Frames from the global south
BRIDGE CINEMA Ask Me I'm Positive from South Africa was intelligently made
After running in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, the Tri Continental Film Festival arrived in Bangalore with a selection of its wide range of films described as `human rights cinema from the global south'. Conceived as a bridge between the medium of film and concern for human rights, social practises and struggles, the festival originated in 2002, in Latin America, and intends to become an annual event. The festival in Bangalore began with The Rockstar and the Mullahs by Ruhi Hamid and Angus Macqueen, a film showing the uneasy co-habitation within the same society of `modern' phenomena such as Pakistani rock music and the fundamentalist mullahs who oppose music as being un-Islamic.
Salman Ahmad, lead singer of the popular Pakistani band Junoon considers himself a devout Muslim and his music not much divorced from the traditional, also popular, Sufi strains. But increasingly Pakistani hardliners are strangling Ahmad's lifeline, by denouncing music as `obscene' and against their religion. Exploring these objections, Ahmad travels across the country talking to people on buses and in shops about Junoon, music, censorship and so on, till finally he reaches Peshawar where the ban prevents music being played in public. A conversation between Ahmad and the city's leading mullah brings together the two disparate and conflicting strands of Pakistani society that the film explores.
Short films
Easily one of the highlights of the festival was a series of three delightful short films. Ask Me I'm Positive from South Africa follows three young and enthusiastic boys infected by the HIV virus as they travel around the country, demystifying AIDS and screening a film. Revealing both, the naοve misconceptions about AIDS as well as what it's like to live openly with the virus, the film follows the three men's personal lives as they pick up women, hang out and reconcile their state of being and its implications with the regular activities preoccupying any young person their age.
The second in the series was The Ball by Orlando Mesquita from Mozambique. Poor boys looking for a football, blow up condoms and wrap them in twine to provide enough body to allow them to be kicked around in a rough game of soccer. Using this playful occurrence, Mesquita neatly loops the film, thus suggesting the cyclical nature of life as well; every time the `ball' bursts, another is bought, it is wrapped with wool mischievously collected by pulling apart a sweater, the ball is kicked into a lady's house and she unstrings it to make a new sweater all over again. The gravity of the subject comes bursting through in the final frame which lists statistics showing low condom use in the country. The final short, The Moment, was a poignant film showing different people describing special moments during or before lovemaking. Candid, humorous and precise, the film featured South Africans - mixing race, gender and preference to provide an insight into people's very private lives. In fact, a number of films from Africa focussed on sexuality and related social concerns, such as Woubi Cheri, peeping into the lives of homosexual and transgender communities, effortlessly switching between their public and political struggles for recognition and assertion with the personal stories and relationships of the memorable cast.
The Latin American selection dealt primarily with poverty and people's struggles. The Tri Continental might not have been the kind of festival which allowed you to watch all the films back to back (many were screened immediately, one after the other) but it dipped into myriad issues presenting a layered and wide perspective to the global South.
HEMANGINI GUPTA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
