Sunday, 1 September 2019:
12:00:The Flight (Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta, 2018, colour, 87 min., Bengali) 14:30:And What is the Summer Saying? (Director: Payal Kapadia, 2018, colour and black & white, 24 min, Marathi) 15:00:Bebaak (Director: Shazia Iqbal, 2018, colour, 20 min 35 sec, Urdu / Hindi / English)
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While Bollywood dominates the discourse on Indian Cinema, there is also a genre of “good, middle road cinema” emerging in Indian language films – films that are efficiently made and are frequently favourites in festival circuits. Regional cinema continues to flourish, catering to its own audiences, occasionally being screened outside. Due to the commercial interests of distribution, these innovative, cinematic and rooted films hardly get to be seen outside their language regions. The films in this selection are those that are heard about, but not easy to access. Spanning the last two years, they introduce filmmakers working in regional languages who also have a need to meet audiences from newer constituencies, to build the profile of an “Indian Cinema”.
Bina Paul graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) with a specialisation in editing. She has edited over 40 feature films and has worked with illustrious directors like G Aravindan, John Abraham and P N Menon. She is a recipient of two National Awards and numerous State Awards for editing. She has been the Artistic Director of the International Film Festival of Kerala for seventeen years and has been instrumental in shaping it into an important international event. She has served on the juries of various international film festivals including those held in Locarno, Durban, Morocco and Berlin. Bina is a regular faculty at the FTII and CDIT (Science & Development Documentary Course). She is currently the Vice Chairperson of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy and Vice President NETPAC.
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Friday, 30 August 2019:
15:30 Ka Kha Ga Gha
(Director: Sherin Govindan, 2018, colour, 73 min, Malayalam)
Kalan aka Karimkalan is a ritual artist who lives on the outskirts of a village in Kerala. His sole income is from an orthodox ritual called Kalanoot, in which the artist is fed with food and given money to avoid unnatural deaths in a family. Ironically, Kalan lives amidst a past of unnatural deaths in his own family. One day, his son Maithreyan, a street magician who was reported to have committed suicide along with his wife and children, returns and describes the days he spent in a mental asylum after his wife’s suicide and the vagabond life he led. Maithreyan pens down his autobiography and plans his last act - the Butterfly Reincarnation - the first of its kind in the history of magic. He digs his grave, makes the coffin, and asks his father to bury him - to reincarnate him as a butterfly.
From the arrival of Maithreyan in the film, the interpretation of the events are left to the viewer - is it fantasy or reality?
Shery is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works in Malayalam films. He is known for his debut feature film Adimadhyantham which won a special reference in the 59th National Film Awards.
17:30 Bulbul Can Sing
(Director: Rima Das, 2018, colour, 95 min, Assamese)
By acclaimed filmmaker Rima Das, Bulbul Can Sing is a ground-breaking, coming-of-age tale that won prestigious awards at Berlin, Dublin, Singapore and Mumbai Film Festivals. Three teenage best friends in rural Assam are forging their distinct personalities, but as the two girls secretly meet boys and the boy realises he’s gay, they soon come face to face with outmoded cultural traditions that challenge their family and place in the community but, most importantly, their bonds as loyal friends.
Rima Das is a self-taught screenwriter, producer and director who also takes on the roles of cinematographer and editor for her films. Born and raised in a small village in Assam in northeast India, she is now based in Mumbai and Assam. She is the Managing Director of Flying River Films which supports local, independent filmmaking in the region. Best known for making indigenous and realistic films with non-professional actors, her films have been striking a chord with people not just in India but across the globe.
Village Rockstars, Rima’s second feature film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2017, then travelled to more than 80 film festivals around the world. The film has received over 50 awards, including the National Film Awards as the Best Feature Film in India 2018 and an Oscar entry from India 2019. Bulbul Can Sing, her third feature film had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2018, in the Contemporary World Cinema section. Followed by the Asian Premier at Busan International Film Festival and its European premiere at Berlin International Film festival (Generation 14 section) 2019. The film won the Golden Gateway Award for best film in Mumbai Film Festival and Best Actor at Singapore Film Festival. Rima Das is also nominated for Best New Director at the Asian Awards for Bulbul Can Sing, 2019.
Kattumaram's narrative revolves around the Tsunami-affected lives of the middle-aged fisherman Singaram who is taking care of his orphaned niece Anandhi, a teacher, and teenaged nephew Mani, who are the children of his elder and younger sisters, respectively. Singaram works hard to provide for his family, and also tries to arrange a groom for his niece, who rejects the many alliances he brings. Later, when he comes to know that Anandhi is in love with a fellow female teacher, Kavita, he is shocked but tries to come to terms with his niece's sexual orientation. However, he is ostracized by his conservative community. The patriarchal Singaram's ego is deflated, and he empathizes with the plight of the village barber, the transwoman Alankaram.
Swarnavel Eswaran is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, the premier film school in Asia, and the prestigious film studies programme at the University of Iowa. His recent documentaries include Tsunami: Waves from the Deep (2018), Hmong Memories at the Crossroad (2016), Migrations of Islam (2014), and Unfinished Journey: A City in Transition (2012). His films have been screened in major festivals in the USA, UK, Europe, India, Japan, and Africa. He is currently a professor in film studies/production in the English and MI (Media and Information) Departments at Michigan State University. His books include Madras Studios: Narrative, Genre, and Ideology in Tamil Cinema (Sage Publications, 2015).
14:30 Sukhantyam
A HAPPY END
(Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 2018, colour, 29 min 18 sec, Malayalam)
The film follows three unemployed but resourceful men who launch an innovative private limited company, which charges a service fee for offering a pleasant end to all those contemplating suicide. The trio believes that with tact and sensitivity, and by being overly conducive to their clients’ death-wish, they could be convinced to give life another chance.
All goes well until a high strung client arrives; he is bent on dying and cannot be deterred. Frustrated, they perform a ritual marking his death and tell him that he is now a ghost. Unexpectedly, a police jeep arrives with a Sub-Inspector and his entourage following up on a complaint that The Happy End Company is engaged in the unlawful act of killing people and usurping money.
Born in 1941, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, one of the leading luminaries of New Indian Cinema, has written and directed twelve feature films. Has participated in all major film festivals round the world; and he has successively received the International Film Critics’ Prize six times, the National Award for Best Director five times. He won the BFI Award for the Most Original and Imaginative Film in 1982 for Elippathayam (Rat-trap); French Government’s Legion of Honour: Commander of the order of Arts & Letters in 2004; Dada Phalke Award, India’s highest national honour for cinema in 2005 and India’s top civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 2006. He has been the recipient of life-time achievement awards from the Cairo, Denver, New Jersey, Colombo, Pune and Mami Festivals. Adoor has a DLitt from M.G. University, Kerala University and Viswabharati University and is the author of four books on cinema.
In a conflict ridden Kashmir, a Muslim ‘half-widow’, (a woman whose husband was arrested and never returned), finds herself, her 11-year-old daughter and sick mother-in-law in a crisis as she attempts to obtain her missing husband’s death certificate from the government. Now she must find the strength to rise above an unthinkable and absurd situation.
Praveen Morchhale is a director, screenwriter and producer. After a few years working as a film and theatre director, he made his feature debut with Barefoot to Goa (2015). Morchhale has been hailed by critics as an important filmmaker of the Indian new wave. His second feature, Walking with the Wind (2017), screened internationally at several film festivals. The film won the Best Film Award in Rome in 2017 and the National Film Award for Best Ladakhi Film in India in 2018. Widow of Silence (2018) had its European premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
Dolkar, a 26-year-old Tibetan exile, lives in Delhi. 18 years ago, she escaped from Tibet with her father, making a perilous trek across the Himalayas that ended in tragedy. Dolkar has suppressed all recollection of that traumatic incident. But when she unexpectedly encounters Gompo, the guide who abandoned them during their journey, memories of her escape are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for retribution and closure. Flashbacks of her desperate journey with a small group through a harsh and desolate Himalayan terrain punctuate her growing predicament in the present as she follows Gompo through the claustrophobic alleys of the Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi. The two stories moving in tandem, both determined by a series of fateful choices, reach their conclusion as Dolkar and Gompo finally confront each other.
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam are an Indian-Tibetan couple who have been making films together since the mid-eighties when, as students, they made their first award winning documentary, The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City. They lived and worked as independent filmmakers in the San Francisco Bay Area and then in London for many years before moving back to India in 1996.
Through their production company, White Crane Films, which they started in 1991, they have made several documentary films, video installations and one dramatic feature film. Their documentary films include: The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche (1991), The Trials of Telo Rinpoche (1993), and The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (1998), all commissioned by the BBC. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009), was theatrically released in the US and kickedoff with a two week run at New York’s Film Forum. It won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague. Their latest documentary, When Hari Got Married (2012), premiered at Films From the South, Oslo, and has shown at DOK Leipzig and IDFA Amsterdam. Their debut feature film, Dreaming Lhasa (2005), was executive produced by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Gere, and had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival and its European premiere at San Sebastian International Film Festival. It had a theatrical run in the US, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Their video installations have shown at the Contour Biennale (Belgium), Kunsthalle Vienna, Khoj Studios (New Delhi), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Busan Biennale and Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna), among other venues. In 2012 they launched the Dharamshala International Film Festival, which is now one of India’s leading independent film festivals.
Sunday, 1 September 2019:
12:00 The Flight
(Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta, 2018, colour, 87 min., Bengali)
A village mechanic dreams of flying. After discovering the crash site of a World War II Japanese plane, Bachchu Mondal decides to rebuild it. His project doesn’t go unnoticed by the ghosts that haunt the place, all victims of broken dreams. Authorities begin their investigation of Mondal as a life threatening series of bizarre events conspire.
About the director
An ex- economics professor, illustrious Bengali poet and writer, Buddhadeb Dasgupta is an internationally celebrated master filmmaker, considered to be amongst India’s finest. His signature style rests as much on the visual poetry of his films as on the socially relevant themes he highlights. Dasgupta has won numerous national and international awards, accolades and honours from the most prestigious organisations worldwide. Winner of the Best Director award from the Venice International Film Festival for his masterpiece UTTARA (The Wrestlers) he has also been part of the Masters’s of World Cinema section of the Toronto International Film Festival seven times and has won the prestigious Golden Athena, Life Time Achievement award from the Athens International Film Festival. Dasgupta has been the chairman of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata, Government of India for two terms and is a part of the present Academy Award Jury Board. His filmography boasts internationally acclaimed masterpieces like Duratwa (The Distance), Grihajuddha (The Crossroads), Bagh Bahadur (Tigerman), Phera (The Return), Charachar (In Shelter of the wings), Uttara (The Wrestlers), Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (Tale of a Naughty Girl), Kaalpurush (Memories in the mist) and many more with the last work being Tope (The Bait) which world premiered in Masters of World Cinema, TIFF, 2016. Urojahaj (The Flight) is his latest oeuvre.
14:30 And What is the Summer Saying?
(Director: Payal Kapadia, 2018, colour and black & white, 24 min, Marathi)
A mystical film poem about Kondwall village, its inhabitants and the surrounding flora and fauna. Here in the Indian district of Maharashtra, the camera roams through the jungle and in and among the houses, searching for intimate stories and secrets. A young man goes out hunting for honey in the forest, the way his father taught him. We hear the story of the time a tiger appeared in the village. Wood fires illuminate humble interiors in moonlit colour shots, while daylight scenes appear in glorious black and white. Majestic tree crowns rustle in the wind; a plume of smoke rises from the landscape. In the background we hear barking dogs and lowing cattle, as villagers whisper about their lost loves. This mysterious and dreamlike film reveals the young director Payal Kapadia to be a highly talented filmmaker. And What Is the Summer Saying? is a pure cinematic experience that’s brimming with scenes that deserve to be seen on the big screen.
Payal Kapadia is a Mumbai based filmmaker and artist. She studied Film Direction at the Film & Television Institute of India. Her film Afternoon Clouds premiered at Cinefondation, Cannes Film Festival, 2017. Her experimental documentary And What is the Summer Saying? had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival (2018). It went on to receive the Special Jury Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (2018). Kapadia’s experimental short The Last Mango Before Monsoon was premiered at Oberhausen International Film Festival (2015), where she was awarded FIPRESCI Prize and Special Jury Prize. Presently Payal is working on making her first feature film, All We Imagine as Light, with initial support from the Hubert Bals Bright Futures Script Development fund.
15:00 Bebaak
(Director: Shazia Iqbal, 2018, colour, 20 min 35 sec, Urdu / Hindi / English)
Fatin is an architecture student from a lower middle class Muslim family, who goes for an interview to seek scholarship from a religious Education Trust, along with her father, Zaheer. During the interview, she gets reprimanded by the interviewing officer, Niyaz Sheikh, for not following the religious tenets meant for women.
At the tomb below the trust office, she meets two young girls who are students at the local Madrassa. One of them, Rafiya, has fixed notion of being a 'good girl' by following the set rules of the religion; the other, Shireen, seeks freedom from the same. Fatin has to choose between reinforcing Niyaz's misogynist dogma and living with the burden of her own muddled morality or standing up for what feels right.
In the process, Shireen, who largely represents girls who are systematically indoctrinated into losing their identity, becomes a catalyst of change for Fatin.
Shazia Iqbal has been working as a production designer/ art director for more than ten years in the Indian film and advertising Industry. An architecture graduate, she left a sheltered office job after being enticed by the idea of telling stories. She has studied Directing for Films at MET Film School, Ealing Studios, London.
Bebaak is her debut short which won the Audience Choice Award at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, 2019 and Best Short Narrative (Jury award) at the New York Indian Film Festival, 2019. It is inspired by a true event that moulded her religious, social and political ideology while growing up. Her first feature script, Chaplin was selected at NFDC Director’s Lab, Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab (Utah - first round) and Mumbai Mantra Screenwriter’s Lab. She designed Anurag Kashyap’s film, Mukkabaaz which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and is the lead Production Designer for India’s first original Netflix series, Sacred Games. A trained actor from Le Femis, Paris, she conducts workshops for young actors, using the method of ‘Actioning’.
Details
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi
3, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Near Vakil Lane
110001 New Delhi
