Bangalore Film Society

Film Screening/Lecture on Fukushima Tragedy

2012-02-13T01:57:00.000-08:00

We are very happy to invite you to a lecture “Lives in the shadow of Fukushima” by Prof. John Clammer on Sunday, 19^th, February 2012 from 4 pm on wards at National Gallery of Modern Art , Palace Road Bangalore.

To share a little about the lecture and the speaker/discussants:

Prof. John Clammer, Professor of Sociology at the UN University, Tokyo will speak about life after the Fukushima nuclear disaster as a lived experience throwing open for discussion the questions of nuclear safety and health .

Dr. Corinne Kumar, Founder Director, CIEDS Collective and Secretary General, El taller International,Tunisia as one of the discussant who has worked on peace and nuclear disarmament and human rights nationally and internationally over the last thirty years will initiate a discussion on the politics of nuclearisation, nation state and development.

We also hope to have a voice from the resistance movement against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant.

The lecture will be preceded by a film screening on Fukushima: "Yet we seed", directed by Koike Natsumi. The film includes various interviews of organic farmers in Fukushima, after the accident.

We hope that the lecture will deepen the debate on our choices of science and technology and its implications for humanity.

We look forward to seeing you.

You are welcome to extend the invitation to your friends and all those who you think would be interested in the issue.

Warmly,

Bhoga Nanjunda Madhu Bhushan George Kutty

CIEDS Collective Vimochana Bangalore Film Society

Food Security and SRI (System of Rice Intensification) methods of cultivation

2012-02-13T01:55:00.000-08:00

“Indian scientists should focus on sustainable agriculture with an emphasis on reform from below”

Joan P. Mencher

Dear all,

We are very happy to invite you and your interested friends to a lecture and film screening programme titled ”Food Security and SRI (System of Rice Intensification) methods of cultivation: Alternatives to the corporate model” by
Prof. Joan Mencher.
The films: One man, 1 cow and 1 planet is based in India. 2. Silent Forests- is about GMO trees and GMOS and what they are.

Date: Friday 17^th February 2012. Time: 3 pm: Venue: No.33/1-9, Thygraja Layout, Jaibharath Nagar,
M.S. Nagar P.O, Bangalore 560033. Land mark: Jaibharath Nagar Petrol Bunk:

For Information contact Bhadra: Mobile:9019289592

Organised by CIEDS Collective, Vimochana and Bangalore Film Society

Prof.Joan P Mencher:

Joan P. Mencher is a prof. emerita of Anthropology from the City University of New York’s Graduate Centre and Lehman College. She is the Chair person of a not for profit organization, “The Second Chance Foundation”, which works to support rural grass roots organizations that works with the poor and small farmers in India and the United States on issues relating to ecology, caste, land reform, agriculture and women over the past half a century. She has published widely both in the US and in India on all of these subjects, primarily in academic journals. Some of her published works are: Agriculture and Social Structure in Tamil Nadu: Past Origins, Present Transformations, and Future Prospects, Social Anthropology of Peasantry, of Female Headed/Female Supported Households: A Cross Cultural Comparison, Mixed Blessings: Gender and Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally, Walk On My Back So I Can Work Tomorrow: Health and Work Among Female Agricultural Workers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala," Critical Survival, "Population Policy in India: What Could It Mean for Women?" and "Women and Irrigation in South India." She has also been a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank for their India operations.

Mexican Film Festival

2012-01-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

Bangalore Film Society is happy to present a Mexican Film Festival in February (1-4 & 9-11) 2012.

Screening Schedule:

Wed, 1st Feb: THE BASTARDS

Thu, 2nd Feb: USED PARTS

Fri, 3rd Feb: PAN'S LABYRINTH

Sat, 4th Feb: CRAZY CARNIVAL

Thu, 9th Feb: MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD

Fri, 10th Feb: THE DESERT INSIDE

Sat, 11th Feb: BACKYARD

All screenings start at 6.30 p.m.

Entry free.

Venue: BFS Office, No. 33/1-9, Thyagraju Layout, Jaibharath Nagar,
M.S. Nagar P.O, Bangalore 560 033. Land mark: Jaibharath Nagar Bharat
Petrol Bunk:

Contact: 9886060096

Synopses:

THE BASTARDS

(Los bastardos)

(Mexico/2008/Color/90 mins.)

Director: Amat Escalante

Writers: Amat Escalante, Martín Escalante

Stars: Jesus Moises Rodriguez, Rubén Sosa and Nina Zavarin

Brief summary: Two Mexican immigrants do odd jobs for random sleazy Americans, and usually hang around with their fellow Mexicans at a drop-off spot waiting for something new to pop up. It can be anything from construction-working and strawberry-picking to muscle-for-hire goons, just as long as there's enough money in it for them. Meanwhile, an American mother has trouble communicating with her lackadaisical teenage son, and fails to draw his attention in every way. The boy doesn't treat her very well, and leaves the house without even saying goodbye. On that same evening, the four lives will be forever changed, which is the story that this movie tells.

The film is beautifully shot, and also has a fantastic soundtrack (very raw, hardcore music), which goes along perfectly to the style and theme of the plot of the movie. The two leading Mexican actors have apparently never done any movies before this one, but still manage to come across perfectly as these everyday-Mexicans, just trying to get by in a hard world, even if it may require doing things they don't appreciate very much.

USED PARTS

(Partes usadas)

(Mexico/2007/Color/95 mins.)

Director: Aarón Fernández Lesur

Writer: Aarón Fernández Lesur

Stars: Emery Eduardo Granados, Alan Chávez and Carlos Ceja

Ivan, a 14-year old boy, lives with his uncle Jaime, a mediocre dealer of used car parts. Both of them dream with a better life and are stashing away their money in order to emigrate illegally to Chicago shortly. When Jaime realizes that he needs much more money than he expected in order to pay the "Coyote" that will help them cross the border, he decides to introduce his nephew into the world of car-part theft. Ivan learns quickly the know-how of his new trade and convinces Efrain, his best friend, to help him. The kids enjoy themselves together and carry out Jaime's orders skillfully until Ivan realizes that his uncle's intentions for the trip have changed since they first made their plans.

MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WOLD

(Mas que a nada en el mundo)

(Mexico/2006/Color/90 mins.)

Directors: Andrés León Becker, Javier Solar

Writers: Andrés León Becker, Javier Solar

Stars: Elizabeth Cervantes, Juan Carlos Colombo and Julia Urbini

The relationship between beautiful Emilia (Elizabeth Cervantes) and her imaginative young daughter, Alicia, is tested in this understated Mexican drama. Disoriented after moving to a new apartment and left to herself when her mother starts bringing men home, Alicia takes refuge in dreams that soon become nightmares, especially after she begins to fear that her mom has become possessed by the vampirism man next door. With a keen eye for the rhythms and struggles of contemporary Mexican family life, this film illuminates the secret worlds of lonely children while never straying from its true subject: the uncommon love between a single mother and her child.

The captivating young lead, gives a rich performance with layers of emotional range rarely seen in such a young actress. The film artfully combines the surreal, the comic, the poignant and the tragic, creating a potent film about growing up and a complicated mother/daughter elationship, brilliantly executed by Andres Leon Becker, Javier Solar."

CRAZY CARNIVAL

(El carnival de Sodoma)

(Mexico/2006/Color/119 mins.)

Director: Arturo Ripstein

Writers : Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Pedro Antonio Valdez (novel)

Stars: Marta Aura, María Barranco and Alejandro Camacho

In this black comedy, master Mexican director Arturo Ripstein (The Holy Office, Deep Crimson) presents another of his trademark looks at the twin forces of absurdity and pathos. Based on a novel by Pedro Antonio Valdez, the film weaves five episodic tales centered around a decrepit Mexican brothel run by a Chinese immigrant, Chang (Samuel Gallegos), and protested nightly by a Christian group who hopes to shut it down. Among the cast of characters who populate this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah are Chang's long-suffering wife, an eccentric stable of hookers, and an especially seedy roster of customers (including corrupt politicians and deranged priests), resulting in a carnivalesque tapestry of the human condition.

PAN’S LABYRINTH

(El laberinto del fauno)

(Mexico/2006/Color/112 mins.)

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Writers : Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarion

Stars: IvanaBaquero, Doug Jones, Sergi Lopez

Music: Javier Navanrete

Camera: Guillermo Navarro

Pan's Labyrinth takes place in Spain in May–June 1944, five years after the Spanish Civil War, during the early Francoist period. The narrative of the film interweaves this real world with a fantasy world centered around an overgrown abandoned labyrinth and a mysterious faun creature, with which the main character, Ofelia, interacts. Ofelia's stepfather, the Falangist Captain Vidal, hunts the Spanish Maquis who fight against the Fascist reign in the region, while Ofelia's pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. Ofelia meets several strange and magical creatures who become central to her story, leading her through the trials of the old labyrinth garden. The film employs make-up, animatronics and CGI effects to bring life to its creatures.

Academy Awards

Winner : Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup

Nominated : Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film

THE DESERT INSIDE

(Desierto adentro)

(Mexico/2008/Color/110 mins.)

Director: Rodrigo Pla

Writers : Rodrigo Pla, Laura Santullo

Stars: Mario Zaragoza, Diego Catagio, Guillermo Dorantes

"Desierto Adentro" ("Desert Inside") -- a drama set against the backdrop of Mexico's Cristero War, which took place between 1926 and 1929 -- won prizes for best actor, awarded to Mario Zaragoza; best special effects; best visual effects; best sound; best original score; best photography; best original screenplay; and best supporting actor.

The film is set against the backdrop of Mexico's Cristero War, which took place between 1926 and 1929, when the Mexican government banned Catholicism and persecuted its followers. Clergy are separated from their congregations and worship is forbidden.

Elias, the central character of the film, follows his wife's wishes by seeking out a priest to perform the last rites on their unborn son, whom she fears will die due to a fall she sustained. Upon finding one, he manages to persuade the priest to return with him to the village to perform the last rites, despite putting the safety of the community at risk. The Federales follow the pair and kill every man, woman and child in the village. Elias's family are able to escape, although his wife dies while giving birth to their son.

Captured, Elias realises he is responsible for the deaths of his entire community and begs the priest for forgiveness before his execution. The priests says he is unable to do so and curses Elias's bloodline. Elias escapes and becomes obsessed with the concept of atoning for his sin. He moves his remaining seven children to the desert where they begin to build a monument to God. As his children begin to die through illness and accident, Elias maintains that God has forsaken him and his religious beliefs turn from reverence to homicidal and take over his and his children’s lives.

BACKYARD

(El traspatio)

(Mexico/2009/Color/122 mins.)

Director: Carlos Carrera

Writers : Sabina Berman

Stars: Ana de la Requera, asur Zagada, Marco Perez

An astonishing fictional account of the unending series of murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which began in 1996. Most of the victims are low-paid laborers who have been drawn to the town by the possibility of work at American-owned factories. In the film Mexican police officer Blanca Bravo is sent to Cuidad Juarez to investigate and comes to learn realities of these women's lives, as well as the truth about a police force and local power structure embodied by entrepreneur Mickey Santos that has ceased to care.

Turkish Film Festival

2011-12-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

Take me back to Constantinople

BFS presents a Turkish Film Festival

December 9-11, 2011 and January 6-8, 2012

All shows start at 6.30 pm. Please be seated by 6.20 pm.

Venue: Bangalore Film Society Office, No. 33/1-9, Thyagraju Layout, Jaibharath Nagar, M.S. Nagar P.O, Bangalore 560 033. Land mark: Jaibharath Nagar Bharat Petrol Bunk

Entry Free!!!

Contact: 9886060096/080-25493705

Movies

1. Eskiya (The Bandit)

2. Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim (The girl with the red scarf)

3. Hababam Sinifi (Outrageous Class)

4. Babam Ve Oglum (My Father and My Son)

5. Gegen die Wand (Head-On)

6. Uzak (Distant)

Screening Schedule:

Friday, December 9th 2011

The Bandit (Eskiya/1996/121’)

Dir: Yavuz Turgul

Summary: The epic adventures of the legendary Baran the Bandit following his release from prison. After serving 35 years, it is no surprise that the world has changed dramatically. Still, Baran can't help but be shocked to discover that his home village is now underwater thanks to the construction of a new dam. He then heads for Istanbul to get revenge upon his former best friend, the man who snitched on him and stole his lover Keje. Along the way, Baran teams up with Cumali, a tough young punk who finds the thief's old-fashioned ways rather quaint. When Cumali gets into deep trouble with a crime boss, Baran adds another vengeful task to his roster.

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116231/

Saturday, December 10th 2011

The girl with the red scarf (Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim/1978/90’)

Dir: Atif Yilmaz

Summary: A classic and endlessly watchable love story that never dates Inspired by the novel of acclaimed writer Cengiz Aytmatov, Atif Yilmaz adapts one of history's greatest love stories to the screen with the greatest finesse. Story of Ilyas, a truck driver who delivers sand to a dam construction, his newly acquired wife Asya and their young son Samet. But the legendary love affair between Asya and Ilyas is soon shaken by jealousy, an alcohol habit and extra-marital affair. Ilyas, who genuinely loves his wife but is hampered by an ever weakening character, ends up walking out when job-related problems come to a head. The helpless Asya is left with their son to cope alone. She waits patiently for her husband to return Until she runs into Cemsit, a sympathetic figure who Samet soon begins to identify as his father. When she finally surrenders to his affections, life takes on an entirely new hue.

But then, years later, Ilyas suddenly appears from nowhere, demanding his wife and child back. His arrival rekindles the questions that have preoccupied hearts and minds since time immemorial. What is love? What makes a lover? What makes a spouse? What makes a father?... And which is harder: to go back or not to go back?

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263975/

Sunday, December 11th 2011

Outrageous Class (Hababam Sinifi/1975/87’)

Dir: Ertem Egilmez

Summary: Outrageous Class is the first of a series of rip-roaring comedy films made by Ertem Egilzmez. Dubbed as one of the greatest Turkish movie productions with great actors and actresses, scenario full of fun, a class full of outrageous guys.

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252487/

Friday, January 6th 2012

My Father and My Son (Babam Ve Oglum/2005/108’)

Dir: Cagan Irmak

Summary: Sadik is one of the rebellious youth who has been politically active as a university student and became a left-wing journalist in the 70's, despite his father's expectations of him becoming an agricultural engineer and taking control of their family farm in an Aegean village. On the dawn of September 12, 1980, when a merciless military coup hits the country, they cannot find access to any hospital or a doctor and his wife dies while giving birth to their only child, Deniz. After a long-lasting period of torture, trials, and jail time, Sadik returns to his village with 7-8 years old Deniz, knowing that it will be hard to correct things with his father, Huseyin.

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476735/

Saturday, January 7th 2012

Head-On (Gegen die Wand/2004/121’)

Dir: Fatih Akin

Summary: In 'Gegen die Wand' Cahit, a 40-something male from Mersin in Turkey has removed everything Turkish from his life. He has become an alcoholic drug addict and at the start of the movie wants to end it all. Sibel a 20-something female from Hamburg wishes to please her Turkish parents yet yearns for freedom. She has had her nose broken by her brother for being seen holding hands with a boy and yet she can not break her mother's heart and run away. She too attempts suicide and she first approaches Cahit there at the Hospital. Sibel asks Cahit to marry her, as she believes this to be the way out of her parent's house. She promises Cahit that their relationship will be like roommates, not like a married couple. The film follows Sibel and Cahit as they get married, become closer and eventually fall in love.

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347048/

Sunday, January 8th 2012

Distant (Uzak/2002/110’)

Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Summary: Mahmut, a 40 year old independent photographer, is a "village boy made good" at least professionally in the big city - Istanbul in this case. After his wife leaves him, he falls into an existential crisis. Then comes his cousin Yusuf, who left his native village after a local factory closed down, effectively unemploying over half the local men. He looks to Istanbul for salvation: a job on board a ship sailing abroad, at once exciting and crucial to supporting his family in the desperately poor village. The distance between the two men is apparent at once, and becomes increasingly pronounced. Whereas Mahmut is adusted to big city life and suffers from many of its neuroses, Yusuf is a lonely, excentric country worker with annoying nervous and hygienic habits, and a sick mother back home he must somehow support. This intimate drama was filmed in the director's apartment in Istanbul, using all his furniture, appliances, rooms, car and so on as the film's props.

Further details on: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346094/

Film Screenings for the month of November 2011

2011-11-17T23:56:00.004-08:00

Venue: Bangalore Film Society Office, No. 33/1-9, Thygraja Layout, Jaibharath Nagar, M.S. Nagar P.O, Bangalore 560 033. Land mark: Jaibharath Nagar Petrol Bunk:

Telephone: 9886060096

Friday 25^th Nov. at 6.30 pm.

Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Country:USA

Language:English

Runtime: 92 min

Ratings: 7.8/10 from 84,214 users

Director: Jason Reitman

Writers: Jason Reitman (screenplay), Christopher Buckley (novel)

Stars:Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright and Maria Bello

Synopsis

Tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor has a seemingly impossible task: promoting cigarette smoking in a time when the health hazards of the activity have become too plain to ignore. Nick, however, revels in his job, using argument and twisted logic to place, as often as not, his clients in the positions of either altruistic do-gooders or victims. Nick's son Joey needs to understand and respect his dad's philosophy, and Nick works hard to respond to that need without compromising his lack of values. Wheembern a beautiful news reporter betrays Nick's sexually-achieved trust, his world seems in danger of collapsing. But there's always one more coffin nail in Nick's pack.

The Sting (1973) Won 7 Oscars/ 26^th Saturday 6.15pm due to the length of the film

Director: George Roy Hill

Writer: David S. Ward

Stars:Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Robert Shaw

Country:USA

Language:English

Runtime:129 min

Ratings: 8.4/10 from 80,520 users

Synopsis:

When a mutual friend is killed by a mob boss, two con men, one experienced and one young try to get even by pulling off the big con on the mob boss. The story unfolds with several twists and last minute alterations.

3. Charlie Wilson's War (2007) Nov. 27^th Sunday at 6.30pm

Director: Mike Nichols

Writers: Aaron Sorkin (screenplay), George Crile (book)

Stars:Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Run time: 102 min

Ratings: 7.2/10 from 50,957 users

Synopsis

In the early 1980s, Charlie Wilson is a womanizing US congressional representative from Texas who seemed to be in the minor leagues, except for the fact that he is a member of two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees. However, prodded by his major conservative supporter, Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight the people are suffering in the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support to defeat the Soviet Union. However, Charlie Wilson eventually learns that while military victory can be had, there are other consequences and prices to that fight that are ignored to everyone's sorrow.

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Documentary Screening

2011-09-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

BFS is very happy to invite you to the Bangalore premiere of the documentary film So Heddan So Hoddan (Like Here Like There) by internationally acclaimed documentary film makers Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar,

on Sunday, 18^th September at 6.30 pm

Venue: Smriti Nandan, Nandadeep, 15/3, Palace Road, Opp. National gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore 560 052. Telephone: 22258091/65979732

The film directors will be present at the screening to introduce the film and to interact with the audience after the screening of the film. All are welcome

Synopsis:(Language: Sindhi/Hindi/Kutchi with English Subtitles, Dur: 52 mins)

Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, a medieval Sufi poet, is an iconic figure in
the cultural history of Sindh. Bhitai’s Shah Ji Risalo is a remarkable
collection of poems which are sung by many communities in Kachchh and
across the border in Sindh (now in Pakistan). Many of the poem...s
draw on the eternal love stories of Umar-Marui and Sasui-Punhu, among
others. These songs speak of the pain of parting, of the inevitability
of loss and of deep grief that takes one to unknown and mysterious
terrains.

Umar Haji Suleiman of Abdasa, in Kachchh, Gujarat, is a self taught
Sufi scholar; once a cattle herder, now a farmer, he lives his life
through the poetry of Bhitai. Umar’s cousin, Mustafa Jatt sings the
Bheths of Bhitai. He is accompanied on the Surando, by his cousin
Usman Jatt. Usman is a truck driver, who owns and plays one of the
last surviving Surandos in the region. The Surando is a peacock
shaped, five-stringed instrument from Sindh. The film explores the
life worlds of the three cousins, their families and the Fakirani Jat
community to which they belong.

Before the Partition the Maldhari (pastoralist) Jatts moved freely
across the Rann, between Sindh (now in Pakistan) and Kutch. As
pastoral ways of living have given way to settlement, borders and
industrialisation, the older generation struggles to keep alive the
rich syncretic legacy of Shah Bhitai, that celebrates diversity and
non-difference, suffering and transcendence, transience and survival.
These marginal visions of negotiating difference in creative ways
resist cultural politics based on tight notions of nation-state and
national culture; they open up the windows of our national imaginary.

Ignaural Film 2011

2011-08-23T23:08:00.001-07:00

The first film that will be opening this years Film Festival on water 2011 will be

" Touched By Water "( Indian Premiere)

Director : Tamas Wormser
Producer : Tamas Wormser,Charles Faubert
Duration : 46 min.
Country : Canada
Language : English
Year Of Production : 2006

Touched by Water is a documentary that dives into the water and the sacred through exploring the rites of purification practiced by world religion. It also explores the tradition of bathing and healing praticed by the elite from the times of the Roman's. Touched by Water conveys our complex relationship with water, its sensual pleasure and spiritual renewal. Shot in 13 countries over the course of 10 years, the film is both an ode to the social ritual of public bathing and a thought provoking look at water's spiritual significance..."It is call for open-mindedness....Wormser underscores our universal relationship to water." Touched by Water immerses us in the rich and diverse ways of loving water, the source of all life.

Nominations:

Shortlisted for Japan Prize," Best Documentary of the World at Montreal World Film Festival

Premiere : New Year's Eve 2009 on Documentary Channel and ARTV

Screenings Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
Environmental Film Fest Barcelona 2009; Cornell Cinema Ithaca
Pacific Cinematheque Vancouver.

About The Director :

Tamas Wormser was born and raised in Budapest,Hungary. In 1986 he moved to canada, where he continued working in theater as a writer,actor and director. Tamas Wormerse's film celebrate man's ability to be creative and keep searching for beauty....Wormser is presently developing several feature length films. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two sons.

2011 Water Film Festival Preview

2011-08-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

The Year Awaits

Water Film Festival 2011

Click The Water Film Link Above To Go To The Preview

One Of The Films Featuring This Year

2011-08-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

English Title: Water How Much!

Original Title: Ghor Ghor Rani

Country of Production: India

Running Time: 3 min 40sec

Language: Hindi with English sub-Titles

Awards: India Premier

SYNOPSIS

Ghor Ghor Rani (Water How Much!)

It’s a game played by the children, especially girls in the rural areas of Bundelkhand, India, where they play with the imagination of water-Ghor Ghor Rani (Gol Gol Rani in Hindi). Here in the film, the game has metaphorically presenting a grim reality. Absence of water, scarcity of life giving substance, here is pointed in poignant manner, through the game of little girls.

A life-time of struggle for water, probably awaits these young girls. Don’t waste water from young lips becomes a cry in this short film. Here conservation of water is the message of the film presented in a touching manner.

Chief Guest For This Years Water Film Festival 2011

2011-08-08T22:41:00.000-07:00

The 6th Edition of the water film festival 2011 will feature a prominent and a celebrity who is our Chief Guest.

Vasundhara Das

Who is Singer and actress, And as acted in films across languages like Hindi, Kannada,Tamil And Malayalam films. She is know as a "Shakalaka Baby" cause of her debut song in the Tamil film Mudhavlan.

Born in a Tamil Hebbar Iyengar family in bangalore. She did her schooling in Cluny Convent and her college from Mount Carmel graduating in Economics and Mathematics.

She as a lovely voice that is let her make her own album of non-film songs. Singing in languages such as French, English, Kannada, Tamil,Hindi And Telugu. Also Featuring her Famous hit called "Tide" with Ashu and Dhruv For a Channel V Jammin Show.

Some of her movies that she as contributed and acted include :

Ugly Aur Pagli [2008] Hindi.
Sillunu Oru Kadhal [2007] Tamil.
Corporate [2006] Hindi
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna [2006] Hindi
Kal Ho Naa Ho [2003] Hindi
Boys [2003] Tamil.
Kanda Naal Mudhal [?] Tamil.
Anniyan [?] Tamil.
Manmadhan [?] Tamil.
Monsoon Wedding [2000] Hindi.
Hey Ram [1999] Tamil & Hindi.

Vasundhara Das will be Inauguration the event and will sharing a few words about the importance of Water as she is a Environmentalist herself and she knows the value and importance of water in today's world.

Voices from the Waters

2011-08-08T02:21:00.001-07:00

Voices from the Waters

International Traveling Film Festival 2011

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in Water”

-Loran Eisley

dedicated to the rivers and streams of the universe

Bangalore Film Society in collaboration with a consortium of institutions will be organizing the 6^th edition of the largest international film festival on water- Voices from the Waters 2011 from August 25^th to the 28^th with a daylong conference on water on August 29^th. The festival will be organized in 6 venues across Bangalore. The main venue is Alliance Francaise de Bangalore and inauguration at Christ University auditorium. Apart from screening of internationally acclaimed films on various water themes, the other attractions of the festival are painting and photo exhibitions, art installations, interactions with film directors, water scholars, grass root level water voices and water songs. There will be three days special screenings of the films for the high school students at Balbhavan, Cubbon Park, Bangalore.

Voices from the Waters, International Film Festival was initiated by Bangalore Film Society in 2005, as an effective way of reaching out to the uninitiated on water issues with an emphasis on high school, college students and the youth. The programme aims to bring together grass-root level water activists, environmentalists, scientists, policy makers, film-makers, lecturers, scholars, artists, working professionals from all walks of life to engage in a process of learning and debate on various water issues from around the world.

Voices from the Waters has established its relevance over the last five years and we have consistently been receiving film for the festival from across the world underlining the global concern for water. The festival is growing in stature year after year with more and more institutions coming forward to collaborate with us and take the festival across India and abroad through the year giving the film makers chance to exhibit their works to a broader and diverse audience to enhance water and environmental consciousness.

The collaborators of the Voices from the Waters International festival are, Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, SVARAJ, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, (FLEFF) Ithaca College, USA, Christ University, Bangalore, VISTHAR, Charter of Human Responsibilities, SAMVADA, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, Art group, Doddaballapur, YWCA Bangalore and Water Journeys - Campaign for Fundamental Right to Water – academic and socio-cultural organizations deeply concerned about our depleting potable water resources and searching for ways to replenish this source of life for life worlds.

Your contribution to the festival:

Bangalore is thirsty and most Bangaloreans spend exorbitant amounts of money for water for basic necessities. While we read everyday in the news papers of the drinking water crisis, as per the report published in The Hindu dated April 12^th 2011,”drinking water crisis looms large in over 4000 villages and 38 towns in 12 districts of Karnataka” which highlights the enormity of the issue. Most states of India suffer from shortage of drinking water and we all need to act together to avert a catastrophe waiting to happen. Voices from the Waters International Film Festival is unique in its approach to raising awareness among the public to conserve our drinking water resources for posterity, to save ourselves and the planet.

We welcome all of you to this unique film festival to see and listen to the stories from the waters across the world.

Film Festival Is Back (2011)

2011-08-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

The supreme powers of the world seek another planet surfacing up the billions of dollars just to find another alternative planet to earth and what they do look for is “WATER” - The very essence of life.

The Festival that is held supreme importance to very existence is turning 6 years this 2011. Bangalore Film Society with collaboration with many others NGO’s have made a strong impact in showing the films that’s not only made a impact here in our very nation but also gotten responses and entries from about 30 countries this year.

Even thou there is growth with the number of audiences, responsive and support to this Film festival from year to another. We at BFS don’t enjoy the rapid devastation that is been caused to water in many parts of the world over the years. It’s likely even said that the next world war be fought over water. We tend to showcase the deadly reality that shows the plight at which many of our water bodies are been destroyed across the world.

Water - A shocking reality “ COMING SOON..................This August"

Bangladesh Film Festival

2011-07-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

Karnataka Chalanchitra Academy in collaboration with Bangalore Film Society and the Federation of Film Societies of India is screening the following Bangladeshi films as part of a Bangladesh Film Festival at Badami House, Corporation. All are welcome.

Date	Time	Movie	Dir	Dur
11/07/2011	6.30 p.m.	Inaugural film: QUITE FLOWS THE RIVER CHITRA (Chitra Nadir Pare)	Tanvir Mokammel	114 mins
12/07/2011	6.30 p.m.	ANTARJATRA	Catherene Masud, Tareque Masud	123 mins
13/07/2011	4.00 p.m.	THE SHADOW OF LIFE (Chandragrohan)	Murad Parvez	125 mins
13/07/2011	6.30 p.m.	JOY JATRA (Rqhviv)	Tanquir Ahmed	119 mins
14/07/2011	4.00 p.m.	THIRD PERSON SINGULAR NUMBER	Mostofa Sarwar Farooki.	123 mins
14/07/2011	6.30 p.m.	WAITING (Opekkha)	Abu Sayeed	84 mins
15/07/2011	6.30 p.m.	Closing film: ON THE WINGS OF DREAMS (Swopnodanay)	Golam Rabbany Biplob	88 mins

[screening/lecture] BFS@1Shanthiroad: Italian Films Screening and lecture by Roberto Cavallini

2010-10-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

Bangalore Film Society @ 1 Shanthiroad

Presents

Lectures and Film screenings

Italian Films

@1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery

#1, Shanthi road, Shanthi nagar, Bangalore-560 027

Saturday 9th Oct 2010, 6pm

6pm - 6.30pm: introduction by Roberto Cavallini

6-30pm - 8pm: screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Hawks and Sparrows' (1966).

8pm - 8.30: final comments and discussion

Synopsis THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS, a wild comic fable, stars the beloved stone faced clown Toto as an Italian everyman, and Ninetto Davoli as his good natured but empty headed son. Pasolini uses a comic crow, which philosophizes amusingly and pointedly about the passing scene, as a counterpoint to the performers, representing humanity, as they progress down the road of life. Pasolini presents a tragic fable which shows two delightful innocents caught, like many Italians, between the Church and Marxism.

Roberto Cavalli is an Italian, London-based scholar, writer and cultural organizer. After a Master in Contemporary art theory at the Humanities Dept. of Cà Foscari, University of Venice, since 2005 Roberto has been a PhD candidate in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, under the supervision of Dr Jean-Paul Martinon. His research interests include the works of Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and the films and poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini. He has held teaching positions in the Dept. of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, in the Dept. of Humanities at The City and Guilds London Art School and he worked for three years as docent for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.

Roberto is also the coordinator of InC, a research group in continental philosophy, based at the Graduate School, Goldsmiths. In 2005 he founded BiS with Daniele Rugo, an artistic group for research and visual practice; since then he has curated and authored several projects around issues of migration, social patterns and communities. Some of his projects have taken place in Venice (A+A Gallery), Bologna (Errars), Castello (Spain, Waste Art Biennial), Damascus, New York (The Rider Project), Istanbul (The Apartment Project) and Tangiers. He curated a two-years project about migration titled ‘Leaving room’, a touring exhibition that in March 2009 took place at the Cinemateque de Tanger (Morocco), funded by Roberto Cimetta Foundation and Graduate School, Goldsmiths.

He is also founder, editor-in-chief and author of ‘Eclisse’, books series on cinema and film-making, for ‘Abeditore’, a publishing house based in Milan, Italy.

He is member of Reloading Images network and Executive Producer for Reloading Images India project 2010.

[water film festival] Voices From The Waters 2010: 5th International Film Festival on Water

2010-08-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

“The heron in the canyon, a bighorn ram on the cliff above, one lean coyote on the rim across the river hear the sound of the howl, the song of a wolf, rise in the twilight stillness and spread through the emptiness of the desert evening. One long and prolonged deep wild archaic howl, rising and rising and rising on the quiet air.”

- Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

“Claim the rain that showers down from the sky- drizzle, torrent and hail. Not just in your outstretched palms or in pitter-pattering buckets. Assert your stake in the clouds. The image of the cloud- the sprawling cumulonimbus that blocks out the sun. The memory of clouds- a magnificent white elephant will-o’-the-wisping into a swallow in pristine slow flight. Learn by heart, the high school elementary science of the clouds. Of water sizzled from the oceans, rivers, streams, ponds; of water squirreled away by the bouncing sunshine from over your skin, snatched from the immediacy of your breath. Look out the window, into the beyond where this science runs riot and bleeds into the landscape with color, texture, smell and the occasional ecstacy. A mysterious flower that has bloomed under you and over, consuming you. In shorthand, ‘Life’…. And once again, I repeat, ‘Claim the rain….’

- Shohei Kitamura, Raise the Song of the Wolf

Voices from the Waters, Bangalore’s premier environmental film festival and open platform and the biggest of its kind in the world returns for its 5th edition which unfolds in color and noise across Bangalore from the 27th to 30th August 2010. Interspersed with songs, photo and art exhibitions, installations, water walks, interactive sessions with water activists and film directors and culminating in a conference, ‘Voices from the Waters 2010: 5th International Film Festival and Open Platform on Water’ seeks your presence as part of the intricate design of the fabric of the festival where you are the medium that remember, claim and affirm water as a fundamental human right and the source of all life.

We Need You.

At:-

Venues and Schedules:

[Main venue] Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, Vasanthnagar For screening schedule click here

Badami House, NR Road For screening schedule click here

YWCA, Koramangala For screening schedule click here

(for school children)Balbhavan, Cubbon Park For screening schedule click here

(for college students) MES College, Malleswaram For screening list click here

Suchitra Film Society, Banashankari. For screening list click here

Conference on 30th August 2010: The Politics of Water

ADMISSION FREE.

Contact: 25493705/9886213516/9731120043/9535060987

bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

http://voicesfromthewaters.com

[screenings] Guilty Pleasures- Bunuel in Mexico

2010-07-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

“They have called Buñuel everything—traitor, anarchist, pervert, defamer, iconoclast. But lunatic they dare not call him.”

- Henry Miller

Once you have passed along the staircase that spirals through five chambers, each one consecutively diametrically challenged than the one below, you ascend to the terrace of the Tower of the Senses. It a great heady rush to come out the top, the walls give away, the sky descends upon you, the wind is punch drunk and watch out! You may not want to land straight into a bird’s flightpath. Many have reached here, (the floor is cut in with initials that recount the entire alphabetical order many times over) but most struck either by vanity, ambition, fear or lack of imagination or a bit of it all put together have only looked skywards and remarked on how the tower could do with a little more loft. They have taken in the expanse of the sky, the weave of the constellations, the dark yonder without realizing that they could have done so from the ground itself if they had permitted their imagination to. Few have dared an attempt to look down the tower. When you do so, the effect is that of the inverted telescope. The sky now turns into sea and the teeming sea below now turns into the infinity that contains the spectacles to behold, one that plays out as an eclipse on terra. Luminous, iridescent, otherworldly, a vision that wild talons couldn’t tear you away from. A vision all the more stupendous for its tensions and paradoxes- of light and darkness, of forms and the formless, of words and the ineffable, of the part and the whole, of the minute and great, of fascination and fear, of life and death, of chaos that contains structure within and structure that gives away to chaos. The knack, and that its hard one to pull off is heard, is to take it all in, stand for a moment right outside the absurdities and note that the whole raging spectacle, the span of the eclipse itself is but a mere slip of existence.

The colorful Mr. Luis Bunuel even years after his films have been canonized has remained a most mercurial figure, precariously poised whenever an attempt is made to slot him in. If he is a surrealist, what of his earthy documentaries? If he is a humanist, what of his studied detachment? If he was an iconoclast, what of his spell in Hollywood? Was he an exile or a willing nomad? “I’m an atheist,” he once said,” Thank God.” He seems to be always outside paradoxes staring in. His images break the tyrannies of words and mores, images where devotion is tempered with desire, order with randomness, the surface with the entrails, beauty with rot, life with death, Apollo with Dionysus. In short Bunuel captures life and humanity as a beguiling abstraction and pins it to the cinema. Bangalore Film Society in association with FFSI, Southern Region and the Embassy of Mexico are proud to present the rarest films of a key phase in the life of the master. Presenting ‘Guilty Pleasures- Bunuel in Mexico’

20th July, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

NAZARÍN
Mexico/1958/95 min/est/B & W/EST

Director: Luis Buñuel.

"Nazarin follows the great tradition of mad Spaniards originated by Cervantes. His madness consists in taking seriously great ideas and trying to live accordingly"
- Octavio Paz

In the Mexico of the beginning of the XX Century, the humble priest Nazarín shares his misery with the needy that live near the small town of Chanfa. After protecting a prostitute responsible for starting the fire that destroys the hostel, Nazarín is forced to flee the town. While he is travelling, the priest’s actions cause a series of conflicts that go against his vision of Christian charity.

22nd July, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR
Mexico/1953/90 min/B & E/EST

Director: Luis Buñuel.

“Stop, shadow of my elusive beloved/ Image of enchantment that I most desire/ Beautiful illusion for whom I happily die/ Sweet fiction for whom I painfully live.”
- Juana Ines De La Cruz

When they find out that the 133 tram, where they have worked all their lives, is being retired from service, Caireles and Tarrajs get drunk and decide to steal it. During the night they give service to an eclectic group of people that include a catrin, a couple of nuns, a teacher with his students and a couple of rake workers. The next morning, Caireles and Tarrajas try to take the tram back but they are faced with the obstinacy of Papá Pinillos, a retired inspector that is set on turning them in to the authorities.

23rd July, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

THE GREAT MADCAP
Mexico/1949/90 min/B & W/EST

Director: Luis Buñuel

"Responsibility is a heavy responsibility."
- Cheech Marin

Synopsis: The rich and drunken widower Ramiro allows his children Virginia and Eduardo, his good for nothing brother Ladislao and his sister in law Milagros, to exploit him. Desperate, his brother Greogorio decides to make them all believe that Ramiro is ruined and that the family has to work to survive.

24th July 2010

MEXICAN BUS RIDE (1951)
Mexico/1951/85 min/B & W/EST

Director: Luis Buñuel.

“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish."
- Federico Lorca

In a small coast town, young Oliverio is forced to interrupt his honeymoon because his mother, Doña Ester, is dying. She asks Oliverio to go to Petatlan to look for Mr. Figueroa, so that he can write her will. Oliverio begins his trip in a beaten up bus, driven by Silvestre. During the trip, the young man has to overcome all sorts of unforeseen events and Raquel’s insinuations, a sensual and flirty woman set on having sex with him.

25th July 2010

DAUGHTER OF DECEIT
Mexico/1951/80 min/B & W/EST

Director: Luis Buñuel.

"That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not."
- Cervantes

Synopsis: When he discovers his wife’s infidelity, Quintin kicks her out of the house. While she’s leaving, she screams at him that their daughter is the result of her adultery and she is not really his. Embittered, Quintin abandons the girl with Lencho and his wife Toña. Many years later Maria convinces Quintin hat she lied about his paternity and tells him he must go back to look for his daughter.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[screenings] World Refugee Day

2010-06-17T01:28:00.001-07:00

We can all be refugees
Sometimes it only takes a day,
Sometimes it only takes a handshake
Or a paper that is signed.
We all came from refugees
Nobody simply just appeared,
Nobody's here without a struggle,
And why should we live in fear
Of the weather or the troubles?
We all came here from somewhere.

- Benjamin Zepheniah, We Refugees

Godforsaken room with a lizard on the wall. Godforsaken city where strange mongrels chase strange cars at strange hours. Godforsaken streets where you wonder why the commonest crow seems unfamiliar. Godforsaken signs that seem to point the wrong way up and the left way right. Godforsaken depots and train stations where old man Time sits still, frailer than ever, leaning against the wall, readjusting his watch. Godforsaken skies above like an expertly painted infinity staring down at you.

For the seekers of vague entities and ephemeral presences and fragmented meanings, there is the twilight hour at dusk when the vagueness is at its most tangible, at best the smoke out of the ashtray or a few strains of the blues from the radio next door. Stare if you will at the alien expanse that lies before with the gaze of Ulysses at the bow of his ship, the gaze of the exile, always homebound and therefore always adrift. If the weather is right, you will spot the gods in their disguise. A few minutes later the stars come out and before you know, the night arrives tiptoeing in plain sight.

If the statistics are to be believed the multitudes of the displaced, lost and searching are higher than ever before in the history of man. And below the statistics of the visible, the teeming invisibles clamour for the right to merely exist. UN declares the 20th of June, 2010 as ‘World Refugee Day’. We acknowledge, abide, remember and stand in solidarity because while the refugee may connote many things, it is foremost a human condition as a symptom of the soul.

20th June, 2010 6:30pm

In Search of My Home (30min) Dir: Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh
(global premiere)

In the world’s largest democracy, live thousands of men, women and children with lost homes and forgotten names. Sheltering one of the largest refugee populations in the world, India still lacks a comprehensive domestic refugee law, that could guarantee them their basic human needs and a life of dignity. In Search of My Home is a journey with a Burmese and an Afghan refugee family, as it explores the complexities in their everyday battle for survival. Hope and despair, love and loss come together in a story never told before; a tale absent from India’s collective conscience and its mainstream media. In Search of My Home, is having a simultaneous global premiere on 20th June, 2010 and BFS is proud to host the film in Bangalore.

Paradise: Three Journeys in This World (51min) Dir: Elina Hirvonen

Paradise - Three Journeys In This World is a poetic documentary. In the first journey we travel along the route of tomato trucks to Almeria, Spain, where illegal immigrants from Africa work in greenhouses. The second journey takes us to Morocco, where numerous immigrants are willing to do anything to get to Europe. We meet Adam, who has escaped war in the Ivory Coast. Now he is living in hiding along with numerous other refugees and immigrants and constantly fearing violence from local authorities. The third journey takes us through the desert to Bakary Fofana’s home village on the border of Mali and Mauritania where the desert is believed to ruin the possibility of human life in the village within the next few decades.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel: 25493705/9886213516

[screenings/discussions] A Retrospective of The Films of Monteiro & Jayashankar

2010-05-31T03:12:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

We are pleased to invite you to a three day screening of our films by the Bangalore Film Society on June 4, 5 and 6, 2010 at 6.30pm, Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Marks Road, Opposite State Bank of India, Bangalore. Please see the schedules and the synopses of the films below. There will be a Q&A with the filmmakers, after the screening.

Warmly,
Anjali and Jayasankar
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Venue: Ashirvad, St. Marks Road
Contact: 25493705/9886213516

Friday 4th June, 2010

6.30- Irani Cafe Instructions, 2008 (3 Mins)
6.35- Breasts, 2006 (10 Mins)
6.45- Agreement, 2006 (10 Mins)
7.00- Do Din Ka Mela, 2009 (60 Mins)

Saturday 5th June, 2010

6.30- Our Family, 2007 (56 Mins)
7.40- YCP 1997, 1997 (43 Mins)

Sunday 6th June, 2010

6.30- Memory.Space, 2006 (2 Mins)
6.32 - A Short Film on Rain, 2009 (2 Mins)
6.35- Naata, 2003 (45 Mins)
7.30- Saacha, 2001(49 mIns

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Synopses

Irani Restaurant Instructions
4 mins., 2008
http://iranimumbai.blogspot.com/

Based on an eponymous poem by Nissim Ezekiel, the film explores the space and time of an Irani Restaurant in Mumbai. These are inexpensive, inclusive spaces, which are being transformed in to up
market Cafes and fast food joints...
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Songs of Resistance : Breasts
10 mins, 2006

Songs of Resistance is a series that weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets.. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. For Kuttirevathi, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman).

Festivals
Special Mention, Sadho Poetry Festival, Delhi 2008
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Songs of Resistance : Agreement
10 mins, 2006

Songs of Resistance is a series that weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. Her work became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman).
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Do Din Ka Mela
60 mins, 2009
2009, Kutchi and Gujarati with English subtitles, 60 mins.
Camera: KP Jayasankar; Location Sound: Harikumar M.; Script, Editing &
Sound Design: Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar

http://atwodayfair.wordpress.com/

“Nothing in the world will last – it is but a two day fair” sings Mura Lala Fafal, drawing inspiration from the Sufi traditions of Sant Kabir and Abdul Lateef Bhita’i. He is accompanied on the Jodiya Pava (double flute) by his nephew Kanji Rana Sanjot. Kanji taught himself to play and make his own flutes after hearing the music on the radio. Mura and Kanji are Meghwals, a pastoral Dalit community that lives on the edge of the Great Rann of Kutch, in the Western Indian state of Gujarat. They are both daily wage labourers and subsistence farmers in an arid zone. The film is a two day journey into the music and every day life of this uncle-nephew duo, set against the backdrop of the Rann. The Great Rann of Kutch is a vast salt marsh/desert that separates India and Pakistan. Before the Partition the Meghwals moved freely across the Rann, between Sindh (now in Pakistan) and Kutch. The music and culture of the region is a rich tapestry of many traditions and faiths, an affirmation of the syncretic wisdom of the marginalized comunities that live in this spectacular and yet fragile area.
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Our Family

56 mins , 2007 Tamil with English subtitles
Directed by Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar
http://ourfamily2007.wordpress.com/

What does it mean to cross that line which sharply divides us on the basis of gender? To free oneself of the socially constructed onus of being male? Is there life beyond a hetero-normative family? Set in Tamilnadu, ‘Our Family’ brings together excerpts from Nirvanam, a one person performance, by Pritham K. Chakravarthy and a family of three generations of trans-gendered female subjects, Asha, Seetha and Dhana, who are bound together by ties of adoption. They all belong to the trans-gendered community called Aravanis (aka Hijras, in some parts of India). Asha Bharathi, the grandmother, is the president of the Tamilnadu Aravanigal Association, Chennai. Seetha, the daughter and Dhana, the granddaughter live in Coimbatore. Weaving together performance, life histories and everyday life, the film problematises the divides between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Awards
Special Jury Award in the Documentary Section, Signs 2007, Thiruvananthapuram
Certificate of Merit and Special Mention, Mumbai International Film
Festival 2008
Indian Documentary Producers Association ( IDPA) Gold for Best Script, 2008
IDPA Gold for Best Sound Design, 2008
IDPA Silver for Best Editing, 2008
IDPA Certificate of Merit for the Best Documentary, 2008

Telecast: NDTV 24x7
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YCP 1997
43 mins, 1997

Built between 1865 and 1876, Yerwada Central Prison (YCP), Pune, is one of the oldest prisons in India, with over 2500 inmates. In this video, six poets and artistes of the YCP share their work, their lives... Through their poems and musings, the film explores the modes in which they creatively cope with the pain and stigma of incarceration, in the process questioning their selfhood and the socially constructed divides between ‘us' and ‘them', between the ‘normal' and the ‘deviant'.

Awards
Certificate of Merit, Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) 1998

Jury’s Award for Best Innovation at the Astra Festival of
Anthropological Documentary Film, Sibiu, Romania, 1998.
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Memory.Space
90 secs, 2006

An exploration of the inner self, shot through with shards of memory, fragile, as the outside world leaks in. It seeks a fleeting moment of transcendence, beyond polarities (inner/outer, self/world), a transitory space of being and nothingness.

Indian Documentary Producers Association Awards 2007
Gold for the Best Cell Story

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A Short Film on Rain
1 min 26 secs, 2009

Clouds, Rain, People, Umbrellas, Sea, Flood, Ebb and a dream called Mumbai

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Naata (The Bond)
45 mins, 2003
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro, Camera: KP
Jayasankar; Location Sound: Harikumar M.; Script, Editing & Sound
Design: Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar

http://naata.wordpress.com/

Friends and activists, Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, work with neighborhood peace committees in Dharavi, Mumbai to promote conflict resolution through the collective production and use of visual media. Korde and Khan are both long-time residents of Dharavi and both first-generation migrants to the city. As Asia's largest slum, with a population of 800,000, Dharavi has often been represented as a breeding ground for filth, vice and poverty, full of immigrants whose right to live in the city is often questioned by vigilante citizens' groups and right-wing politicians. However, Dharavi's long history of immigration has created a creative, productive space which plays an important role in the economy of the city; it is one of the major hubs of the informal sector that produces commodities ranging from food products to leather goods catering to a large export market. When the deadly riots of 1992-93 tore the city and their community apart, Korde and Khan were moved to act, working to change both the negative perception of Dharavi and erase religious and ethnic divisions. Naata follows these remarkable men as they work on their film, Ekta Sandesh - their work paralleling that of Naata's own filmmakers, another filmmaking pair who are immigrants to their city of Bombay. Traveling with a projector and a screen, Korde and Khan show the film at their own expense in communities savaged by distrust and prejudice. The two pairs of filmmakers join forces in this documentary to spread their important message even further. Naata is the second in a series on the people and the city of Mumbai. It is a sequel to Saacha (The Loom), 2001

Telecast: YLE Finnish Television Network, Finland, NDTV 24/7
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Saacha (The Loom)
49 mins, 2001
http://saacha.wordpress.com/

Saacha is about a poet, a painter and a city. The poet is Narayan Surve, and the painter Sudhir Patwardhan. The city is the city of Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), the birth place of the Indian textile industry and the industrial working class. Both the protagonists have been a part of the left cultural movement in the city. Weaving together poetry and paintings with accounts of the artists and memories of the city, the film explores the modes and politics of representation, the relevance of art in the contemporary social milieu, the decline of the urban working class in an age of structural adjustment, the dilemmas of the left and the trade union movement and the changing face of a huge metropolis.

Awards
Second Prize, New Delhi Video Forum, 2001

Dennis Hopper Raising Hell Forever

2010-05-30T00:32:00.001-07:00

[screenings] The Volta Sessions

2010-05-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

“Meanwhile, I was still thinkin'
If it's a slow song, we'll omit it
If it's a rocker, that'll get it
If it's good, she'll admit it
Come on queenie, lets get with it”

- Chuck Berry, Little Queenie

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is Star Time. Are you ready for Star Time? Thank you and thank you kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you at this particular time the artist nationally and internationally known as the hardest-working man in show business. Yes, he'll make your bladder splatter, he'll make your knees freeze and your liver quiver.

- Danny Ray, Introduction to James Brown and The Famous Flames

“Never shake it once you dig it.”

- John Cassavetes in & as Johnny Staccato

White heat in the morning. Cold showers at night. Nasty traffic on a Sunday. Monday gets by alright. The city’s getting unpredictable, neurotic, wild. There’s disorder in the air and outrage at the cul-de-sac. Stiff collars get to work and all the starch gets soaked in by closing time. It’s getting to be a problem of disorientation telling the old from the new, the new from the renovated and the renovated from the freshly inaugurated. And that’s without counting the ‘under constructions’, ‘men at work’ and ‘take diversions’. And don’t even get started on the electric interruptions. But then, everybody’s gotta get by. Everybody’s gotta have a beat to walk to. Everybody’s gotta have the rhythm.

This coming weekend, Bangalore Film Society is going to teach the electric company some lessons in the art of supply. Oh yeah, we’re mainlining it three days in a row and playing movies soundtracked end-to-end with eclectic sonic delirium- pop, jazz, rock n’roll, reggae, motown, bebop, the blues, the balaika, the folk, the skiffle, the classics and the classical- we got it all and on rotation. Proudly presenting on 21st, 22nd and 23rd of May, 2010- ‘The Volta Sessions’.

Friday 21st May, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

The Harder They Come (1973/103min) Dir: Perry Hanzel

Make no mistake. It was indeed maverick Director Perry Hanzel’s goovy sunshine Kingston-set gangster flick set the stage and tuned the world for the 70s reggae invasion. Starring reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff, ‘The Harder They Come’ was the radical original. A tale told with equal parts grit and funk, of a naïve young musician who arrives to seek his fortune in the big city only to be confronted by a corrupt police and shady music cartels before he becomes the most dreaded outlaw of all- it is rousing stuff, rivetingly portrayed. The soundtrack featuring 'Toots and the Maytals' and Cliff himself is the stuff of cult. If you think you’ve heard the songs before it is only because they've been covered by the likes of Grateful Dead and The Clash. ‘The Harder They Come’ was the first feature film to be made in Jamaica and as the eponymous Ali G. would approve, we’re calling all the patriots to assemble.

Saturday 22nd May, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Mean Streets (1973/112min) Dir: Martin Scorsese

If it’s soundtracks, we’re looking at Scorsese- the man who took the art from Rosi, Hitchcock, Casavettes, Anger and the likes and perfected the lining of image with sound to get to that feeling that just won’t go away. ‘Mean Streets’ is the stuff of legend, the tour-de-force coming of age tale of a group of friends in the boiling pot that is New York City, and the accompanying double disc soundtrack makes just about the greatest jukebox in the world. So you have Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, the Carradine Brothers and Amy Robinson on screen and the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Ronettes, Ray Baretto among others on the thumping soundtrack. Rarely does the cinematic experience get more locked and loaded than ‘Mean Streets’. It is the master operating at his best and the sweep of it all is hard to resist.

Sunday 23rd May, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989/77min) Dir: Aki Kaurismaki

What happens when a Finnish folk-punk-whatchumacallit band is deemed too niche for the local audience? They pack up and head for that land of opportunity, America. And what happens when America doesn’t turn out to be the way the imagined it to be? They head for Mexico. And they have a dead friend in tow. That’s the story of ‘Leningrad Cowboys Go America’ for you but in the company of that master of wistful comedies and funny tragedies Aki Kaurismaki, the road movie-concert movie-silent comedy hybrid is a beast of its own, punch-drunk on whimsy and always whistling the catchy tune. The films got it all- the magnificent Matti Pellonpaa as the svegali manager, a cameo by Jim Jarmusch, beautiful cinematography by Kaurismaki regular Timo Salimen, and to cut a long short, it's as Tom Waits once put it- the piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me......

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

The Leningrad Cowboys Variety #1

2010-05-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

[screenings] One Day in the Life of K.

2010-04-20T22:44:00.000-07:00

“Everyone wants to be a perpetual motion machine
We all try harder as the days run out”

- Modest Mouse, Perpetual Motion Machine

“Alas,” said the mouse “the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these walls narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already , and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.” “You only need to change direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

- Franz Kafka, A Little Fable

The search was for a certain Mr. K. Anyway, that was how it all began, with all the tantalizing mystery of the heavy fog and streetlights variety. All one gets to start wth is a picture of what is supposedly the back of his head and a few words on his characteristic elusiveness. Even if they didn’t go to the trouble of pointing it out to you, the first week of thumb-twiddling vexation and worn-out Florsheim soles would convince anyone that presences of Mr. K were located precisely in his absences, a ghost taunting you with ‘K was here’ graffiti everywhere you looked. And the paint is always fresh. At first, it’s enough to get you excited, you are prepared to be hurled down, always a cigarette handy and always a bar next door, that web of intrigue, deceit, sin and the other coming attractions that the trailers keep screaming out rococo-style. But once the initial euphoria begins to wear thin, there’s no point is romanticizing it all. You have a job to do and you do it. One could always use the money. The despair of the day in, day out, all in a day’s work, as they like to put it is never the chest-beating type but a slow burn that you can feel at the core of your being. You can imagine your heart looking more or less like, a bleak shoe. And by the time you have found your man, the twist ending doesn’t really count. So you finally discover that Mr. K was no one else but you, all along. It’s a job well done. And you have another one waiting for you in office tomorrow. Its best if don’t lose sleep over these kind of things.

Yes folks, it is indeed a torrid summer of much drudgery at the BFS. With no respite in sight. If it’s not heat, it’s the dust, if it’s not dust, it’s the power cuts, if it’s not that, it’s the remains of the game of cricket… you can always count on something these days that will pull you down. Where does one turn to in moments where the irrationality ends only where the despair begins. We’re looking for some perspective here. Well, to the movies, we say, the classics, to Ritwik Ghatak, Ermanno Olmi and Stuart Cooper. Bangalore Film Society proudly presents ‘One Day in the Life of K.’, some perspective on the absurdity of the world as rendered by the masters in comedy, poetry, tragedy.

Friday 23rd April, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Ajantrik (B & W/1958/102min) Dir: Ritwik Ghatak

Ghatak’s ‘Ajantrik’ is, to paraphrase John Lurie, ‘strange and beautiful’, all at once. The chronicle of a small town taxi driver and his broken down old jalopy which Ghatak unfolds as a heartbreaking love story, is made of such achingly human stuff that it screened to a mesmerized audience in Venice 59’ inspite of lacking all subtitles. A tragicomedy in the best sense of the word, one of the order of Chaplin, ‘Ajantrik’ is to put it quite simply, one of the all-time greats.

Saturday 24th April, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

I Fidanzati (B & W/1963/77min) Dir: Ermanno Olmi

It would be a shame to repeat ourselves but we really don’t have a choice. Olmi’s ‘I Findanzati’ is to put it quite simply, one of the all-time greats. This weekend, we’re outdoing ourselves. The terrific Mr. Olmi has always been a favorite since we screened that beautiful waltz of a film- ‘Il Posto’. ‘I Fidanzati’ is one of those rarest of films, the one’s that tick with the rhythm tuned right to the heart. A tale of a couple separated as the husband moves to the city to work, Olmi orchestrates a sweepingly told tale of love, longing and all that is inexplicably lost in between. Winner of the OCIC Award at Cannes ‘63.

Sunday 25th April, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Overlord (B & W/1975/83min) Dir: Stuart Cooper

Stuart Cooper’s ‘Overlord’ is… well you know it. It really is. Stuart Cooper may not be a Ghatak or an Olmi and may have spent most of his life making dreary stuff for the television, but ‘Overlord’ was his finest moment. An evocation of the wastelands of war, seamlessly blending documentary footage, newsreels, staged scenes and surreal sequences, Cooper chronicles a young man being trained in the lumpenizing machinery of the army and executes it all with a poetry approaching a dream/nightmare. Absolutely humanist and extremely personal in its approach, ‘Overlord’ ends where the ugly spectacle that was ‘Saving Private Ryan’ begins. Winner of the Silver Bear, Berlin ’75.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[flicker] The Man Who Fell To Earth

2010-04-08T04:21:00.000-07:00

“I said Hello to the grief bird,
Hello grief bird, what’s happening,
Ashes, Pits of ashes.”
- The Fugs, Coming Down

If the strange room in which astronaut Dave finds himself in the beguiling denouement of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ had a television, the feed would have undoubtedly resembled a Nicolas Roeg film. A Roeg film at its best unfolds like a rogue transmission from a pirate satellite, not unlike the ones the protagonists of Philip K. Dick novels of conspiracy and paranoia experience- a dream satori in which the banality of the familiar appears bizarre and alien, the clichés of a life thoroughly modern and the rigmarole of the day in- day out are suddenly suffused with the light of clarity in which the essential disconnect between men and nature, one man and another and one and one’s own self appear as a yawning chasm, the grip of an existential vertigo, heightened neurosis, the clockwork of heartbeat from beneath the floorboards, a light that came and etched darkness in its wake. It’s a subliminal assault on the senses but in times where all judgment is the reserve of spin and marketability, Roeg like Dick spins fantastic for the primal- truth, clarity and humanity. Both may seem like some kind of mad prophets but within the grey schemes of the modern, often it isn’t too hard to confuse subversion and madness.

‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ Roeg’s 1976 epic sci-fi head-trip begins with a montage of spectral vistas, of lights and fires freefalling against the sky that ends firmly in the grip of gravity as the freefall ends with a loud explosion in a lake. A hooded figure emerges and walks across the New Mexican landscape. Yet another immigrant in the land of immigrants. An alien, in the full sense of the word. That much is more-or-less clear from the onset. Along the narrative of the film which spans several decades, the alien played by rock and roll legend David Bowie runs into other souls, each alienated in his or her own way whether it’s the short-sighted, homosexual lawyer Franswroth, the alcohol-addicted small-town girl Mary-Lou or the confused, disillusioned scientist Bryce. If it all seems like a clichéd case of a few freaks against the system then you misunderstand Roeg who never misunderstands the System. There is no heart to it where the beast resides where one can strike at. The System is everyday reality and all of us, pleading either practicality or ignorance, are part of it. Roeg’s debut film as a director ‘Performance’ co-directed with the prodigal and sadly, short-lived Donald Cammell documented the end of the 60s and with it our collective innocence, so pleading innocence is not an option, not now. We’re all too old for that. Instead Roeg’s genre-bending and elliptical style of film-making, a truly bizarre concoction lining up between the frenzied cut-ups of William Burroughs to the melancholic kitchen-sink melodramas of Ken Loach mired in warped visual extravagance of Eurotrash immerses us in a strange and disconnected world. Roeg’s camera is as unmoored as the narrative as it moves through non-sequiturs in time and space as if in an existential fever dream. There is no grounding, no centrality, no heroes, no villains, no innocents. Only the ignorant and the practical. As the late, great David Foster Wallace once confessed that when he was stuck in a traffic jam all the angry thoughts that he had about the drivers sitting in their SUVs was the easiest thing he could do- crib about the environment, climate change, depleting petrol supplies. His thinking was hard-wired to do that and while all if it was not so wrong, it also expressed the limits to his imagination, a certain prejudice that tainted and clogged his thoughts. Roeg’s imagination formed in the surrealism of Jose Luis Borges and Kafka, the ‘untrained eye’ of Brakhage and the humanity of R.D. Laing goes beyond simple platitudes. ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ plays out within a complex structure suggesting an ingenious mirror maze with a shocking pitch black humor that only arch surrealists can seem to incorporate in their visions. It is not surprising then that the film plays a little bit like Bunuel for the MTV generation.

The casting of the androgynous, bisexual, chameleon-like David Bowie as the alien ‘Newton’ seems a pitch-perfect casting coup. ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ does for Bowie’s persona what ‘I’m Not There’ did to Dylan’s, which is to diagnose the times they lived in by situating their mercurial personalities in context. Roeg’s film could easily be read as a comment on Bowie’s celebrity. The self-confessed ‘plastic human’, Bowie, inspite of his enduring popularity, and while always part of the zeitgeist of the time, was never really the real thing. He was a rock and roller, a glam rocker, a disco dancer and a pop star, mostly always successful but also always performing. There is no real David Bowie. David Bowie is a shape-shifter. David Bowie is always the victim of his times. So the iconic image of him sitting amidst suburban decadence before multiple TV screens all playing with nothing more than a drone not just underlines the singer’s vague poignancy but also is a comment on the times. After all, every age got the Bowie it deserved. If his later work is unashamedly for the worse, then in some way, it speaks for our popular culture.

Roeg’s frenzied camera comes to a complete stasis only at the final image. A sort of Magritte’s The Son of Man by way of Elsa Schiaparelli. It’s a trip coming down, down, down. One recalls, the allusion made early on in the film to Bruegel The Elder’s Landscape With the Fall of Icarus- Icarus drowns in the waters unnoticed as a ship sails past, the farmer continues to plough his field and the sheepherder daydreams. The continuing human tragedy seems after all, a little bit sad. As Lydia Millet anguishes in her masterpiece ‘Oh Pure and Radiant Heart’- ‘Finally our ignorance consumes us, licking our backs with tongues of fire. And behind us the earth is left black’.

(cross-posted on www.passionforcinema.com)

[flicker] Road, Movie

2010-04-06T02:22:00.000-07:00

‘Please, don't spoil my day, I'm miles away
And after all I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time’

- Lennon & McCartney, I’m Only Sleeping

Director Dev Benegal’s first full length directorial venture in 10years ‘Road, Movie’ is as one of Richard Linklater’s iconic slackers ‘The Man in the Boat-Car’ in ‘Waking Life’ puts it so well- ‘in motion to the ocean.’ In times like these, where motion has come to strictly connote cold, dreary and deadhead concepts like momentum, progress and the strictly A to B and all of that operating strictly within the unshakable bracket-pillars of strict deadlines, ‘Road, Movie’ is that rare motion picture that rediscovers delight in the seemingly archaic adventure of losing oneself somewhere along the road. The firmament of this beautiful film is atomized by the frozen ice of time giving away to the timeless poetry of dreams. It is a film at the velveteen altar of sloth but not as how the mainstream critics have put it, in terms of ‘ennui’ and ‘banality’ and ‘déjà vu’, but as Thomas Pynchon takes it in his essay, all the way back to its ancient Latin origin in the word ‘acedia’- the high of sloth. The loaf-about, an aimless ramble, the zeitgeist of a bar table that has continued from noon till late into the night, a blues song about worn shoes, horizon after horizon, a yawn, couple of winks and a dream spectacular. It is a kind of freedom that goes beyond mere concept and ideology. The tyranny of words itself have evaporated. A most high mead afforded to mortals. An infinite expanse.

‘Road, Movie’ is a story of Vishnu, heir to father’s plummeting hair-oil business, who agrees to transport a few cartons of the oil to a place far, far away in an ancient rickety truck that was once a mobile cinema. Vishnu is something of a conceited young man and at its bare-bones, the film chronicles his journey through the picturesque deserts of Kutch, his encounters with strangers and finally, his coming of age. And even at this level, unlike the usual trope-treading tripe such as ‘Good Will Hunting’ or ‘Rocket Singh’ where the coming-of-age seems to be an exclusive shorthand for ‘forward progress’ and ‘success’, the film is more about Vishnu discovering the pleasure that lies dormant within his bones, a good stretch and a terrific yawn, picking a knowing passivity that allows him to find himself, over becoming yet another undead cog in the great streamlined machine. One could call it a ‘shift of paradigm’ but that would be playing straight into the hands of the machine and nothing could do more disservice to the inherent poetry of it all. Instead one could say that within the barren infinity of the desert dunes, what passes as the dread of nothingness is recognized as a possibility of being possessed by the ecstasy of an invisible gypsy wind. As Lynyrd Skynyrd put it- Call me the breeze.

Two standout montage sequences underline the electric skyline vibe that runs through the film. The first one where the tale of ‘Arabian Nights’ (the canonical masterpiece of acedia) is recalled and the scene gives away to a fluid and abstract invocation of escapism and the power of stories and the second is the sequence of the carnival in the desert that invokes Fellini, Guru Dutt, Bollywood cinema of yore and puts them on a psychedelic spin that is sheer delirium to behold.

The film is suffused with quirk to spare and ‘quirk’ being one those words that is most loosely used and mostly these days, as a mere auxiliary to ‘childlike’. But like the best of Wes Anderson, ‘quirk’ in ‘Road, Movie’ is the juxtaposition of tragedy and humor or rather humor born out of a sense of tragedy which in turn, collates into a formless pool of a certain despair. It is the tragicomedy of reaching your hand out in all hope and getting nothing but a ridiculous banana within its grasp.

Director Benegal makes the tale of a group of women who walk through the desert in search of water as a palate for this ineffable despair and the tragedy. Later, we meet a water bandit who monopolizes all the water in the desert and Benegal plays the scene out as a brilliant charade via Sergio Leone and pokes ridicule at the conceit at the heart of the great streamlined machine. He pokes them where it should probably hurt the most. Literally and metaphorically, ‘the balls’.

The dynamics of water and its distribution, (which these days finally seem to be deemed newsworthy inspite of being a pressing matter for far too many years) seem to be one of Benegal’s abiding concerns. His last film, ‘Split Wide Open’ (criminally unavailable on DVD) released at the turn of the millennium not only predicted the oncoming sleaze of reality television but also, the clout of the water mafia that supplied tap water to the slums and Evian for those who could afford it. To his credit, in both the films the director refrains from the froth and the fist but asks us to pay attention and understand. It is precisely this approach that makes him images unencumbered and free and a lot of what happens lies in the delicate ether of emotion and feeling.

Benegal’s take on India has been criticized as exotic and such is the case but it is not, thankfully, of the ‘holy cow’ variety. Instead Benegal’s gaze looks at the nation with the eye of a person who has the despair and hence, the quirk of one failing to belong. Not very different from Jim Jarmusch, another stranger in his own land. The decisive comma in its title- ‘Road, Movie’ is precisely that paradox. A slight detachment and a little deadbeat pause which gives the audience enough time, in the midst of the rush to illusionary finale, to look within themselves, beyond the walls and enjoy the ride.

(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

[screenings/lecture] World Water Day

2010-03-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

New bill to penalize those wasting drinking water
-Deccan Herald, Bangalore March 9’10

Privatisation no solution to tackle water shortage in city
- Deccan Herald March 9’10

Water Crisis to worsen in city
- Deccan Herald March 12’10

City is the second highest water waster in country at 50.9% New Delhi top the list at 52.4%
- Deccan Herald March 13’10

While all these questions remain unanswered and new ones add…

The city gets thirstier under the scorching summer sun and the water vendors make fast buck in some instances as much as Rs 1000 for a tank load of water, a consortium of concerned organisations and institutions working on water and environment issues invite you to a panel discussion and film screenings on the use and abuse of water on March 22nd & 23rd 2010 at Ashirvad, 30 St. Mark’s Road Cross, Opp. State Bank of India at 5.45pm.

Programme details

Monday 22nd March, 2010

5.45 pm: Tea
Water Songs by Bhoomi Thayi Balagafollowed by Panel discussion: on the use and abuse of water

Panelists:

1. Prof. Stewart Ayash will speak on the Global Use and Abuse of Water. He is a scholar on international health issues, health communication and consumer health issues.
2. Viswanath Srikantaiah will speak on Water through the Ages in India. Vishwanath is a well known water activist from Bangalore who is deeply committed to water conservation and rain water harvesting. He is the founder of Rainwater Club Bangalore.

6.45 pm:

Water and a City – directed by Swati Dandekar

How much water does a person need? Who ensures that this need is met? Is there enough water for everybody?
With growing urbanisation across India, many towns and cities are crying for more water. How much of the perceived shortage of water is due to a lack of resources, and how much due to lack of awareness and poor management?
Located in Bangalore, India’s IT capital, the film traces the journey of water into and out of urban homes. Along this journey, it looks at access to water for the poor, the politics of water pricing, urban India’s continuous exploitation of natural resources, and explores possible alternatives for a sustainable water future.

7.30 pm:

Living on the Edge – directed by Raseena Sherif and Anu Priya

Global warming, though proceeding at an alarming rate, is still met with complacency by many Bangaloreans. People seem to believe that we are neither responsible for the phenomenon, nor will we be affected by it. Living on the Edge takes a closer look at the city's contribution to the global issue, and throws a few uncomfortable facts about the future at its viewers.

Professor Patricia Zimmerman will lead the discussion on the Film. Prof. Zimmerman from Ithaca College USA is a scholar on cinema, photography and media arts and the co-director of Finger lake environmental film festival.

Mr. Leo Saldana, of Environment Support Group and environmental justice campaigner will lead the discussion.

Tuesday 23rd March, 2010

6.00 pm:

Publos Unidos: Swineflu Ground Zero in Mexico- directed by Felipe Casanova and Miguel Angel Tiaz

In 1994, with the consent of the then Governor of Veracruz, the US transnational industrial pig farming company, Carroll Farms started operating in the valleys of Cofre de Perote in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The farmers of the region thought that the company was going to bring them benefits by creating jobs but they soon became disillusioned and realized: industrial pig farms don’t bring benefits to the communities rather they contaminate the air, land and water. The farmers began to express their anger; they got organized and began to protest. In complicity with the company, the Mexican government fabricated legal claims against five members of the La Gloria community. With time, the farmers had reason for their anger: in 2009, the terrible epidemic of swine flu began in La Gloria and has now spread and threatened the entire world.

From Big Easy to Big Empty- directed by Greg Palaston

August 29th 2006 marked the one year anniversary of the devastation in New Orleans caused by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This Special Greg Palast Report brings you exclusive footage and the stories you won't hear on the other networks -- the hidden political agendas and the suppressed eyewitness reports.
In this half-hour film, Greg Palast and his team travel to New Orleans to investigate what has happened since Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. He examines why residents had to leave, what really caused the flood and why they aren't returning.
On August 22, 2006, reporter Greg Palast and producer Matt Pascarella were charged with criminal violations of the anti-terror laws by the Department of Homeland Security while making Big Easy to Big Empty. And there is no doubt, this film is dangerous - to the regime of Washington.
Here is the real story of Hurricane Katrina you won't get on CNN. You'll follow investigative reporter Palast ("a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes" - Jim Hightower) as he travels to New Orleans to investigate what has happened since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. On his visit, Palast discovers the population of New Orleans is minuscule, the reconstruction sparse, suicide rates climbing, and that many citizens have not, nor do they even know how to return to the city that care forgot.

Discussions with Prof. Patricia and Prof. Stewart

Organised by Bangalore Film Society, Bhoomi Network, Era Organic, Voices from the Waters, Environment Support Group (Environmental, Social Justice and Governance Initiatives). Suchitra Film Society, Rainwater Club and Samvada

[screenings] But Beautiful

2010-03-09T01:46:00.001-08:00

“His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. ...He watched her for several minutes.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and The Damned

“ Love is funny, or it's sad,
Or it's quiet, or it's mad.
It's a good thing, or it's bad,
But beautiful...”

- Jimmy Van Heusen, But Beautiful

Right about now, things are beginning to get real complicated. The distinguished Mr. Freud enquired only to pass, Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, who yawns cosmic mysteries and truths about the infinite nature of things confirmed that it was beyond his genius, Einstein declared he’d rather pick his violin and we reached Plato’s room at the Hotel Acropolis only to find a sign- Do Not Disturb (Mē mou tous kyklous taratte )! Admittedly, the question was a bit vague to begin with, imported as it were from across many and various bar tables all across. The keen connoisseurs of the affairs of the heart seemed to be caught in eternal speculation without knowing a semblance of a question, let alone something of an answer. Consider, for example, and we propose- A x B. If A indicates a man and B a woman, what in the scheme of this is ‘x’ and why is everyone talking about ‘y’? The conversations amble through vistas- one conjuring up rain-soaked moody platforms of Hemingway where last, long goodbyes were being said, others invoking the quirk of Salinger’s heartbreaking muckle-mouths- the one that got away, another traversed F. Scott’s terrestrial distances of longing, and yet another launched into the snatches of warmth nestled under the sweaters, as Pynchon was apt to say. The design was pure Nabokov and the music was jazz. But the question remains, as it were. But beautiful.

This weekend, Bangalore Film Society proposes the same confounding question and promises that there is really, no answer. But we highly recommend you join the fun as we have none other than the eternal Jean-Luc Godard, new-auteur-on-the-scene Hong Sang-Soo and the original Mr. Howard Hawks playing their hearts out for three days over a single weekend. Proudly presenting on the 12th, 13th and 14th March, 2010- ‘But Beautiful’.

Friday 12th March, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
A Woman is A Woman (1961/85min) Dir: Jean-Luc Godard

If ever a film had all the delirium and whimsy and color of candy, it has to be maestro Jean-Luc Godard’s self-described paradox ‘a neo-realist musical’- ‘A Woman is A Woman’. Coming right after his cinemascape-altering debut ‘Breathless’, this techicolor spectacular not just confirmed Godard’s genius for sure but launched muse, collaborator and partner- the iconic Anna Karina as the goddess of the silver screen, a sensation like no other. A film running on sheer exuberance, comic absurdity and wit, a heartfelt tribute and enquiry into the Hollywood musicals of the Golden Era, ‘A Woman is a Woman’ tells the classic tale of a woman caught in between her lover and her best friend but like you’ve never seen it before. Winner of Best Actress and Special Jury Award at the Berlinale ’61, the film is an experience and an unforgettable one.

Saturday 13th March, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000/126min) Dir: Hong Sang-Soo

One of the most distinct voices of the Korean New Wave that swept that festivals and the art-houses from the early 2000s, Director Hong Sang-Soo was perhaps the most understated and therefore, under seen. His witty chronicles of neurotic urban lives however has increasingly found acceptance and he has finally graduated from a talent to be watched out for to a distinguished auteur. Increasingly compared to the likes of Hsiao-hsien Hou, Aki Karusmaki and Eric Rohmer and yet uniquely his own, Sang-Soo is definitely a class apart as can be seen from ‘Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors’, a tale of modern courtship and love and consequences. A Nine-part film in 2 parts and what that means has to be seen to be believed, ‘Virgin’ is the first Sang-Soo to be screened by BFS and we promise, more is to follow.

Sunday 14th March, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
Bringing Up Baby (1938/102min) Dir: Howard Hawks

And BFS makes good on its promises. Earlier this year, we had promised some Howard Hawks and here it is and it is right up there with the very best. ‘Bringing up Baby’ is a prime example of ‘the screwball comedy’. So we have esteemed archeologist David Huxley who is awaiting the delivery of the ‘intercostal clavicle’ that would complete the Brontosaurus skeleton he has spent his life assembling. He is also about to get married to certain uptight lil woman named Alice Swallow and charm the old Mrs. Random who has promised a million dollars to his museum. Trouble arrives in the form Susan Vance, a hard-headed woman if there was any and her pet leopard Baby that her brother Mark has sent over from Brazil. And then… it gets crazier, absurder, weirder, surreal, mad-cap and laugh-out-loud-funnier at a rate where it is almost impossible to keep pace. Snappy dialogue, Insane Slapstick, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, RKO Studios- this is Hollywood and Hawks at their finest moments.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

Tubetrawlin' #6

2010-03-02T02:56:00.000-08:00

Ballet Mecanique (1924)
Dir: Fernand Leger, Dudley Murphy

[flicker] Blast of Silence

2010-02-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

A fully-loaded .38 can go off 6 times. All fatal, depending of course, on the hand that wields it. The seventh time it inevitably gives a harmless little click. Now it’s just a cigarette lighter run out of fuel. Just a kid’s toy that looks like a .38. Lokhand ka Paperweight. ‘Click’ goes the hollow cylinder. The gun did not hush up; it did not so much as go quiet. It plain ran out of bullets. The seventh pull of the trigger is mere silence. Nothing to come from, nowhere to go.

“The streets were dark with something more than night”
- Raymond Chandler, Introduction to ‘The Simple Art of Murder’

Allen Baron’s highway-to-hell noir ‘Blast of Silence’ opens straight into pitch darkness and turbulence. It’s a train making its way through a tunnel. The narrator kicks in- a sarcastic and weary god. A god who himself seems to have lost faith. He offers no solace, no catharsis and doesn’t remember the last time he attempted a miracle. After all, given the state of his glorious creation, how long could he have deluded himself. It’s a goddamn racket and these days he just runs the numbers and sets up the odds and waits and watches. A brief, bleak monologue, one which would do Raymond Chandler proud, describes the birth of our protagonist Baby Face Frankie Bono as the train tunnels into light. The odds have been given. There’s going to be no pay-off on this one.

The relentless, omnipresent narrator is at a jazz and cheap whiskey equation with the visuals, more Pull My Daisy than Morgan Freeman. Penned by Hollywood blacklistee Waldo Salt who would later etch the grit and grime of the streets of New York into ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and delivered with rough-hewn, expressive gusto by fellow blacklistee and great character actor Lionel Stander, the narration puts you square into the sharp shoes of Frankie Bono and if it fits too tight, there just ain’t no wriggle room for your toe. Unlike the alienating, non-sequitor even playful voice-overs of the French New Wave noirs, this one’s primed for the gut and you can just feel it. The biting cold of a New York winter, the desperation, the sweaty palms, the nerve-wracking tension, the essential loneliness that has marked and scarred Frankie Bono but one that bred his instinct to survive.

The tropes of the tale are spare and simple. After all, nothing too original about a hitman who comes into the city on contract to carry out a hit. But as the story plays out, it’s pure process. Arrive in the city. Check into a hotel. Meet your contact. Shop for your tools. Follow your mark. Kill time. Wander. Wander. Wander. Pick up the merchandise. And now we’re ready for the execution. Films like ‘Collateral’ are too mired in the racket and the conventions of Hollywood to ever look at anything essential square in the eye. ‘Blast of Silence’, one of the first independent American productions, a contemporary of John Cassavetes’ ‘Shadows’, offers an unflinching stare that brings in the burn. Frankie Bono’s isolation and detachment is no ‘be cool’, neither can it afford to be something as a warm and righteous as a ‘code of conduct’ a la Melville. Circumstances, society, what makes the world tick- a man simply cannot afford to be anything other than a cold, calculating machine. Frankie Bono’s greatest enemy is himself, his desires, that part of him that qualifies as human. It stands in the way of his efficiency. It is a weakness, it could make him irrelevant, as irrelevant as a corpse.

Even at a purely visual level, the movie is sensational. From the rolling thunder opening to Frankie Bono memorably stepping out of the train and lighting a cigarette to the ferry ride that I’m pretty sure inspired the ending of Jarmusch’s ‘Permanent Vacation’ to the Christmas time pageantries to the… hell, every goddamn scene is about as seminal as it gets. Baron is coming to the film from a career as a comic book illustrator and he knows how to deliver with every inch of the frame. Among all the stand-out scenes, the one that bleeds the most is the montage set in the club as Frankie Bono observes his mark celebrate his birthday. A singer on a bongo belts a song of murder and torrid towns, the scenes swings vertiginous, cutting from table to band to table, a maddening daze, hallucinatory and existential, it is ‘The Scream’ or as the narrator puts it ‘makes my stomach turn’. Yet another scene catches Frankie cooling off after an upheaval, quietly cleaning his gun, preparing for the hit. It’s a Hitman’s saxophone solo. And then comes the grand finale, shot in a hurricane. ‘Blast of Silence’ is inspired film-making operating at all the right keys. It works consecutively on so many levels that even at a lean, mean 77minutes it is nothing less than an epic.

The soundtrack is brilliant. A mix of hard street jazz and ethereal Christmas choirs that serves to bring out the chill that is the city and the soul. The cinematography by Merrill Brody does to old New York what ‘Vertigo’ did to old San Fransisco. And not surprisingly there does seem to be a small cult that visits the New York locations of the film just like the Vertigo-philes swarm SF. And while ‘Vertigo’ may seem to bloom with the romantic, ‘Blast of Silence’ keeps it coming cheap and fast.

On the eve of the film’s release Director Allen Baron was touted as the next Orson Welles. But as Baron shrugs and admits, it never came to be. Hollywood was never for him but he got suckered. But when one looks at Citizen Kane which looked at the American Dream from top down and Blast of Silence that looks at the American Nightmare from bottom up, one can’t help but be reminded of what Thomas Pynchon wrote- that America is made up of three things and three things only- blood, shit and money. Even for a genre as hard-boiled as noir, Baron’s film looks into the mouth of hell with such casual lack of humanity and hope that realms of meaning and chaos swirl into nothing less than the insane, aka the Herzogian.

‘Blast of Silence’ never holds back and keeps packing the punches, keeps them coming, keeps running and before you know it, you have a corpse on your hand. Shouldn’t be too hard to leave it alone, shouldn’t be hard to walk away from it all. After all, even God shows the other cheek.

(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

[screenings] Rituals of a Soul Gypsy

2010-02-16T20:44:00.000-08:00

“Perhaps my childhood has not vanished after all. It is true I have virtually not a single memory from that time, but perhaps my memory is only out of sight, like the watercourses in the desert. It has survived by disappearing from the surface and still runs in the depths, where I am headed.”

- Sven Lindqvist, Desert Divers

The terminally romantic take up permanent residence within the city of Vertigo. Life for them is all about standing in the cold gothic alleys in long black coats trying to get a cool cigarette lit against the wind. But few, the weary, women and men who have made a difficult peace with the chaos and absence of regular logic, they move on. The quest is the same, it is they who have been transformed. One is still in search of key of the ineffable mystery which once drew them to the city but in time the romanticism that once buffeted and even damned them has given away and over so many encounters, scars, broken bottles, torn paper, piled up ashtrays- the wreckage of the romantics- has tired them down to the bones. They now have to stock up and bear the fragility and the weight of being human. The land beyond where they now seek to venture is no place for their flesh. They stand in queues, check their bodies in at an abandoned locker room and venture out. No tokens are given. A meaningless ritual abolished long back before anyone can even remember.

Bangalore Film Society invites you to the outer limits in the company of three masters who have boldly gone where few have gone before. This coming weekend we’re dealing exclusively in the abstracts and settling for nothing less than the sublime. Proudly Presenting ‘Rituals of a Soul Gypsy’, three films, three masters, three days.

And there was light.

Friday 19th February, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Heart of Glass (1976/94min) Dir: Werner Herzog

If one is looking to explore the great beyond; madman, eccentric impresario, auteur-par-excellence and all time BFS favorite Werner Herzog would seem to be a most reasonable choice for a guide. ‘Heart of Glass’ marks a critical departure (to be read as ‘a descent into further madness’) in the master’s film-making and has now gone down in cinema history as nothing less than canonical. The events in the movie take place in a tiny Bavarian village which is gripped by a kind of collective insanity when the man who runs the local glassworks dies without revealing the secret of the ‘Ruby Glass’. In a typical Herzogian scheme, the actors who performed in the front of the camera were first subjected to Hypnosis and a constant trance-like state was induced. The rest was taken care of by Herzog regulars, the sublime work of cinematographer Jorg Schmidt Reitwein and the haunting score by Krautrock band Popol Vuh.

Saturday 20th February, 2010 Time: 6.30pm

The Passenger (1975/120min) Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni

A.K.A ‘Profession: Reporter’, this swooningly soulful and masterfully superior work by the great Antonioni has by the fate that befalls to some of the greatest films, not gathered as much traction and attention as it most rightfully deserves. An existential chronicle of a reporter who finds a dead body in a hotel room in Saharan Africa and switches identities and cruises around exotic Europe, it is dense as any film wrought in the master’s gaze but as compared to the more popular ‘Blow-Up’, what moves ‘The Passenger’ in the realm of the sublime is its soul and what a beautiful gloriously weary soul to behold! The film stars the legendary Jack Nicholson at his most poignant, recalling not the wild wolf rebel as he is popular but his more quieter, gentler, deeper roles like the disaffected Robert Dupea in ‘Five Easy Pieces’. Joining him is Maria Schneider and she is made of dreams. Nominated for Palm D’Or, Cannes 75’.

Sunday 21st February 2010 Time: 6.30pm

Gandahar (1988/83min) Dir: Rene Laloux

At BFS we disapprove of ‘Avatar’. The only thing it ever came and did was raise our ticket prices to new levels of obnoxiousness. (Rs. 300/- deposit?) Good cinema it was not and to make a good case of it we’re proud to screen our first Rene Laloux, an institution in animated film and a surrealist master. A simple tale of a blue-colored harmonious tribe invaded and colonized by a technocratic society, the Lalouxian image is at once familiar and whimsically bizarre. ‘Gandahar’ was the director’s final film and after several years of lying bowdlerized in a Hollywood vault is finally out on DVD and the beauty and imagination supreme can once again be glimpsed in full pristine glory, proving once again that sublimity can sometimes be real kidstuff.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[screenings] Vertigo Love Affair

2010-01-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

“But when she left, gone was the glow of
Blue velvet
But in my heart there'll always be
Precious and warm, a memory
Through the years
And I still can see blue velvet
Through my tears”
- Bobby Vinton, Blue Velvet

“It’s about reliving a moment lost in the past, about bringing it back to life only to lose it again. One does not resurrect the dead, one doesn’t look back at Eurydice. Scottie experiences the greatest joy a man can imagine, a second life, in exchange for the greatest tragedy, a second death. What do video games, which tell us more about our unconscious than the works of Lacan, offer us? Neither money nor glory, but a new game. The possibility of playing again. ‘A second chance.’ A free replay.”
- Chris Marker on ‘Vertigo’

To all about to enter the gates of the city of Vertigo, there is much advice to be given. You will also receive pointers, maps, compasses, survival kits and other impressive and sleek accoutrements that would seemingly last you in the deepest, darkest Amazon or the driest, hottest Atacama. And yet most have made the journey to the inside of this ancient city have never made it out. Those who returned found the reality of the outside world so unbearable that they escaped back into the gates the first chance they got. Perception is usually the first casualty. Immediate horizons and time-space aligned along a Mobius strip. A land of illusion- labyrinth streets of the mind where smoke and mirror mesh with secret memory and intense desires to haunt the lonely, lost souls- the wanderers. And redemption, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, she’s a femme fatale.

Bangalore Film Society declares 2010 open with a three day tribute to one of the greatest of films of all time- Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, whose influence on films and generations of fans and admirers has been close what some describe as ‘religion’ and others as an ‘obsessive preoccupation’ and some others as a ‘confounding addiction’. Proudly presenting ‘Vertigo Love Affair’, a weekend along the spiral of love, longing and madness buffeted only by the vision romantic.

Friday 22nd January, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
Vertigo (1958/128min) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Unheralded at the time of its release, ‘Vertigo’ was a visionary film truly ahead of its time, a cryptic personal statement by Hitchcock on his own and our collective longings and anxieties coded into the vessel of a ‘Hitchcockian’ thriller. The almost surreal tale of a cop who develops agoraphobia, a fear of heights and is set on a trail of a seemingly disturbed or possessed women by his old friend, ‘Vertigo’ plunges into depths of what makes us and breaks us as human beings, as creatures of obsession and passion. Every bit of the film is iconic from the hallucinatory title sequence to the chemistry between James Stewart and Kim Novak to Bernard Hermann’s piercing score to the locations around San Francisco shot in a palate of colors that we can watch yet again for the first time in history since its release thanks to a complicated restoration process lobbied for by one of the film’s most committed obsessives- Martin Scorsese.

Saturday 23rd January, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
In the City of Sylvia (2007/84min) Dir: Jose Luis Guerin

Nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice 07’, the dreamily named ‘In the City of Sylvia’ announced debut director and former film critic Jose Luis Guerin as a talent to be watched out for and confirmed him as yet another soul who thrived in the enchantment of ‘Vertigo’. Guerin distills some of the essence of the Hitchcock classic into a beautifully told tale of a wanderer who has returned to a relive a fateful encounter six years ago where he met the girl of his dreams and she drew a map for him to lead him to her. Director Guerin achieves an almost alchemical result as he picks up the rhythms of winding streets and cafes and infuses it with the pangs of love and longing. Even just to look at, it is one of most gorgeous films around.

Sunday 24th January, 2010 Time: 6.30pm
The Green Ray (1986/98min) Dir: Eric Rohmer

The enigmatic auteur Eric Rohmer passed into the light on 12th January, 2010. Bangalore Film Society remembers him not only as a great director of droll and eccentric cinema but also as a great film critic, one of the first to experience and declare the genius of Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks (whom we will be screening quite shortly). ‘The Green Ray’, one of Rohmer’s greatest, features a lost soul, a girl named Delphine searching restlessly and obsessively for that one ineffable abstract just like Scottie in ‘Vertigo’ and the anonymous protagonist of ‘In the City of Sylvia’. The frail and weepy Delphine emerges as one of Rohmer’s most complex characters as she wanders across France in the search of……………………
'The Green Ray’ was the Winner of the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI at Venice 86’.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

Rohmer's Exit

2010-01-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

Eric Rohmer, French film critic, novelist and film director, passed away on Tuesday 12th January, 2010 at the age of 89. As it often happens with individuals who are detached in presence and self-effacing in greatness and hence are taken for as reassuring and perhaps, even for granted, the loss has suddenly put an unprecedented focus singularly on the man’s life. It was here once again that Rohmer’s typical, charming elusiveness that lit his works now also seemed to light his life. The more you got closer to the individual, the more he obfuscated into light.

Eric Rohmer was a painted horizon against the backdrop of which great moments have been played out by great players standing forth and delivering their lines. As a film critic, he was instrumental in appraising and canonizing the films of Hitchcock and Hawks, which were then neglected by the contemporary critics as populist cogs along the Hollywood assembly line. As the editor of the magazine Cahiers Du Cinema during its most legendary phase, he gave platform and calmly stood behind the caustic and iconoclastic ideas of the young Truffauts, Godards, Chabrols and Vardas. He honed them so that they became legends of their own right and ideas about cinema were altered forever. After all, where would Arnold Schwarzenegger be without the jump-cut?

But who was Eric Rohmer?

He was born Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer. His first writings were published under the nom-de-plume ‘Gilbert Cordier’. ‘Eric’ he borrowed from the great German film-maker Erich von Stroheim and ‘Rohmer’ he added from Sax Rohmer, creator of the Fu Manchu stories. For those who want to believe against the man there are more than ten versions of his childhood and growing-up that to choose from. Even on the eve of his death, the names and faces of his wife and children remained anonymous.

Cinema being the most manufactured of all art, Rohmer, baring a few exceptions where he immersed in period and fantasy, stuck to chronicling droll middle-class people leading droll middle-class lives. They were witty exercises in rhythms of the everyday- conversations, picnics, dinners, rendezvous, dates and walking the streets, both alone and together. His critics complain of the films being too talky and minimal or as Gene Hackman snaps in Arthur Penn’s ‘Night Moves’- ‘like watching paint dry’.

But for Rohmer the deceptions, etiquettes and poses of daily life were manufactured enough and our encounters and interactions suspicious enough to strike comedy, tragedy, farce, suspense, drama, twists and revelations and sometimes all together in unforgettable fatal instants like the middle-aged man trying to cope a feel of Claire’s knee in the film of the same name or the sunlight breaking over the beach in ‘The Green Ray’. At his prickliest and raw, he may seem detached even cruel but the complexity and tenderness with which he films his characters and circumstances is all too familiar and human.

After all, even legends have to die. Like he once admitted- all his tragedies were in fact, comedies.

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. by Dash Shaw

2010-01-04T22:39:00.000-08:00

to be continued to Look Forward, First Son of Terra Two

Grizzly Bear- Two Weeks (The Unofficial Gabe Askew Video)

2010-01-04T03:34:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T04:23:00.002-08:00

'That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.'
- David Wooderson, Dazed and Confused

IFFK 2009: The Blow-Out

2009-12-18T15:03:00.000-08:00

Today at around 5pm, as Raul Ruiz’s ‘Nucingen House’, a fantasy filled with the fluid that makes time-space of memories and experiences, ended with ruminations on journeys against a black screen, the curtains went down on IFFK 2009 and all the faithful that had gathered and stayed till the lag end called it with wolf whistles and loud applause. And that was it. The delegate IDs went off the necks, the stalls disappeared, the flag and festoons came down. There was no drama, no comedy, no sentiment. The depraved and the perverted went back to their homes and their offices- tending kids, writing checks, providing tech support, booking tickets for ‘Avatar’ and ‘Vetaikaran’. If you asked us, we’d probably plead innocent and refute all charges. But the fact remains that ‘Antichrist’ played an unprecedented five packed shows. 4 of them scheduled and one put together exclusively ‘on public demand.’

Divine

My second Arturo Ripstein film of the festival and while like the first it wanders bravely into scandalous territories, it lacked the ingenious structure and deranged firmament of ‘The Realm of Fortune’. Also, as yet another critique of organized religion and particularly blasphemous of Christianity, I reeled with fatigue. There had been one two many films in the last few days that did just that. But as powerful director of surrealist imagery laced with sepulchral humor, Ripstein’s shock to the tender modern psyche continues to register with brute impact.

While ‘The Realm of Fortune’ was a dark pyramid built in the mind, ‘Divine’unfolds like it were a religious book or even, a religious movie for the dark ages of the new millennium. It takes around the turn to the 2000s and chronicles a religious cult in Mexico started by a deluded old couple who worship at the altar of Our Mother of the End of the World and keep awaiting for the return of the messiah and live in a commune that goes by the name of ‘The New Jerusalem’. Barbie dolls, Cecil B. Demille moves starring Victor Mature and Charlton Heston, Video Games, Television- these are the new totems and mediums through which the members of the church receive their communication from God. Once again, Ripstein plays broad comedy with sick strokes and catches the viewer off-guard between apocalyptic grimness, brutal excess and broadly funny satire.

‘The New Jerusalem’ is populated by society’s rejects- drug addicts, abused teens, the repressed, the homeless and the wretched. Unfolding chapter by chapter which Ripstein titles as ‘The Mystery of the Wrath of God’ or ‘The Mystery of the Second Coming’, he deconstructs religion, its paraphernalia, its allures, seductions and dangerous delusions and casts a shadow of doom, before ending on a beguilingly ambiguous note.

Nucingen House

‘Nucingen House’, a last minute replacement for Jacques Rivette’s ‘Around a Small Mountain’ as the final film to be screened at IFFK 2009 was my first experience of Chilean art house legend and cinephile-intellectual Raul Ruiz. The synopsis seemed to indicate a Victorian horror film but as the movie began I was thrown away at once by the fact that it was a period film shot digitally with the most pedestrian results. The aesthetic seemed to jar with tacky TV modernity when the material seemed to call for the thundering atmospherics.

Then the camera moved. Glided rather, on rarified air like Dracula’s brides. It showed you a scene, paused to take in the mis-en-scene and then moved back or turned away to reveal or confound with yet another secret. The gaze itself seemed as certain of the end of the corridor as it was uncertain of the ghosts that stood waiting at the turn. The narrator of the story seemed equally unreliable equally on terms and at odds with the flow of the camera. Was the story the overheard conversation at the dinner table where the protagonist sits; or was it the narration of the protagonist himself or is it director Ruiz? Flashbacks are confused with dreams and dazes. The fantastic is juxtaposed with the human and the seemingly real. The absurd turns into terror and terror back into comedy. The digital aesthetic which at first seemed unfortunate begins to yield into an atmosphere of its own. Blonde hairs dissolving in sunlight, the smudges of the candle stands, the blurs, the occasional color- a new aesthetic of beauty and ambiance is formed. And it blends seamlessly together with orchestral score played by one of the film’s characters on a piano that he seemingly created from the memory of a snatch of Debussy’s ‘Sunken Cathedral’ and was completed with the specter of the haunting quality of the piece serving as the muse. An inexplicable connect pulls it all together and like the best of Poe, Bierce, Hitchcock, Cluzot, all masters of thrill and suspense, it is this mysterious all-too-human stuff that haunts the film. The absurd fear of the vulture eye in ‘The tell-tale heart’, the obsession in ‘vertigo’ and the madness of ‘le corbeau’; they need not be explained and they cannot be but we know them more than we know the streets of Paris and San Fransisco.

Through the most generic of pulpy tale, Ruiz poetically and subtly distills this ‘human stuff’.

And with that it all came to an End.

In Trivandrum Avatar news, the release of the film has been postponed to Saturday evening on account that the prints are not yet arrived. 'Sreepadmanabha' the theater screening the film was mobbed all day today when members of the public undeterred neither by the hot sun or the fact that the IFFK had just come to an end stood in endless cues for tickets to the film which will reportedly change the face of cinema forever.

Capsule Reviews:

'Monrak Transistor' is an absolute joy.
'Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl' is exactly that.
‘Seasons’ is definitely not ‘thegreatestmalaylamfilminthelastfiveyears’. It checks in just about okay.
‘Ek Tho Chance’ is an absolute wash-out.
‘Harishchandrachi factory’ is a classic of our times and should be given an all-India tax-free release.
‘Antichrist’ is passé.
‘The Last Supper’ is one of the greatest political films of all time.
Mrinal Sen deserves a greater focus.
Raul Ruiz is some kind of master.
Arturo Ripstein is as supremely fucked up as it gets.
And
Everbody should watch Fransesco Rosi.

Acknowledgements

Dr. Fun Man Chu and Hard Ed

The place I come home to

The Festival and its organizers who make it happen every year

And to beautiful, debauched Trivandrum you should really stop pleading innocent for the rest of the year.

(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

IFFK 2009: Alcoholous Anonymics

2009-12-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

Dr. Fu Man Chu got on the boat today. He received a brief message in the morning underlining that it was most imperative for him to return to his laboratory at once. The message was simple- ‘The albino gorilla has given birth (stop) It is a boy (stop).’

His time was up. His time had just begun.

Next stop: Genetic modification, anarchy and world conquest.

This unholy night, I think of him in his boat and as a concerned tax-paying citizen I am most worried about the condition of the good doctor’s mind. A daylight nightmare brews in his brain. Contorted noises. Strange Faces. Ancient mazes of terror and darkness. Desecrated temples. Debauched women. Utter lunacy.

You might just want to call it ‘innocence lost’. But we’re not talking ‘Paa’ or ‘Khan’ here, simple jack. This is the full retard.

Before I start out writing my capsules of day 3 & 4, I apologize to the three of you for not publishing my post yesterday when it was due. But dear readers, you will be happy to note that the good doctor, myself and local Brando- Hard Ed were sufficiently decadent and that the breeze blew beautiful, there were intermittent showers and at dusk, the colors began to flow across the horizon, liquid as wine.

And now, Back to business.

Day 3

More Than a Miracle

On day one I promised more Francesco Rosi and here it is. Atypical it may be, as produced by Carlo Ponti, the genius huckster of the psychedelic art house of the 60s (Antonioni, Godard, Varda, Menzel, Warhol… you name it.), the robust rush that possesses the movie is pure Rosi.

A slight digression on the awesomeness of Hot Shots:-

Hot Shots, the Charlie Sheen starring, Top Gun-Rambo-Casablanca-Lady and the Tramp skewering madcap Zucker-Abraham collaboration is something of a classic. It is immensely rewatchable, crazy-side-splitting funny and takes on the harebrained tropes of Hollywood with a cavalier sense of lampoon and plays it as broad and as madhouse as it gets. And Charlie Sheen is THE SHEEN. The Hollywood spoof once a rare beast has now in itself become part of the system. Without going into matters of quality, let us just assume that it has become a major genre with elements which now cross-over into other genres. For example, ‘Shrek’, ‘Ratatouille’, ‘Inglorious Basterds.’ If the spoof genre has to be reckoned it needs atleast one canon film. Something must do for the genre what ‘Bicycle Thieves’ has done for neo-realism and ‘Blade Runner’ for dystopian sci-fi. You have these classics- Airplane!, Kentucky Fried Movie, Hot Shots!, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz etc. But we’re looking at canon material here. We’re looking to inform dialogues and rage dialectics and publish large hardbound books.

I’m suggesting Francesco Rosi’s ‘More Than a Miracle’.

End digression.

Produced by Carlo Ponti. Directed by Francesco Rosi. A Lush background score by Piero Piccioni (the memorable ‘Traffic Boom’ on the Big Lebowski soundtrack). Written by Tonino Guerra, poet and screenwriter for Fellini, Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Angelopoulos. Starring and now, you’re probably wondering- ‘what could beat THE SHEEN?’ You don’t just say Omar Sharif. You say ‘the legendary’ Omar Sharif. Charlie’s got time yet. And opposite the dashing Egyptian, you have the swoon, the brass goddess, the verve, the moxie, the lady among ladies, Mrs. Ponti- Sophia Loren. And seen through the gaze of Rosi and like the mesmerizing Brenda Lee in ‘The Weavers’, your senses shall be transfixed.

This is arch-subversion. Poker has never seemed so straight before.

Rosi and Co. pick a children’s fairytale. Princes. Princesses. Magic. Gods and Angels. Quests with Happy Endings. The little illustrated stories you read as a kid that in some way shape the values you believe in and then Walt Disney and Co., ever so sweetly whistle their way to the bank.

The film starts quietly. Pretty soon you see a flying monk. Then Sophia Loren slips her tongue in a lock and Sharif gets paralyzed with a chicken drumstick in head. Then there is a barrel that floats across to faraway kingdoms with Loren trapped inside. Then a donkey that is a bank- a sequence that has to be seen to be believed. The ante of absurdity is progressively raised. A 3000 egg omelet, a proud French chef who had Henry IV licking his fingers who condemns his rejected dinner to be placed in a hole and buried. But it is not all over until you wash the dishes. But there is treachery in that. Will the Prince find true love with the peasant women or will he marry the wicked princess? And the lumpen proletariat of the village- what will they eat?

‘More than a Miracle’ calls the bluff on the fairytales and the morals and inane quietisms of religious parables. The prince here is an obstinate royal fool. The guardian angels asks the peasant women to not listen to the rest of the angels who will tell her it is her duty to suffer and that life is short and paradise eternal. We even see the rest the other angels and it’s all pretty ridiculous.

This kind of mischief is rare. It was plain sublime. Like THE SHEEN says it- “I’ve fallen for you like a blind roofer. My heart is falling down around my ankles like a wet pair of pants.”

And yeah… it was all at IFFK 2009.

The Last Supper

Tomas Alea’s ‘The Last Supper’ screened this year as part of the Cuban panorama was one of those films I had intensely anticipated over the years. On two separate drunken evenings that share no common shore other than that I was present at the same table as two gentlemen who seemed to have an excellent choice in films, had come up with the ‘The Last Supper’ and ‘Memories of Underdevelopment’ as two films that any person who reckons himself a cinephile should be sure to catch. Having already missed my chance at the later film, I made sure I wasn’t going to be missing this one and the doctor and me were better sloshed and late than never. We arrived just before the grand set-piece of the title was about to play.

A count who’s inordinately worried about how his sins and virtues would add up in the great book outside the pearly gates fancies himself a chance at redemption and he wants to play martyr just like good lord Jesus Christ. To this effect, he invites the African slaves who toil at his mill for the titular feast and seats them across his table. The almost theatrical yet subtle and provocative conversational scene that takes place, rendered decadence with candlelight turns into one of most potent debate, that as it slides into inebriation takes on an almost feverish glow. Even if the characters start off as mere symbols, Alea first etches them human and flawed and after a bit of wine, brings out his tongs and rips apart the colonial corporate mindscape of the white master and speculates on the institutionalization of the slaves.

Alea calls religion’s bluff. For the white master it is a matter of convenience. He presides over the table, alluding himself with the son of God at his last supper and tries to impress his dark-age, racist ideas on his slaves as the word of God himself. As the supper proceeds, Alea shows the moral weakness of the master that relies on religion which is but an easy frameworks of beliefs and values for a businessman like him to fall back on. The hierarchy of a society religiously organized allows the imperial white man to propagate his supremacy. Organized religion is not presented just as a scam but rather as a delusion that the white man had to buy into not only for the money but also to assuage his own guilt. The slaves laugh when the master proselytizes about ‘sorrow’ being the greatest gift that humans can make to the altar of God. The slaves bring with them earthy stories not written in books- ancient fables and songs of sorrow. At the end of the supper, Alea exposes the white master as a weak and afraid. And finally, seeing their master up-close for what he his, the slaves begin to assert their voices.

The next day of the Holy Saturday, the slaves are promised a day off. When the manager of the mill forces them to come to work, anarchy reigns. The Manager and his wife are killed. The white master retaliates, forgetting all that he had promised the slaves the night before. He has but one plan to crush the uprising- to make an example of the 12 who sat across the table on Friday. Here the film picks up a trashy subaltern aesthetic. Music pumps. The camera supervised by Mario Garcia Joya moves like a cat through the jungle. The film thumps with suspense and action. The chase is breakneck and wild and the 11 of the 12 are swiftly and brutally murdered and their heads savagely stuck on poles by the civilized white man who promises to build a church in the memory of his manager. But the 12th man runs wild. From the folds of the white man, he returns back to earth and he is complete and strong. The film ends with vigor, fists pumping in the air. Viva la revoluzione!

It is not an empty headed call for machismo. Alea gently dismantles layers and gets into the heart of the truth. The call to arms and freedom is full-blooded yet tranquil. Truly, one of the greatest political films of our times.

Day 4:

In Search of Famine

For the good Doctor, the Mrinal Sen retrospective was one of the eye-openers of the festival. When I was soaking in the technicolor of ‘Monrak Transistor’ (Day 1), he was soaking in ‘Calcutta ‘71’ which has become some sort of a canon or reference point for all the films that he watches. He convinced me to get myself a DVD of the movie as soon as possible and that I must see it at once. When I catch my own boat back, I hope it’s one of the things I get to do real soon.

‘In the search of Famine’ is probably not one of Sen’s greater works. As a film it is complex, engaging in an introspection on the medium itself and on the ‘aesthetics of poverty and destitution’ and if ‘that’ means anything. It is an inquiry into values and morals in the context of the rural-urban divide. It is ingeniously structured- a film within a film and at first it is sheer joy to watch Sen adapt the New Wave aesthetic in an Indian context. But the stylistic flourishes, aided in no small bit by Sen regular and one of our greatest cinematographers- K.K. Mahajan, quickly tire as the films draws itself into knots and muddles and stagnates without much exploration. The story of the film crew and the story of the film they are making both seem to compliment each other too comfortably and with a kind of pretentious quietism, rather drawing out nuances with conflict and contrast. The film tries but perhaps not hard enough. The characters barely escape caricature and if they do it is because they’re terrifically essayed by the actors. Dhritiman Chaterjee exudes an easy cool as the director and there is an excellent turn by the actor who plays the villager who becomes the go-to-guy for the crew. The scene stealer is obviously Smita Patil playing herself. It must have been said before but that is how it is- she is positively radiant.

Mrinal Sen directs with detatchment, never passing comments on the subtleties while still taking a dig at the larger structure. In that, ‘In search of Famine’ is a success. He concedes and gives away his politics and ideas to the idea of being human. But in his larger questions, neither is there a sense of complexity nor does he claim disillusion.

As it is, the film is uncommon and ambitious. But the nagging feeling is that Sen was onto something that he really couldn’t pull off and run with.

I mentioned it to the doctor. He asked me check out Calcutta ’71. I’ll be doing just that.

Hands Over the City

There is a scene in ‘In the Search of Famine’ where a screening of ‘Guns of Navarone’ is being announced in the village and the village boys ecstatically run behind the vehicle from which the speakers boom and pamphlets are being distributed. There is a palpable excitement and clearly, it contrasts with the prospects of Sen’s own film probably destined for the film festivals and foreign art houses and at best, a run in Calcutta. It is one of the questions that the film merely grazes without probing deeper. But as I was watching my third Fransesco Rosi of the IFFK 2009, I think I was almost about to say,” Eureka.”

‘Hands Over the City’ is a procedural film, not one of those pulpy policers or courtroom dramas which can atleast rely on a plot of cheap pulp for the thrills. Rosi’s film is a Parliamentary procedural. Motions are passed, long debates are held, ballots are taken, there is a lot of talking and very little action. But the corridors of diplomacy have rarely been channeled with such fire. Every scene contains such momentum, such jazz energy that within the first five minutes whatever remained of ‘Michael Clayton’ in my head was reduced to ash and blown away. Every set-piece, every mis-en-scene was a giddy exploration of corruption and the modern corporate-industrial structure and the common man’s losing battle against the beast.

The movie is directly engaged. It lifts the perpetrators by the collars and sheds the spotlight right on them. Just like ‘The Weavers’ he crates the oppressive atmosphere of a noir, crisscrossed in white and black, reeking of greed and vice. He sets an honest man amongst it but the games within the corridors of power are exclusive to the avaricious and the power hungry. He captures the nuances of the balance of power, of coalitions, of the language of diplomacy, of the workings of the state that take the choices and information away from the people. He neatly delineates the seduction and authority of the system which can entrap the honest and innocent. He frames the corridors with a Kafkaesque flair, every frame seminal and the usage of sound is extraordinary and it contributes to the depth and emotion of the scene. There is an anger at the heart of ‘Hands Over the City’ and it is not just Rosi’s impeccable style but his unshakable faith and his love for the city of his birth and also that of the Mafia- Naples, that informs the energy of the film.

Once again, another Rosi film like nothing I had ever seen before. Like ‘The Last Supper’ mentions it is difficult to recognize the truth these days because it walks with the head of a lie. ‘In Search of Famine’ couldn’t seem to distinguish either. But Rosi rooted in native Naples calls it right. He calls a shovel, a shovel.

Rod Steiger gives of those legendary performances that command very inch of the screen as the corrupt Eduardo Nottola and Salvo Randone who was terrific in 'the weaversl gives yet another stellar turn as the honest and fighting De Vita.

Coming out the theater, I added to my list of Calcutta 71- Gomorrah and Il Divo.

Homero Manzi, A poet in the Storm

I walked out of this one. They changed the schedule and put this in instead of T.V. Chandran’s ‘Bhoomi Malayalam’. This one was about an Argentinian revolutionary. It was made by a director of commercials who probably considers ‘Amelie’ as one of the touchstones of cinema. Don’t cry for me Argentine. I’m okay with it. My only regret is that I missed a second viewing of ‘Monrak Transistor’ to stay with this one.

Well, that’s it for the day. And Dr. Fu Manchu. You got out while the going was good.

I’ve got tickets booked for Avatar tomorrow.

But before that I watch a Ripstein.

And Avatar is gonna change filmmaking forever! Really! Oh yeah! Goddamn Simple Jack!

(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

IFFK 2009: Sickness in the Quiet Kingdom

2009-12-15T16:33:00.000-08:00

The Indian Coffee House has all the acoustics of a wind chime. Everything inside seems to go ‘clang’. The waiter serves the water with one, brush against a neighbors table and ‘clangg clang’, and from the kitchen, a continuous tumble of clang, clang, clang and yet another, clang. The redoubtable Doctor and yours truly sit across a table amidst so much cling-clang and from the condition of our persons as is evident from our hangdog doorstop postures and glazed faces, expressions stuck at a go-between illumination and ignorance, that the proceedings of the IFFK 2009 have attained a critical disorientation.

And we were yet to see ‘AntiChrist’. Clang.

The Realm of Fortune

My first visit to the IFFK had resulted in a run-in with the films of Glauber Rocha. After the movie, I went right outside and threw up my lunch and spent the rest of the day hungry and sober. Last year, I was introduced to the cinema of Fernando Birri and promptly passed out in the theatre. This year, the tropical malady comes with the name of Arturo Ripstein. For all those like me and the good doctor who have so conveniently clubbed Latin American cinema somewhere between Buena Vista Social Club and Ammores Perroes, the IFFK usually serves up some obscure, bitter medicine that will burn the senses on its way down, torching all beliefs and pretenses, ratting soul against bone and on its way out will be coughed away in bile and phlegm.

All the way, we thought we knew what we were getting into. The festival brochure described Ripstein’s cinema as the ‘art of pain’ and seemed to cheerfully mention an exploration of the ‘aesthetic of hunger, destitution and decline’. ‘Why not?’ said I to the doctor. ‘But of course’, said the doctor to me and the cavalier duo began their descent into ‘The Realm of Fortune’ forarmed and forwarned. We knew Arturo Ripstein was a prodigy of sorts. We also knew that he had served as Buneul’s disciple before directing a Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the tender age of twenty one. So far so good.

The film begins with a howl screamed into a mirror in the early hours of a morning. The howler is the town’s messenger, a man who stands in a town square, beats his drum and screams out advertisements and messages for the people. He lives with his mother, an old hag. Within the first ten minutes, Ripstein systematically unmoors you from your sense of living and life and comfort and beliefs and plunges you into a parched Godless world. You are cast into a world that runs on the evil that men are capable of, where power rules with no limits of control or decency, where the weak are at the will and use of the strong. There are also people weaker still who are under the command of the mere weak. The town howler, Pinzon, even then at best a grey character, given to selfishness and delusion, seems to be our only guide through this vicious world.

A carnival comes to town and Pinzon comes into the possession of a wounded cock from the cockfighting arena. The cock becomes the source of all of Pinzon’s aspirations. Even as his mother succumbs to a slow death, he only seems to want to tend the bird back to health so it can go back into the arena from which it once barely escaped. The mother’s funeral is a protracted scene, tinged with the poisonous gallows humor supplied only by the depravity of humans that runs through the film. Laughter is evoked and stifled at the same time and the tumult is disturbing to behold. His mother buried, Pinzon returns to his bird to whom he feeds not just bread but also, pieces of fried chicken. The cock recovers and returns to the ring and Pinzon gets his first taste of success and power. As he continues to amass his fortune, we see his initial guileless gradually morph into cunning.

He falls in love with the beautiful carnival singer La Caponera who has already been claimed for by Don Benavides, a powerful man around town. The Don initially takes Pinzon under his wing, teaching him how to rig cockfights and card games. He learns quickly and the relationship, like all others, based solely on business thrives. La Caponera finally warms to Pinzon. The erotic sequences are bestial, charged with fervor and frenzy. The cock finally becomes the obvious symbol. Pinzon faces off with his old master The Don in a gambling duel charged with machismo and money that Ripstein terrifically satirizes and the tides turn as the erstwhile slave cleans out and turns his old master destitute.

The cunning now turns into cruelty. Don Pinzon now sits in his mansion and gambles with his friends. His wife is now forced to sit beside him at all time, she being reduced to a mere totem, what he calls his ‘lucky stone’. The second act leaves the audience helpless as the vicious cycle threatens to continue moving into darker realms of malice and for the weak, there seems to be no redemption in sight.

In true surrealist fashion, the labyrinth of the movie’s ingenious structure is pinned to our psyche. As the images get progressively frightening and depressing and the laughs get stifled further, a strange sickness takes hold of the mind. Even the silences begin to howl. ‘The Realm of Fortune’ begins to sprawl with a wicked will, now all its own. The humans begin to lose themselves, blinded by the excesses of hubris, pain, luxury, apathy in a maze whose foundations they themselves laid on the sunburnt soil. The tower of folly grows towards the stars in a grip of delusion, declaring itself the tallest structure ever built in a desert, never aware that it is coming apart at the corners. And that dust will return to dust.

There is no deliverance promised for the living; only the inevitability of finding ourselves in yet another labyrinth of sand and illusion that we build like it were our kingdom to keep.

Previously, the closest I had ever come to experience an aesthetic similar to Ripstein’s ‘Art of Pain’ was in the films of Marco Ferreri. Like Ferreri, Ripstein stages a slightly skewered reality where symbols come together to inform a prophetic allegorical truth. But where Ferreri’s apocalyptic humor is broad and witty, Ripstein’s ‘aesthetic of hunger, destitution and decline’ is the entrails and abscesses of the world.

Ek Tho Chance & Harishchandrachi Factory

Earlier in the morning, I had grappled with a minor case of loss of faith. The bad news I bear is that Saeed Mirza’s first film in fourteen years in an embarrassing washout that compares with the worst travesties of Bhandarkar. The problem with ‘Ek Tho Chance’ is the similar one that afflicted Shyamaprasad’s ‘Seasons’ that I had written about yesterday. Why do our auteurs who deal in cinema have to bend over backwards and concern themselves with the morons amongst the youth of today? We have music channels to do that. It is disheartening to see such august company dealing in trivialities of pop culture when they should be doing what they do best-make cinema.

So after the crushing disappointment dealt to me in shape of ‘Ek Tho Chance’, the much-talked about ‘Harishchandrachi Factory’ was all it took to restore my faith in Indian cinema. It is a film in vernacular but absolutely Indian in spirit. In the spirit of Chaplin and Tati and with the infectious vibe of young Marathi theatre, the delightful little movie not just rescues and reinvents a lost part of our cultural history but in the manner of ‘Valu: The Wild Bull’ offers digs and satires on history, etiquette and tradition. It is laugh-out loud funny, it embraces politics and most importantly, in the age of puke-puke-multiplex-cinema-puke-puke restores to the medium the dignity and magic that was in the danger of being forgotten.

Rest assured, if I had ever complained about the wholesomeness of the film, ‘The Realm of Fortune’ gave me more than I ever asked for.

With Valu and now, Harishchandrachi factory and other flawed yet interesting entries like Dombivali Fast and Devrai and Restaurant, Marathi cinema truly looks set to enter the proverbial ‘purple patch’.

AntiChrist

It’s all a bit said and done. And especially after Ripstein, Lars Von Trier’s prank cinema looks very much like the work of a huckster. There are interesting bits. There is enough provocation. But at the end of it all, it still feels like a very minor work of a contemporary master. Damned if I want to give my two bits. As far as all the reels and reels of dialogue and debate and breath spent on the film is concerned, it’ll just go ahead and add a few more ‘clang clangs’.

(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

IFFK 2009: Amphibians and Aviators

2009-12-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

The sun is out and she’s shining one hell of a scorcher on this particular Trivandrum December. Reptilian heat- one that crawls out your pores and creeps down the spine. The eyes declare fever- blurry narcotic colors, blind flashes, silver streaks, orange and green flares. The Swiss army knife Trivandrum edition comes equipped with a pair of cool green aviators. Screw design. We’re talking survival here.

It’s day 4 of the 14th International Kerala Film Festival and owing to unavoidable circumstances, day 1 for yours truly. The cold blooded cinephiles have already gathered and are running wild and depraved all across this once idyllic city that otherwise smacks of a quiet colonial hangover disrupted only by the pageantry that seems to accompany politics here. A pirate Mahindra Commander mounted with boom-boom speakers and party insignia was seen driving in circles asking one and all to gather and march in the name of justice. Flags and posters are everywhere but it is the festival banners that stand tall amongst it all and against the sun. For a whole week, the art house and the avant-garde will spill over the barricades and storm the streets.

My aide and comrade, Dr. Fu Manchu has already set up camp in the mouth of all this madness for two whole days. The good doctor has assured the situation had been excellent and that he had been experiencing mild delirium, hallucinations and the occasional rasp of poetry. He grins Cheshire as he says,”Mindfuck.”

Transistor Love Story

A Pen-Ek Ratanaruang retrospective. After Tsai Ming-Liang and Kim Ki-Duk, the mysterious divinations and calculations of the IFFK compass once again picked up one of the most original visions from across the map of Asia and the world. Cool, deadbeat, punch-drunk, lit by the same light that shines through the firmament of our own memories and longings, the time is indeed perfect to shed some spotlight on the eccentric filmography of the Thai auteur.

To all like yours truly, who hold Shaad Ali’s glitter shine ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ as some sort of a classic, ‘Monrak Transistor’ is one on the lists for all time top tens. Ratanaruang’s sophomore effort after his cult debut ‘6ixtynin9’ is a fancy firecracker of a film, one that explodes into colors and shapes and noise and thrill. He spins a cheaper kind of full blooded melodrama with wit, grit, style and a bit of Godard and the result is an ecstatic, genre-hopping fever dream. Inspired by the baroque melancholy of a pop song titled ‘Never Forget’ by a tragically short lived Thai singer, Ratanaruang fashions a tall tale of a man named Pan who leaves his wife and children behind and absconds from the army to pursue his dream of being a singer only to end up swabbing the floors of a studio. After almost two years of labor, he gets his first chance under the lights only for an unfortunate incident to derail his life yet again as he becomes a worker on a cane farm and from there to the streets and from the streets into lock up.

In only his second effort, one can already spot the mastery over the narrative that would define his two later films- that dreamy classic ‘Last Life in the Universe’ and the crazy hypercube that was ‘Ploy’. Deadbeat tableaus that could make Jarmusch proud, cocky intertitles (Sweet Talking Voice Over; Tits, Ass and Balls), breaking the fourth wall, a musical interlude, slow motions, fast-as-blur- he embraces the kitsch and the high emotions and goes jazz with it. Cinematographer Chankit Champnivikaipong bleeds the scenes with poetry capturing at once, the sadness and festivity of the neon smudges. The film may be a sprawling potboiler but it always seems to have time to stop all proceedings and stare in rapture at the rainwater twirling out the roof and the light hitting the surfaces or a towel blowing in the wind. It is in these small details that the Director makes a quiet comment on a changing world where all that is real and true and earthy is being replaced by the plastic and disposable.

The titular radio keeps playing forgotten songs.

Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

Manoel de Oliveira, what could explain him? When a man lives for over a hundred years and keeps making beguiling and delightful art house films, I can’t deny the fact that I have some serious catching up to do on life. I have been enchanted even provoked by the grand old man’s films but I have never loved them as I think I should and I do confess to being slightly stumped by them. His latest ‘Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl’ is no different.

The film begins a la Bunuel’s ‘The Obscure Object of Desire’ as a young man narrates the story of his love to the interested woman in the next seat. ‘Eccentricities’ continues Oliveira’s Bunuel obsessions after his ‘Belle Trijour’, the sequel to Bunuel’s ‘Belle Dujour’. The tale is strange- old and new, young and ancient. The young man, an accountant falls in love with the titular blonde who appears before him, tantalizing with her exotic fan, across his office window. Gazes meet. There is seduction and young love. When the young man expresses his desire to marry her, his uncle disowns him and he has to travel to Cape Verde to make a fortune only to lose it when he returns. His steadfast love for the blonde-haired girl is about to set him once again into far off, dangerous lands when Oliveira pulls the carpet and well… Freud didn’t get it, Stephen Hawking confesses he can’t either and Senor de Oliveira charmingly seems to sigh- women! But it is exactly why we still go on loving them.

The film moves like all of the master’s films. Stately, mannered and poised. There is a musical performance on harp, then a poetry recital. Moments of quirk and mischief. Long static shots for all of the brief 64min. In the end, I was a bit confused. Sigh.

Seasons

First one has to remark that it was terrific idea to screen Malayalam auteur Shyamaprasad’s latest in an open air auditorium. At its best it was breezy, understated and all-too-human. It was sometimes unintentionally bizarre. And then there were the terrible times for which we could perhaps use the word- ‘Bhandarkarian’.

‘Seasons’ is undoubtedly the lowest ebb of the director’s filmography working only intermittently as the director engages with the larger pursuits of changing landscapes, relationships and politics as he satirizes the globalize corporate complex. Weaved into it is a coming of age tale, which is also a heartbreaking one of innocence lost. It is only when the director bends over backwards to appeal to a larger audience that he completely misses the pulse and steps into the territory of the plain ridiculous. He is at home when he gently unfolds a father-son and sibling relationship or a fabulous drunken party among old comrades, but in etching the dynamics of a techie office he resorts to tired clichés and stereotypes. The presence of a homosexual gay cartel stealing software and selling it on the black market is an idea as strange as it is jarring. The rock-muzak soundtrack seldom helps and not to mention a cop-out of an ending after he calls into focus all the complexities and politics.

One of best reasons to watch ‘Seasons’ was it features by far the most auspicious debut by any young actor in the last decade in Malayalam Cinema. Actor Nishant etching the role of the prodigal son Sarath brings a heft and easy sincerity as he wanders in the corridors of a new Kerala, the one that as his brother says is inhabited by so many Mr. and Mrs. Iagos. Even in the midst of much sap, the young actor holds his own and does it with much soul. As we reel under the spectacle of so many fat men jumping high on wire their ugly paunches tied in corsets (a spectacle called Pazhassi Raja), ‘Seasons’ with its young cast and many ideas offers a semblance of a relief. But just that.

The Weavers

It’s only the first day but if I was a betting man and a smart one at that, my money would go on Francesco Rosi as the find of the festival. Why isn’t the man mentioned more? Why is it that Dr. Fu Manchu and me, two not-too-lousy cinephiles have never heard of this grand guy before? Why don’t they mention him when they’re discussing Scorsese and why doesn’t his name turn up in one of those many many essays on the New Wave of the 60s? For all who have seen Scorsese’s first ‘Who’s That Knocking at My Door?’ and have been in awe at the macho dynamics and the bebop beat at play at the heart of it all- well, presenting the original- Fransesco Rosi.

I maybe excitable but this is pretty much what tends to happen at a Kerala International Film Festival. (Goa, you suck! You could never pull it off. Stop paying fat packets to the PR guys and then we’ll talk.)

A chronicle of modern corruption, ‘The Weavers’ has both swing and sting. Something Ray’s inferior ‘Janaranya’ could have done with in spades. A chronicle of group of Italian carpet salesmen trying to peddle cheap carpets in Germany, ‘The Weavers’ has it all- a style, a poise, a sterling sense of humor and morbid feeling of being human, broken and corrupt. The soundtrack rock and rolls and the Gianni di Venanzo’s deft camerawork frames the scenes in the crisscross Art Deco chiaroscuro of a true blue noir. I’m pretty sure Robbie Muller would have taken notice. The characters are etched with charm and grit. Alberto Sordi turns in an all time great turn as a conniving con guy/salesman and he is equal parts sweaty and suave. However, it is Belinda Lee as the femme fatale who takes the daggers to our hearts. Underneath her skin, what at first seems something feline turns out to be a quiet desperation and determination something she seems to share with the rest of displaced and dispossessed characters. Rosi frames Lee like only a master could capture a muse and never has a woman walking down a corridor or lighting a cigarette been a source of such seduction and mad delight.

Before I retire from this festival, there’ll definitely be another Rosi film that I’d have seen. With the way that she walks.

Fin

In other news, Rocket Singh was found last night under a street lamp near the Zoological Gardens with multiple bullet wounds on his chest and limbs. His condition is now reportedly stable and the police are on the lookout for a suspect, a man known only as ‘Pierre’. The only witness present at the scene of shocking violence refused to testify and when asked the reason, simply lit a cigarette and said,” He wasn’t any goddamn piano player.”
(Cross-posted at www.passionforcinema.com)

[screenings] Once Upon A Time

2009-12-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

“The good news, on the other hand,
Is that schoolboys
And girls will not have to memorize me.

Who got the Nobel for literature?
Who the Booker?
Who won the cup at Wimbledon?

And who did Time magazine pick
As the Man of the Year?
I have already forgotten.”

- Man of the Year, Arun Kolatkar, Kala Ghoda Poems

It’s yet early December but we’re calling it an year. This year end, we think it means we’re calling it a decade. And like the good old, good times, we’re calling all bets off, all maps invalid, the chips are plastic, sand is the new stone and like Brautigan says, everything is after all- in watermelon sugar. Senor Edward Abbey, however, prefers the term ‘epicurean hedonism’ and Otis Redding sings,” I’m just sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away”. Les Paul accompanies on guitar and Chet Baker on saxophone. The picture is 30 x 60 in., oil on canvas. Signed by Edward Hopper.

All the good folks.

We would like to thank all the good folk who’ve been with us through the year, the decade and have been the real reason to the fact that we’re still around and doing our thing. Thank you all very very much. For more than just being there. So once again the lights will dim, the projector will flicker and we’ll all hope that the electricity holds on. Proudly presenting this December, ‘Once Upon A Time’- a weekend of three cinema classics, old and new, from right across the world. Music, Comedy and the Sentimental stuff.

That’ll be all for now. Next year we’ll be on Facebook.

Friday 4th December, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949/106min) Dir: Robert Hamer

"If fit opportunity offer in the hour of unusual affliction, minds of a certain temperament find a strange, hysterical relief in a wild, perverse humourousness, the more alluring for its entire unsuitableness for the occasion."
- Herman Melville, Pierre

It all started at the Ealing Comedies. In the late 1940s, the London-based Ealing Studios ran into something of a ‘golden period’ and satire and comedy on film were never quite the same again. And off all the Ealing Comedies, ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ is the greatest. Smart, sophisticated, impeccably acted and side splittingly hilarious, the movie is as the poster puts it ‘a hilarious study in the gentle art of murder’ as the charming Mr. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price who would later go on to play P.G. Wodehouse’s eponymous valet Jeeves), ostracized from aristocratic society because his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer makes a determined and diabolical attempt for Dukedom. The problem- eight relatives in the way. And all of them played with classic thespian relish by Ealing’s go-to-guy Sir Alec Guinness.

Saturday 5th December, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989/102min) Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

In the world animation, Hayao Miyazaki is an institution like few others, like Walt Disney or Chuck Jones. His films are meticulously hand crafted, preferring good old cell animation over CGI, and as cinema they’re closer to the films of Ozu, Satyajit Ray and Charlie Chaplin than the usual animated fare. As a chronicler of childhood and coming-of-age, he captures the essence of it like the best of Fellini or Truffaut. Hilarious, poetic, human and something like a good lazy yawn on a beautiful Sunday morning; ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ is a Miyazaki milestone, a bouncily told tale of Kiki, a thirteen year witch-in-training who has to leave her home with only her wise-cracking cat Jiji for company and truly find her place in the big wide world. (All Kids Enter Free)

Sunday 6th December, 2009 Time: 6.15pm
Night on Earth (1991/129min) Dir: Jim Jarmusch

"With mankind, forms, measured forms, are everything."
- Herman Melville, Billy Budd

‘Night on Earth’ is an incandescent film, a film of lights that glows and glitters and blinks against the dark like neon, not only with Jim Jarmusch’s beautiful twilight visions but with Frederick Elmes swooning cinematography, Tom Waits’ brilliant bebop waltz score and career best performances from a terrific star-studded ensemble which includes terrific turns from legends like Gina Rowlands, Armin Mueller Stahl, Rosie Perez, Beatrice Dalle, the late great Finnish actor Matti Pellonpaa and a bat-out-of-hell-mad-jazz performance from Roberto Benigni that has to be experienced to be believed. Chronicling five stories set in taxi cabs in five cities across the world from Los Angeles to Helsinki, ‘Night on Earth’ is at once and by turns a slice-of-life, comedy, drama and melancholy. All in all, it is beautifully human.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[screenings/discussion] The Joan P. Mencher Lectures: We are What We Eat

2009-11-13T01:19:00.000-08:00

'The picture becomes evidence of the general human condition. It accuses nobody and everybody.'

- John Berger

‘We’ve begun to eat our own limbs’

- Arundhati Roy

As the world tilts increasingly and unsustainably top heavy and as many species, tribes, lives and livelihoods are looking towards extinction and the human imagination is deluded and curtailed; the need of the hour is first, the lucid understanding of the human condition and how the bigger global trends are affecting and shaping our lives on a day to day and very intimate basis. Renowned anthropologist Dr. Joan P. Mencher has been working for many years in India on topics that are increasingly acquiring urgency across the globe- sustainable agriculture, inequitable food distribution, climate change, the condition of the farmers. It is an honor for Bangalore Film Society to present ‘The Joan P. Mencher Lectures: We are What We Eat’, a series of film screenings and discussions, as the professor herself introduces us to the complex world of our daily bread- the history, the systems, the structures, the intrigues, the deceits, the stories of tragedy, and of hope.

Friday 20th November, 2009 Time: 6.30pm

Screening of the ‘The Story of Stuff’ (20min)

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Introduction to ‘The Joan P. Mencher Lectures: We Are What We Eat’ by Dr. Mencher.

Screening and discussion of ‘Fresh’ (90min) A Film by Ana Sophia Joanes

Filmmaker Ana Sofia Joanes takes a close look at the innovative alternatives to industrial food production that have been championed by visionaries from around the country: urban farmer and activist Will Allen, sustainable farmer and entrepreneur Joel Salatin, and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, among others. Where our current system fails us by contaminating the soil, water, and sometimes the food itself, smaller scale sustainable practices offer a hopeful new vision of healthier land, animals, and, ultimately, people. Fresh celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision of a future of our food and our planet

Saturday 21st November, 2009 Time: 6.30pm

Talk by Dr.Joan Mencher "Women and Alternative Visions for the Future of food in India"

Screening and discussion of ‘The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil’ (53min)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

Sunday 22nd November, 2009 Time: 6.30pm

Screening and discussion of ‘Thirst’ (65min) A film by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kauffman

Global corporations are rapidly buying up local water supplies. Communities suddenly lose control of their most precious resource. “Thirst”, a character-driven documentary with no narration, reveals how water is the catalyst for explosive community resistance to globalization. A piercing look at the conflict between public stewardship and private profit.

Screening and discussion of ‘Caminos- The Immigrant’s Trail’ (20min)

Caminos: The Immigrant's Trail traces a group of U.S. and Canadian citizens retracing the immigrant trail from El Paso, Texas to Oaxaca, Mexico. This documentary, based on our summer 2007 trip led by Food First executive director, Eric Holt-Giménez, reveals some of the factors that drive these migrants to leave their families and risk their lives to seek work in the U.S. Hear the stories of Mexican farmers who were driven off their land by U.S. farm subsidies and the globalization of food trade.

ADMISSION FREE

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

Joan P. Mencher is an Emerita Professor of Anthropology from the City University of New York's Graduate Center, and Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the chair of an embryonic not-for-profit called The Second Chance Foundation, which works to support rural grassroots organizations in India and the United States who work with poor and small farmers on issues of sustainable agriculture. She has worked primarily in South India but also in West Bengal briefly, on issues of ecology, caste, land reform, agriculture, women, and related issues over the last half century, and has published widely both in the United States and in India on all of these subjects, primarily in academic journals.

[screenings] It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books

2009-10-27T03:24:00.000-07:00

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘to the facts of how Terra is run. Two entities maneuver around each other, with the first one ruling and then the other. These entities-‘

‘I’m not either one,’ his son said. ‘I’m an Old and a Regular. I don’t want to take the test; I know what I am. I know what you are and I’m the same.’

- Philip K. Dick, Our Friends from Frolix 8

‘In autumn, that miserable year, the province witnessed, for the first time in 18 years since the el presidente’s visit to inaugurate the new mural done across the walls of the town hall by self-proclaimed indigenous artist and son of the soil, Juan de la Iglesia, also a veritable pig who happened to be the then minister of foreign policy’s only son, of a feeble blind-folded donkey being a led by an angry and disturbingly muscular farmer wielding no less subtle symbols than a hammer and sickle, the honking screaming chaos of a traffic jam. The dust blown graveyard with its gentle melancholic candles and quiet reverence to the souls departed had overnight, to the surprise of one and all, transformed into the head of a mechanized octopus sprouting Volkswagen, Cadillac, Honda and Godknowswhat tentacles across the eight roads from here to the ends of towns and beyond. The village idiot Santiago’s death had seemingly, to the open mouthed surprise of one and all, stirred a pageantry that far surpassed the hushed magnificence that marked the heavenly passing of that redoubtable nobleman Don Camancho and the solemn multitudes that gathered to pay their last respects to Father Font. Senor Santiago had breezed into town a decade ago, an emperor in rags, stinking of cheap wine, not a godforsaken peso to his name but a tongue so rich that it would put poet laureates to shame in one boozy breath. Beneath his muddy tatters lay a body so beaten with wrinkles and scars that one imagines that when he curled up at night under a lamp-post or in a shed he would have resembled no more than a crumpled piece of paper, something a Parisian poet discarded at a café. With his stock of exploits around which he spun grand narratives of adventure and romance, he quickly established himself as the mid-noon to late-night attraction at the Rio Hondo Bar. Tales of lumberjacking in Alaska, of raiding the tombs of Egypt, of whale-fishing in Japan, of the Hot Balloon Ride over Borneo in the search of a frog, of getting stranded without papers in Rawalpindi, of his many conquests of exotic women(eight fifty two, in all); all of which the townsfolk took in enthusiastically but also being rational men and women, with a pinch of salt. Not that the punch-drunk troubadour ever seem to care. He was only too happy to drum it up for the listening ear.

He passed away in his dreams. His crumpled body was found by the undertaker’s apprentice Juan Ferrero who took it upon himself to ring the town bell announcing the loss. No one had any clue as to how the news spread. But by mid-noon, a procession of strangers began to enter town. Strange men and women, strange cars and even stranger hats and boots came to take one last look on that face, beatific and ever the fool, even in death. After the funeral, the Rio Hondo Bar erupted in an impromptu carnival. The town, plagued all year by pestilence, suddenly found the warmest of whisky poured down its soul bringing with it a glow in the grip of which it was impossible (to use a cliché) to forget life’s sorrows and celebrate. Senor Santiago would be never be anointed a saint but his heaven would be one with eight hundred and fifty two exotic angels.’

- Javier Reyes, The Gospel of Unknowns

Bangalore Film Society is proud to pay tribute to the masters of the greasy collars and hardened knuckles- Fuller, Imamura, Olmi, who roughed it up with the hard times and the hard life over a lifetime and two before they made their first film. When so much of cinema is about the cinema itself and less about life, to witness these masters at work is to be reminded of the glory and the beauty of the cinematic image. Their pursuit was neither realism nor the abstract. If you ask them- they told stories; and within these stories they saw and captured with their well-worn eyes, the poetry of life. Something the great Richard Linklater had in mind when he named his first film- It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books

Friday 30th October, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Pick Up on South Street (80min/1953) Dir: Samuel Fuller

‘We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense.’

A decorated infantryman who fought in the hellfire frontlines of war, an itinerant journalist who famously strapped a typewriter on his back riding cross country in box cars and freight trains, an insanely prolific writer of cheap lurid fiction; Samuel Michael Fuller- the veritable prince auteur, madman and shootist had survived all three lives, life and limb intact before he took his place behind the camera and leaving his indelible mark on the French Nouvelle Vague, The American Brat Pack, The Japanese and Icelandic New Waves all the way down to Tarantino. The seminal 50s noir ‘Pick Up on South Street’, one of his most influential masterpieces- a tale of petty pick-pocket who inadvertently finds himself embroiled in a high-level government conspiracy, is filled with the grit, wit, poetry and humanism that only Fuller could summon. Nominated for Golden Lion, Venice 54’.

Saturday 31st October, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
The Pornographers (128min/1966) Dir: Shohei Imamura

‘As for me, I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction.’

Never has cinema brimmed with the green glow of subversive glee as it has in the films of Shohei Imamura. Living among the ruins of post-war Japan, he spent several impressionable years working in the black markets of his country peddling cigarettes and alcohol. Not that he would complain, for in these gutters he found a found a world teeming with life and when he finally occupied the director’s chair, he bought all his love and obsession of the down, the deadbeat and the downright margins to the glory of the cinemascope. ‘The Pornographers’ widely regarded as the two time Palm D’Or winner’s early classic chronicles a seedy underworld of blue collar porno directors and gangsters and their friends and family as they do what they do, if only to get by in a world that doesn’t give a damn.

Sunday 1st November, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Il Posto (93min/1961) Dir: Ermanno Olmi

‘There is another reason I am behind the camera. Because otherwise it would be like going up to a girl and saying, “I love you but now he’s going to kiss you for me.’

A son of peasant factory workers, Ermanno Olmi had it tough when at a tender age he had to support his family through World War 2 working as a clerk in an electric company. His experiences came together with his intuition as he went on to become a director with a unique aesthetic that seems to able to evoke the sorrow and the beauty of the world in the most commonplace of things. ‘Il Posto’ is a masterwork, a tender coming of age tale of young boy who travels from his village to the town in search of unemployment only to find himself on the wrong end of the absurd structure that society has arranged itself in. Winner of the Film Critics Award at Venice 61’.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[screenings/discussion with director]Neerundu Nilamundu

2009-10-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin."
- Antonio Gaudi

You are cordially invited to the screening of film, ‘NEERUNDU NILAMUNDU’, by Bala Kailasam. The Director will be present at the screenings to introduce his film and interact with the audience in a post-screening session.

Day: Saturday

Date: 10th October 2009

Time: 6:30pm

Venue: ASHIRWAD, OPP. STATE BANK OF MYSORE, ST. MARK’S ROAD,

BANGALORE -560001; Phone: 080-22210154

About the film:

The word ‘reforms’ with respect to Government functioning is almost always understood only in its economic context as disinvestment and privatization. Very rarely it is understood as the reform of the functioning of the individuals within the Government, and a change in the form and style of Governance. It is taken for granted that such a mission is impossible!

This film is about a group of engineers working in the water sector in Tamilnadu who are engaged in such a mission. The film traces their journey to 2003; how it started in the ‘The Tamilnadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD)’ and showcases exemplary stories of individual transformation leading to institutional transformation. The narration is from the point of view of an engineer from the Agricultural Department (AED) undergoing training by a couple of TWAD engineers who share their experience with unbelievable passion.

B. Kailasam, son of Mr. K. Balachander, is an Engineering graduate from the Madras University, trained in Film and Broadcasting at the University of Iowa, USA. His thesis project The Twice Discriminated (1987) was an analysis of the state of Dalit Christians of Tamilnadu. On his return to India he worked in various capacities as Director, Script Writer, Editor and Sound Recordist for several films and videos. His 1990 documentary on the art of Temple architecture and sculpture called Vaastu Marabu won the Best Film on Art and Culture at the 38th National Film Festival 1991. In 1992, he produced and designed the sound of Veli, an imagistic ode to the river Cauvery.

ADMISSION FREE

This is being Co-organized by:

Bangalore Film Society contact: George Kutty @ 9448064513

Visthar contact: Shyam Khalil @ 9845442453

The Other Media contact: Santhosh Kumar @ 09446529991

(A shout out to the Mad Architect of the Twisted Columns of Malwan)

[screenings] The Year of the Swine

2009-09-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

“F-f-first they told me to lose the stutter, now they tell me I'm not funny anymore! It's a pain in the butt being p-p-politically correct."

- Porky Pig, Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)

“Whether it was the violent sharp shock of the ambulance siren outside the thin milky glass windows or the gentle rustle of the nurse’s sandals on the terracotta tiles which woke him up, he couldn’t really know but as he sublimated from the amorphous to flesh and blood between dream and dawn he saw a plump silhouette dressed in white, balanced on high heels leaving the whiteness of his room into the dark corridor beyond the door and heard the last circular strains of the music of the siren snake beyond the glass further outside the reach of his ear. Coming together in half-lucid wakefulness, he felt the bed-prison contraption of hard foam and steel chains within which he had been trapped for the last nine days pull and anchor his body and soul back into rigid stasis. He moaned the end of his dreams and freedom as the dreaded word ‘quarantine’ rose in his head and the walls seemed to close in blinding him in a blaze of sedate white. ‘Is there an end to this?’ He prayed for the apocalypse to end his misery when his memory got better of the dry white room and drifted into the liquid sphere of memory and beauty. ‘There she lies’. He turned his head as far as it could go and from the corner of his eye, he saw her, trapped and tied just like he was. From all the angle he could achieve he could see only her glorious sculpted feet. The word ‘chrysanthemums’ rose in his head. His heart went into ache and longing. And just then, as if he made an unwarranted indiscretion, he was reminded of the roving camera eye that stared at them from the walls. They were always watching, always listening, making sure in a manner most clinical that there would be no inkling of a disturbance. All the unseen eyes, the walls, the white, the emptiness- all descended upon him with cold wrath. ‘Damn them. To hell with them.’ He closed his eyes and with all the soul he had, gently folded his toes at her in the greatest of hope. He looked back at her. The beautiful feet lay quiet and still in the big empty white room. ‘What a fool I am? What was I thinking?’ And then, it moved. She moved. Ever so slightly, ever so slowly, each toe on her marble feet began to curl and bloom. And he was reminded of Yeats. ‘With the earth and the sky and the water/ remade, like a casket of gold/ For my dreams of your image that blossoms/ a rose in the deeps of my heart.’

- Margaux Rollin, Like a 30th Century Man

The dreaded Swine flu is very much the forgotten news of yesterday but at Bangalore Film Society we have developed an unhealthy obsession with the events that followed the outbreak and have formed a firm belief that it needs further contemplation and thought, if not as a comment on modern life then only to send it off with a blast. The fear and loathing thrown up by the epidemic was no mean spectacle and for a few weeks, the city and the world went about it’s business looking very much like something from Romero’s ‘The Crazies’. So bring out those masks and turn up for the weekend when BFS ever so proudly presents three days of reflection, celebration and the macabre in ‘The Year of the Swine’.

Friday 25th September, 2009 Time: 6.30pm

Dead Ringers (116min/Canada) Dir: David Cronenberg

The very fact that the apocalyptic filmography of David Cronenberg, one of the greatest directors of our time, acquires increasing importance and seems uncannily prophetic does not bode well for our times. ‘Dead Ringers’, regarded by many as the very best of Cronenberg’s strange and brilliant visions, chronicles a bizarre true tale of two identical twin brothers and their obsession with a disturbed woman. A tale of addiction, love, madness, identity and a meditation on the frailty of the human body in times like the one we live in, ‘Dead Ringers’ swept the Critics Association Awards before being typically and unfairly side-lined at the Oscars and features a great performance by thespian Jeremy Irons as the brothers Mantle.

Saturday 26th September, 2009 Time: 6.15pm

The Kingdom Pt-1 (140min/Denmark) Dir: Lars Von Trier

Enfant terrible, egoist, mad man, amateur, prankster, auteur- the films of Lars Von Trier have always had critics and spectators sitting on the fences, fuelling raging unending bouts of dialogue and debate. Never one to heed the sign over the red button that says ‘Do Not Push’, Mr. Von Trier is the ace rabble rouser and we at BFS have conceded to let his eccentric film-making take over our programming and for the first time in our three decades of existence, we’re proud to present an acclaimed television mini-series in two parts, over two days. Von Trier’s ‘The Kingdom’ premiered in 1994 in Denmark and became a television event like never before, acquiring acclaim and a fevered following across the globe. A satirical, farcical, macabre story set within the confines of The Kingdom Hospital- a site of strange happenings, Mr. Von Trier can be found in all his magnificently crazed element.

Sunday 27th September, 2009 Time: 6.15pm

The Kingdom Pt- 2 (93min/Denmark) Dir: Lars Von Trier

What is the secret of the ambulance? Will the evil doctor Dr. Helmer get his due? Will the spirits that roam the confines of the Kingdom Hospital be put to rest? Is there redemption in store for the doctors and inmates? Will there be a consensus on the mad Mr. Von Trier? Watch and find out. Part 2 of The Kingdom. The Grand Finale.

Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

(Indebted in no small measure to the very evil Madame L.)

[water film festival] Voices from the Waters 2009: 4th International Water Film Festival

2009-08-31T04:02:00.000-07:00

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction-up, down, sideways-by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.

The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”

- Jacques Yves Cousteau

“When a great tree, over a hundred years old, is uprooted and killed in a few seconds to make way for a couple of inches of tar where no life will ever take root, one cannot but help contemplate a nagging feeling that the world is about to collapse under its own dead weight. When so much of life revolves around the plastic, the bland and the cheaply disposable, it is only natural for that which is human inside of us to revolt, rebel and pronounce its doom. As the world steps and rolls over all that is life and the living and moves towards the thoroughly modern, it is our collective imaginations that are being cramped, colonized, swamped by TV boredom and other detritus of an ugly civilization. But to contemplate the apocalypse, however fashionable and easy, is to yield your imagination, the only thing of true and pure value that makes one human, to the modern atrocities. Rebellion is made of stronger stuff. To rebel is to hope beyond the odds, to rebel is to tell tales of life in 4000 AD where man first comes in contact with his nearest neighbors in outer space, to rebel is to plant a sapling whose fruits will be eaten by children yet to be born. It is incomprehensible, it cannot be put into words, in a modern scheme it may be rendered useless but don’t stare at the horizon, don’t stop to look at the landscape presented before you. Stare far and beyond. It is there that lies the first light to lead you to a new dawn- where life is teeming and the imagination unfettered and greater still.”

- Prof. Ly Saiwa, The Book of Bright Futures

Bangalore Film Society in association with Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, Svaraj, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Ithaca College, USA (FLEFF), Charter of Human Responsibilities, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, Suchitra Film Society, Federation of film societies of India (Southern Region) and YWCA is proud to present the fourth edition of Bangalore’s biggest environmental Film Festival and the biggest water film festival in the world- Voices from the Waters 2009: 4th International Water Film Festival from the 4th to the 6th September 2009.

From neighborhood ponds to the holy rivers to the oceans- the images of the acclaimed, feted and riveting films from across the globe will take you on a journey through time, place, memories and civilizations in an attempt to rediscover and celebrate water as the source and origin of our lives. We welcome you to add color and noise to the texture of the festival. Without you it’ll just be another screening of films but it is only with you that it will be what it was always intended to be- ‘a festival’

Venues and Schedules:

[Main venue] Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, Vasanthnagar For screening schedule click here

YWCA, Koramangala For screening schedule click here

Badami House, NR Road For screening schedule click here

(for school children)Balbhavan, Cubbon Park For screening schedule click here

(for college students) MES College, Malleswaram For screening schedule click here

Suchitra Film Society screenings on 5th and 6th September from 6pm onwards

ADMISSION FREE.

For information on the Conference on Critical link between Climate changes Food, Water, Livelihood and Ecosystem Security to be held on 7th September, 2009 click here.

Contact: 25493705/9886213516

bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

http://voicesfromthewaters.com

‘If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water’
- Lora Eiseley

Voices from the Waters 2008
Voices from the Waters 2007 Day 1-2-3

[screenings] Bastards out off Hell

2009-08-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

She stayed until the Greek came back, about an hour. We didn’t do anything. We just lay on the bed. She kept rumpling my hair, and looking up at the ceiling, like she was thinking.

‘You like blueberry pie?’

‘I don’t know. Yeah. I guess so.’

‘I’ll make you some.’

-James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

Everyone on these streets knew if you turned around and saw the man, all seven feet, looking down at you, you had at best start saying your last and final prayers and make them good, remember everything, cash in your chips and for what its worth, ask for forgiveness from the Man up there cause down here, about a second ago, your last chance just passed you by. And if don't believe in the Almighty then, do what you have to do. You have a got a minute at most. No point running or making a fuss about it or asking to speak to your mother and kids. Go down easy. Rest in Peace. And that's one half of the reason they call him `Tombstone'. The other reason's got to with that beautiful face of his. A striking mug- whichever way you stare at him, like one of those ancient Greek statues they dug up from the grime of centuries ago but now they been beaten in by time and weather so much that they look like something that came from outer space. Of childhood and memories, there is no trace, neither does it look modern. It is a face marked by graves of what must once have been a gorgeous masculine profile. Eyes hardened and purpled during the time he spent as a POW in a Nazi camp in Litzmannstadt, Poland. One ear lost in a scuffle with some dealer punks during his time in Harlem, the other ear burnt from sleeping too close to the boiler from when he worked the railroads. The mouth was slit at Johnny Friendly's Bar and the nose punched in by the feds trying to get him to rat on his customers. But if there was indeed a scar on that dead face which he sported like a goddamn charm, it was the gash across his forehead. Before every hit, he licks his fingers and runs it along the flesh-and-wound barb-wire. No one knows where he's got that from. Legend has it, that he got it from a dame. He had turned up piss-late and dirt-broke for a meeting, having blown every dime in his pocket at the crap tables. It didn't go down too well with her. She went at him with a stiletto.

-Elwood Reinhardt, Severe Burns

Noir is in the air. Blood-stained collars are back in fashion and ladies, it is very very chic to sport a gun. As a tribute to the glorious second half of ‘Kaminey’ and on the eve of the new Tarantino, the much awaited and greatly debated ‘Inglorious Basterds’, Bangalore Film Society is proud to present to you a weekend of the tough, the dead, the crazy, the wild and the reckless. We present to you the works of one of cinema’s masters-by-default Seijun Suzuki, the man who knew very clearly where to point and what to shoot. We present Bastards out Off Hell.

Friday, 21st August 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Out of the Past (1947/93min) Dir: Jacques Tourneur

‘We called them B-pictures’
- Robert Mitchum

‘So what’s the big idea? I thought it was going to be Seijun Suzuki.’ Well, BFS would advise you not be vocal if you get the aforementioned thought it your head. Why? Simply cause you don’t want to mess with the kid. The original gangster-preacher, the charm, the suave, the street- Robert Mitchum in his most explosive performance yet in the great Jacques Tourneur’s tour-de-force noir joined by no less than the seductive Jane Greer and a terrific Kirk Douglas. Regarded now as a classic Hollywood noir, ‘Out of the Past’ is a sensationally told tale like only Tourneur could, of dead-end detective whose past returns to catch him in a tale of deceit and intrigue. The dialogue itself is a doozy.

Saturday 22nd August, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Branded To Kill (1967/98min) Dir: Seijun Suzuki

“People think I have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in.”
- Robert Mitchum

Now that the kid’s outta the way, we can bring in The Man. And at his flamboyant best. A blue-collar director hired to churn out movies off the assembly line, Suzuki was a true visionary- ask Tarantino, ask Jarmusch, they’ll tell you. He may not be able to hold sway on it like Godard, but for Suzuki, like the greatest- Fuller, Houston, Imamura, Kurosawa, Hawks et al, he had a gut feeling about it and went all over town with it. ‘Branded to Kill’ is one the epitomes of the Suzuki aesthetic, a brash, perverse, fast and furious dynamic tale of ‘No.3 Killer’ who must hang on to his life and fight his way to No.1. If you haven’t seen Suzuki, you haven’t seen anything like it ever before. Starring the one and only Joe Shishido- imagine Elvis playing a yakuza.

Sunday 23rd August, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Youth of the Beast (1963/92min) Dir: Seijun Suzuki

“Where are the real artists? Today it`s four-barreled carburettors and that`s it.”
- Robert Mitchum

Visually, the pictures have seldom done better. Suzuki outdoes himself in this exciting twist-laden tale of crooks, cops and revenge. Mirrors, smoke, yellow dust, strange landscapes, hallucinations- Seijun turns it upto eleven and sweeps the senses turning yet another run-of-the mill script handed to him by his bosses into plush extravagance and searing beauty and cinema- oh yes, the cinema! The great Joe Shishido turns up yet again as the protagonist Joji 'Jo' Mizuno and sometimes it just doesn’t get any better than this.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)

[screenings] One Time and One Time Only

2009-08-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

‘There is great disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent’
-Gen. Li, Doonesbury by G.B. Trudeau

‘Each will have his personal Rocket.’
-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

"The whole world was watching us, and we had a chance to show the world how it could be if we ran things,” growled Wavy Gravy, the Woodstock 69’ MC . You can either take it or leave it at that. But for what it counts, Woodstock Music & Art Fair 1969: An Aquarian Exposition was more than its base statistics- 400,000 people, 3 days, 32 of the best rock, folk, blues, jazz, psychedelic acts, 600acres of dairy farm, one of the 50 Moments that changed Rock & Roll History and for all you know, 43miles away from the actual town of Woodstock. It was more than the ‘fitting end to a beautiful generation’ that it is often purported as. For a time that believed that the present and the now were the infinite and the glorious, nostalgia is an ill-spent dime and any and all speculation, just so much paper.

As the 40th anniversary of those 3 glorious days knocks on the door, we will not commit the mistake of remembering Woodstock or commit something as ignoble as pay tribute. Woodstock was an event of our collective consciousness, a concert of our mind, pure color- the first plucked string still vibrates an aurora borealis somewhere along the atmosphere. It is not a place and time far, far away that we seek but a dimension, where if you turn back mad flowers bloom and sweep, rain falls on guitar strings, people frolic manic in the mud arms akimbo awaiting the promised beautiful embrace and the air is made of the sweetest music ever played. Woodstock 69 is the eternal and Bangalore Film Society is proud to celebrate the Love, Peace, Freedom, Beauty and Music, and play it like it once played and plays forever- ‘One Time and One Time Only’

Sunday 16th August, 2009 Time: 4.30pm
Woodstock: The Director’s Cut (1970/225mins) Dir: Michael Wadleigh

225minutes of not only the greatest concert ever played but 225minutes that changed cinema forever. Iconoclast film-maker and counterculture icon Michael Wadleigh along with 100 member rag tag which included a very young Mr. Scorsese not just executed one of the greatest films of all time but captured what no film had or has since captured- a unique time, a unique mood of a crumbling utopia having its greatest howl. Stylistically revolutionary at the time with its inventive use of editing and the split-screen, Wadleigh’s free-wheeling and gorgeously painted frames and expositions translate with not a missing vibe the grand human poetry that was and is ‘Woodstock Music & Art Fair 1969: An Aquarian Exposition’. Winner of the Best Documentary Feature, Academy Awards 1971.

THE FOLLOWING WILL PERFORM:-

CROSBYSTILLSANDNASHCANNEDHEATRICHIEHAVENSJOANBAEZTHEWHOSHANANAJOE
CROCKERANDTHEGREASEBANDCOUNTRYJOEANDTHEFISHARLOGUTHRIETENYEARSAFTER
JEFFERSONAIRPLANEJOHNSEBASTIANCARLOSSANTANASLYANDTHEFAMILYSTONEJANISJOPLIN
AND
JIMIHENDRIX

Admission Free. Permission to Arrive Deranged at the Premises granted.

Venue: 33/1-9, Thyagaraja Layout, Jai Bharath Nagar, MS Nagar PO, Bangalore- 33.

Tel: 25493705/9886213516