyubova wants to see the village of her childhood – Yuri – and is dragging her son along. The village is an obscure place hundreds of miles from Moscow and is known for a small museum dedicated to a hero from the Napoleonic war – Prince Bagration. There is a church steeple with a bell and a woman at the counter sells tickets to go up, hoping to also sell a T-shirt with a bear embroidered on it. As fortune would have it Lyubova’s son disappears when she is looking out over the snow-covered landscape from the church steeple. Lybova stays on to look for the boy with the help of a local policeman. News is frequently brought to her that there are people who might be her son – a corpse floating on a river since before the beginning of winter, a young monk in a local monastery who has a similar sounding name and arrived the day before, a prisoner in a jail quarantined to a section meant for those with tuberculosis. As she stays on, she finds herself gradually losing her identity. Lyubova begins by flaunting her Moscow connections but Moscow matters little in this place.
 Country: Russia
Film: Yuri's Day (Yuriev Den)
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
Screenplay: Kirill Serebrennikov
What is extraordinary about Yuri’s Day is the sense created of a space left out of the political system – the slovenly population, the petty crime, the drunken family men and the policeman who was once a criminal himself. In the 1990s, the policeman explains, the state could no longer pay policemen. When the policemen left in large numbers, former criminals were recruited to police the place.
Great works of art, it can be argued, are not those that take up familiar issues in a powerful and persuasive way but try to give voice to new experiences or name unnamed experiences. Sometimes, the new experience is such a strange one that what a film means cannot even be articulated readily by the critic. If this criterion of judgment - by which the greatest films are also the most intriguing - is conceded, Yuri’s Day is an astonishing work. |
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| by MK Raghavendra |
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Son frère (His Brother)
Dir: Patrice Chéreau, France, 2003 |
 Country: France
Film: His Brother Son frere
Director: Patrice Chereau
Writer: Philippe Besson,Patrice Chereau
Producer: Pierre Chevalier
Cinematographer: Eric Gautier
Editor: Francois Gedigier
Sound: Guillaume Sciama:
Cast: Bruno Todeschini, Eric Caravaca,Nathalie Boutefeu, Maurice Garrel, Catherine Ferran, Antoinette Moya, Sylvain Jacques, Fred Ulysse, Robinson Stevenin,
Costumes: Caroline de Vivaise
Patrice Chéreau is an important filmmaker from France and his 2003 film His Brother was screened at IFFI 2003 as part of the ‘Country Focus: France’ section. Chéreau is not a great filmmaker but is still an extraordinary craftsman who gets amazing effects by attention to detail. His Queen Margot (1994), a film version of a novel by Alexander Dumas is a stunning piece of period recreation that is perhaps even without an equal in cinema. His Brother is a different kind of film - it deals with terminal illness – and is almost visceral in its impact. The last film that was so strong was Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972). His Brother has no discernible metaphysics like Bergman’s film but provides an excruciating account of a person in the different stages of an illness that science is not able to treat.
In the film Thomas and Luc are brothers and Thomas is diagnosed with a rare disease of the blood which prevents it from coagulating because the blood platelets are being destroyed. Thomas undergoes various surgeries – his pancreas is removed initially - which leave him brutally scarred but the ailment resurfaces each time. Luc is into a homosexual relationship and the film is taken up with the issue of each of the brothers coming to terms with what the other is undergoing.
The issue of why a film as excruciating as His Brother is so extremely engrossing is a difficult one to answer but it perhaps makes us acutely aware of our own frailties – as well as the frailty of scientific knowledge itself. It is difficult to explain this to people who have decided notion about what should be watched on the screen but, for all its explicitness and its ‘morbidity’ His Brother is a riveting and unflinching portrayal of the brutality of nature that films which are considered extremely violent will find hard to match. |
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| by MK Raghavendra |
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IFFK-2009
A Report on the 14th edition of the International film festival of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram. India. December, 11-18, 2009. |
IFFK has come to occupy an important place in the Indian film diary. This is a festival that brings large number of delegates, in thousands from all corners of Kerala State, lining up at theatres anxiously waiting to find entry to see the films. This is because of the strong film society movement that has established firm roots even in rural areas. It is quite amazing to see audience occupying every inch of space in the auditoriums even on floors, aisles, and steps to see the films. It is always a real experience to attend and enjoy this festival. This year the number of delegates participating in the event crossed the mark of 8000, including Media and invitees. Around 160 films are screened in 9 cinema halls located in different parts of this city.
The festival has different sections for awards. The main competition section awards Golden Crow to the best film covering films of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Fipresci awards two prizes – one given to the Best from the competition section and the other for the Best Malayalam film. In addition, Netpac award for the Best Asian film and Hassan Kutty award for the best debut director are also instituted. The festival also presented the retrospectives of Mrinal Sen, who is also bestowed with lifetime achievement award. The other retrospectives included films of Jaques Tati (France), Mikio Naruse (Japan), Arturo Ripstein (Mexico), Francesco Rosi,(Italy), Lohitadas (India), and of the contemporary masters Raul Peck and Penek Ratanaruang.
Another important section in the festival is the celebration of fifty years of French New Wave cinema – captioned as ‘From Film Criticism in Cahiers du Cinema to French New wave’. Screening of French New Wave films followed by discussions are the highlights.
 The competition section has 14 films from different countries. True to its tradition of providing pleasant surprises, the Iranian cinema through its entry ‘About Elly’ by Asghar Farhadi became the focus of discussion among the delegates. Capturing the images on the beach of a stormy sea, Asghar Farhadi treats us with an almost live experience of the trauma that encompasses the members of a family, who are on a pleasure trip, when one of their companions disappears. It is not often that we come across such an experience that engrosses us totally in it.
 Road to Confluence
Amit Roy, a promising young Indian filmmaker makes a very bold attempt to venture into handling the subject of ethnic conflicts in India. In his debut film Road to Confluence he explores with critical analysis the dilemma and predicament that many of the Muslim intellectuals face when their rational thinking and approach on various issues lands them in to deep trouble in the midst of hostile attitude of the Muslim fundamentalists. It is really commendable that Amit Roy is able to get able support from veteran artiste like Paresh Rawal who plays the role of a Muslim portrayed as a true Gandhian in the film, and Om Puri and other veteran artistes who have given lively performances.
 My Secret Sky Madoda Ncayiyana a young director from South Africa makes a sincere effort in his film My Secret Sky, to portray the journey of two children, brother and sister from their village to the city to make out a living. He is very successful in bringing out the best from the child artistes to make it a real journey of life.
 There
(Orada), from Turkey by Hakki Kurtulus and Melik Saracoglu is another film that has rich cinematic values. The brother and sister, who meet at the funeral of their mother, after a long separation, visit their father living in an island. They all recollect their past and it is now the time for a frank introspection for all of them. The film is slow paced but very effective. It is reported that the two young filmmakers are faithful followers of Ingmar Bergman style and have absorbed some of his shades in this film. The film has a very smooth flow of shots depicting logical sequences that makes us to reminisce the techniques of Bergman and sometimes of Bresson. The dialogues are very carefully penned.
 Train in the Tenth Floor Train in the Tenth Floor, by Joshy Mathew, in Malayalam is a moving film that evokes deep sympathy for a psychiatric patient who undergoes anguish and agony in a mental hospital for 15 long years. It is a pity that none of his family members including his wife and son care to visit him even once. The artiste who has played the role of psychiatric patient has given a memorable performance.
There are quite a good number of good films in the cinema of the world section and most of the films are having repeat screenings so that all the delegates are given opportunity to see them. The festival concludes with the closing function on 18the December, 2009, in the evening.
(Report from Thiruvananthapuram, by H.N.Narahari Rao). |
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Book Review
The Film Society Movement in India
Complied and Edited by HN Narahari Rao
(Published by the Asian Film Foundation, 2009) |
 The film society movement in India is important to students of cinema for a number of reasons. The foremost one is that it is the movement through which Indians became acquainted with international cinema. Serious filmmakers from Satyajit Ray to Shyam Benegal became interested in cinema through the movement and Indian art cinema is still deeply indebted to it. Film criticism as a discipline also owes much to it. The history of the film society movement in India is therefore something that has long needed chronicling.
Sri HN Narahari Rao, as once one of the guiding spirits of Suchitra Film Society, the foremost film club in Karnataka, is a pioneer of the film society movement in the State. It is only fitting that he should have been chosen to officially document and chronicle the history of the movement. The Film Society Movement in India is an ambitious volume that brings together a huge amount of material written by people associated with the movement both in India and outside - and profusely illustrated with rare pictures that bear witness to the happenings commencing from the earliest years of the movement.
The film society movement in India perhaps owed to similar movements in Britain and France and the individual who contributed more than any other to initiating it in India was Marie Seton, who later wrote a famous biography of Satyajit Ray. The book provides evidence of her involvement in the project, the commencement of film appreciation as a legitimate discipline, the first FA Courses conducted at the FTII with cultural stalwarts like KV Subbanna and Gaston Roberge being among the first students. Among the various articles and essays collected are those by Chidananda Das Gupta (a survey of the FS movement written in 1965), a nostalgic account of cinephilia in Bombay by Darius Cooper, a note on teaching film appreciation by Prof. Satish Bahadur, an assessment of film societies today by Gaston Roberge and numerous accounts of the actual experiences of film societies across India. The book also includes several useful annexures – from ‘How to start a film society (along with a specimen constitution) to histories of the movement in areas like Britain and Latin America. An unusual addition – which could be useful to persons beginning film appreciation – is a list of great filmmakers from world cinema along with their selected filmographies.
It is not often that one sees the possibility of a book surviving in time but The Film Society Movement in India – which bears evidence of monumental effort - has enough documentary material in it to be a valuable book of reference to those studying the movement in India in the decades to come. |
| by M. K. Raghavendra |
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