2nd Women’s International Film Festival at Chennai
iView Author: Jibin (Chennai,India)
Email: jeeka.mj [At] gmail.com
‘ 2nd Women’s International Film Festival – An Overview‘
The 2nd Women’s International Film Festival in Chennai just concluded and I feel bad. No, not because it ended, but because my college has re-opened after a holiday for the entire duration of the festival.
Nevertheless, I’m delighted they at least gave that so that I could enjoy some quality movies in Sathyam Cinemas, for a measly sum of 100 rupees! But of course, the work put into it by organizers InKo centre and their sponsors is worth a mention. It was aptly inaugurated by Shabana Azmi on 1st of March. The whole event according to the organizers was about defining a women’s film.
Out of the 135 films shown, a good portion of it was shown in the South Indian Film Chamber’s theatre, but I restricted myself to Sathyam, frankly because of the difference in projection quality and the comfort factor.
Now this was the first film festival I’ve ever attended, and when my college announced the holiday and distributed the delegate passes, I didn’t have many expectations because there is a general perception that film festivals show boring films. But the theme of celebrating womanhood coupled with a promising brochure containing the film synopses attracted me towards it. (There was also the bargain of watching a lot of movies in a plush theatre for a small sum.)
And I did see some good movies. My perception of film festivals was changed on the first day and I started going there everyday, and came back learning something new about filmmaking.
Here are some of those movies which I saw and recommend watching if you ever get a chance.
Installation of Love by Maja Weiss(Slovenia)
One of the craziest films I have ever seen, this satirical drama centres around Mojca (Bernarda Oman), a damsel in distress as she just can’t come into terms with her husband. Her thirst for love eventually reaches her lover of old times, Milos (Igor Samobor). When Milos rejects her affectionate advances, he takes her to his painter friend, whom Mojca falls for in a matter of minutes. Then starts the crazy ride as the whole thing is planned by Milos and Mojca’s daughter Nika (Vesna Voncina) to shoot an installation about love. The movie which starts as a simple drama slowly starts getting complicated and goes haywire in the last hour, though in a positive way. A memorable scene is the ending conversation between Mojca and her husband, which goes from frantic to emotional to funny and then starts switching between them-very well written scene. It ends up being a film in a film in a film in a film-the installation, shown at a movie hall, called cut by Maja herself in the end, in the movie we watch ourselves!
Nocturnal by Keivan Ali Mohammadi(Iran)
A psychological thriller, Nocturnal has the protagonist Shabnam who receives irritating calls from a stranger, before going to a nightclub with her friends. Over there, she receives the news that her brother, who is a war photographer, is dead during war coverage. Her life and the film goes topsy-turvy after this and a montage of indulgence ensues. Besides this is her dwindling relationship with her lover. The film starts to test your patience until she meets with an accident herself, where her brother makes his entry in her imagination and starts explaining love to her. Not edge of the seat stuff, but certainly engaging due to the setting, decent acting and the background score.
Cinderella Formula by Hideki Wada(Japan)
A simple film with lots of heart, marred only by the DVD’s aspect ratio which didn’t look good when blown up on the big screen. Toru Igarashi (Kosuke Toyohara) is a god when it comes to entrance exams to the University of Tokyo. One day, his doctor friend tells him about his cancer getting worst and that he has just two years left to live. A disheartened Toru comes across Maki Endo (Saki Terashima), an intelligent but poor girl. He decides to help her gain entrance into the university before he dies. Earnest performances, subtle humour and a unique twist on the clich'©d story make it better. It also has some inspiring advice for those preparing for exams.
Amodini by Chidanand Das Gupta(India-Bengali)
This movie took me by surprise because of the amount of humour it had. Set in medieval India, the movie is about Amodini (Rachana Banerjee), the daughter of a rich land owner who is about to get married to another rich but old man. He fails to turn up, and unable to face social embarrassment, she is married off to Pundu, a 15-year old boy, whom she marries but doesn’t accept. He runs away and returns later, all grown up, married and quiet rich, while Amodini starts to feel remorse for what she had done. There are some humorous scenes like in the beginning where a small child held by a woman turns out to be her husband, a man who has 165 wives and takes money to go to every single in-law, the fight between both wives of Pundu and the ending where their feet are shown as they sleep.
Things I Never Told You by Isabel Coixet(Spain)
Smart dialogues and interesting characters make this movie a really enjoyable watch. The story is mainly about Ann (Lily Taylor) whose boyfriend dumps her and she goes into depressive mood, and Don (Andrew McCarthy), who wants to be satisfied with his life and becomes an advisor for stressed out people. They both meet eventually and fall in love. There are another set of characters that come in and out of each other’s lives seamlessly, until one of the help seekers of Don inadvertently injures him. The movie is a breezy watch, with neat performances.
Naseem by Saeed Mirza(India-Hindi)
A good film about how much the communal riots in 1992 involving Ayodhya and the Babri masjid had affected muslim families in other parts of India, told revolving around a young schoolgirl, Naseem (Mayuri Kango). The dialogues and cinematography of the movie are poignant. Some very good performances by Mayuri and Kaifi Azmi as her grandfather are the highlights of the movie. Kay Kay Menon also plays a small but influential role in the movie.
Hanami by Doris Dorrie(Germany)
The best film I saw in the festival, Hanami or Cherry Blossoms is about Rudi (Elmar Wepper) and Trudi (Hannelore Elsner), an aging couple who goes to visit their children in Berlin. Their children are not very eager to welcome and house their parents, as they cannot control their lives themselves-especially their eldest, Karl (Maximilian Bruckner), who is in Japan. Disappointed but happy with themselves, Rudi and Trudi stay near the beach, until one day, Trudi dies. Rudi is left alone but goes to Karl in Japan, where Trudi always wanted to go. He develops a traumatic condition and starts wearing his wife’s clothes and going to places where she wanted to go to. He meets a young Butoh dancer Yu (Aya Irizuki) and develops a platonic relationship with her.
Not only is the movie powerful, but it is also one of the most beautiful movies you will ever see-elegant Berlin locales, daffodil fields, Japanese parks, Cherry blossom trees, the city and the unforgettable Mt. Fuji-all shot excellently courtesy of cinematographer Hanno Lentz. Also worth mentioning is the soothing and riveting background score by Claus Bantzer. Incorporation of the Butoh dance, a modern Japanese dance into the film thematically is cleverly done. Well directed and superbly acted, it’s a must watch.
Links by Froukje Tan(Netherlands)
Also called Left, this movie was a pleasant experience, but quiet hard to understand. Dexter (Jeroen van Koningsburgg) is an ordinary mechanic until confusing things start to happen to him. A new girl in office looks like his girlfriend and he can’t drive properly. His girlfriend Stella (Lotte Verbeek) leaves him and he is suspended by his company. After getting arrested for crashing some cars, the interrogators look the same. He gets a CT scan done which reveals that the right hemisphere of his brain is damaged because of a stroke, which means he can’t see left and he can’t distinguish people. He meets another traumatised girl in the hospital who looks like Stella and realizes she is the only one he cares about.
A very hard movie to make but Froukje has done a good job of holding it together from going berserk. It was quiet amusing to note that she has used the same actors for a particular age group. They have all done a good job of lending a different personality to each of them. The ending did not seem convincing, but still a watchable movie because of the fresh premise and amount of loose ends she tied up.
The Rosa Parks Story by Julie Dash(USA)
The made-for-TV movie boasts good acting, great moments and a historically significant premise, about a black civil rights secretary who refused to move out of a seat for a white man, which changed the revolution of coloured people in America. The scene involving separate water counters for coloured and white people where dogs drink from the coloured counter is moving. Angela Bassett shine in the title role, along with Peter Francis James who play as her husband, Raymond Parks. Watch out for scenes involving a registrar and a librarian, played by Patsy Benson and Stephanie Astalos-Jones respectively.
3x FTM by Kim Il Ran (Korea)
The award-winning documentary about three FTM (Female Towards Male) transsexuals and their lives after and before their operations to remove their breasts and the womb is a tiring but decent watch. Running for about 115 minutes, it talks about how being an FTM has affected the protagonists’ social life. They also talk about the hardships they went through in their school and professional life.
Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi by Saba Dewan(India)
This documentary follows the everyday life of Riya, a bar dancer, a year prior to the ban on bar dancing. She finally turns into a normal housewife in the end. Realistic and subtle, it is a well planned documentary where other bar dancers who live with Riya are as interesting as her. One of them has a husband, and a confrontational scene between him and her is so emotionally resonant and realistic that it can put most of the bollywood dramas and all the TV soaps to shame.
Other documentaries and short films worth a mention are Q2P & Morality TV and Loving Jehad:Ek Manohar Kahani by Paromita Vohra, Through the Negev (about Sudanese refugees in Israel) by Ya-Hsuan Huang, Senegalese and Islam by Angele Diabang Brener, Silent Hues (about Indian child actors) by actress Rohini, Keeping the Vision Alive (about women in Korean industry) by Yim Soon Rye, Beijing Haze (about a Chinese girl’s migration to the states) by J P Chan and Angels Die in The Soil (about an Iraqi girl who is a gravedigger by choice) by Babak Amini.
So many things happened to me during this festival. I started to appreciate documentaries better and learnt some behind the scenes in Q & A sessions with some of the directors, regional and foreign. I silently shouted “eureka” in my head when a film inspired me to add a unique twist to rekindle my lagging ideas. I finally got to chat with a foreign filmmaker about cinema in this part and that part of the world. Heck, I was stunned by the fact that in 8 days I actually saw 30 films out of the 57 that was shown in Sathyam, as I had only planned 10!
More than anything, I have completely realized how much film festivals could play a part in helping a director’s career and how good an event it is to showcase one’s talents.
Tags: 3x FTM, Amodini, Cinderella Formula, Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi, Hanami, Installation of love, Links, Naseem, Nocturnal, Sayeed Mrza, shabana azmi, The Rosa Parks Story, Things I Never Told You, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Jibin -what college r u in? u r one lucky soul! Chennai was where I went from being a movie watcher to being a movie buff – thanks to the cheap theaters! Good to see that there is a finer level of appreciation. I’d like to hear about these in advance – anywhere on the net I can find the info?
i’m in SAE institute here in Chennai….the festival was like my course material:-)
www.inkocentre.org has some info about this festival…don’t know about other festivals so far, though waiting for something to come up..