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The annual 11-day Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema has recreated a site and season in New Delhi where films are finding a new audience and filmmakers file in to hear what viewers, peers and critics have to say. Shastri Ramachandaran reports on the 10th edition of Osian’s Cinefan
With
the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) being shifted
from Delhi to Goa a few years back, the Capital, particularly its Siri
Fort complex, was deprived of an event that was looked forward to
every alternate year. Making Goa the permanent venue for IFFI left
northern India without any seasonal hub for cinema. Although Delhi has
developed a vibrant film culture with a participatory audience over
the years, and there is no dearth of occasions where periodic platters
of excellent cinema from different parts of the world are served up, a
festival that stirs the city and pulls in the people has been sorely
missing.
Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema — which showcased nearly 200 films, including 40 shorts, at the Siri Fort complex in New Delhi this year — has grown vastly in content, stature and appeal since it began in 1999, as Cinefan, with a score of Asian films. Founder Aruna Vasudev’s initiative has blossomed into an annual event that not only brings in some of the finest Asian and Arab films but also draws renowned directors who value this platform as much for the exposure as the challenge of entering its competitive sections. This festival, which has an all-women core – Indu Shrikent and Latika Padgaonkar being the curators who have journeyed with Vasudev in Cinefan’s transformation – had a lot to offer. Right from the opening film, Johnnie To’s Sparrow, to the closing film, Mumbai Cutting, the 11 days were packed with a banquet of features, documentaries and events that engaged the critics and cine buffs as much as the thousands of others, obviously not the typical film festival junkies, who trooped in daily for a taste of the fare on offer. The closing day, which began with Federico Fellini’s classic Otto e mezzo (8 `BD), called for some tough choices to be made. There was Raja Sen’s Kanter Will, Edward Yang’s Taipei Story and Mazhar Kamran’s Mohandas — all three being screened around the same time — and followed by Kabootar of first-time director Maqbul Khan before the much-talked about Mumbai Cutting, which is a series of shorts by 11 eminent directors. The preceding days were no different, where choosing to view one exciting film meant foregoing the treat of another excellent one in the same complex. Kamran and Khan are seen as promising new voices in the Hindi film world, from Bollywood but not of Bollywood. Kamran, who was the cinematographer for Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya and Kaun, makes an extraordinary statement with Mohandas that shakes the audience awake to the reality of another India, where the majority continues to be oppressed by feudal elements in cahoots with the cops, officials and local mafia. It is the story of a lower caste boy who tops the university exams but finds his identity, and certificates, stolen and thus deprived of his deserved job. While films on the subject of stolen identities are not new — earlier ones being the Greek Number and Network starring Sandra Bullock — Kamran’s is not a techno-thriller. It is a value-based unravelling of the layers of oppression from which there is no escape for the underclass in the countryside. If films such as Kamran’s and Khan’s give a glimpse of a new trend in Hindi cinema, other Asian, and Arab, films – particularly from Israel, Iran and Lebanon – bring home the stark realities of a post-9/11 world where conflict and recurrent crises have taken a heavy toll of not just lives but human values and relationships. There was Disengagement from the inimitable Israeli master Amos Gitai, Under the Bombs by Philippe Aractingi and Night Bus by Iranian director Kiumars Pourahmad – riveting statements against war and militarisation where people are pitted against their own in spite of their humanity which is forever vitiated by violence, exile and loss. Many may feel that a festival is not "international" in the absence of films from Europe and the US and, for that reason, may be put off. Osian’s Cinefan has overcome this obstacle to attracting audiences, and not only by featuring films from Europe and the US on Asian and Arab themes. The organisers have managed to do so, first and foremost, by creating a place and atmosphere for good cinema. This, in turn, has generated much enthusiasm and curiosity, especially among the younger generation in Delhi to know what these films and film festivals are about. Those who come are immediately captivated by the spectacular visual ambience of the Siri Fort complex with exhibits of film memorabilia from the Osian collection. The visitors are held in by the diversity of films and film-related activities underway, the low-priced tickets for shows and the absence of babugiri in the organisation, which encourages easier public access. Osian’s Cinefan festival is organised in association with the Delhi Government, but unlike in IFFI, the government is hardly visible in a way as to deter the public. As a result, those who throng the place and watch the films are not the usual festival crowd but new audiences which are being motivated by Osian’s programmes, especially of reaching out to schools and colleges. Cinema is finally being taken out of the cliques it tends to get confined to in festivals, and that is a big positive.
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