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Warped minds, tormented souls
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Twelve films from Afro-Asian and Latin American countries will vie for honours at the Seventh International Film Festival of Kerala, to begin in the city on March 29. PRAKASAM K. UNNI offers a preview
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From `Ekti Nadir Naam'
Many of the feature films entered in the competition of the Seventh International Film Festival of Kerala, to be held here from March 29 to April 5, deal with warped minds and ravaged souls continually yearning for stability and sustenance in a pitiless impersonal world.
Twelve films from nine Asian, African and Latin American countries compete for the top prize, Suvarna Chakoram, which carries a purse of Rs 10 lakhs. Other prizes to be given are a Rajata Chakoram, with a cash component of Rs 3 lakhs for the best director, a Rajata Chakoram with a cash award of Rs 2 lakhs as Special Jury Prize for excellence in any area of filmmaking, and an Audience Prize, carrying a purse of Rs 1 lakh, to the director voted the best by delegates to the festival.
The films will be judged by a five-member jury headed by the veteran Hungarian filmmaker, Marta Meszaros, who, perhaps, has made the most powerful statement ever on celluloid against Stalinism. The other jurors are the German director, Reinhard Hauff, the Japanese filmmaker, Kohei Oguri, the Sri Lankan director-writer-journalist, Tissa Abeysekara, and the Assamese actress-director Santwana Bordoloi.
The International Association of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) would give a prize to a film adjudged the best by its jury chaired by the internationally-acclaimed British film critic, Derek Malcolm. The jury would also have Andrea Martini, film critic from Italy, and Prabodh Kumar Maitra, Calcutta film critic, now compiling an encyclopaedia on Satyajit Ray.
There are three films from India in the competition, `Shesham' (Thereafter) and `Danny', both in Malayalam, and `Ekti Nadir Naam' (The Name of a River), in Bengali. `Shesham', written and directed by T. K. Rajeev Kumar who has a few commercial successes to his credit, casts film star Jayaram in the uncharacteristic role of a fairly sane inmate in a lunatic asylum. A young aspiring filmmaker (Geetu Mohandas) sets out to make a film on him. As the film progresses real and reel lives get enmeshed intricately. `Danny', by Malayalam cinema's enfant terrible, T. V. Chandran has superstar Mammootty playing Danny, a person of few wants and no aspirations who lives and dies impervious to social conditioning and outside the pale of history. `Ekti Nadir Naam' is a take-back to a Ritwickian world reminiscent of the master's films such as `Subarnarekha', `Meghe Dhaka Tara' and `Titash Ek Nadir Naam'. An attempt to question and define terms such as `refugee' and `home', this film uses elements from theatre, dance and folk representations. This film by Tanzanian-born Anup Singh had won the Aravindan Puraskaram for the best film this year.
From `To the Left of the Father'
Of the two films from Brazil, `To the Left of the Father', a maiden film by Luiz Fernando Carvalho, touches on a topic widely considered taboo -- incest. Andre is a Lebanese migrant in Brazil who leaves home following an incestuous relationship with his sister. When he is brought back into the family, the expose of his incestuous past vitiates the atmosphere with tragic consequences.
Dead men tell no tales, but the protagonist in the Brazilian film, `Posthumous Memoirs' by Andre Koltzel, writes a memoir after his death. The film is based on the book, `The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas', by a renowned 19th-century Brazilian novelist, Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis. The following quote by the narrator of the novel gives insight into the spirit of the story: "Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man. The gaze of public opinion, that sharp and judgmental gaze, loses its virtue the moment we tread the territory of death. I'm not saying that it doesn't reach here and examine and judge us, but we don't care about the examination or the judgment. My dear living gentlemen and ladies, there's nothing as incommensurable as the disdain of the deceased." Akihiko Shiota, a Japanese director who has done films exploring teenage minds, has directed `Gaichu' (Harmful insect), a film, said to have been roundly booed during its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 2001, for its theme that had apparently abraded the moral sensibilities of a section of the audience. The story revolves around Sachiko, a 13-year old girl, whose nascent sexuality is preyed on by adult males. She ends up maladjusted to the life around her. Female sexuality, which is pulled in conflicting directions by modern values and the bounds of tradition, is the theme of `Fatma', a film from Tunisia by Khaled Ghorbal. Fatma, the heroine is raped while still a teenager but takes to education as a source of liberation and independence. But when she decides to marry, she resorts to surgery to mask the loss of virginity. But she ends up in an unenviable situation where she and her new husband have to socialise with the doctor who had performed the surgery.
Need for companionship is the theme of `Taxi Un Encuentro' (Taxi an Encounter) from Argentina. The film by Gabriela David is about a smalltime car thief who is `civilised' by his chance encounter with a girl, wounded and abandoned following a gunfight between her parents.
`Soif' (Thirst) from Morocco, set in a village where water is scarce, develops into a metaphor for a thirst for freedom, expression and to reach out, enacted through a village whose people live in a complex web of disparate relationships.
Imagine a pickpocket finding a photograph of his wife in a wallet he has just stolen. This happens in `Pickpocket', directed by Linton Semage from Sri Lanka. In this film, which shares the name of the 1959 Bresson masterpiece, the pickpocket, fuelled by jealousy, pursues with almost mordid obsession the person who had kept the photo in his wallet. `Karmen Gei' by Joseph Gai Ramaka, tells the tale of a sexy, seductive woman who attracts people to her like moths to a flame. She represents an unbounded animal spirit burning out her life tragically in an African concrete jungle. This film from Senegal is based on an adaptation of an opera by Georges Bizet. It is replete with brilliant colours and vibrant music in tune with the tenor of the theme.
The lone entry from China, `Orphan of Anyang', is about the members of urban society marginalised by the economic changes of the last two decades in China. Revolving around characters such as a prostitue, a gang leader and an unemployed youth, the film is laced with strands of comical irony.
The competition also features first-time feature filmmakers.
This doesn't diminish the serious nature of the festival. After all, Bergman and Satyajit Ray too were first-timers once.
Vox populi
All the delegates to the Seventh IFFK would, in a way, be jurors. They would decide the Audience Prize for the best director. Democratic ideals and technology have been fused to this end. The delegates would be given a ballot paper each, randomly numbered.
After the screening of the films, the viewers may register their votes on computers. When voting starts, each delegate has to enter the number of his ballot paper in the text field on the computer screen. The computer checks whether a vote has earlier been cast on this number. A second text box is now provided for the delegate to enter the number of his favourite film. However, adequate measures should be taken to ensure that the delegate alone casts the vote. The delegate card could serve as the `voter identity card'. Volunteers may verify the photo in the delegate card. If not, proxies may abound.
`Blasphemy' and brickbats
Mob censorship is alien to Indian directors. But to the Senegalese filmmaker, Joseph Gaye Ramaka, it is not.
His film, `Karmen Gei', which is being screened in the competition section of the Seventh IFFK, had been at the receiving end of an Islamic sect, the Mouride, in his country.
This sect, part of an Islamic brotherhood, had termed the film as blasphemy and threatened to set afire any theatre in the country's capital where it was screened.
Mouridic chants are said to provide background score to the burial of a prison warden who kills herself following a lesbian relationship. This has been cited as proof of blasphemy.
Screenings had been cancelled in Ramaka's homeland following the outburst of sectarian opposition to the film.
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