|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The 10th Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, which concludes in New Delhi today, saw the screening of some of the world’s greatest films, writes Shoma A. Chatterji
What do films like Johnnie To’s Sparrow, Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights and Mumbai Cutting have in common? All these films featured at the 10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema which concludes today. They feature among the over 150 films from Asia and the Arab world. This year’s festival, held in Siri Fort and Alliance Fran`E7aise in New Delhi, brought together more than 40 short fiction films for the first time. For the strikingly unusual film, Mumbai Cutting, ten of India’s respected filmmakers Sudhir Mishra, Jahnu Barua, Rahul Dholakia, Rituparno Ghosh, Shashank Ghosh, Manish Jha, Anurag Kashyap, Ruchi Narain, Ayush Raina, Revathi, Kundan Shah collaborated to give a glimpse of life in modern-day Mumbai, the city of dreams and heartaches. A film as emotionally complex as the city it portrays, Mumbai Cutting alternates between the comical and the cynical. It tells the story of a man and a woman who come together in grief after losing their loved ones, a writer who makes it his mission to connect with a troubled orphan, a Muslim woman trying to procure a fake passport, and an aspiring actor who races through the streets to reach an important audition. Sparrow, directed by Johnnie To of Hong Kong, is a slang in local Hong Kong street language that means pickpocket. The film is the story of a beautiful woman and three professional pickpockets who come together in search of an elusive key. It was the inaugural film at the festival. "Like a sparrow, the camera swerves through the forgotten alleyways and old buildings intent to reveal something new. For me, films have always been a medium that documents a specific place and time. Sparrow is an embodiment of that spirit", says Johnnie To. Wong Kar-Wai’s first
English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, is the centerpiece
film. After a rough break-up, Elizabeth sets out on a journey across
America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream and a soulful new
friend, in search of something to mend her broken heart. Travelling
across the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are
greater than hers, including a troubled cop and his estranged wife and
a down-on-her-luck gambler with a score to settle. The star cast
includes Norah Jones and Jude Law. Incidentally, My Blueberry
Nights opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as one of the 22 films
in competition. American singer-songwriter Norah Jones made her debut
as actress in As many as 15 films make up the Asian-Arab competition section. These include Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani (Pakistan, 2008) Abai Kulbai’s Swift (Kazhakstan 2007), Korea’s Mozart Town (2008) directed by Jeon Kyu-Hwan, The Israel-France co-production Lemon Tree (2008) directed by Eran Riklis and Iran’s Loneliness (2008) directed by Hojat Ghasemzadeh Asl. The 10 films featuring in the Indian competition are: Bioscope directed by K.M. Madhusudan (2008), Gulabi Talkies (Girish Kasaravalli, 2008), Gajendra Ahire’s Gulmohar (2008), Maqbul Khan’s Kabootar (2008), Mohandas directed by Mazhar Kamran (2008) Pryas Gupta’s The Prisoner (2008), People Under the Heaven by Anjan Das (2008), Remo’s A Story of Red Hills (2007), Uproar (2007) by Jaideep Varma and The Whisperers (2007 by Rajeev Virani. There are 11 films in the First Feature section from across the Asian-Arab horizon featuring countries like China, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Korea, Turkey, Indonesia, Iran and some co-productions too. An interesting screening section is titled Intolerance – The Wages of Fear that features 12 films. The organisers of the festival describe this section thus: "Intolerance has many faces, some more fierce than others. They range from mere indifference and apathy to palpable malevolence, prejudice and hatred. But there are so many little steps between indifference and outright violence. This is where we encounter some disturbing moral, social and political questions." Directors whose films are in the In-Tolerance section will speak of their work and their journeys while making their films. Joymoti, the first Assamese feature film is being screened at the festival in celebration of 73 years of Assamese cinema. The only release print of Joymoti was lost soon after the death of producer-director Jyotiprasad Agarwalla in 1951. In 1985, Altaf Mazid saw some reels of the film incorporated in a documentary by Bhupen Hazarika. He placed it within a new dimension — not as the first Assamese film, but as a nationally significant piece of Indian culture. In 2000, when he had his own editing set-up, he began reconstructing the film from the documentary and added English sub-titles.`A0 The festival also saw
the first-ever grand public screening of Erich von Stroheim’s 1924
classic Greed, which is among the world’s greatest films. It
tells the story of three characters drawn into a tragic circle of
events after one of them wins a lottery ticket. The woman who wins the
fortune refuses to spend the money even while she and her husband find
themselves The Ten Commandments in the World Cinema section celebrates the significance of the number 10 on the occasion of the festival’s 10th anniversary. The films explore how cinema has navigated the narrow alley between censorship, transgression and pleasure throughout its history. The Springboard section is screening films from earlier editions of the festival since 1999. Osian’s-Cinefan is also paying tribute to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Alain Robbe-Grillet, renowned cinema personalities, Taiwanese director Edward Yang and Indonesian actress Christine Hakim who is also president of the Asian-Arab jury. Along with the annual award for writing, the festival saw filmmaker Mrinal Sen being conferred upon Osian’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Cinema. The writer’s award, renamed the Aruna Vasudev Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Cinema, was given to Jose ‘Pete’ F. Lacaba from the Philippines.
|
||||
|
|
||||
