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Signs of change

Eye-opener: Stills from ‘Margazhi Ragam’ and ‘Yarwng,’ which will be screened as part of SIGNS 2009.

The fourth edition of SIGNS 2009, the festival of feature and non-feature films for the John Abraham National Awards organised by Federation of Film Societies of India, Kerala, at Thiruvananthapuram is an eye-opener.

The festival has more than a 150 films, in the competition, focus and other sections, apart from a special package of Indian Video Art by Baiju Kurup and Abhiram Poduval, and an Asian Documentary Package by documentary filmmaker Supriyo Sen. SIGNS 2009 showcases some of the best creations in the field of short fiction, feature and documentary.

As a medium, these videos exhibit an immediacy, vigour and spontaneity that go beyond television and cinema.

Still form ‘Yarwng,’

What distinguishes them is the keen sense of history and location.

Lalit Vachani’s ‘The Salt Stories’ revisits Gandhiji’s legendary Salt March to map the legacies and memories it has left behind in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat today. Here video becomes a tool to fight forgetfulness and to reclaim history and memory. Likewise R. V. Ramani’s ‘Nee Yaar?’ (Who are you?), a film about Sundararamaswamy, the eminent Tamil writer, unravels the conflicting facets of his life – domestic, literary, social and political. Here the video is as unobtrusive as a friend, moving through reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries and relatives.

One could describe Sourav Sarangi’s ‘Bilal’ as a searing attempt at ‘video neorealism.’ This film plays an unflinching witness to the life of Bilal, the son of visually impaired parents who are struggling to make a living at the fringes of a metropolitan city. Here, the video camera is a witness to the grind of the everyday, with all its frustrations, violence, and also hopes and dreams.

Ranjan Palit’s ‘Forever Young’ is an enchanting documentary about Lou Majow, a rock singer from Shillong, and a great admirer of Bob Dylan. Anirban Dutta’s ‘In for Motion’ is an interesting look at the IT industry in India, its lineage, trajectories of development and the dilemmas it is mired in now, with the personal narrative of the director woven into this ‘historical-analytical’ narrative.

M. R. Rajan’s ‘Cinemayude Kalpadukal’ (Footsteps of Cinema) looks back at a vibrant period in the history of Malayalam Cinema, through the experiences of Sobhana Parameswaran Nair, a producer. For this, it uses film songs along with first person narratives and evocative visuals. Ramachandran’s ‘Saamam’ traces the legacy of an enigmatic singer like M.D. Ramanathan, where his biography meshes with comments and reflections.

Similarly, in the fiction category , the videos have a different take on various themes and formats. Most of them do away with ‘cinematic’ conventions and search for narrative structures that challenge the viewer. A film like ‘Many Stories of Love and Hate’ (Shyamal Karmakar) weaves a complex narrative about human relationships, in a contemplative manner, composing his images and monologues to create drama.

Sherry’s ‘Last Leaf’ is a daring attempt at portraying the love between two nuns. Murali Manohar’s ‘Karna Motcham’ (a student film), Tony Sukumar’s ‘When This Man Dies,’ and Shyam Arjun Salunke’s ‘The passion of cricket’ are some of the films to look out for. The strength of these videos is the easy and effortless use of the camera, which is employed like a pen (a la Astruc’s camera stylo), innovatively and freely mixing monologues, texts, multiple screens, chapterisation and commentary.

Unlike the documentaries we are used to in its films division and television avatars, these are intensely introspective, and never pose the author as invisible or omnipotent, instead they are present and active in the unfolding narrative, hence the prevalence of intimate autobiographical voice-overs in many films.

Ironically, despite the huge audience for film festivals in Kerala, films from Malayalam seem to be working in isolation from the rest of the country. Most of them seem to be obsessed with the big screen format and tend to use video as its apologetic substitute and not as a medium in itself. This gets reflected in treatment styles, which is more often stilted and self conscious, instead of being self-reflexive.

One hopes that festivals like this will inspire them to break conventions about the technologies of narration and the fear of bringing oneself into one’s work. The festival is on till February 19.

Feature films

For the first time, Signs has included a competition section for feature films which includes films such as Girish Kasaravally's `Gulabi Talkies,' T.V. Chandran's `Bhoomi Malayalam,' Madhusudhan's `Bioscope,' Sasikumar's `Subramanyapuram,' Paresh Mokashi's `Harischandrani Factory,' Jeyendra Panchapakesan's `Margazhi Raagam,' P.G. Muthuiah's `Poo' and Priyadarsan's `Kanchivaram.'

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