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issue No.10 / 04 / 10 |
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April 2010 |
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| A Word With You |
| Greetings and Best wishes from Bangalore, |
We are now releasing our tenth issue of e-cineindia.
Recently I had occasion to visit many colleges in Karnataka on an assignment to conduct film appreciation lectures. It is quite a fascinating experience to interact with the youngsters who show enormous interest in cinema. Many of them are interested to see the classics of the world cinema. Further, they also participated enthusiastically in airing their views at the discussion meetings on the films shown. As a part of my lecture, in one of the colleges, I requested them to write a paragraph, in English or in the regional language on what they thought about the Chinese film The Road Home which I screened for them.
I glanced through their writing and it was really a revelation for me. Some of the pieces were very good, an indication that they have all the potential, which, if nurtured well may blossom in the future. This, I am conveying it to my film critic friends here because we in FIPRESCI always feel that we should improve the standard of film criticism in the country. If we catch the budding talents and groom them properly we can expect good writing on cinema in the years to come.
It is my intention to express my views that FIPRESCI- India can do something in this direction, by holding Review Competition for youngsters at the film festivals, at universities and colleges, etc and suitably reward the best reviews. This will definitely go some distance in identifying talents.
I invite comments and suggestions from my friends.
With best wishes,
Yours truly
H. N Narahari Rao
Editor |
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| Film Reviews |
Dream a Stallion
(Original title: KANASEMBA KUDUREYANERI)
(Kannada / 105 mins / 2009 / col) |
Directed by : Girish Kasaravalli
Produced by : Amruta Patil – Basant Kumar Patil
Cast : Vaijanath Biradar, Umashree, Pavitra Lokesh
Story : Amaresh Nugadoni
Music : V.Manohar
Photography : H.M.Ramachandra Halkere
 Seldom have we come across a film of such an intense nature as Girish’s latest film, in recent years which faithfully reflects the images of the social condition that prevails in a typical rural setting with stunning reality and truth. It is the distressing tale of two families- one, a rich and feudal, and the other stricken with poverty, superstition, oppression and injustice.
Irya and his wife Rudri belong to a community of grave diggers who dig the graves for burying the dead bodies. While Rudri works in the fields to earn the bread for the family, Irya believes in Siddha the family Guru who often brings luck to him. He patiently waits for some body to die, that is his cherished dream also, so that he can earn some money by digging the grave for the dead body. He also has a plan to enjoy a feast with his wife by spending that money on country liquor and meat. His mind does not think beyond this. That is his ultimate ambition and vision!
On the other side, there is senior Gowda, the land lord and highly respected decrepit elderly man of the village who in his early days had wielded enormous clout in the village. He is now lying unmoved for several months on the bed, almost in a state of coma. None of his relatives care to come and see him. He is looked after by one of his confidant Matadayya who is also the caretaker of the house. The only time he shows some expression is when his son introduces his young daughter, Pinky to him. There is a smile on his face and signals his grand daughter to sit by his side on the cot. The grand daughter feels sick of the situation and wishes to run away from the place.
Shivanna, son of the Gowda has come to the village, with his wife and daughter to finalize a deal to sell a vast stretch of ancestral land to an industrialist. His wife has come to this place after a lapse of five years. Not because she is interested to see her father-in- law but to accompany her husband on an important mission of selling away the lands. She feels disgusted of the situation that she is in. Shivanna wants to quit his present post as the principal of a college to start his own convent school in the city to amass huge wealth. Irony of the situation is that, on the day of registration of the sale deed his father the senior Gowda breathes his last. Shivanna can not postpone his visit, he prefers to go for registration of the deed rather than performing the last rites of his father. As a result his father’s corpse starts stinking.
Irya, having lost his patience in waiting in vain for the demise of the Gowda, ultimately digs the grave even before the death, thinking it as an imminent event. When the procession of the dead body is taken out, Irya wants to join the others in the procession. But he is barred from doing so and when he persists he is beaten mercilessly. Interestingly three possibilities of ending are shown giving the audience the choice of selecting the one out of them.
The film has a complex structure, does not conform to linear style. For instance, Irya washing the red color on his shirt is shown first and how it happened appears later. Similar style of narration is followed for other incidents also. It is powerful enough to raise several issues that confront us. The disintegration of the land-lord family, migration of the present generation to the city, and the capitalistic approach of Shivanna for accrual of wealth at any cost are quite evident. He is bitten so much by this bug that he is ready to throw even long practiced traditional rituals to the winds for the sake of making money. Shivanna’s daughter keeps herself engaged in this isolated place by counting the number of pillars in the house and reciting only English rhymes, a pointer that the next generation moves further away from the native culture.
Another issue that strikingly surfaces in the film is the pathetic plight of Irya and his wife Rudri. It appears as an indictment on the establishment which has miserably failed to alleviate the sufferings of the likes of Irya and Rudri in any form. It is painfully depressing that they continue to perish like this eternally. Having come to know that lands are being purchased by big industrialists at lucrative prices, Irya also plans to cultivate his piece of barren land to get a better price as others have done. That is where the film concludes.
It is to be noted here that Girish Kasaravalli has made a significant departure from a series of earlier films that mainly dealt with stories dominated by women characters. It is definitely a welcome change and the treatment of the subject is quite pensive. The camera is so focused on the subject that it never moves out of the village, it mainly concentrates in the Gowda’s mansion and the vast landscapes of the barren land. All the time we observe these well composed shots, it also makes us to think of things that are happening off the screen. It compares very well in standards with some of the films on subjects with rural background that have come recently from Iran, China and Mongolia and won recognition at the international level.
by H.N.Narahari Rao |
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| 3 Idiots (Hindi) |
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
 Popular Hindi films – although they always have a moral purpose upholding honesty and sincerity - rarely have a social message pertaining to the times. Some recent exceptions include Taare Zameen Par (2008), Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006) and 3 Idiots (2009). 3 Idiots begins with two former classmates Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan Qureshi (R Madhavan) going in search of Rancho whom they lost touch with after graduating as engineers from the ‘Imperial College of Engineering’. The college is an elite institution which admits only the brightest students. Although its ownership is not specified, Raju comes from a poor family and is also not doing well enough for a scholarship and this suggests a government-run institution, perhaps modeled on the IITs. The film alternates between the present and the past. Rancho comes from a wealthy business family in Shimla and was the non-conformist while the other two were inspired by him. Another classmate was Chatur Ramalingam – less inventive but openly ambitious – and the three friends often clashed with him. When their course concluded Chatur openly challenged them on the success of their future careers. When Farhan and Raju return to their alma mater after ten years Chatur joins them, fresh from the US and full of his achievements and possessions. He is now concluding a business arrangement with a fabulous inventor named Phunsukh Wangdu, which will make him successful beyond their wildest dreams. It is Chatur who now reminds the two of his challenge ten years back.
Many of the flashbacks in the film deal with the figure of authority in the Imperial College – Professor Viru Sahastrabudhhe (Boman Irani), whom the boys have nicknamed ViruS. The Professor was a hard task master who believed in competition and success at any cost. Virus had been so unsparing that his implacability led to a boy’s suicide. ViruS, nonetheless, remained unmoved and cited his continued application to work after his own son’s death. Particularly galling to ViruS was the fact that while Rancho was always playful it was still he who stood first while Chatur came only second. Because of Rancho’s influence Farhan eventually abandoned engineering as a career and became an international wildlife photographer while Raju, despite his poor showing in the final examination, impressed potential employers with his confidence - and found employment.
Raju, Farhan and Chatur now set off for Shimla to meet Rancho. Rancho’s name is actually Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad and they find the enormous Chanchad mansion without much difficulty. When they find Ranchoddas, however, they discover that he is not their Rancho at all but someone else. Their graduation photograph hangs on the wall – with this man’s face on it instead of Rancho’s. Who was Rancho really, they wonder, and it comes out that ‘Rancho’ was a servant’s child in the Chanchad household who showed an aptitude for learning. Since the boy wanted ‘learning’ and the actual Ranchoddas only a degree, the boy was admitted to the Imperial College as ‘Rancho’. When they finally locate ‘Rancho’ he is teaching local children in Ladakh’s wilderness, bringing creativity to his ‘model school’. The crowning bit of information is that ‘Rancho’ is actually Phunsukh Wangdu – with hundreds of patents in the US – and Chatur is thus humbled.
The fact that 3 Idiots has a large number of comic moments does not detract from its being a film with a serious message on education. The message pertains to higher learning in India being rendered painful because of the emphasis placed on competition and the rat-race. Creativity is the casualty, the film says, because of people having to submit to a straight-jacketed notion of education. This is the apparent message but 3 Idiots nevertheless relies on Rancho coming first to fully convince us of his abilities. His doing so effortlessly has a parallel in the dyslexic boy in Taare Zameen Par demonstrating his prowess in the subjects he was hopeless at – without us knowing how he achieves it so easily. ‘Dog-eat-dog’ and ‘rat-race’ are disparaging terms for market-induced competitiveness but the films show little faith in the possibility of bypassing the market in any circumstance. For all his affinity to the poor children of Ladakh, the former servant’s boy Phunsukh Wangdu can only be judged on the basis of his American patents.
Films like 3 Idiots are strangely positioned in as much as while they endeavor to deal with the ‘real issues’ of today, they still depend on the elements of the Bollywood fantasy. Since they conveniently shift from the one mode to the other, it is difficult to say what aspects should be taken seriously. For instance Rancho/Wangdu has established a school in Ladakh. Anyone who has seen Ladakh and knows its terrain understands the difficulty that finding drinking water - let alone establishing a ‘model school’ - represents. The film shows the protagonists driving from Manali to Leh as easily as one might from Churchgate to Chowpatty, perhaps taking its notion of the Manali-Leh highway from an automobile advertisement. If 3 Idiots is a film with social concern it can be criticized for not being adequately concerned with the actual circumstances. If it is a ‘fantasy’ it shows itself incapable of imagining existence in a far flung corner - except as extensions of upper-class city life.
It is perhaps in its failure to imagine that 3 Idiots reveals its hidden self, eventually. Most of the protagonists in the film are given families and pasts that help us to understand and locate them. Farhan is a middle-class boy and Raju Rastogi’s father is a lowly paid white-collar worker trying to put his son through college. Even Pia, as the daughter of a professor in an elite institution, is a credible figure. But there is an evident ‘absence’ in the way Phunsukh Wangdu is imagined because the film does not give him any kind of recognizable past. He is simply a ‘servant’s child’ and we get to see nothing of his background. Even when Phunsukh Wangdu (as ‘Rancho’) arrives in college he has a confidence far beyond that of someone accustomed to the life of a servant’s child entering an elite institution in India. Also, Phunsukh Wangdu has ‘hundreds of patents’ to his credit but there is not even a hint about how he acquired them. Bollywood abounds in fantasy but in this inability to imagine Wangdu is an uncomfortable truth – that such a person is unimaginable. It is unimaginable that a servant’s child in India will become a celebrated inventor. Elite educational institutions are not for his kind even when the institutions are publicly owned. Despite their efforts at being ‘socially conscious’, socially conscious films like 3 Idiots unwittingly give us truths that belie their pretense at social optimism.
by M.K.Raghavendra |
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| Road, Movie (Hindi) |
Director: Dev Benegal
 The ‘road movie’ is a genre in which the stories revolve around the aimless journeys of frustrated people not quite sure of what they are seeking. Instead of a tightly constructed plot that arouses our sense of anticipation, what we look for in a road movie is the possibility of being witness to unfamiliar experiences, seeing exceptional people in strange circumstances.
Dev Benegal is a filmmaker who attained fame through his adaptation of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novel English, August (1994). Road, Movie is about a young man from a business family (apparently in Jodhpur) frustrated with selling hair oil and setting out on a journey across the desert. Vishnu (Abhay Deol) is too sensitive for his milieu and it is in a frustrated state that he embarks on his journey. His uncle is the owner of a traveling cinema fitted into a 1942 Chevrolet truck and his task is to deliver it to a museum in a seaside town. Where a road movie is most effective when dealing with actual towns or settlements – which can give us a sense of the lives lived in far flung corners – much of Benegal’s film is set in the empty desert where there is no sign of habitation. The characters whom Vishnu meets are not people who are rooted but apparently homeless wanderers. Vishnu picks up three of them – a boy in a teashop (Mohammed Faisal), a wandering mechanic named Om (Satish Kaushik) and a banjara woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee). Keeping the three together is their dependence upon the ramshackle truck, and most of their experiences center around screenings of films arranged for passing locals. The film can be read as a celebration of cinema’s unfailing power to entrance and bring people together. The comma between ‘road’ and ‘movie’ in the title is perhaps meant to suggest ‘road’ and ‘movie’ as separate experiences knitting spaces and people who are far apart. The most brilliant sequences in the film involve makeshift screens put up for ‘shows’ – with only the horizon to mark a space – and the night air in the desert ceremonially lit up.
Road, Movie is slow-moving and we tend to wait for events to happen – interrupt the desert panorama with some action, as it were. The situations that Benegal sets up turn out somewhat synthetic – an encounter with a brutal policeman and a sequence involving torture, a mela in the desert to which the wandering mechanic is headed and a meeting with a ‘water lord’ who attacks them with his henchmen, when they have ‘stolen’ from his well. Since the only weapons in Vishnu’s possession are his cinema equipment and his hair oil, it may be expected that the two will come in handy.
The chief attraction of Road, Movie is the camera work, and the cinematography by Michel Amathieu is dazzling. But one senses the presence of a ‘foreign hand’ in the camera work. It seems to be only when a foreign eye is catching India’s landscape that we understand what a beautiful country we live in, because Indian cinematographers don’t often show this kind of sensibility. The guitar music by Michael Brooks tries to be experimental but his score might have been more at home in a Hollywood road movie.
Abhay Deol as an actor is now synonymous with the new Hindi cinema perhaps because he has a subdued presence. He is slight of build and has not cultivated the kind of male body that seems mandatory in Bollywood today. Unlike actors from the earlier art cinema – Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri – he does not try to ‘act’ but simply ‘is’. His only drawback is perhaps that he does not convey a sense of ‘interiority’ and this means that the more he has to be a person with hidden depths (as in Dev D) the more unconvincing he is. Abhay Deol is just right for Road, Movie, which is perhaps because Vishnu is not a complicated person and the film does not give him introspective moments.
Road, Movie is curiously poised because while it does not seem like an Indian film, it belies many of our expectations from the genre, which demands an understanding of the local milieu. It is becoming increasingly difficult to assess and evaluate new cinema in Hindi because the rules it follows are so unclear. Dev Benegal knows cinema because his film shows a familiarity with Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road (1976) – about two mechanics specializing in film projection equipment traveling along the border between East and West Germany and visiting run down theatres. The glittering mela segment from Road, Movie recalls Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963).
A complaint against Road, Movie is that it has no sense of direction (or teleology) because Vishnu is in the same condition at the conclusion of his journey that he is in at the beginning. The mechanic dies in the throws of laughter when watching a Harold Lloyd film and Vishnu drops off the boy and the banjara woman – after exchanging passionate kisses with her. Since we see Vishnu and the woman as equals who love each other, what prevents them from coming together? Benegal appears suddenly aware of the inequality between a hair oil manufacturer and an actual banjara woman, when what we have been seeing is only a romantic engagement between the actors who play their roles. Also, when the hair oil business has been so lampooned and sneered at, how can Vishnu return to it at all?
Dev Benegal has not been very productive after English, August since he has made only one feature – Split Wide Open (1999) – in between and Road, Movie suggests that he has awakened to India as a wondrous cinematic space only recently. But alongside, he has correctly understood that mainstream Indian cinema – as it once was – is the experience that might bring people from different walks together even if this togetherness lasts only for a few flickering moments.
By M.K.Raghavendra |
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Book Review
From Rajahs and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond:
Images of India in International Films of the Twentieth Century
By Vijaya Mulay, Seagull Books, 554 pages, Paperback Rs. 695/- |
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 The film society movement in India must get a huge proportion of the credit not only for having created the best filmmakers outside the mainstream – those like Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal but also for inspiring film critics, academics and film scholars, as it continues to do today. Vijaya Mulay, the author of the book under review is one of the pioneers of the movement, having been associated with ‘Indian film culture’ in its infancy and its formative years. Beginning her engagement with cinema more than 60 years ago, Vijaya Mulay (or ‘Akka’ to her friends) has seen Satyajit Ray at work and also come into close contact with international filmmakers like Louis Malle – when he was in India in the 1960s. Malle went on to make his celebrated series on India – later proscribed by Mrs Gandhi’s government for ‘showing India in bad light’. Akka has an unmatched exposure to Indian and international cinema and this makes her the ideal person to document and trace the way in which India as a cultural space has been recorded and represented in international cinema from around the world. The book combines the diachronic or historical approach with the thematic one. It begins by dividing films according to eras rather than themes and this makes it extremely easy to follow but it also has separate sections for foreign filmmakers like Franz Osten, who worked in India in collaboration with Indians. After making ‘Orientalist’ films like Light of Asia (1925) and Shiraz(1928), Osten made Hindi classics like Achut Kanya (1936) Savitri (1937) and Kangan (1939).
Coming to the contents of the book, most students of cinema know that ‘illusion’ in cinema is credited to Georges Melies, a former magician who understood how cinema is ideally suited to promoting illusion – when the Lumiere brothers had been preoccupied with its ‘documentary’ aspect. What most people do not know is that Mélies also made three films invoking India – The Brahmin and the Butterfly (1901), The Wonderful Rose Tree (1904), which also features a Brahmin (called Iftikar) and Palace of the Arabian Nights (1905). While the first chapter in the book is devoted to the earliest cinema, subsequent chapters take up ‘Orientalist’ cinema from Europe including those of Joe May and Fritz Lang, the ‘Empire’ cinema of the pre-colonial era which included adventure films like those starring Sabu, post-colonial cinema in which India had to be portrayed differently because it was now an independent country. In subsequent chapters the author discusses the India-based work of great international filmmakers like Renoir (The River), Rossellini (India: Matri Bhumi) and Malle (Phantom India). The 1980s were a significant period for films about India perhaps because of Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), after which came a spate of films - including the popular television series The Jewel in the Crown.
Akka’s approach in the book is to provide as much information as possible, which is perhaps the best thing for a volume as extensively researched as this. Another way might have been the ideological one with its basis in the writings of theorists like Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak. This latter approach is perhaps the approach of the cultural theorist while Akka’s is that of the archivist, who is nonetheless deeply aware of the biases and prejudices in cultural representations. The fact that the book is the approach of a critical archivist means that it is also engaged in giving us visual evidence because it is sumptuously illustrated – with not only the rarest of rare film still but also documents and photographs from colonial India. The book also includes a series of indices – correspondence between the author and Louis Malle, some information about German films made about India but shot in Germany, and selected synopses of many of these films.
Reflecting upon the enormously ambitious undertaking represented by Akka’s book, one realizes that this is essentially a nationalist exercise. It is only when one is proud of one’s past and cultural heritage that one is preoccupied with how they are represented. Akka is not explicit about how she would like India represented but her painstaking work makes it evident that India as a cultural space is now intellectually mature. It is mature enough to take a critical view on how it should be represented by other cultures, mature enough document and represent its own experience in history, and perhaps even mature enough to represent other cultures fairly.
by MK Raghavendra |
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Film society movement’s genesis and evolution
(A review of the book: The Film society Movement in India by H.N.Narahari Rao –by
Mrs. Latika Padgaonkar - Article appeared in ‘Asian Age’ Delhi edition on 10th Feb 2010)
 AT A time when so much of world cinema — classics, new and obscure films — is available on DVDs, television and the mobile, the work done by the Film Society Movement in India sadly remains unrecognised. Few know of its steady build, and of the ideals that nourished it at a time when cinema was a wholly collective experience.
The Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI) turned 50 last year. A landmark book, The Film Society Movement in India, complied and edited by H.N. Narahari Rao who works with the Suchitra Film Society, traces the movement’s genesis, growth and decline over half a century. For those unacquainted with its grand history, it could be a revelation. Comprising facts and figures, interviews and essays (some unsparing in their critique), the book recalls the personalities that wondrously shaped both the filmmaker and the viewer and sheds light on why the movement declined.
London’s first Film Society, founded in 1925, showed hitherto unscreened films from France, Germany and Russia, but definitely not Hollywood or England. “The recent murder of the silent film by her garrulous sister” meant that silent films no longer shown in theatres were also screened. In Paris, cine-clubs took up avant-garde films considered
too abstruse for popular exhibition.
That Indian audience also needed to look beyond Hollywood was keenly felt in the ’40s itself. But acquiring and screening proved to be a tough call. Statutory requirements had to be fulfilled, censorship and tax exemptions sought and a convenient hall organised for screenings. Above all, people had to be tempted to become members.By the time FFSI was founded in 1959, societies in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Patna and Roorkee were already operational as intellectual, non-political, non-profit cultural bodies. Screening outstanding but unavailable films was their raison d’etre, but equally important was to stimulate a serious interest in cinema, hold discussions, launch publications, foster new talent, and even make 16-mm documentaries on an amateur basis.
Those first wondrous years are lovingly recalled by several enthusiasts in the book. The breakthrough came in 1964 when FFSI got a marvellous package from Colombo Film Society — The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The Last Laugh, The Italian Straw Hat, Metropolis, Passion of Joan of Arc, The Blue Angel, Le Million. It laid the foundation for a healthy film movement in the country. Foreign embassies, the Central Film Library, and later the National Film Archive of India were a vital source of films. The visit of the British journalist and Padma Bhushan awardee, Marie Seaton, catalysed the spread of an enthusiastic film culture. Invited by the ministry of education in 1955 to work with the NCERT and introduce audio-visual aids in teaching, Seaton toured extensively, talked indefatigably, showed films she had brought with her from the British Film Institute, developed friendships with Satyajit Ray, Jawaharlal Nehru (she wrote books on both of them) and Indira Gandhi. Societies mushroomed, some in very small towns accessible only by bus.
It was a fairy-tale beginning that brought in a galaxy of foreign luminaries. For any cinema student, the list reads like a who’s who: Georges Sadoul (one of the world’s most respected film theoreticians), Roger Manvell (author/co-founder and first director of the British Film Academy), Jerzy Toeplitz (co-founder of the Polish Film School), Donald Richie (former Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York), Raymond Durgnat (influential British film critic); and some of the tallest names in cinema: Jean Renoir, Louis Malle, Istvan Szabo, Jiri Menzel, Krzysztof Zanussi, Majid Majidi and Pudovkin. Indian stalwarts also hailed from the movement: Satyajit Ray (the first FFSI president, a post he held till he died), Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, K.A. Abbas, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterjee, Basu Bhattacharya, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Pahari Sanyal , and B.N.Sircar to name a few.
But the movement’s history was a chequered one. Occasionally, a society’s work raised the hackles of outsiders. The Calcutta Society, led by Ray, suffered attacks by film trade members for being a “group of subversive youngsters (that) was running down Bengali films”. At another time, they were thrown out of the house where a meeting was in progress for “spoiling (the) sanctity of the abode.
What dogged the early office bearers was the question of membership: Was there an ideal number of members to be admitted? The problem remained a knotty one for years. The Delhi Film Society, founded by 12 educationists, diplomats, businessmen, administrators (incuding Vijaya Mulay, Muriel Wasi, Krishna Kripalani, L.K. Jha, and Chanchal Sarkar) believed in the virtue of small committed numbers. Since their meetings were not social events, only those with a deep and sustained interest in cinema could join. Long before their political careers took off, Indira Gandhi and I.K. Gujral became members, and even held the posts of vice-president and Treasurer respectively. Aruna Asaf Ali was also part of this small, privileged circle.
In 1964, Usha Bhagat became joint secretary of the FFSI. Inspired by Seaton, she organised a programme of Ray’s Apu Trilogy, which had thus far been “screened once in a while at unearthly hours in remote cinema halls.” As Indira Gandhi’s long-serving social secretary, it was her responsibility to keep Mrs Gandhi informed of “new developments in the arts, crafts, cinema and theatre”. She took up the thorny issue of censorship of foreign films which had bothered society activists and disappointed and embarrassed embassies that loaned prints.
It was during Mrs Gandhi’s tenure as I&B minister in 1964 that the decision not to censor films screened by film societies was taken. Ironically, it proved to be a double-edged sword. People with little interest in cinema flocked to see nude scenes and sex. Activists were disheartened, but the rising costs of running a society meant that the doors had to be opened to “the hordes of sex-seeking members” (sic): permissive films meant more members; more members meant more money. Genuine aficionados fell out, discussions dwindled and the original stimulus waned.
But the good work carried on: organising festivals with the help of foreign missions; promoting regional cinema, creating study groups, holding seminars (Lindsay Anderson, Richard Attenborough and Georges Sadoul at Iffi, 1965), starting a short film festival and launching publications (Indian Film Culture, Montage, Film Bulletin, KINO, 10th Muse, IFSON, Close-up, Chitra Biksham among others). In Kerala, Adoor Gopalakrishnan started not just a society but a film cooperative for production and distribution. Most interesting was the movement’s impact on film criticism. In Bengal, writes Chidananda Das Gupta, the press “changed the style and content of its reviews” as early as in the 50s. With the advent of colour television and the VCD in the 80s, decline was inevitable. While some societies were active, others depended on the drive of a single individual. Responses to the movement have been mixed. Some writers regret the absence of palpable results, others speak of “irregularities in accounting and misappropriation of funds”; still others acknowledge that new filmmakers were promoted, but proper film appreciation and clarity of purpose were lacking.
Where do the 250-odd extant societies go from here? Gaston Roberge, author, teacher and founder of Chitrabani, a communication centre in Kolkata, feels that since cinema is not the only important medium today (there are telefilms, ads, music TV, the mobile etc), societies need to focus on not just film appreciation but on media appreciation as well.
The Film Society Movement in India is a labour of love. Richly illustrated, it would have gained greater polish with tighter editing and subbing. But as it stands, it presents an objective account of what some far-sighted and dedicated individuals did for the glory of cinema in this country.
by
Latika Padgaonkar |
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A Lost Treasure of Assamese cinema returns home
Guwahati, March 14: The only print of the Ninth (9th) Assamese feature film, RUNUMI, directed and produced by noted writer and Sattriya dance exponent, the late Suresh Chandra Goswami, has been returned to his family after nearly four decades.
The print of the film, released in 1952, has been returned by Amiya Borthakur of Bhir Gaon of Biswanath Chariali, whose father and the late Goswami’s brother-in-law Lakshminath Borthakur, had taken it for screening in some tea gardens in the area. Since then, it was lying in a tin trunk in Borthakur’s residence.
The 13 reels of the film are still in the original cans and have been brought to the Guwahati residence of Goswami’s daughter Dolly Borpujari.
This is definitely one of the best news the state can get at a time when Assam’s film industry is celebrating its Platinum Jubilee.
Preliminary checking indicates that a significant part of the film could still be intact though the actual condition of the print will be known only after it is checked by experts.
However, because of the high-humidity conditions of the region all the cans have caught rust and a few of them even have developed cracks, because of which some of the contents might have got damaged.
Goswami’s grandson, film critic Utpal Borpujari, is already in touch with relevant people in Mumbai for the cleaning of the print and transferring it to other formats, and also plans to contact the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) in Pune for its scientific restoration and preservation.
Runumi was the second Assamese film to have been shot in location and “open floor” after Joymoti (ref: Axomiya Chobir Porichalok: Suresh Goswami; written by Hemanta Kumar Das, published in Bismoy, January 1983 issue). Goswami, who had established in Prachin Kamrupi Nrittya Sangha along with the late Jibeswar Goswami in Shillong in the 1930s to take Sattriya dance to the outside world, had learnt the basics of filmmaking by observing Jyotiprasad Agarwalla at work.
Runumi was the first film in which the late Nalin Duarah had worked as a cinematographer. He had reshot a major portion of the film after the results of original cinematographer Paresh Sarkar of Kolkata was found not up to the mark.
The music of the film was by Darpa Nath Sarma (father of Jitu of Jitu-Tapan duo). The cast comprised Kanaklata Saikia, Neyimuddin Ahmed, Suresh Goswami, Indreshwar Barthakur, Hironmoyee Devi. Among the singers were Ivy Baruah and Sewali Devi.
Based on Goswami adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play “The Warriors at Helgeland”, RUNUMI’s story was set in Assam and Nagaland (then a part of Assam). Even as the film was running to good response in Upper Assam, the state government had suddenly banned it without offering any reason when the late Bishnu Ram Medhi was the Chief Minister. Suresh Goswami, who once described the reason for the ban as “Agyat Karon” (due to some unknown reason), was left bankrupt because of it. However, he had started writing the screenplay for another film, based on his highly popular novel “Bhonga Gorha” (adapted by himself into a play titled “Urmila”) when he passed away in 1984.
An author of a number of books, including Axomor Nitya Nratya Kala and Sankari Nritya Natya Kala, and popular novels Xat Rongor Notun Kareng and Mohan Moina, Goswami had also acted in Maniram Dewan and Lakhimi.
The late Goswami’s family would like to make two appeals – one to the Assam government and one to people at large.
To the government: Please let the people know why was the film banned, and also come forward to help restore and preserve the film, which is part of Assam’s cinematic heritage. The restoration and preservation process is particularly important because already many of the state’s films have been lost due to lack of proper storage. Now that the state is soon going to have its own film archive, Runumi’s preservation could be the test case for the state government.
To the people: Anyone who was directly or indirectly associated with the making of Runumi, or anyone who has any material related to the film (stills, newspaper/magazine articles, publicity materials), or anyone who had seen the film, please send share those materials and memories at the following address:
Utpal Borpujari,
Dolly Bhawan,261, R G Baruah Road,P O Silpukhuri,Guwahati – 781003
Email: utpalb21@yahoo.com, utpalb21@gmail.com
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