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Literary Review
Less obvious worldviews
"ASIAN directors very often come from literary backgrounds, they have a sense of culture, they come from countries that are full of contradictions and threats, they have experienced life in an intense way, and all this comes into their films along with real freshness and enthusiasm."
So declares the French film magazine Positif. In India, only a small coterie of film festivalgoers are in a position to appreciate this conclusion. The problems of the market make it difficult for us to view Asian films which reflect the intensities, paradoxes and insecurities of our daily existence. Not just the intellectual experiments here, vital as they are to the growth of cinema; but of well-framed, heart-warming stories like Zhang Yimou's "Happy Times" (China), or a "In the Mood for Love" by Wang Kar Wai (Hong Kong). For the committed filmmaker in Asia, cinema is neither a mere money-spinner nor a hothouse indulgence. It is a means of self-assertion, of sharing a less obvious worldview.
Asia has done well with cinema, both as art and commerce, Hong Kong's action thrillers beating the West at its own game, and Bollywood keeping Hollywood at bay in India, and winning world attention in recent times.
From Catholic Philippines to Islamic Iran, what range and diversity we get in Asia! Filmmakers have adapted the Western medium so skilfully to their needs in this continent that no history of cinema can afford to bypass them. Any list of the world's best auteurs will have to accommodate an Akira Kurosawa and an Abbas Kiarostami.
Cinemaya, the Asian film quarterly edited by Aruna Vasudev, has long been a rich source of information on Asian cinema. More recently, it launched an Asian film festival in New Delhi, which has been expanding in size and reach. A natural extension of this campaign has taken the form of an impressive anthology by the Cinemaya team (Aruna Vasudev, Latika Padgaonkar, Rashmi Doraiswamy) tracing the histories of cinema as it has developed in 18 nations, along with chapters on Central Asian regions like Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, as also on West Asian Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria.
The book provides an excellent bird's eye view from the origins of the art form to the present scenario, interspersed with close-ups on key facets. It avoids jargon in favour of friendly narration. Naturally, the regions about which we know less, and places where cinema is still young, are of greater value to the reader. We also want to know about nations like Korea, whose films have emerged more recently in the international arena.
The accounts of Japan and China do not satisfy as much because, in covering more ground in their cinema, and the political factors which influenced their ups and downs, the writer races across chunks that we would have liked to chew and savour. After digesting the chapters on Iran, we are no closer to understanding what makes the Iranian auteur so brilliant with his understated metaphors, what gives the Iranian film its singular flavour and quality.
However, it is a tribute to a book of over 500 pages that you end up wanting more from it!
The anthology scores in attention to detail, and in the honesty of the writers. For example, while decrying the downslide in Indonesia the writers add, "But many other countries also experience social injustice, yet excellent films continue to be made there." Dan Fainaru's "Coming of Age" on Israel is equally unsparing. He even includes a paragraph on Palestinian cinema, reserving unstinting praise for Ilya Suleiman's "Chronicle of Disappearance", an ironic portrait of Israel's Arab inhabitants. "One of the very rare pictures made in this part of the world that manages to deliver messages, sometimes devastating ones, through purely visual, cinematic means."
We learn about the struggles of the New Wave, of determined experimenters finding ways of overcoming the Hollywood menace, not only in films from the U.S., but in their influence on local minds and products. We also see how some nations return to the documentary, and others establish a name for animation features. We discover how a fine artiste like Mike de Leon (Philippines) had to make his films outside the industry as it were, and how Amos Gitai, the only internationally known Israeli film maker, has to find his funding abroad. We read about government policies/support, facilities for training (and their lack) taking different forms under different regimes, and how independent film-making and digital technology have opened parallel avenues.
While some of the writers sound optimistic others are dour. But all are motivated by an enthusiasm for the subject they write about with confidence and command.
Isn't the title both literal and suggestive? After all, it is impossible to overlook the metaphysical streak in Asia's treatment of the most sensuous genre of them all.
Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia, edited by Aruna Vasudev, Latika Padgaonkar and Rashmi Doraiswamy, Macmillan, 2002, p.592, hardback, Rs.765.
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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