A rivulet, all its own
ANUJ KUMAR
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The Habitat Film Festival-2007 offered a rare glimpse of regional cinema.
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“Kahan Se Aye Badarwa”.
Attending the Habitat Film Festival recently, one realised cinema need not be current to be fascinating. Taking a break from the rigmarole of queuing up at box office for the latest blockbuster, one reclined to view what’s flowing besides the m
ainstream. It turned out to be a mixed bag. Some of them were mere excuses in the name of small budget cinema while most of them reinforced the belief that there exists a whole new world beyond the Bollywood jungle waiting to be tapped.
The highlight was a retrospective of renowned Kannada filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli. In a career spanning thirty years, he has directed 11 films and won four Swarna Kamal awards. His “Nayi Neralu”, “Kraurya”, “Dweepa” and “Thayi Saheba” were on show stamping his style – not to focus just on an individual but bring about the political and social changes in the Indian history on the canvas through his tales.
Another highlight was “Sonam” (The Fortunate One), the first feature film made in the Monpa dialect of the Indo Tibetan branch of languages. The film deals with polyandry in a small society of Yak shepherds. Director Ahsan Muzid said, “The film is an attempt to revive the film culture in the North East. We have a long history of regional cinema. Assamese cinema came into existence in 1935 but today Bollywood has taken over all.”
Muzid complained about the infrastructure as well. “The DVD culture has led to the demise of cinema halls in the region. We showcased the film at the only surviving theatre near Itanagar. The first show was a houseful but then the attendance dwindled for the projection was just too bad.”
Talking of the subject, Muzid said it was based on a novel by Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi who belongs to Arunachal Pradesh but writes in Assamese for the lack of script. “When I was doing research for the film in the Monpa society I met many persons who suffered because of this practice of polyandry. The story depicts the fact that no two men can share one wife.” Muzid has gone for a progressive end. The guilt of a woman finally overpowers the strength of tradition establishing the importance of monogamous institution of marriage.
Overpowering effect
“Sonam”.
In the Hindi section, the focus was on Vinod Kumar’s “Kahan Se Aye Badarva” based on Munshi Premchand’s short story “Kafan”. Starring Rajpal Yadav, Nethra Raghuraman and Sadhu Meher, Satyajit Ray’s favourite seen after a long time. The story depicts the overpowering effect of hunger and its tragic consequences on a small household. The script has a heart but the film lacks in form with the main protagonist Yadav giving a loud performance and Nethra made a brave attempt to shed her model image but failed to fit into an unfortunate but self respecting wife. Producer Satyen Bhatia who is known for making tele-serials on literary works said, “The original story was too short to be made into a feature film. So we added more characters without compromising on the essence. We shot in Purab village near Lucknow and have used local villagers as well.” Bhatia tried to hide the actors’ inability to speak the khadi boli, by calling it an attempt to make the film contemporary.
On the importance of film festivals, Bhatia said, “This is a way to find distributors for small films. There is no monetary benefit. Recently we showed in Leicester Film Festival where it bagged the audience choice award.”
As for the government support, Bhatia alleged, “The UP government had promised to support the film as more than 80 per cent of the film was to be shot in the State. But when we were about to start shooting, we got a letter that the policy is about to change. In the end we neither got any monetary support nor any reasonable answer.”
Dispassionate view
Some other films that caught the attention were “Cyanide”, a Kannada film which focussed on the last 20 days in the lives of LTTE assassins of the late Rajiv Gandhi and the Marathi film “Shevri” which captured one night in the life of a divorced woman who is forced to spend the night out for her room partner has a visitor. In both the films the dispassionate view of the directors A.M.R. Ramesh and Gajendra Ahire stands out.
On the popularity charts, the film of the week was undoubtedly Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” but it already has a number of Page ones.
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