Still no character or class

The International Film Festival of India continues to be a washout, three decades after its inception. Lack of planning and organisation dog it every step of the way. The few eminent film makers who did attend the festival had to contend with officials who were unprepared and knew next to nothing about their films. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN, while pointing out some of these drawbacks, focuses on some of the films.

IFFI bashing has become virtually mandatory for film critics in this country. And if you have been a habitue of the annual international film festivals of India, there is really no other go. Old timers may recall golden fests attended by Andre Wajda and Jean Renoir. And natter about how IFFI brought world cinema exposure for the desi movie moguls as well as auteurs.

But back in the present, at the 31st IFFI in 2000, we see that three decades have not given it character, class or charisma.

That despite drawing world renowned names this year to dais and hall. There was Abbas Kiarostami, eyes perpetually screened by dark glasses, so balefully remote that you could have mistaken him for a mafia don in a Hollywood thriller, and about as forbidding to the press and public. "No, no interviews! I am always misquoted." At the press meeting of the jury for the Asian directors' competition, he sat in proud silence. Anyway, President Mrinal Sen wouldn't let go of the mike.

Kiarostami's film brought consolation of sorts. "The Wind Will Carry Us" was nowhere near masterworks like "Close Up", it left too much unsaid. A city man and his unseen companions (photo journalist and assistants?) descend on a village, letting the natives think they are on a treasure hunt. The man wanders o'er hill, field and cemetery, cell phone in hand, and leaves as mysteriously as he came. But what visuals of the land! Long aerial shots which wind round the ribbon road through the hills and reach the village squeezed into a rocky ledge. But the engaging geography could not indicate as much as it had done in his earlier film "Under the Olives". The script was full of the warmth and wit which comes from a feeling for the people who speak it, especially the little boy guide. (One wondered anew if anyone could beat the Iranians in depictions of children). But the dimensions were wrought by the camera really, playing more hide than seek with people and interiors, where patchy forms, narrow stairs and curtained windows teased the viewer into anticipation.

As when the visitor recites poetry in the dark basement, which is visually shaped in the girl's hands milking the cow, and in her lantern-lit feet. Such moments show why the film maker makes the doctor say at the end that the best things in life are the generosity of God and the beauty of this world. "For who has come back to speak of a greater Paradise after death?"

Bibi Andersson, Ingmar Bergman's heroine of unforgettable films, gorgeous in black, brushes past you before the tea stall. Your thirst is forgotten as scenes of passion and intensity from her "Persona" and "Wild Strawberries" crowd your mental screen. She sparkles with mettlesome humour. (Interrupting a question about how the great Bergman shaped her talent, she announced, "Let's not give him credit for everything! I am solely responsible for my own growth as an actor.") She also "commanded" the press to trounce MGM for refusing to let IFFI screen her most powerful portrayal in "Persona" on the pretext that IFFI was its debtor. "The Face", a less known early Bergman, had to be screened instead.

Fernando Solanas popped up unannounced on that occasion. His appearance didn't disappoint you (as did his inordinately long "The Cloud", the closing film at IFFI. This tribute to Argentinian theatre lost focus in self conscious artiness. Cars and people moving constantly backwards were the least gimmicky images in its arduous passage).

Solanas was your dream come true of the Latin American artist - handsome, white haired, romantic and surreal. Even his star Angela Correa, a stunner if there ever was one, with a bunch of black braids to take your breath away, could not steal the show from him. His gesticulating Spanish was visual drama. You saluted him for memorable films like "The Voyage" and "Tangos" where he revolutionised your concept of narrativity, and of musical score, through themes so rooted in the local that they became universal.

True, in general IFFI attracts few foreign stalwarts. Worse, it does not know how best to present those who do come. All introductions are alike; gushing, starstruck and often hysterically unprepared. Never with dignity or substance. Before special screenings the stage is crowded with government officials and nubile girls who sway in and out with bouquets, awards or lamps. And why should the awards be presented by transcient ministers and governors? Why not by eminent film personalities?

The press meets are absolute washouts, attended mostly by regular spot reporters, often strangers to the work of the director they are to quiz. Sometimes, the director is presented before his/her film is screened. Either way the standard questions are always "Tell us something about your film", and "What are its distribution prospects?" No wonder seasoned Indians adopt school teacherly patience like Shyam Benegal, or studied nonchalance like Girish Karnad did. And God help the guest who needs a translator! The young interpreter with Solanas struggled so ineffectually that the film maker became red in the face. A foreign visitor offered to help, which improved things only marginally. Frustrating because what emerged was so full of passion and contemplative thought.

For a nondescript festival like ours, the off-again-on-again competition section seems quite redundant.

This year's choice from Asian Directors included atrocious entries like "The Last Malay Woman", a thoroughly regressive, hidebound, chauvinist extolling of traditional womanhood by a woman director (Erma Fatima Rahmad). Song, dance and music a la Bollywood, plus the sacrifice of true love for a previous engagement with the Muslim fanatic (who becomes a good man after a fight with the hero in the waters, against the backdrop of raging fire, not to forget a last minute rescue of a baby from the flames). Worse was to come. After his village trip to recover his lost Malayan culture, the playwright sheds his westernised approach, and stages a new play about the woman who "offers" her virginity to the bridegroom. Her meek surrender echoes the words of the girl he had loved and lost, spoken to her spouse on her wedding night! Curtains down but not before a nauseating post nuptial shot of the stained sheet.

The winners? Well, "Khadosh" (Israel, Amos Gitai) with a special mention passed muster. But nothing outstanding about the Golden Peacock awardee "The Railroad Man" (Japan, Yasuo Furuhata), though it was touching enough and made visually arresting melodrama for the dead daughter and the living father to play their parts. The Indian entry "Karunam" by Jayaraj which shared this top award had nothing to recommend it except its choice of theme, the plight of the old parents, spurned and neglected by the young, no longer a western phenomenon for us in India. Its unrelieved pathos was tedious as was its total absence of any surprise. "Nang Nak" (Indonesia, Nonzee Nimibutr) which won the Silver Peacock for the Most Promising Asian Director was an unimaginative retelling of an old legend about the wife faithful even after death, with no contemporary resonance or relevance.

"Postman in the Mountains" (China, Huo Jianqi) was a sound choice for the Special Jury Award with another Silver Peacock, as a moving document of human bonds, between father and son, of duty, responsibility and personal commitment which takes pride in one's work and in its contribution to the community. The retired mailman takes his son on the long, perilous trek through the villages strung upon the green-swathed, cloud-shawled, river- wound mountains and introduces the young man to the residents. Each hamlet tells a chapter in the tale, gaining weight in flashbacks, and in unexpected verbal exchanges, even little squabbles, between father and son. The values it promotes become loftier as exemplified by simple folk in the rarefied regions.

Mystifyingly, the wonderful debut by Lama Khywentse Norbu in "The Cup" was ignored by the illustrious jury (film makers Mrinal Sen, Abbas Kiarostami, Joao Batista de Andrade, film critic Joan Dupont, screenplay writer Jean Claude Carriere - associated with Luis Bunuel, better known in India for his screenplay of Peter Brooks' "Mahabharata").

This first Bhutanese feature was one of the most endearing films at the festival, where the pathos of the Tibetan refugees was balanced with humour. As soccer fever hits the boys in the monastery on the Himalayan foothills, young monk Orgyen tries to smuggle in a TV set plus satellite dish to watch the World Cup Final. Sharp one-liners in the script keep you chuckling on your way home, even as the figure of the old abbot surrounded by packed trunks and dreams of a return to his homeland , haunts you as the image we carry into the new millennium.

(To be concluded)

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