IFFLA ‘09 : Impressions
iView Author: Evelyn Tu (Princeton, USA)
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IFFLA Impressions : Little Zizou, Leaving Home, Quick Gun, Siddharth, Supermen of Malegaon
One of the beautiful things about IFFLA is its location at the ArcLight Cinemas on Sunset Boulevard, where all the movies are screened together and drinks and food are copiously served. I met so many people there, I’m reluctant to name any and get someone wrong. This is so different from the New York festivals that make you hike all over town from theater to theater.
My friends arrived early for people watching; I’m otherwise perennially trying to catch up with the clock. With more than half an hour to kill before Sooni Taraporevala’s “Little Zizou” started, I asked an especially dapper Anil Kapoor if I could snap his photo. Then he tried to shoo us into the screening of the English-language version of his home production, “Gandhi My Father“. Later, “Little Zizou” ended five minutes before “Gandhi,” leaving us in the lobby looking sheepish in front of Anil yet again.
“Zizou” was a fresh experience for me, as I’d missed the first 20 minutes or more at New York’s MIAAC festival, no thanks to a three-hour traffic jam at the Lincoln Tunnel on a Sunday evening. I hadn’t even seen Boman’s wonderfully wacky mambo before. Also, the movie’s newsprint setting took on a new layer of meaning, as papers are getting far closer to extinction than they were just six months ago. As delighted as I was by the film, so must the others in the audience have been, because it won the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature Film. In the Q&A, Sooni brought up the precious commodity of laughter, along with the importance of mocking leaders who incite fear and then ride in to “save the day.”
The next evening started with Jaideep Varma’s “Leaving Home, The Life and Music of Indian Ocean“. I liked his story structure, showing how each of the musicians brought their own interests and ethnic/religious/cultural backgrounds to the music, as well as the tale of the guitar player who regretted passing on the opportunity. But for newcomers to the band like me, it felt a little long. I would be curious to see if the movie keeps up a better pace with less music. It’s hard to cut footage when the music is so great. I have first-hand experience with that, as virtuosity mesmerizes me too, especially with gorgeous performance shots like these.
I’d switched out my ticket to Anil Kapoor’s “Virasat” (sorry again, Anil) to get into “Quick Gun Murugun” which everyone else was going to see. I appreciated the production values, which combine brightly hued art direction that outshines all of Bollywood and back-bending FX from The Matrix. However, I am SUCH a wimp when it comes to movie violence and I usually object to it anyway when I’m not covering my eyes. If only all those bullet holes to the head didn’t make squishy noises, perhaps I would have been less squeamish.
Nina Paley’s excellent “Sita Sings the Blues“, which won the IFFLA jury’s prize for best narrative feature, already has played in our area. So, my next movie was Pryas Gupta’s “Siddharth The Prisoner“. Rajat Kapoor, for those who care about these things, looks more handsome with a bit of scruff. The story arc confused me a little until my thunderclap moment when Pryas said in the Q&A that he was inspired by his explorations into Buddhism to write this movie. Essentially, his point is that the things that you decide you really want will bring you endless misery, while letting them go will set you free. So, once I knew that, I appreciated the movie much more.
On Saturday morning, I’d described for a friend some of the techniques the Lumiere brothers established during the early days of filmmaking. One of their genius inventions is using the areas outside the frame to cause the viewer to imagine the rest of the world. Another is that every shot stands on its own with a beginning, middle and end. So, I looked for both things in “Siddharth” and noticed these qualities often. In the lobby, I mentioned my observations to Pryas. While he wasn’t aware of any intention to shoot his movie this way, he did say his cinematographer was second camera on Slumdog Millionaire and shot 40 percent of that movie.
The capper for me, as I had to leave in a few hours, was Faiza Ahmad Khan’s “Supermen of Malegaon“, which won the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary. By now, you may have heard the story of the Maharashtrian town where most of the residents are poor Muslims who work in the mills and their only escape is watching locally produced spoof movies on Fridays. Khan follows one filmmaker’s struggles to Indianize and localize Hollywood’s Superman. Her movie perfectly captures the wackiness and difficulties of the situation, without a single dull moment or preachy note. Picture slicing open Superman’s pants so that steel rods and boards can be inserted through the crotch in order to simulate his flight. The audience giggled throughout — try to see it at a theater if you can. Khan said she’s trying to get a one-hour version of “Malegaon ka Superman” on her DVD, so I’m looking forward to that, too.
After Saturday’s screenings, many of the filmmakers gathered in the ArcLight’s upstairs bar, where networking and friendly conversations went on for hours, far too long for this traveler to hold out until the end. If anyone has the inside scoop on how the rest of the night played out, I’d love to be the first to hear.
Tags: anil kapoor, IFFLA, Little Zizou, Quick Gun Murugan, Siddharth, Supermen Of Malegaon, The Life and Music of Indian Ocean
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
U lucky, lucky so & so!
Sounds like ur having a ball!
Bechara Anil, he’s king of the world right now…Tread carefully ;-)
It’s a shame most of these films shown at festivals seldom make it to dvd.
Wish I was there :-)
LOL, I do feel lucky that everyone was so gracious at the fest. You ought to go sometime.
Nice write-up, thanks. Can’t wait to see Superman of Malegaon!!
Virginia, let’s hope Supermen makes it to the East Coast festivals. I’ll definitely see it again.
Nice writeup Evelyn. I missed Superman, how i really wanted to see it.
BTW, you missed Yes Madam, SIr. What a delightful movie..amazing to say the least and what followed in the Q/A was one of its kind…so,, eheh feel envious ;-)
I *am* envious of you seeing Yes Madam, Sir. Plus, I missed Fakir of Venice which also got huge reactions.
Yes, let’s hope Supermen comes to the NY Festivals, also Fakir of Venice, also Yes Madam, Sir, also Children of the Pyre – I’d see them all again today.
I went to LA this year mostly because I just loved the festival last year, the part I went to – I barely had a focus on what I wanted to see – but now that I am back and have some time to breathe/think – so many of the movies have affected me/made me think/laugh.
Here’s a wonderful still from Supermen of Malegaon: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/12/28/MNQ014QMFA.DTL&o=
Also, Little Zizou has now been in the theaters for 50 days. So, there’s clearly no stigma about being a festival movie.