My dear friends,
Our greetings and Best wishes for a Happy New Year to all our readers.

Fipresci India certainly has many reasons to rejoice the year 2010 which has now come to a close. We have improved our e-cineindia, we coordinated well, for the first time we also conducted two seminars and our colleagues were able to participate in the jury in eleven international film festivals. And in our Annual general meeting at Goa many new proposals were initiated and there was active participation from the well attended gathering. e-cineindia, this year, got the press accreditation at IFFI Goa 2010.

A brief report on the two seminars held one at Bangalore and the other at IFFK, Trivandrum, is furnished in this issue of e-cineindia.

One interesting proposal that has been initiated by our members is about instituting an annual Fipresci India, grand prix award for the best Indian film to be presented at one of the major film festivals being held in India. How to implement this proposal is an issue that is being debated quite seriously among the members. One basic document giving a shape to the procedures to be followed in implementing this idea is being prepared as a draft proposal. This will be circulated among all the members and after obtaining a general consensus, action will be taken to implement it. It is in this context that we need the participation of our friends in making constructive suggestions on the draft proposal when it is circulated. It is to be noted here that a similar award exists in Europe for the best European cinema of the year given by the film critics.

The general opinion that emerged in the recently held seminars on Film Criticism points to the fact that it is quite difficult to get the space required for detailed analysis of films in regular dailies and periodicals. Such lengthy articles on cinema can be accommodated only through web magazines. Then again, the problem remains that only those who are blessed with this facility of Internet can find access to such writings. We are well aware that people in non metro cities are still exposed to print media only and they are only a few who are in the habit of browsing the internet.

Cinema needs to be written, there are many who are passionate about it, there are many who read them also and let us continue our job – writing on cinema.

With best wishes
H.N.Narahari Rao
Editor.

Claude Chabrol, who passed away recently, was one of the more important filmmakers to come out of the Nouvelle Vague or the French New Wave, an epoch-making movement that began in the late fifties. Each of the filmmakers who belonged to this movement (Godard, Rivette, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, Resnais) blazed independent and pioneering paths although they have not been equally influential. Among them, Chabrol has been exceptionally prolific and versatile but his fame rests largely on his exploration of a single genre – the crime story.

Claude Chabrol acknowledged the influence of Alfred Hitchcock but his resemblance to Hitchcock is superficial. Unlike the American crime novel, the Hollywood crime film has submitted to a kind of self-censorship, consequently finding it necessary to accommodate an element of explicit moral instruction. Hitchcock’s best films were made in Hollywood but, in working within the same conventions, he was able to confuse the moral distinctions that turned the criminal into an independent social category. He was able to ‘subvert’ the genre of the Hollywood crime film. Hitchcock rarely sees through the eyes of the criminal but his detectives are not entirely disinterested pursuers; they are sometimes obsessive voyeurs, sometimes vicarious participators and the lines of judgement are frequently obscured.

Claude Chabrol, in contrast, does not work under Hollywood’s ‘moral code’ and is not required to subordinate his vision to it. His methods are more direct than Hitchcock’s and if he is to be described accurately, one could say that he subscribes to an aesthetic influenced by the realist tradition; his films are ‘thrillers’ largely because this gives them an interesting structure. Chabrol’s films are primarily taken up with the inadequacy of the ‘civilizing’ influence, the inability of culture to ‘manage’ the volatility of the human mind. As a corollary, his crime films frequently show us unexceptional people who drift into acts of brutality when the veneer of gentility encasing them is peeled away for an instant.

Before I go on to examine some films pertaining to Chabrol’s different phases it should be remarked that Chabrol’s films are primarily studies in social behavior. While he may be broadly described as working within a genre, it will be incorrect to describe his methods as dependent on generic conventions or his characters as representing ‘types’. The difference between a ‘realistically’ drawn character and a ‘type’ is similar to that between an observation and an inference. As long as Chabrol’s characters behave like ‘real’ individuals his films succeed because their behavior cannot be contained by explanations. When they are conceived as ‘types’, however, the films often fail because characters and behaviour already conceived as ‘inference’ cannot be persuaded to yield more meaning.

There is a distinct element of satire in many of Chabrol’s films and if his target is generally acknowledged to be the bourgeoisie, his intent can still not be described as ‘criticism’ of the class; that would be reading too much politics into it. To my mind, Chabrol simply dissects the behavior of people he knows best, people closer to him in the social hierarchy and it is impossible to understand social behavior without taking into account the determining factor of class. When he deals with members of the other classes, the results are sometimes unfortunate.

Chabrol’s first film Le Beau Serge (1959) tells the story of Francois, a student from Paris who returns to his native village, Sardent, to convalesce – only to discover the squalid circumstances under which some of his former friends live. Serge, his boyhood friend, is now an alcoholic. His wife, now pregnant for the second time, had earlier given birth to a ‘Mongoloid’ child that did not survive. Her flirtatious sister lives with her drunkard father who, on discovering that she is not really  his daughter, takes advantage of the fact to rape her. Serge is drunk and insensitive when his second child arrives but Francois is there to help. Francois sets the example that can make the difference to Serge and the others; he becomes a vehicle for optimism. Le Beau Serge may be optimistic about the civilizing influence of the educated urban class but this is a point-of-view that virtually all Chabrol’s later films – those for which he attained fame – repudiate.
  A Double Tour (1959) tells the story of the Marcoux family. Henri, his wife, Therese, and two children – Elizabeth and Richard – live on a large country estate. Henri is in the middle of a passionate relationship with Leda, a young artist and a neighbour. Henri’s daughter Elizabeth is engaged to Laszlo a noisy and thoroughly unconstrained young man who cannot be persuaded to show ‘refinement’. The family exists in this uneasy state of equilibrium until a violent confrontation takes place between Henri and Therese in which the husband practically drags his wife in front of the mirror to establish her unattractiveness. Shortly after this, Leda is found strangled and the police arrive to investigate. The irrepressible Laszlo carries out an investigation on his own and within the space of a few sequences Richard is deposited before us as the guilty person.

Richard confesses and gives his version of the events. We have been prepared for his repressed sexuality when we find him spying on the maid through a keyhole and we have seen the influence of his possessive and overbearing mother work upon him. A Double Tour is not a major film but it does contain one moment of sublimated horror: Richard tells Leda why he despises her beauty just before he strangles her. He has just overheard Henri roughly explaining her repulsiveness to his wife and Richard recognizes his mother’s ugliness in his own face as he grimaces into the mirror.

The Marcoux family is presented to us as the epitome of gentility and this is largely suggested by their table manners; they sit in front of their exquisite cutlery and crystal, rarely bringing themselves to eat. The impulsive and flamboyant Laszlo, the maid and her boyfriend, conversely, devour mouthfuls at every opportunity. There are other psychological pointers but one is more impressed by what the film is intended to mean than by its capacity for observation. Chabrol’s best period – in which his capacity for observation is virtually unmatched – began with Les Biches (1968), through La Femme Infidele (1969), Le Boucher (1970), Les Noces Rouges (1973) and ending perhaps with Violette Noziere (1973). Que La Bete Meure is among the best that belong to this period.
Que La Bete Meure (1969), which translates as ‘the beast must die’, is an exquisite film that demonstrates why, despite his professed closeness to Hitchcock, Chabrol does not really belong to conventional crime cinema. It is closer in spirit to the European realist tradition, the ‘thriller’ structure giving its vision of human fallibility just the right degree of tautness. Que La Bete Meure tells the story of Charles Thenier, whose infant son is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Charles                       
dotes upon the child and decides to track the killer down and avenge himself. Through a combination of fortuitous circumstances Charles meets Helene, a small time actress, whose presence in the car that killed the child is established. Charles is attracted to her but avoids emotional entanglement until her responsibility is ruled out. The killer, it happens, is her brother-in-law Paul, a wealthy but thoroughly obnoxious garage owner who lives in Brittany. Charles persuades Helene to take him to Paul’s house and there, he meets Paul’s wife and Paul’s son Philip. Also present are Paul’s aged mother, Paul’s partner and the partner’s wife. Paul himself is not present when get there but, as they wait for dinner, Charles senses the tension in the group mounting when it is time for the master of the house to arrive. Paul duly makes a noisy, abusive entrance and entertains the guests at dinner by reading out (while almost choking with laughter) some wretched poetry written by his wife, a performance that only his admiring mother finds funny. This scene is characteristic of Chabrol because it combines the refinement of a formal family dinner with the underlying brutality in many familial relationships.

Except his mother, everyone in Paul’s family loathes him; his son Philip wonders why someone does not kill him. Charles gets a chance to kill Paul during a visit to the seaside but hesitates at the crucial moment, convincing himself that a slower end for Paul will be more pleasurable. Finally, when the sailing trip planned for the purpose of killing Paul actually takes place, the latter has read Charles’s diary and thwarts his plans by pulling out a pistol. Charles is disgraced and he is forced to leave with Helene.

The two depart, stopping over for dinner at a wayside restaurant; Charles chooses the moment to reveal his true interest in Paul. This sequence is extraordinarily moving because of the tenderness that has developed between Charles and Helene. Chabrol intercuts their conversation – and Charles’s divulgement about his dead child – to images of the meat being prepared and served. The meat is dismembered and we recollect the circumstances of the child’s death. Helene and Charles, however, do not react with distaste to the meat, which is duly eaten. Helene suggests that they should go back and kill Paul but, at this moment, a television newsreader announces Paul’s murder; he has just been found poisoned. Charles and Helene return and Charles finds himself accused by the police. He is arrested but Philip, who has grown to love Charles, suddenly appears and makes a confession. In the last part of the film Charles decides that he put the idea of killing Paul inside Philip’s head and leaves a note with the sleeping Helene – confessing to the crime. The only reason for Charles’s existence has been his ‘desire for revenge’; he reasons that confessing to the crime would be, for him, the most appropriate act. He ends the confession by admitting that if events had not taken this course, he might have loved Helene. Charles sets out on a sailing trip and there is a suggestion that he does not return.

What is interesting about Charles is that, at the verbal level, he constantly asserts his desire for revenge but, in real terms, he makes no attempt to consummate this desire. There is also just a subterranean hint that he allows Paul access to his diary so that the latter will discover the true nature of his intent and take steps to undermine it. Since Charles cannot compel himself to kill Paul, his subconscious mind perhaps devises the strategy of letting Paul see the diary; confessing to Paul’s killing could also be the easiest way of taking credit for something not done. The film also contains sequences in which Paul seems to be straining himself to retain memories of his dead son. The dinner sequence in the wayside restaurant – when he and Helene watch the dismemberment of the meat without any discernible reaction – may also reflect upon the lost battle against forgetfulness. The problem that seems to confront Charles at every stage is therefore his inability to act as he would will himself to, his incapacity to ‘manage’ or straightjacket his behavior.

One of Chabrol’s patented inventions (perhaps employed first in A Double Tour) is a retreating zoom that withdraws sharply, without apparent reason, from the object of focus. The eye of the camera may withdraw without warning from an intimate conversation, perhaps taking the aerial route, and the background music acquires a hint of menace. This formal device does not contribute directly to the narrative but serves to render the objects of focus suddenly cold and mysterious. More importantly, the objects themselves are freed from the tyranny of the camera and this has the effect of opening out the closed universe of the story in a way that would not be possible through means that only further the narrative. For reasons that are not clear, Chabrol’s later films seem to do away with this device altogether.

Chabrol’s work as a whole presents another problem to the critic and this is the filmmaker’s versatility. If Le Beau Serge not only does not prefigure but also contradicts Chabrol’s most representative work, the filmmaker also made other films – sometimes literary adaptations – that seem to bear little relation to his crime films. What is interesting is that Chabrol’s crime films are disarmingly ‘small’ in their scope (although not ‘slight’ in their import) while his adaptations appear to be substantially more ambitious. There is evidence to suggest that as Chabrol’s reputation began to catch up with him, his films became more ambitious and he embarked upon his adaptations and his other, ‘more serious’, films. At the same time, his fascination with the crime story remained and he continued to make crime films that, curiously enough, became slighter and slighter. There seem to be two sides to Chabrol – the lover of crime stories and the serious social commentator and in his best films the two sides achieve a very fulfilling union. In his later films, however, one senses a disturbing fissure developing between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’. Among Chabrol’s films after 1980, Une Affair de Femmes (1989), Madame Bovary (1991), Betty (1992) and L’Enfer (1994) perhaps belong to the former category. Poulet au Vinaigre (1985) and its sequel Inspecteur Lavardin (1986), Le Cri du Hibou (1988) La Ceremonie (1995) and one of his last films Rien ne va Plus (1997) seem to belong to the latter one. Chabrol’s later ‘entertainments’ no longer exhibit the thematic concerns that made his early crime films so stimulating and even his acute powers of observation leave him

Betty tells the story of a middle-class girl married into the aristocratic Etamble family, of her descent into alcoholism and nymphomania when curbs are put on her real self by the stultifying propriety of her husband’s home. Laure, a woman in a similar predicament, who has found spiritual refuge in a den for alcoholics named ‘The Hole’, befriends Betty. Mario, a former adventurer with working-class origins and, currently Laure’s lover, runs ‘The Hole’. The film taxies back and forth in time and we learn of Betty’s spurning by the Etamble family, of the financial settlement she accepts before she relinquishes all claims on her children. The early parts of the film, especially those in ‘The Hole’ are brilliantly filmed: soft hands replacing empty glasses with consecutive double whiskies, the stillness of an inebriated man sitting ramrod-straight at a counter. The problem with the film is that Chabrol’s is characteristic social observation has deserted him here; we never come close to understanding the constraining atmosphere responsible for Betty’s present state although an halfhearted attempt is made to also link it to the sexual experiences of her childhood. One hesitates to rush to this conclusion, but Chabrol also seems increasingly taken up with the gloss of his own cinema – at the expense of his subjects.

Betty and L’Enfer are both taken up with the essential ‘waywardness’ of the mind, a ‘vibration’ that culture tries to straightjacket and contain. In Betty, the constraining institution is the gentility of the upper-class household while in the latter it is success and marital happiness. In L’Enfer (which translates as ‘hell’) Paul, who runs a prosperous waterfront hotel, is consumed by jealousy when the waywardness of his mind (finding an objective correlative in his wife’s voluptuousness) cannot be contained by either material success or marital happiness; Paul retreats irreversibly into dementia. If a literary parallel is to be drawn, Paul is somewhat in the position of Tolstoy’s Ivan Illyich; the waywardness of Ivan’s mind cannot be contained by his attainments in life and the inevitable spillover takes the shape of hypochondria that drives him to sickness and death.

The first part of L’Enfer is scintillating but problems soon crop up when the filmmaker attempts to get inside Paul’s head through certain recurring fantasies. Chabrol’s best films take their cue from the realist method that proceeds by denying us access into the recesses of the mind; what we see on the surface is guidance enough. Chabrol goes about trying to top each one of Paul’s behavioral excesses with another one and the film becomes hysterical. Since we have already gained access into Paul’s mind, nothing he does surprises us any more and we are left exasperated.

La Ceremonie (1995) and Rien ne va Plus are, once again, crime films after the two-film interlude of Betty and L’Enfer. Chabrol’s best works have always been helped by luminous performances – Michel Duchaussoy and Jean Yanne in Que La Bete Meure, Michel Piccoli in Les Noces Rouges – but in these two films, the charismatic portrayals prove to be of little avail. We sense a gradual change in Chabrol’s filmmaking methods between the films of the golden years and those of the nineties and this partly on account of a new brazenness with which the camera confronts the action. The fluidity of in the movements of his camera eye once suggested its presence almost by chance, its studied detachment towards the action it was catching. The camera now betrays a newly discovered, immobile self-importance and the performances are clearly arranged in front of it. The result is the camera’s inability to catch things off-guard. In both La Ceremonie and Rien ne va Plus, Chabrol gets confident performances but the self-importance of the camera draws attention to the performance as artifice and this undermines the director’s realist aesthetic.
In La Ceremonie, Sophie joins an upper-class family as a maid. Jeanne, the village postmistress, befriends Sophie. Jeanne is a busybody with a deep sense of resentment against the upper-class smugness of Sophie’s employers, the Lelievres. Sophie, who is initially dutiful and obedient, also has her resentment activated when the closely guarded secret of her illiteracy accidentally becomes public knowledge. The   events in the film hurtle inexorably but rather too easily towards violence until the two girls butcher the Lelievres and their children. The film ends with Sophie and Jeanne parting company after kissing each other goodbye.
Chabrol’s most recent film in the group Rien ne va Plus tells the story of two small-time confidence tricksters and is as charming and engaging as any film with two charismatic film stars can be. The filmmaker still has a talent for sudden violence but everything in the film is so soaked in artifice that one finds it difficult to retain any of it even as one steps out of the auditorium. As we have seen, Claude Chabrol’s methods work best when they are true to the realist aesthetic, when their capacity for detached social observation is given free reign. As we have also seen, there has been a strong tendency in his later films for the filmmaker to impose himself upon his subject matter. If Claude Chabrol’s later films had been informed by a new subjectivity, they would have merited considerable attention. As it is, this is not a new subjectivity asserting itself – as much as an obtrusive artistic self-importance – even as he became less important as an artist.

By
MK Raghavendra

On October 13, 2011 and Ashok Kumar ‘Dadamoni’ would have turned hundred years young.

From his first accidental and reluctant step into movies (Jeevan Naiya) in 1936 up to 1970 (Purab aur Paschim) it was estimated that he had covered around 400 miles of celluloid. At the rate of approximately 13000 feet per film (2 1/2 miles) his 150-plus films by then, added up to 400 miles, and fans fondly hoped that he would touch the thousand-mile mark! That was not to be – after his last film in 1997 (Ankhon Mein Tum Ho) Ashok Kumar breathed his last on the 10th of December 2001, at the ripe old age of 90, with 275 movies under his belt – 250 miles short of the mark. Five films were released after his death.
 
Who knew that the shy, unassuming young lad from Bhagalpur would rise to such heights? A graduate of Calcutta University, he had come to Bombay only to get a recommendation from Himanshu Rai to proceed to Germany to learn film techniques. Rai advised him to get some experience under some of the German technicians who worked in his ‘Bombay Talkies’ and then go to Germany.  The young Ashok Kumar agreed – to the great good fortune of the Indian film industry and the film-going public. Sasadhar Mukherjee (his brother in-law) is said to have been instrumental in getting him to join the Talkies as a Cameraman’s assistant where he also acquired practical knowledge of processing, developing, printing and editing of films.
Then Himanshu Rai found himself in a fix: the lead man for his film, Jeevan Naiya quit suddenly. For ome strange reason he picked Ashok Kumar (possibly, that his wife Devika Rani, heroine of the film, would not be seduced by Ashok!), but Ashok Kumar was not willing. On the one hand he had never thought of acting as a career option and on the other, the profession did not have much of a reputation in those days. It would be many films and several awards later that Ashok would assert: It is up to you to raise [the] standard and emerge as an actor who is a gentleman first. Long before this, it was Himanshu Rai’s insistence that paid off – and a star was born.

Ashok Kumar went on to do several films with Devika Rani, by far the best of which was Achhut Kanya. The movie itself stands out as a pioneering social drama of pre-independence India – a story of a Brahmin boy falling in love with a girl from the so called ‘untouchables’ in Indian society. For an untrained artist who stumbled on to the sunny side of the camera by a mere quirk of fate, the outstanding feature of his acting was what came to be called the ‘natural style’, challenging the prevailing traditional, theatrical style of acting (Tapan Sinha called it the ‘jatra’ style). Ashok Kumar had a revolutionary effect on film-acting: he spoke and behaved ‘naturally’. What was marvellous was that this found wide acceptance among theatre goers. For him, the casualness of Ronal Coleman and the artistry of Charles Laughton were ideal.

His reign over the masses lasted approximately six decades with astounding versatility: from young lover’s roles to roles of a policeman, smuggler, judge, grandfather, uncle or dirty-old-man, all played with unique aplomb. His performances were never routine, run of the mill or stereotyped. He bravely did ‘negative’ roles and played the comedian with gusto. His performance with ‘Rail Gadi’ (a superbly delightful rendition of Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s composition) is inimitable and timeless. His ‘habit of talking while laughing’ (as Leela Chitnis would call it in her autobiography much later) became his trade mark – but every time you heard it, it was different. Leela Chitnis also spoke, in her autobiography, of his ‘childlike straightforwardness’ – which also came through in many of his roles, and which was perhaps what drew him to Himanshu Rai in the first place, who considered it as a sort insurance against his wife’s fidelity!
|
Himanshu died in 1940 after completing Kangan (Ashok Kumar–Leela Chitnis) and a dispute arose between Devika Rani and S. Mukherjee. Their compromise allowed each of them to produce films alternately – and helped Ashok Kumar, who later quipped: “… out of sheer nepotism, [my brother in-law] decided to make me a star!”

Then came 1943 with Kismet (opposite Mumtaz Shanti) and Ashok Kumar was catapulted to the position of the top most star of the day. Directed by Gyan Mukerjee the film dictated trends to come, merging action with the social genre to satisfy all kinds of audiences. Kismet established a world record by running for over three years at Calcutta’s Roxy Cinema.

This was also a turning point in Ashok Kumar’s career for other reasons.

His mentor-patron brother in-law, Sasadhar Mukherjee decided to walk out of Bombay Talkies leaving Devika Rani in control. Asked to leave, the humiliated Ashok Kumar swore to come back one day. But first he joined his brother in-law, along with Rai Bahadur Chunilal and Gyan Mukherjee to set up a new studio: Filmistan. Ashok Kumar also started to freelance in the manner of KL Saigal, Chandramohan, Motilal.

In 1946 Devika Rani married the Russian Painter, Svetoslav Roerich, and left Bombay Talkies. This presented Ashok Kumar the opportunity to come back to Bombay Talkies by buying its shares. Savak Vacha also joined him, and they attempted to pep up the studio’s dwindling finances. A number of films were made Mashall (1940 – Nitin Bose) Mahal (1949 – Kamal Amrohi), & Maa (1952 – Bimal Roy) – and all fared well.

Where did Dadamoni come from? It was during his second term at Bombay Talkies that Ashok Kumar got this nick name. During his early days at Bombay Talkies, Savak Vacha who was senior to Ashok Kumar would call him Ashok. But now, Ashok was the boss and Savak Vacha was not quite sure how to address him. One day, Ashok Kumar’s sister Sati came to the sets and she addressed her brother as “Dadamoni”. This term found favour with Vacha and he started addressing Ashok Kumar as “Dadamoni”. Soon he was Dadamoni for the whole industry.

Having worked with numerous directors, Franz Osten, Gyan Mukherjee, Nitin Bose, Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan, Phani Mazumdar, Satyen Bose, Tapan Sinha, BR Chopra, Kamal Amrohi, MV Raman, Bhim Sain, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Brij, Basu Chartterjee (to name a few!) Ashok Kumar always credited Sasadhar Mukherjee and Gyan Mukherji who “really trained me”. He said there were both highly critical, but he learnt a lot and “I’m still learning.”

What is his greatest, almost morbid dislike? It was house-lizards – he would shoot them with his revolver, so effectively brought out in Choti si Baat and vouched for by Mehmood: He won’t sleep until it is killed!

How does an actor keep from being type-cast in spite of, and through, almost 300 films? He said in an article in Filmworld : ’When used too long, a medium of self-expression … wears down to becoming a matter of routine, habit, technique and reflexes,’ he avoided the word: cliché – perhaps another sign of his gentle nature. To counter this tendency he developed many other interests – languages (English, Hindi, Bengali, German, French and Persian), painting (introduced to it by Iftekar, he confessed that he did most of his paintings while in the toilet!), chess (which he mastered after Iftekar ‘defeated’ him on the sets of ‘Samaj’) sports (boxing – participated in the 156-pound category in the Bandra Boxing Tournament, tennis, cricket and badminton, and fencing), vintage cars (of which he had five, one was used in Chalti Ka Naam Gadi), dogs (at one time he had thirteen of them), UFOs (he is reported to have sighted one, which was confirmed as such by the Astronomy Department), astrology, writing and homeopathy (with claims of having cured a case of cancer, one case of polio and gangrene).

Bombay Talkies under Ashok Kumar saw a surge of activities and many films were launched. Among actors who were launched were Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand and among directors were people like K.A. Abbas, Gyan Mukherjee, Sushill Majumdar and Amiya Chakravarty.
In 1953 he started Ashok Kumar Productions and the first picture Parineeta (1953) was directed by Bimal Roy and catapulted Meena Kumari to the top. However, during the shooting of Parineeta serious differences arose between Ashok Kumar and Bimal Roy. There was a fall out between them after the completion of Do Bigha Zameen (1953) – which took years to patch up – when Ashok Kumar acted in Bimal Roy’ s Bandini (1963).
In the early 60’s Ashok Kumar disclosed this after Meri Soorat Teri Ankhen; people he trusted had started cheating him.

He was not afraid to take risks and was one of the first anti-heroes of Indian Cinema with his role in Kismet in 1943. This movie went on to create a record for the highest grossing film in India at the time of its release. It was also among the first films to show the character with shades of grey – and was a trend setter in its own way. Ashok Kumar himself was not very happy with the negative roles – whether in Kismet, or Sangram or Sanyasi. See what a nice innocent face I have, he said with that ever-present twinkle in his eye.
On the other hand, he seemed to be cut out for comedy. He enjoyed his roles in Chalti ka naam gaadi (1958), Khatta Meetha (1978) and Shaukeen (1981). ‘I have never seen a better comedian than Ashok Kumar,’ opined Mehmood – the ultimate comedian of the Hindi screen, though unfortunately typecast for his tomfoolery over anything else. With Ashok Kumar, it is interesting to see how even his dirty-old-man depictions brought out feelings of indulgent laughter from the audience.
Ashok Kumar’s style of smoking drew many imitations. But he wasn’t a habitual smoker. He first smoked in Naya Sansar (1940) – and his style of lighting a cigarette while talking became his own hallmark. He then resumed smoking when it was required for a film. The 1980s saw him transgress to television with equal gusto and enthusiasm with serials such as Hum Log and Dada Dadi Ki Kahaniyaan.

Ashok Kumar’s life cannot be of one that Shakespeare spoke of when he said: a poor player, who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. The shadow of dadamoni will hang over Indian cinema for decades to come.

Film Awards:
1959 - He won Award of Sangeet Natak Akademi
1962 - Filmfare Award for the Best Actor (Rakhi)
1963 - BFJ Award for the Best Actor (Gumrah)
1966 - Filmfare Award for the Best Supporting Actor (Afsana)
1969 - Filmfare Award for the Best Actor (Aashirwaad)
1969 - National Film Awards for the Best Actor (Aashirwaad)
1969 - BFJ Award for the Best Actor (Aashirwaad)
1988 - He won Dadasaheb Phalke Award
1994 - Star Screen Award for Lifetime Achievement
1995 - Filmfare Award for Lifetime Achievement

Fipresci India in association with the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy conducted a seminar on Film Criticism today on 14th November, at Bangalore, as a part of the KCA-IFF held during November 8 to 20th, 2010.


Mr. Shenoy, Press Club Secretary, and noted film critic, Mr. M.K.Raghavendra, noted film critic, Mr. H.N.Narahari Rao, President FFSI, and many others including Mr. N.Vidyashankar, Mr Prakash Belwadi of Suchitra, film Journalist  B.N.Subrahmanya, veteran film distributor and producer Mr. K.V.Gupta actively participated.

Fipresci-India meets at Goa- AGM

The annual general meeting of the Fipresci India was held at Goa on Sunday, 28, November, 2010. It was attended by 15 members from all parts of India and many important decisions were taken including election of the executive committee members and office bearers.

AGM of Fipresci India is in session. Mr. P.K.Nair, presided over the AGM at Goa.

FIPRESCI - India at IFFK 2010

A Seminar on the topic ‘Film Criticism Today – Global, National and Regional Challenges’ organized jointly by Kerala State Chalachitra Academy and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) discussed on the extended roles of the film critic at Hotel Horizon, Trivandrum on 16, December 2010. The Minister for Education and Culture M.A.Baby formally opened the Seminar.

Setting the base of the Seminar, H.N.Narahari Rao, Secretary, FIPRESCI and National President, FFSI who moderated the seminar, talked about the origins and evolution of cinema and film criticism. Film criticism began in a big way the 1940s after the Italian Neo-realism. Cinema as a medium was sensational and people wanted to understand cinema, especially of the serious variety. Good writers and writings were required to explain cinema. Critical analysis of cinema started appearing in magazines such as Sight and Sound and Cahier du cinema.
Mr.M.A.Baby, inaugurating the seminar                                 Mr. Rao making the opening remarks,

He traced the growth of Film Criticism from the days of silent era, and quoting several instances, he explained how different forms of criticism took shape and the types that are prevalent in India. He also narrated how celebrities like Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, and Chidanand das Gupta made legendary contribution that are considered to be of significant trend setters in writings on cinema. He also introduced the eminent panel speakers who made their presentations.
Prof Razlogo making his presentation                                     A section of the packed audience at the seminar

Prof. Kirille E. Razlogo, from Russia, who is the Programming Director of Moscow International film festival, a scholar in cinema with more than 800 publication to his credit, with a doctorate from Moscow University, and also one of the Fipresci jury at IFFK made the first presentation. He spoke about the changing roles of a film critic in the light of a changing landscape of films and festivals, with special reference to Russia. Professional critics are now required to be more diversified but have become devalued. A film critic could make a career or destroy a film. Citing an example of a piece of writing in the New York Times, he said that it can increase viewership by 30-40%. The place of the critic is now changed owing to the influence of the television. Critics are now being used for preparation and presentation of film synopsis, script doctoring, as article writers in newspapers, as advertisers/PR persons and as television presenters. Film festivals also cannot function without a professional critic.

According to him the film critic is often devalued, though in some cases the review of a film often proved to be its advertisement campaign. He also agreed that there is a sea change in the form of criticism that exists today in Russia from the days of 1970s and 80s. This is also because of the contents of the films that is now prevalent and also because of the political situation that has undergone a big change. Reacting to a question from the audience, he mentioned that because of the strong opinion of many of the intellectuals in Russia who thought Tarkovsky’s version of Andrei Rublev deviated from the truth, the film was not received well in Russia.

Ms Claudia Lenssen, a Fipresci jury member from Germany, noted that though there are a large number of freelance journalists in Germany they are not paid well for their work and this has affected the quality of criticism in film publications and popular dailies. There are not many full time professional film critics now. Stating that there are as many as 300 journalists in FIPRESCI Germany, she said that she was not sure as to how many of them earned their living by writing articles in newspapers for they were poorly paid. Most of them join promotion/PR agencies. There are only few people in Germany who can be rated as powerful. She lamented the fact there were no regular programmes for film criticism education and training in Germany. Young people with varying backgrounds of study take to film criticism just by doing an internship. The position of the critic was very different 25-30 years ago. Herzog and Fassbinder could not have been made what they are without the contribution of critics.

Pradip Biswas, from Kolkata, whose book on Girish Kasaravlli’s film Gulabi Talkies was released, said that the new discourses and post structuralism in Film Studies has lead to different and more serious writings on cinema. He quoted an instance where a raving review of a film did not fetch the anticipated crowd, and on the contrary inspite of a harsh criticism a particular film went on to become a super hit at the box office. Speaking on the changing trends in film criticism, writer Pradeep Biswas said that these days seldom are films seen based on what is written. The post of film editor has been scrapped in many newspapers. The articles now seen in newspapers are more like reporting with the writers having scant knowledge of the audiography or camera techniques. One has to study and read a lot to develop a critical mind. Newspapers have also reduced space for film criticism, he added.

Dr. C.S.Venkiteswaran, an eminent writer, anoted film critic, who has won National Award for his writings discussed the pathetic lack of a good internationally acclaimed English journal in India where people can write about films made in their own local language. He said that three main challenges are faced by a regional critic in the changed landscape of criticism. In a culture of excess, a regional writer is bogged by the digital divide. While films from the West and Europe are easily accessible, yesteryear Malayalam films with decent subtitles are not easily available. As such, the writer is forced to cite and take examples from the West or depend on second-hand citation. With film criticism becoming multi-disciplinary, a critic faces the challenge of an academic divide. A regional critic is unable to connect with academic writing in regional cinema and national cinema and is not able to keep up with the writing and perspectives in India and the world. Language divide is the third main problem concerning the critic. Most of the noted and quoted writings are in English and the serious and important work done in other regional languages seldom reach the people in other states.

The seminar was largely attended and the gathering had many luminaries like Mr. P.K.Nair, Mr. Girish Kasaravalli, Ms Uma da Cunha, Mr.Lakshminarayan, Fipresci members and film journalists and many others in the film field.

Pusan IFF 2010
This was my first experience at the Pusan International Film Festival. I had heard it was huge, not only in its sectional film programme but also with the many panel discussions and market extensions related to filming. It certainly is impressive and daunting for a first-timer. The festival has a distinctive Asian feel to it that gives it a unique status.

In just 15 years, this festival has become the main source for cineastes to access, understand and analyse the cinema that emanates from various countries in Asia. It has also become a source for promoting and funding new talent in this part of the world.

A large part of my time was taken up with Jury screenings, so I could not experience many aspects of the festival at first hand. But there was a lot that was rewarding in terms of observations and insights.

The festival statistics that follow are staggering:

Held over October 7th - 15th, 2010, PIFF 2010 screened a record number of 306 films from 67 countries, in 36 screens spread over 6 theatres.

The films programmed presented a record number of 101 World premieres and 52 International Premieres.

Besides its film programme, the festival held key side events linked to marketing, sales and funding of Asian films, all of which are well regarded and attract film professionals in numbers from all over the world.
They constitute the following:
• The Asian Film Market (this year attended by 51 Sales Offices from 108 companies of 26    countries. It held a total of 47 market screenings of 39 films, including 22 market    premieres)
• The Asian Film Academy which registered 24 participants from 16 countries, were led by    faculty members as eminent as Abbas KIAROSTAMI (Iran), MOON Seug Wook (Korea), M    Hyung-gu (Korea) and Ogigami NAOKO (Japan)
• The coveted Asian Cinema Fund, which promotes emerging film talent from within Asia.

The above demonstrates the universe of film and cinema that PIFF offers its delegates. When confronted with it in person, it forces the delegate to pinpoint his/her area of film specialization and interest and focus on that alone.

What lit the festival was the respect, regard and affection extended by those who attended, regardless of seniority or position, towards the longstanding festival head, Kim Dang Ho. Each day was a joyous expression of their loyalty to this man, who was now leaving the festival. Proof of his guidance was that was no hint that his departure would in any way lessen or weaken the stature of the festival. He had given it the confidence and strength to excel and be self-reliant.

Aspects of the programming:
As a writer on cinema and a programmer of Indian films, what has always interested me from afar is its fine-tuning when it comes to selecting the kind of films that has given it its individuality. This is particularly so when Pusan presents films from India. Every year it selects some six to eight films which concentrate on the art-house film. It also gives insights into India’s popular film culture, such as its big-budget, star-studded, song and dance spectacle films. Its PPP programme has given grants to Indian films. This year it brought in the respected master from South India, Mani Ratnam, with his latest film, Raavan presenting it its two versions, one in Tamil and the other in Hindi. Mani Ratnam was present with his two mega stars, the beauteous Aishwaria Rai and her co-star and husband in real life, Abhishek Bachchan. They were accompanied by another major south Indian actor Vikram. This high profile foursome gave press meetings and talks that provided valuable insights into big-budget movie making in India.

For the rest, the Pusan 2010 choice of Indian films was a fine collection of recent art house films. The award winning Murali Nair presented the world premiere of his latest film Virgin Goat, while he himself served on the New Currents jury. Other Indian films included Memories in March (Bengali) by first time director Sanjoy Nag. Other Indian feature films screened in Pusan this year were Shor (directed by Raj Nidimouru and Krishna DK), Subhadro Choudhury’s Clerk, Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan.

In the shorts and documentary section, filmmaker Ashvin Kumar premiered his latest work, Inshallah Football, a film that pitted the international sport of football with the battles of daily life in a beleaguered Kashmir. The film is one of the many that Pusan’s PPP has helped financially to realize its completion. The second short screened was Angshuman Barkoty’s Dr. Nurse and Patient. The latter has been produced by the Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and I was delighted to learn that its Dean Mr Nilotpal Majumder was invited to participate in one of the festival’s panels.

Films in the FIPRESCI competition:The films in the FIPRESCI competition selection were of a good standard. The jury found two films that were outstanding. They were The Journals of Musan - directed by Jung-bum (Korea), which the jury finally named as the winner, followed by Bleak Night directed by Yoon, Sung-Hyun (Korea) Significantly; the same two films were awarded the top prize by the New Currents jury.Since FIPRESCI is permitted only one award, after a thorough debate on both films, the jury awarded the prize to The Journals of Musan.

Fipresci jury members at Pusan -2010
The Journals of Musan is an accomplished film on many levels, especially so for a first-time director. This is even more commendable considering that the director is an actor who has taken on the additional responsibility of acting the main role in addition to direction.

The film very graphically conveys the socio-political scenario in present-day South Korea through the eyes and plight of its principal character – a misfit who is a North Korean defector and so an ostensibly condemned man trying to make a life for himself in the shadows of the city’s mainstream hustle and bustle. He is essentially a kind and decent soul made to live in conditions of cruelty and crime. Without a trace of sentimentality or partiality, the director invites the viewer to look at all its characters, each within their individual social compartments, each with their separate goals and needs.

The protagonist’s only ally and friend is, symbolically, a white fluffy little dog. The surprise ending balances the man’s submitting to society’s need coinciding with the dog seemingly dead on the street – the ending is gripping and telling.
Uma da Cunha

(Report on the 16th Kolkata Film Festival – November, 10-17, 2010)
By Ranjita Biswas
Kolkata’s cineastes wait eagerly for the month of November when the Kolkata Film Festival (KFF) traditionally takes place. This year, however, the 16th Kolkata film Festival saw a far more depleted number of films with 127 films, almost half of the previous festivals. The number of screenings was also reduced. The 9 am slot was done away with. Fund crunch was cited as one of the major reasons. The state government is the major financier of this festival. It’s well-known that West Bengal finance department is not exactly in a healthy condition at the moment.

Another complaint aired by connoisseurs at the premises of Nandan-Rabindra Sadan complex, the hub of the festival, was that a major chunk of films were shown in the DVD format. Whatever it is, there was certain listlessness in the atmosphere, which could not be mistaken by those familiar with the festival’s vibrant air. Some even expressed doubt whether the festival will be held as usual next year, particularly as many foresee a change of guard at the hustling early next year.

Nevertheless, film aficionados could enjoy some of the recent films making a buzz abroad as well as works by masters like Akira Kurosawa, Alain Resnais, Costa Gavras, and Debaki Kumar Bose, a pioneer in the Bengali film scenario.

Some new features were part of this KFF. 2010 being the 150th birth anniversary of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a package of films made on his stories was presented. Among them were Satyajit Ray’s Charulata –by his own admission his most ‘perfect’ film, Tapan Sinha’s Atithi about a boy whose free spirit prevents him from settling down at one place and Purnendu Patree’s feminist film Streer Patra about a wife revolting against her chauvinist husband.
Nobel Prize also figured in a package that showcased films based on novels by Laureates in literature. Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, Volker Schlondorf’s The Tin Drum, Michel Haneke’s The Piano Teacher , Fernanado Meirelles’ Blindness and Lajos Koltai’s Fateless were part of this package. Most of these films, of course, were not new to cine-goers.

Centenary Tribute was also paid to the master craftsman Akira Kurosawa. Many of them like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ran etc. have been figured in festivals in the past and Kolkatans are not unfamiliar with them either. Even then, long queues were seen during the screenings- perhaps to marvel once again at the ingenuous plot of Rashomon and its execution, its construction format adapted by many subsequent filmmakers or be touched with the humane story of a terminally ill bureaucrat’s last hurrah in Ikiru or salute the retired professor of Madadayo for his indomitable spirit “Not Yet” ready to depart this world. An exhibition of stills and posters of the director’s films added to the appreciation of one of the great directors of our time
The Retrospective section, a regular feature, is quite popular with filmgoers as it gives an opportunity to enjoy a considerable body of work by renowned international directors. This year KFF screened films of Alain Resnais, Oliver Assayas, Costa Gravas- all from France, and Jon Jost of USA who was personally present at the festival. Claude Chabrol expired recently. As homage to him Madame Bovary was screened.
Liv Ullmann is more known as the actress and muse of Ingmar Bergman. But she has taken to directing too. The ‘Image’ section had, besides many films she acted in under different directors, films by Ullmann as a director like Faithless and Kristin Lavransdatter set in medieval Norway.

At the KFF, the section that hogs the limelight is, of course, the ‘Contemporary World Cinema’ which offers a glimpse of the recent works of internationally recognized directors, old and new. Since the festival is non-competitive, the latest works by directors are often missing. Even then those gleaned from the recent festival circuit are great draws simply because the average cineaste hardly gets a chance to view them otherwise.

Films made in 2009 and 2010 from 30 countries were screened under this section this year. Though admittedly many of them were not upto expectation or indifferently made, a bunch of them illuminated the screen. Iran –based director Shahram Alidi’s Whisper with the Wind on the persecution of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein, Sri Lanka’s young filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara’s Between Two Worlds, an allegorical tale of troubled times in the island, Israel’s Keren Yedaya’s Jaffa on the love between a Jewish girl and an Arab boy and the conflict thereof, Hilda Hidalgo’s (Costa Rica) Of Love and other Demons on a teenage girl’s life during the Inquisition times -the inaugural film based on a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story, Australia-based Iranian director Granaz Moussavi’s My Teheran for Sale on being a woman in a closed society, The Daughter-in-Law by Kazakhstan’s Yermek Tursunov, a film with minimal dialogue but high on aesthetics, were some of the highlights of this section. Like in other years, a children’s film festival was held along with, a thoughtful gesture indeed.

But KFF also had its share of controversy. Satyajit Ray’s documentary Sikkim, banned by the government for 40 years and recently restored was a much tom-tommed USP of the festival. The film as commissioned by Sikkim’s erstwhile Chogyal in 1971 to attract more tourists. Sikkim was still a Himalayan kingdom and the queen was America-born Hope Cooke. In 1975 Sikkim merged with India to become a state in the republic. Reportedly due to some controversial passages the film was banned and never had a public screening. So expectations were high. However, after the first screening the film was withdrawn as there was objection from a Trust in Sikkim called The Art and Culture Trust of Sikkim (ACT) which said it had the copyright and permission was not sought for the screening. At the festival directorate’s request, ACT relented and it was screened on the last day but many missed out on the film due to the overcrowding of the hall.
Ranjita Biswas

The week long 12thMumbai Film Festival concluded with Fardeen Khan and Raima Sen hosting the event at Chandan theatre, where the Indian lifetime achievement award was given to Manoj Kumar and international lifetime achievement award to Oilver Stone. Yash Chopra and Jane C presented Oliver with his International Life Time Achievement award while Suhasini Mani Ratnam and Vidhu Vinod Chopra presented Manoj Kumar with the Indian Life Time chievement award. Both were also handed over a shawl and a plaque.

After receiving the award, Manoj Kumar said, “Oilver Stone was Oliver Stone until he came to India, but after landing he has become a precious gem and priceless stone.” In turn Oliver thanked Mumbai, the Festival and Manoj Kumar for his kind words and said “India has great culture, you make great movies and I am honored to accept this award.”
The Golden Gateway Award for the best film in the international competition category was resented by Girish Kasaravalli and Samira Makhmalbaf to Turkish film “Majority” directed by Seren Yüce. The award was presented by director Girish Kasaravalli and Festival jury member Samira Makhmalbaf, while the Silver Gateway Award for the runner up film in the international competition category was presented to the Danish film “R” directed by Michael Noer & Tobias Lindholm by both Akbar Khan and Kiran Juneja Sippy, who wisecracked, “I feel very

humbled after seeing all the numbers in my cheque for Rs 12.5 lakhs”.
The silver gateway award for best director was presented by Ashutosh Gowarikar to Anocha Suwichakornpong for her film from Thailand “Mundane History”. Anocha was the only female director competing in the international competition category. The silver gateway award for best actor was presented to Bartu Kucukcaglayan for his performance in the film “Majority” by Sudhir Mishra. The silver gateway award for best actress was presented to Marie Hélène Bellavance for her performance in Canadian film “Vital Signs” by Ashok Thakeria and Inder Kumar. The Jury award for technical excellence was presented to the Greek film “Black Field” directed by Vardis Marinakis by Jahnu Barua. The Audience choice Silver Gateway Award was presented to Spanish film “Biutiful” directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu by Hrishitaa Bhatt.

In the Dimensions Mumbai section, the best film award was presented by Ramesh Sippy to Collin D’çunha for his film “Mumbaikar Ganesh” . The runner up position was shared by two films “Tee” directed by Avinash Medhe and “Mera Ghar” directed by Abhay Kumar. “Mumbai Retina” directed by Narayan Vijay Thakur won the special mention award at the hands of both Om Puri and Prem Chopra. The Jury for Dimensions Mumbai was headed by Dev Benegal, Vishaka Dutta, Ashim Ahluwalia, Brahmanand Singh and Manish Acharya. The Harmony Celebrate Age award was presented to “Mama Gogo” directed by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson and the runner up prize was given to “Forget Me Not” directed by Katia Grivot, while The Mumbai young critics silver gateway award was given to “Octubre” co- directed by Daniel Vega & Diego Vega.

The closing ceremony witnessed great participation from the film industry with the likes of Yash Chopra, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Sudhir Mishra, Arunoday Singh, Satish Kaushik, Prem Chopra, Hrishita Bhatt, Rituparno Sengupta, Rajshree Ojha, Aamir Bashir etc.

The ceremony was followed by the screening of “Red” starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Mary Louise Parker and John Malkovich and directed by Robert Schwentke.

This year Mr. Shyam Benegal, the world renowned filmmaker was conferred with the prestigious Asian Film Culture Award.

Mr. H.N.Narahari Rao President, FFSI was presented with Satyajit Ray memorial award For promoting film as an art.

Highlights of this year festival was country focus on Iran, the short film fiction competition, focus on Taiwan, Retrospective of Kon Ichikawa and a section of Netpac award winners.
IFFI -2010
A Report by H.N.Narahari Rao

Generally, Retrospectives in Film Festivals form one of the major attractions for the delegates and this year we had a retrospective of eight films of Jan Jakub Kolski, the Polish filmmaker at IFFI, that became a talk of the festival amongst the delegates. Many of the veteran film critics felt that it was really a bonus that we got such a package. I call it surprising, because, for many of us, particularly for film society activists, who are quite familiar with the works of Andrei Wajda, Kieslowsky, Polanski, Zanussi and others from Poland, it is for the first time that we had a glimpse of this filmmaker. Kolski, born in 1956, is a highly accomplished film practitioner and has won large number of national and international recognitions.

Jan Jakub Kolski along with his lead actress Aleksandra Michael and cinematographer Artur Reinhart made their presence at the screenings and talked to the audience on their films. The films screened in the Package are The Burial of a Potato (1990), Johnnie The Aquarius (1993), A Miraculous Place (1995), The History of Cinema in the Village of Popielawy (1998), Keep Away from the Window (2000), Pornography(2003), Happy Aphonya(2009) and Venice (2010).

Kolski’s debut film Burial of Potato sets the tenor for his style, and this becomes a familiar one in his subsequent films and it is not surprising that many are of the opinion that his is a style that makes him an auteur filmmaker. His method of narration is something very unusual, some call it surrealistic, some call it as fantasy, and some even say it a magical style. Whatever we may call it, we cannot ignore him, he is definitely an artist who makes you get up and watch with anxiety. He has a set of actors and actresses who make their appearance in most of his films, and after watching the entire package, one after the other, it becomes quite puzzling to place them in their right place in the right film.
Burial of a potato is a film that brings to fore the hostility with which the villagers treat their neighbor Mateuz, a harness mechanic, when he returns from a concentration camp from Germany. He is falsely branded as a Jew to justify their action and they are jealous of him because he eats away into their share of land that is being distributed by the authorities under land reforms. He also comes to know of his son’s death, left unattended when he was wounded, through young David who was a witness to the holocaust that took place during the crushing of the anti communist movement. This episode of historical nature is told by Kolski in a style that is characteristic of his individuality, more like poetry than as a straight narration.

A Miraculous Place, is the story that takes place in a village where a young handsome priest encounters miracles and superstitions and gets acquainted with a woman who is treated as a girl with a stigma. His outlook of life is totally different from the other priest but he decides to stand by the other priest and his girl when the villagers do not accept them. Here again the images that narrate the story are depicted in a totally different style. It is told like fable though fantasy.
In his film The History of Cinema in the Village of Popielawy Kolski has a re-look at the birth of moving images. According to his version the genesis of the machine that captured the moving images was made in a Polish village long before Lumiere’s invention. And there is even a reference that the equipment made by a blacksmith of this village was taken away by Lumiere on purchase. This blacksmith family is in this         The History of Cinema in the Village of Popielawy(1998) profession for several generations and in the present context of the film a ten year old boy goes to join the grandparents and he ties up with the young blacksmith and unearth the old prototype drawings of the machine. It is quite interesting to see them assemble a machine of huge dimensions. Kolski uses this as a background theme to deeply penetrate into sketch the lives of the people living in the village and their behavior.

Keep Away from the Window is probably a film that we may call it as a fairly straight narration with war background. It follows the familiar genre in which the suffering of the Jews is portrayed. A Jewish woman Regina is protected in the house of a childless couple, always hiding in a wardrobe most of the time, under the strict surveillance of the fascist regime. Jan falls in love with Regina, she becomes pregnant. But Barbara              Keep Away from the Window
the wife manipulates to pretend as pregnant and when the child is born it is named as Helusia. After Regina disappears the child remains with the Polish couple. When the time comes, Jan has to confess the truth to the child. There are plenty of scenes in the film that are quite touching but are handled very deftly. The human elements that are brought out in the film are superb. On many occasions when ghastly killings take place they are so delicately handled they never appear to be morbid at all but its effects are never diminished. Kolski in this film raises a pertinent question that makes us to ponder about those who are born to cross parentage as it happens here in the case of Helusia who is Polish-Jewish.

Happy Aphonya is another film of Kolski with a war background. He seems to love to grapple repeatedly with war and Religion as background for his films. When one among the audience asked this question during a Q-A session, he replied, “Environment during oppression and adverse circumstances is a big stimulus to the creativity of film makers.” Happy Aphonya is a very compact film, the period he specifies as the                             Happy Aphonya(2009)
conclusion of Stalin’s era. A Russian wrestler arrives to learn the skills of wrestling from a former champion Rafal who is now lying paralyzed, living with Aphonya, recovering from the trauma of war. Aphonya falls madly in love with the Russian.

Kolski’s narrative style, many critics say belongs to Magic Realism. He does not use intellectuals or men with impeccable characters as protagonists, instead he stuffs his films with characters in a cynical way. We can see physically handicapped, mentally retarded, foolish people, whores and socially discarded persons playing predominant roles. He draws himself away from making any political statements. According to him this is a universe where people just become an insignificant part of it, play their roles and disappear.

It is a revelation for many of us that this director who it is reported is immensely popular among the Polish cinema audience, is introduced to us through this festival.
H.N.Narahari Rao

‘Portraits in a Sea of Lies’ Bags Suvarna Chakoram    Carlos Gaviria receiving the award
The Suvarna Chakoram for the Best Film has been bagged by the Spanish film ‘Portraits in a Sea of Lies’ directed by Carlos Gaviria and produced by Erwin Goggel at the 15th International Film Festival of Kerala. The film wins a cash prize of Rs.15 lakhs, to be shared equally by the Director and the Producer, and a Certificate. It tells the story of two cousins who take a journey to recover their grandfather’s land in a civil-war torn Colombia. The screenplay and editing of this film is also by Carlos Gaviria.
Werner Herzog, World renowned, German Filmmaker was conferred with the Life Time Achievement Award at the IFFK-2010, at Trivandrum on December 10, 2010  
The Rajata Chakoram for the Best Director in Competition has been awarded to the Argentinian director Julia Solomonoff for ‘The Last Summer of La Boyita’. The director wins a cash prize of Rs.4 lakhs and a Certificate. The Rajata Chakoram for the Best Debut Film in Competition, having a cash prize of Rs.3 lakhs and a certificate has been awarded to the Turkish film ‘Zephyr’ by Belma Bas. The International Jury comprises of Ms.Julie Dash as its Chairperson and Ms.Maria Novaro, Mr.Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mr.Yashuhiro Hariki and Ms.Sooni Taraporevala as its members. The Rajata Chakoram for the Audience Award with a cash prize of Rs.2 lakhs and a certificate has been bagged by the film ‘The Japanese Wife’.

The NETPAC Award for the Best Asian Film goes to ‘I am Afiya Megha Abhimanyu Omar’ directed by Onir Anirban from India “for its challenging position and its consideration for presenting different sensitive and controversial issues of Indian society”. The NETPAC Award for the Best Malayalam Film has been awarded to ‘The Way Home/Veettilekkula Vazhi’ directed by Dr.Biju “for its brave approach to a problem, terrorism, which, aside from India worries the whole world and for the message full of humanity present in the entire film”.

The FIPRESCI Award for the Best Film in Competition has been bagged by ‘Buried Secrets/Dowaha’ of the Tunisian filmmaker Raja Amari. The FIPRESCI Award for the Best Malayalam Film goes to ‘Makaramanju/Mist of Capricorn’ by Lenin Rajendran. The Hassankutty Award for the Best Indian Debut Film, constituted by Ms.Mira Nair, has been won by ‘Chithra Suthram/Image Threads’ directed by Vipin Vijay. The director gets a cash prize of Rs.50,000 and a certificate.

Pondering over 15th IFFK films

This year also there were a large number of Films appearing in different competitions as well as Films of the World section in the 15th IFFK(Dec 10-17,2010) at Trivandrum.

Short Reviews:
The Japanese Wife
(India / 2010/ 105 mins / Bengali)
The Japanese Wife, directed by Aparna Sen, noted Actress and filmmaker, was able to touch the spirit of the vast gathering of the delegates in the festival and bag the Audience award. It is an improbable story, quite difficult to sustain it as a reality, but as a film it has some intricate structure which makes us to believe and move with it till its end. The screenplay sketched around some of the well structured events try to embellish the authenticity of the drama. Most of the time this unfolding drama becomes amusing and hilarious. Snehamoy Chatterjee, an Arithmetic teacher in a village school develops friendship, through a pen-friends column of a Newspaper, with a likeminded Japanese girl. This relationship in physical absence ends up in their marriage. Though it appears funny for others they are quite serious about it and in them we see a couple as realistic as any other married couple except that they are physically separated for over 15 years now. We can treat it as a comic fable, enjoy every bit of it and leave the theatre happily thinking, ‘they lived happily thereafter’. But it does not happen like that.

Snehamoy, the main protagonist does not take interest in building relationship with a charming young woman Sandhya who happened to live in his house after becoming a widow. Even his wife Miyage, who survives from cancer arrives from Japan at his place to visit his house, but strangely enough the story takes an unpredictable turn with the untimely demise of Snehomoy before his Japanese wife’s arrival. All are left disappointed, including Miyage, Sandhya, the ageless aunt and ultimately the audience.

Portraits in a Sea of Lies
(Colombia /2009 /90 mins)
People undergoing traumatic experience under political disturbances resulting in civil wars has formed subject for many films in the past. Portraits in a Sea of Lies, is one such film from Columbia, a Latin American country that tries to tell the story of two cousins who have suffered because, theirs is one of those families who were displaced during the civil war that persisted for over 60 years. Jairo is a wandering photographer, and he takes his mute cousin Marina and travel to their native place to recover their grandfather’s land from where they were displaced. The insecurity, the state surveillance, mutual distrust in the people and indifferent society pervades throughout their journey. As they reach their home this uncertainty continues to prevail and they have to face a hostile group in the village. In the process Jairo dies because of a bullet injury.

Honey
(Original title: Bal) (Turkey / 2010 / 103 mins)
Many of the film activists who attended the festival were quite eager to see this film, the Golden Bear winner at Berlin, directed by Semih Kaplanoglu, whose other films Yumurta (Egg /2007), and Sut (Milk/2008), got good reviews in the past.

Semih Kaplanoglu has a snail-paced style and his concentration on visuals and slow motion movements needs to be observed with lot of patience. It may be quite a difficult exercise for those who are accustomed to fast paced movies. Nothing much happens in the films, there are only three characters, little Yusuf, his father Yakub and his mother Zehra. It has a thin line story, Yusuf follows his father to see how he collects honey from the tallest trees, then he goes to the school but finds it difficult to read as he stammers. This cyclic sequence continues. Yakub finds there is no more honey available in the forest and moves to a far off place to fetch it. He does not return and the family suffers the trauma. The little boy is very much distressed and he goes in search of his father.

No doubt, the visuals are presented beautifully, at some points we feel as though we are sitting on a small hillock and observing the events that takes place in front of us, characters come and go. But nothing exciting happens and it almost becomes a meticulously planned documentation of family’s routine chore.
By
H.N.Narahari Rao

By Bikas Mishra
I’m not a Malayalam Cinema regular. I only get a chance to watch these films at film festivals. My exposure is limited to directors such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan and John Abraham. And honestly, I’ve never seen these many Malayalam films ever in one single year!

Watching nine Malayalam films carefully chosen by the 15th International Film Festival of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram was quite an experience in itself. As a Hindi speaker, I often feel deprived of my native cinema. My cinema…if I’ve to call Hindi cinema my own; it is meant for masses who speak many languages, and hence it has an all encompassing quality that also makes it uprooted.

What fascinates me about Malayalam cinema is its imagery, its depiction. Even the films starring superstars of commercial cinema present a truthful picture of the country life. If one has to form an opinion purely on the basis of imagery and depiction, Malayalam cinema is the most realistic film industry in India.

I also get a feeling that like Malayali people, Malayalam cinema is also deeply political and extremely conscious of the contemporary social realities.

Ranjith's "Palerimanikyam Oru Paathira Kolapathakathinte Katha" presented in the international competition section of the festival is one of the most talked about Malayalam films of the year starring the most popular star Mammooty. The film is essentially a peasant drama set up in rural Kerala. It's a unique blend of a detective thriller genre and folk drama. A
detective and his crime analyst colleague are         "Palerimanikyam Oru Paathira Kolapathakathinte Katha"
trying to solve a rape and murder mystery, purportedly the first such recorded offense. The detective duo doesn’t do much of an investigation in the film except visiting the crime record room. Instead, all the detective does it to narrate his account of investigation to his crime analyst colleague. This is how the director turns the detective into a sutradhar (Narrator).

The film is rich in its depiction of the social and political realities of the time it is set in. It also achieves a unique balance of story traditions. Detective thriller genre is effortlessly mingled with the Indian tradition of storytelling where narrator (sutradhar) is an essential part of storytelling as well as the story. The detective (played by Mammooty) often looks directly into the lens and addresses the audience directly as if he's watching the story unfold before his eyes. People used to the western detective dramas might find themselves ill at ease but this film makes no bones about the fact that here the genre is just a tool for deeper social investigation. Shyamaprasad's "Elektra", a film based on the ancient Greek myth, has been nicely adapted to the Malayali milieu. A tale of deceit, guilt and envy; it also provides a peek into the feudal past of Kerala. The film stands out for its sophisticated production value.

In fact, a recurring theme of Malayalam Cinema is past and the memory of it. Ranjith's “Palerimanikyam” explores the past of the state through employing the device of a detective thriller. “Electra” approaches it slightly differently. It invests a lot in setting up the locale of the story and especially the palatial house of the family where the story unfolds.

Lenin Rajendran's "Makaramanju" (Mist of Capricorn) is different and captivating. It's a mystical tale behind a painting of nineteenth century artist Raja Ravi Varma. The film creates a mesmerizing interplay between history and mythology in order to bring to the screen an evocative account of the trials and tribulations of an artist.
“Makaramanju” stands out as its politics is more internal than societal. It remains closer to the protagonist. Not that the film is completely bereft of the social reality of the time it speaks of, however, the directorial concern seems clearly tilted in favour of the individual than the political.

Another noticeable aspect of the film is the element of storytelling. Here the protagonist turns into a sutradhar (narrator) and tells mythical love story of King Pururavas and Urvashi. Quite true to Indian tradition of storytelling where the narrator often plays the character he tells the story of, the protagonist here turns into King Pururavas.
Vipin Vijay's "Chitrasutram" (Image Threads) can be safely termed experimental. As the title suggests, here the director instead of telling a story, is more concerned about presenting evocative images nestled in an aurally exotic world. Experience becomes more important than a coherent story for the director. It's an ambitious piece of cinema that's highly ambiguous yet visually and aurally rewarding.

Dr. Biju's "Veettilekkulla Vazhi" (The Way back home) is an exception, both in its concerns and depiction. It could easily have been a Hindi film.
The premise of the film is full of dramatic potential that the director exploits fully. A dying mother entrusts her only son to a doctor after making him promise that he'll reunite the boy with his father. Highpoint of the drama is the fact that the father happens to be the most dreaded terrorist of India. A panoramic film shot across Ladhakh, Rajasthan, Kerala and Delhi captures the trials and tribulations of the epic hero, who sets out on a journey to find the dreaded terrorist in order to reunite him with his son.

This film shows a glimpse of both the ambition as well as the technical finesse that Malayalam cinema possesses. However, it doesn't hold to a scrutiny of plausibility. Thinking of an Islamic terrorist outfit (especially that's always in the news) run by Keralites, and based out of the peaceful Ladakh is a far cry. The film also brings out a far more important question to the fore- how does a regional film industry deal with a pan Indian issue, especially the one that doesn't affect the state directly in the manner shown in the film.

What’s extra ordinary about Malayalam cinema is perhaps its obsession with scrutiny of its past. Even the commercial cinema of the state is deeply political and often set up in villages and hinterlands. About four decades after Malayalam New Wave, it seems evident that it has permeated into the mainstream Malayalam industry, at least in intent. It’s a very promising film industry with lots of ambition and plenty of talent.
By
Bikas Mishra is the editor of DearCinema.com

Astronomy and archaeology merge in the most unusual way in a brilliant documentary screened at the recently concluded Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Nostalgia for the Light by Chilean director Patricio Guzman, is shot in Chile’s Atacama desert at 3000 metres above sea level, a bone-dry moon-like never-never land, once a trade route, then isolated and abandoned. Till one day scientists saw in its clear, translucent skies a gateway to the stars. A large astronomical laboratory sprang up atop a hill and astronomers from across the world began their study of the origins and boundaries of the universe.

Nostalgia for the Light
In Chile, astronomy is a passion. But the joys of astronomy were darkened by the gestures of the country’s women nearby. They were digging the earth in search of the remains of their sons, husbands, brothers who had “disappeared” during General Pinochet regime. For 17 years between 1973 and 1990, the regime killed, buried, later dug up and disposed of thousands of political opponents, mostly at the Chacabuco concentration camp. The women dug determinedly for years. In an interview to a local newspaper, Guzman says that the high salt content in the desert “preserves bodies for thousands of years. It is a territory of memory.”

Through intelligent (I am tempted to say ‘wise’) interviews with scientists, Patricio Guzman gradually builds up and interweaves the two different searches: the astronomical and the archaeological – giving us a documentary of immense visual power and deep thoughtfulness. The jury spoke of the “the originality of its dramatic and cinematic vision, where image and sound are like traces of the mystery of the past present, the secrets of the big bang and the remains of Pinochet’s victims”.

Women searched for mortal remains for 28 years! Even during the film’s shooting, the crew found the skeletal remains of a female prisoner – mostly tiny fragments of bones. Watching heartbreaking interviews with these mothers, wives and sisters, we learn that they search every day, return in the evening empty-handed, but shake themselves and renew their search the next day. In one case, a woman found her brother’s decayed foot and felt reunited.

But where the two disciplines (and the two emotions) meet is when we see the digital imprints of the stars, its calcium lines. And how the astronomers link these to the calcium lines in human bones, and speak of all of the universe as one.

Co-produced by Chile, German and France, this slow, quiet, majestic film where every shot – including those of the machines and those of the human remains – is a caress, where music is celestial, where some shots are bathed in pieces of space as though bits of sky were falling on the image, tells us that the “past is the astronomer’s main tool” as it is the archeologist’s. The difference is that the astronomer can sleep soundly. But the women who exhume and try to unearth their country’s bloody past – they find that sleep has deserted them.

Yet the paths of those gazing serenely at the heavenly bodies and those looking frantically for lost bones had never crossed till now. Two sets of people tracking two different kinds of bodies in this haunting, moving film; two ideas of light that needs to be shed on the unknown – on the cosmos as much as on a dark era of history. In the same interview, Guzman said that he grew up in a country that once upon a time was luminous. “The light is the same,” he said. “But the country has changed.”
By
Latika Padgaonkar