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Magazine
Of communities and angst
NUPUR BASU
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Stories of people and their struggle for survival were the focus at this year’s London Film Festival
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Beyond Boundaries: Stills from “The Secret of the Grain”
As the pleasant October sunshine fought hard to stall the onset of winter, London’s South Bank and Leicester Square came alive for two weeks with over 11,00,000 film buffs making a beeline to watch over 300 films at the 51st edition of the Lond
on Film Festival (LFF).
As the lights went out in the theatres, the stories unfolded from 43 countries…Ukraine, Brazil, Romania, China, India, Uruguay, France, Indonesia, Spain, U.K., Japan, Germany, U.S., Sri Lanka, Egypt, Mongolia, South Africa…stories of communities and their struggle for survival against insurmountable odds.
Initial controversy
Booker-nominated Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane in its celluloid adaptation premiered at the LFF amidst initial controversy. The story of poor immigrant Bangladeshi families living in London’s impoverished East End found its protagonist in Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman (sensitively played by Tannishta Chatterjee) living in a tiny council flat with her much older husband and her two daughters.
Life changes when Nazneen buys a sewing machine, and a handsome Bangladeshi youth walks through her door to give her tailoring orders. What follows is not only financial independence but also heady sensual love… Things change when her lover decides to join a group of militant Islamic youth to avenge western attacks on Islam.
The glittering closing night gala had a heady Indian flavour to it with Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited” starring Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and Amara Karan, a British-born Sri Lankan in her debut role as a train attendant. The film is a whacky comedy about three American brothers who decide to bond after several years of separation. They are not quite prepared for the surprises in store for them in trains, the deserts of Rajasthan and the foothills of the Himalayas as the journey unfolds.
British-Asian director Asif Kapadia, earlier celebrated for his award-winning “The Warrior”, locates “Far North” in the Arctic tundra and proceeds to tell an amazing story about two women and their struggle to stay alive in the harsh conditions. The entry of Loki, whom they rescue and nurse back to health, provides the director a canvas to probe both psychological and physical conflict.
Miles away from the Arctic on the plains of Kolkata, Indian director Buddhadeb Dasgupta weaves a cinematic tale of ennui, desire, love and terrorism . In “The Voyeurs”, Dasgupta builds a complex narrative through the comic-tragic experiences of two youth from Beherempore who come to Kolkata to find a livelihood in and their adventures when they find a real-life Madhubala to replace the one in their fantasy. What starts as playful voyeurism soon turns dark. Yasin is gunned down by the police in a case of mistaken identity. Dasgupta was inspired by Charles De Menezes incident following the London bombings.
Web of oppression
“Frozen”.
In the upper reaches of the Himalayas, another drama of struggle and survival unfolds in Indian director Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s debut “Frozen”. The story of marginalisation and displacement and the protagonist’s fight for survival is this time told through a teenage girl, Lasya, and her father played by Danny Denzongpa. The film shot in black and white against the white peaks of Ladakh explores the enemy outside and within.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s quartet “Four Women” explores the web of oppression in which women in traditional Kerala society are trapped. In “The Last Lear”, Rituporno Ghosh casts Amitabh Bachchan as a man obsessed with Shakespeare and his tryst with the cynical world of cinema.
World cinema struck its cinematic highs in films like “The Secret of the Grain” directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. The film was probably one of the festival’s most moving and intimate portrayal of working class dilemma of yet another immigrant community in France.
Similarly in “El bano del Papa”, the camera zooms into Melo, a small Uruguayan town bordering Brazil to the heartrending story of a poor man named Beto who decides the only way he can get out of the clutches of the local mafia and feed his wife and daughter is if he builds a lavatory and lets it out to visitors on a day that the Pope plans to visit their village ,a plan that goes hopelessly wrong.
In the Chinese film “Tuya’s Marriage”, the camera zooms in on a poor peasant woman’s struggle to earn a living in the harshest conditions so that she can bring home food to her two young children and her handicapped husband. Tuya’s husband advises her to divorce him and marry another man. This is easier said then done, as the film unravels.
The Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year “Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days” directed by Cristian Mungiu from Romania portrays a day in the life of two girls, one of whom has to go through the illegal termination of a pregnancy. What unfolds is film realism at its grimmest.
Ang Lee’s epic drama “Lust, Caution” documents a troubled period in Chinese history where a heady mix of youth, revolutionary zeal make a violent cocktail with lust, betrayal and oppression.
Recent politics
Contemporary politics is etched in the Egyptian film “Chaos”, Robert Redford’s “Lions for Lambs”, Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”, a powerful animation film that critiques Iran’s Islamic revolution and bagged the British Film Institute (BFI) Sutherland Trophy in the LFF.
According to the artistic director of the London Film Festival, Sandra Hebron, filmmakers are increasingly moving beyond their national boundaries and are trying to investigate recent events in conflict zones via fictional means.
A large number of the films entered had multi-country productions with France, Germany and U.K. as a major partner in co-productions. The only way World Cinema can face up to the power and muscle of Hollywood it appears.
The author is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker.
Documentary Golds
That non-fiction films are becoming a part and parcel of all major film festivals across the world was in evidence at the London Film Festival this month. After accolades at Cannes, Michael Moore’s “Sicko”, a scathing attack on the American healthcare system, was a prized entry at the documentary gala.
“Does Your Soul Have A Cold?” by Mike Mills traced the growth of western pharmaceutical companies and their aggressive hard sell of anti-depressant medications to vulnerable young people in Japan. The camera follows five youth living in Tokyo and narrates this growing influence and dependence through their experience.
The controversial death sentence awarded to radical journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal on charges of killing a police officer in Philadelphia inspired director Marc Evans to make the powerful “In Prison My Whole life”.
Robinson Devor’s “Zoo”, told through dramatic re-enactments and a series of interviews, is the explosive true story of a group of men who used to have sex with stallions in a small American town near Washington. Devor’s tremendous insight and sensitivity in handling such a provocative subject could be a lesson to television and documentary filmmakers.
At a special panel on “The Documentary Dilemma” non-fiction filmmakers discussed the issue of ethics and responsible filmmaking when they approach their real life subjects. “If people are willing to let you tell their story, it’s a huge responsibility and it is a must to be ethical,” remarked Livia Giuggioli, producer of “In Prison My Whole Life”.
“Documentaries search for a deeper truth and there is a huge emotional reward for the filmmaker at the end of it,” added Geoffrey Smith, director of “The English Surgeon”.
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