From the Editor's Desk, February 2008

Now that all the formalities that a New Year entails are over, let us go back to what we do best… screen films for the larger public. Well, for us, the EFL public WAS large enough. But that was before. Now the EFL University Film Club is looking towards a brighter and definitely a BIGGER future.
The Film Club has arranged interactive sessions with directors before. But this time it is going one step ahead. The EFLU Film Club in collaboration with the Azad Reading Room is organizing an exciting weekend of films—feature and documentary. The Organization is headed by Mr. Said Shah who has promised the Film Club an array of films ranging from the USA’s complicity in the destruction of democracy in the eastern Caribbean, the failure of the US government to provide relief to victims of hurricane Katrina, and to charter the depth and spread of corruption between politics and decision making in government and corporate activity.
The Club had seen hard times and even had to shut down its counters, due to reasons manifold. But instead of harping on that we look back towards the month that has gone by. We successfully screened films like Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of our Father, The Piano Teacher, Gaav– the cow and of course Black Friday, appropriately screened on January 26.
We appreciate the effort that all our volunteers take to keep the Film Club running and oh, how can we forget our members!
Hoping for better feedbacks, we sign off!

02-02-08 Innocence
08-02-08 Syriana
09-02-08 Paradise Now
09-02-08 The Vertical Ray of the Sun
10-02-08 Capitol Crimes
10-02-08 The Agronomist
16-02-08 Abar Aranye
23-02-08 Eyes Wide Shut

Innocence
(2005/117’/ colour/ French)
Dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
A parable about the lost paradise of girlhood, specially those prepubescent years before a girl surrenders to the inevitable bumps and fluids. The film marks the directing debut of Lucile Hadzihalilovic, whose seemingly plotless story centers on an all-girls boarding school in a thickly treed forest of the sort usually inhabited by hungry wolves and little wayfarers in symbolic red hoods. Hadzihalilovic based her screenplay on a relatively obscure text by the German playwright Frank Wedekind called "Mine-Haha, or the Corporeal Education of Young Girls." The fealty of Ms. Hadzihalilovic's translation of the Wedekind text notwithstanding, the dubious vision of utopia put forth in this film finds the girls engaged in an almost militaristic pursuit of physical perfection without commensurate attention paid to their intellect
February 2, Saturday, 6:00 pm

Abar Aranye (In the forest...again)
(2003/123’/colour/black &white/Bengali [ subtitles]/India)
Dir: Gautam Ghose
In the `60s, four young men went to the jungles of Palamau for a vacation. This was in Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days & Nights in the Forest). 40 years later, three of them decide to return to the forest. Things have changed. One of them is dead, while another is dying of cancer. They are accompanied this time by their family. Even the forest is different for Palamau, now infested by Maoists, is unsafe for tourists. They drive to the picturesque forests of North Bengal. The three protagonists have traveled from wild youth to successful, and not so successful, middle age. They are looking to relive the past. Yet, the unknown keeps intruding through their offspring. Among them is a young woman who has lost her Turkish lover in the World Trade Center. Lost and lonely, she flits between the effort to relate to family and friends and the slide into personal sorrow. With no memories to haunt them, the rest of the younger crowd lives vacuously in the present. Nostalgia keeps the older crowd afloat and its familiar warmth is comforting because it challenges none of the truths with which they lead their lives. The one who is dying and is desperately trying to forget the ultimate reality of death strikes the only discordant note. There is nothing else that upsets the even keel of the outing except for a night of hard drinking of the country liquor brewed by the tribal communities that live on the fringes of the forest. It is a moonlit riverbed and it is all very picturesque, very pretty, almost unreal. Reality strikes in its own unusual fashion. The young woman goes missing and a ransom note is discovered…
February 16, Saturday, 6:00 pm

Eyes Wide Shut
(1999/159’/English/Colour/USA)
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
A doctor (Tom Cruise) becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter after his wife (Nicole Kidman) admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met and chastising him for dishonesty in not admitting to his own fantasies. This sets him off into unfulfilled encounters with a dead patient's daughter and a hooker. But when he visits a nightclub, where a pianist friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) is playing, he learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their congregations. However, he quickly learns he is in well over his head and finds he and his family are threatened
February 23, Saturday, 6:00 pm

AZAD READING ROOM SCREENINGS

The EFL University Film Club in collaboration with Azad Reading Room is screening a mixed collection of feature and documentary films. The screenings are free and each screening will be followed by an interactive session with Mr. Said Shah, a septuagenarian and a film enthusiast from USA, whose been traveling across the country screening a host of films which deal with issues ranging from Hurricane Katrina victims, to corruption in the legislative procedures in the White House. There are also films which sensitively portray the various aspects of human relationships. Here’s a sneak peek of the summary of the films that the Film Club has decided to screen over a three day back-o-back screening starting from Friday, February 8, 2008 to Sunday, February 10, 2008.

Syriana
(2006/128’/Emglish/USA/colour)
Dir: Stephen Gaghan
The title of the film refers to the way 'think tanks' in Washington, D.C. describe the re-shaping of policy in the Middle East to suit US interests – control of oil & regional geo-politics. The film story depicts an ageing CIA operative who is
manipulated by his handlers' (Pentagon, NSA, CIA) to de-stabilize corrupt local regimes in order to strengthen US corporate interests. A well acted, filmed and tightly edited film delivers a powerful cinematic experience.
February 8, Friday, 6:00 pm

Paradise Now
(2006/91’/Arabic/Israel)
Dir: Hany Abu-Assad
Filmed on location (Palestine/Israel) under dangerous conditions, the cinematic experience is both realistic and artistically fictional. The story centers on 2 friends who decide to become 'suicide bombers'. Excellent characterization, sensitive
photography and careful direction are combined to produce a memorable film.
February 9, Saturday, 4:00 pm

The Vertical Rays of the Sun
(2000/112’/colour/Vietnamese/Hanoi)
Dir: Tran Anh Hung.
Acclaimed director Tran A H has set the film in contemporary Hanoi. The story is about relationships between 3 sisters and the men in their lives. Honour, loyalty and fidelity as aspects of the relationships are sensitively portrayed, beautifully filmed which combine to deliver a strong & humane drama. The sound track bringing together Vietnamese with western music creates an appropriate atmosphere
of sensual experience.
February 9, Saturday, 6:00pm

Capitol Crimes
(2006/90’/colour/English/USA)
Dir: Bill Moyers
The film documents the depth and spread of corruption between politics and decision making in government and corporate activity. Specific case studies and the
'lobbying' system are used to illustrate criminal behaviour in contemporary USA.
February 10, Sunday, 4:00 pm

The Agronomist
(2005/90’/colour/English/French/Creole)
Dir: Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme has crafted a powerful film based on the real life & death of Jean Dominique – agronomist and the founder of Radio Haiti Inter. Through interviews and news footage the evolution of Radio Haiti Inter is dramatized to expose the brutality of the Haitian government as well as the complicity of the USA in the destruction of democracy in the eastern Caribbean.
February 10, Sunday, 6:00 pm

A-Maze of its own...

Ask any Malayali, which is his or her favorite movie, the one movie that will inevitably pop up is the 1993 Mohanlal and Shobhana starrer Manichitrathazhu directed by Fazil. With the fascinating, well scripted story by Madhu Muttam and brilliant performances from the star cast, the movie is a landmark in commercial Malayalam cinema.
This is the story of a couple Nakulan (Suresh Gopi) and Ganga( Shobhana), who come to stay in their ancestral home, which according to legends, is haunted. The eerie happenings in the house and the chain of events which unfold when Ganga opens the forbidden tekkini room, form the crux of the film. Suspense and comedy, two seemingly incongruous elements, form an integral part of Manichitrathazhu.
On one hand, Mohanlal has you in splits with his hilarious performance as the eccentric psychiatrist. On the other hand, the psychological, almost supernatural element in the film has the audience constantly on the edge of their seats. Who has heard the song Uru murai vandu parayo for the first time without getting goose pimples on their skin?
Today, however, Manichitrathazhu is better known as the film which inspired the Tamil film Chandramukhi and more recently, the Bollywood blockbuster Bhool Bhulaiya. Having watched both these remakes, one cannot help comparing them with the original.
In Chandramukhi, the entire story has been adapted to place the focus on superstar Rajnikant, who plays the role of the psychiatrist in the movie. Chandramukhi opens with Rajnikant whereas in the original, the psychiatrist comes in only in the second half of the movie. The plot itself becomes secondary as the film showcases Rajnikant’s superheroism.
Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiya, stays faithful to the original except for changing the setting to a North Indian background. So much so that every scene seems similar to the original and every dialogue seems a translation.
Whether films should be remade or not, is an ongoing debate. Many feel that just as reading a translation is never the same as reading the original; no remake can ever reproduce the essence of the original. On the other hand a remake may help the film to reach a wider audience. If a film is being remade, due credit has to be given to the original and if it has to be adapted to suit the taste of a particular audience, it should be done without destroying the entire concept of the original.

-Amritha G.K
MA English

1993, Once Again...

The ambient sounds turn mute as the camera moves closer to the glass panes with a sense of premonition. The next few seconds affirm
it all in a scene of terrifying verisimilitude. Dramatizing this act of memory, the film progresses with its depictions of human actions of reckless hate. It staggers bourgeois complacency striking at the indifferent rhythm of life and the small lifespan of public memory. Partly resemblingSophoclean audience the viewers are aware of the fallout of the incidents being depicted. However, as we re-live those moments of horror and ask “why”, somewhere we find ourselves transported to the days when the newspapers and television channels were reporting the incidents. The emphasis of the film is on the human response and the de-humanization that becomes a consequence of the entire process. Justice crosses into the realm of vengeance, the idea of “law” is deconstructed, reason surrenders to perverted passion in a world that is almost phantasmagoric in its manifestations. The scarred psycho-social set-up is also interspersed with the moral dilemmas of the individuals involved. Both Badshah Khan (a conspirator) and the anguished investigating officer Rakesh Maria (Kay Kay Menon) grapple with ethical issues.

Screened aptly on the Republic Day, the movie challenges, even dismantles the holiest facts of Indian nationhood and Indian-ness. The stories related are not static, getting transfigured to patterns identifiable in various cities, this city included. Demolitions, riots, blasts, are they the reactionary responses of a regressive society? It is true that certain things cannot be forgotten or even forgiven, but the blood can stop; or we shall remain imprisoned within this vicious cycle till our identities as Indians and our entity as human beings dissolves to mere words.

The Piano Teacher

“[My films] are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”
-Michaek Haneke
The Piano Teacher ends with a sense of incompleteness. As Erika stabs her own chest and walks away through the corridor, our received notions of a film-ending fail to recognize a resolution. This unconventional ending is true to Haneke’s intentions, of distancing and defamiliarization.
Based on the novel by Elfriede Jelenik, The Piano Teacher (Dir. Michael Haneke) narrates the story of Erika (Isabelle Huppert), her love-hate for her overprotective mother, and her attempts at petty transgression of her interrogating eyes, and her sadomasochism as she tries to play it out with her student Walter (Benoit Magimel). A story told through the eyes of the female lead, the narrative subverts many of the visual pleasures. This makes the final “non-resolution” an intrinsic part of the whole narrative, rather than an abrupt ending.
Erika is a pervert, but according to Freudian thought, perversion is basic to sexual pleasure. Given that, some acts of pleasure, appearing as normal, is then characteristic of our cultural coding. It is these cultural coding that Michael Haneke wants to foreground by the endeavor of making this film.
Erika is abnormal, not so much for her acts of perversity but for her being the subject to many of the commonsense assumptions that are distanced from the viewer. The film does not allow a relaxed intake of pleasure. It rather confronts us with unfamiliar images, unsettling the culturally coded viewing of the subject of cinema that is in us.
The “sado- masochism” in Erika plays out through her constant denial of Walter’s pleasure. Her unnatural demands upset not just Walter, but also the viewers’ worldview. The brief moments of Walter’s superiority--the moment of rape, depicts the coming back of the natural patriarchal order. At this point Erika’s own demands appear painful and non-pleasurable to herself. The fact that her demands were non-pleasurable is not by virtue of it being against nature, but because the demand was made by the ‘Other’ of the existing order. Erika by being able to dictate the movements of Walter (who would be the protagonist in a conventional narrative) in interests other than serving the pleasures of the male, thus disturbs the viewing subject. According to Laura Mulvey, the viewing subject identifies with the male hero, and subjects the female to his gaze.
The friction in the film finds its source in the narrative’s restriction of the viewer from occupying Walter’s position with ease. This is a result of two causes -- that Walter is in an inferior position of power, and that the story is told through Erika’s eyes. By the virtue of being able to override the powers of gaze, Erika then suggests a split between the screen and the audience. In conventional narratives, while the screen stands for female and the audience identifies with the male, the former two are objects looked at by the latter two. The gaze of the spectator is subsumed in the gaze of the male actor. Thus making the actor’s gaze not just his but also that of the spectators’. But in the absence of a strong male character who can subject the female to his gaze, the screen then attains a life of its own.
It is the property of this divergence that makes the film look incomplete and freaky. But had we accepted Erika’s worldview, the film would have ended with, “…and she lived happily ever after”.


-Md Shafeeq K
M.Phil., English.

JOHNNY GADDAR: A TRIBUTE

If you sneaked in a copy of James Hadley Chase in your school-bag and read it on the sly, then Johnny Gaddar is a must watch for you. It’s a tribute to Vihat Anand and James Hadley Chase. It almost takes you back to the Hindi suspense thrillers of the 70s. Teesri Manzil, Jewel Thief, Parwana. The title itself is derived from Johnny Mera Naam. Johnny Gaddar takes us back into an era of film-making that many of us now look back at with perhaps a feeling of nostalgia. It does sp by weaving clips from the 70s suspense thrillers into the narrative. Even though these clips take the narrative ahead, the use of clips from other popular films does not give Johnny Gaddar a polyphonic quality. Rather the spectator’s engagement with the film is primarily an engagement with the narrative. The genre being always fore grounded, one cannot be aware all the time that one is watching a thriller. And the film, like a good narrative film should effaces all signs of intended-ness such that the story seems to simply unfold in front of you. Acting and dialogues are the two areas this movie cannot bank on.

Vinay Pathak and Zakir Hussain were great. Neil Nitin Mukesh was a little stiff at times but considering it is his debut film, I have to admit that he fares better than most. My only disappointment was Dharmendra and his delivering English dialogues in his patent “kutte-kamine” style. As for the dialogues, “It’s not the age, it’s the mileage”, the less said the better.

Koel Bannerjee, M.Phil., English.

From the Editor's Desk, October '07

Back with a bang! We would have liked to start the editorial in this way, gloating about what all have been achieved after the gap of one year, during which time for the first time in its 7 year long history CIEFL (not yet TEAFLU/ TEFLU/ EFLU or what not) was faced with a non functional film club. We would have also liked to be self congratulatory and pat ourselves on the back exclaiming on the way the central university status has helped us in setting up great infrastructure totally conducive to the showcasing and appreciation of films.
All that, however, remain merely a "could have been". The ground reality still remains that the auditorium leaks, leaks right on top of the switch board, exposing the volunteers to a healthy chance of getting an electric shock. It also leaks above the seats. But these can be endured when one manages to screen a film. The projector remains as elusive as ever. The pre historic auditorium projector lacks bulb, which results in half a dozen volunteers running after various faculty members through the week, with the hope that someone will take mercy and lend us a projector. The media department had been one of those rare do-gooders, and are we not thankful enough?
This editorial could have talked about the recent documentaries that film club screened, and the intense interactions with directors Paromita Vohra, Stalin K and Sanjay Kak. The immense attendance at the screenings proves the popularity of those events and consequently, their need. The absence of a projector, however, does not allow one to go further into an exploration of these recent occurrences, and forces one to harp on the bottom line: We need a projector at the auditorium, otherwise this attempt at resurrecting the film club and keeping the only existing interactive cultural forum of the campus alive will subside yet again.
Over the last two months we have screened The Rules of the Game, Pan's Labyrinth, Jashn- E - Azadi, Winter Light, L'Aventura, In the Mood for Love, Goodnight and Good Luck, Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City, Where's Sandra?, Q2P, Bommarillu, India Untouched, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.
Hundreds of participants and teaching/ non teaching staff have attended the screenings, and we still harp on the same chord: PROJECTOR!!!
October will hopefully have better things in store, and we will meet you with a more optimistic and 'filmi' editorial.

Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,
Was Stalin K.'s lengthy, oh so lengthy interaction with the audience really necessary? There must be some mechanism with which one can tell a person, no matter how acclaimed a director s/he may be, that enough is enough. No need to take away from the achievements of his film, which were great indeed: spanning the entire country, sort of a beginners' guide to the evils of casteism, extremely useful in our now-urban, primarily upper caste and therefore casteless campus.
But that said and done, was it really important to sit through his exposition of becoming a 'dalit': "A Dalit is one who is a gay-lesbian rights activist, protester against atrocities on women, a secularist, a human rights activist…" and so on and so forth. If embodying the ideals of liberal humanism in one person and taking positions was as easy as he says, then the evils in the world would soon cease to be structural and be mere "sicknesses" of the mind, as Stalin was quick to point out. Such an approach to structural inequalities imply that all we need is the right kind of education and the right kind of frame of mind to transcend earthly boundaries. History has shown us how restrictive and harmful such implications are, and one would expect a so called "sensitive" film maker to show more sensitivity in his thought and interaction (as he stopped short of claiming that this is not the film he set out to make, one can not possibly hold him to that).
Anonymous.

Dear Editor,

This was something I had to ask Sanjay Kak after the screening of Jashn-e Azadi:
In your docu, the resistance seem to have the language of Islam, also there is this reference to ‘Intifada”. Now, even though an influence of cable TV, intifada carries other connotations too, of an Islamic struggle against the infidel imperialists.So, what exactly is the role of Islam, is it a garb in which resistance carries itself forward? Or is it a programme in itself?Is Kashmir existing in a metaphysical space (of course, a resistance fighter was pointing to metaphysical battle) for the Kashmiris, in oneness with Palestine and Chechnya, or are they aware of the concrete geopolitics which then can’t avoid Pakistan from referencing? Can’t that be one of the reason why while West is so familiar to Kashmiris, South is so distant?
Shafeeq.

MACBETH: an Exploration of Horror

Shakespeare’s Macbeth filmed by the celebrated director Roman Polansk in 1971, sticks to the action and dialogues of the play, while introducing the legend in a newer light. This film depicts murders that happen offstage in Shakespeare’s play with gruesome detail. It overtly presents the violence, much of which was only implied in the play, like the murder of Duncan, the bear baiting, the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor and Macbeth’s decapitation. The film also presents the darker motives of the character’s actions, usually removing their dialogue or placing them in a more cynical context. Duncan’s sons (the virtuous avengers in Shakespeare) are presented here as venal weaklings, while the Scottish nobleman Ross, played by John Stride, is presented as a ruthless schemer who oversees both Banquo’s murder as well as the ransacking of Macduff’s castle.
In Polanski’s film, both the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by actors much younger than has been the tradition. In the person of the 26 year old Francesca Annis, Polanski’s Lady Macbeth is a softer and tamer character than is usually seen in most productions. Although willful and seductive, this Lady Macbeth is a rather capricious and perversely child–woman, almost a Lolita type, who controls her husband by persistently cajoling him and playing upon his frustrated sense of masculine pride. Polanski explained his reasons for this particular approach to the character by pointing out - “directors always present the lady as a nagging bitch. But people who do ghastly things in life, they are not grim, like horror movie.” In a more audacious departure from convention, Polanski had Anis perform the famous Sleepwalking scene in nude. Polanski also takes the liberty of interpolating a scene that does not even appear in the play, one in which Lady Macbeth, now overwhelmed by guilt for all the bloodshed she has caused, tearfully rereads an old letter from her husband which she had received from him before their decision of murdering Duncan. It also underscores a bleak realization of how the two of them have needlessly and tragically destroyed their contented and pastoral life together in exchange for a tortured, wretched existence of ever increasing violence, isolation and paranoiac fear, as they commit murder after murder in continued boundless desperation to safeguard their ill-gotten position as king and queen of Scotland.
In the most significant departure from Shakespeare’s text, the film’s ending is unremittingly bleak. While Malcolm is indeed crowned as Scotland’s rightful King, his final speech is omitted entirely in favor of an abrupt wordless scene which presents his envious crippled brother Donalbain returning from exile and entering the witch’s’ lair as if to seek the counsel to usurp Malcolm through murder and treachery just as Macbeth had usurped Duncan. This begins the cycle of internecine bloodshed all over again. Thus the tragedy we witness repeats itself in a spiraling circular narrative framework.
Such nihilistic conclusion effectively renders the action of the play—and Shakespeare’s hopeful suggestion that virtue and justice will ultimately prevail as altogether meaningless and absurd. Polanski thinks, considerably alters and diminishes the psychological complexity and emotional grandeur of Shakespeare’s story. The end result is an irredeemable nightmare vision of a Hobbesian world engulfed in a permanent state of suicidal barbarism. Polanski’s radical revisionist interpretation of the play was influenced by the Polish drama critic and theoretician Jan Cott.
Now coming to the technical details, the film is composed of single camera establishing shots and subjective point of view shots, whereby the audience is made a vicarious (and voyeuristic) participant in the onscreen action. Much of the film’s dialogue lacks the emotive subtext of a traditional musical score. In many scenes all that is heard is the sound of the actor’s voice and sotto voice accompanied by curious atonal wails and drones of soundtrack. Macbeth confronting the witches for the second time and his glimpse to the enchanted cauldron is realized as a cryptic hallucinatory set piece montage. It begins with a vision of Macbeth’s Doppelganger warning him of the dangers at hand and finally culminates in a surreal visual allegory showing the eventual dynastic of Banquo’s heir. The symbolic use of mirrors to illustrate a proleptic vision of death may have been inspired by Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film Orphee.
The film grabs our attention by subtle suggestions. The sun rises through a red sky on a soundless deserted beach where the three witches appear. Immedia
tely a sense of evil is conveyed as the witches lug around a rope, digs a hole and buries a severed hand clutching a dagger. The crown is used as a symbol of Macbeth’s ambition. It’s on the floor when Duncan is murdered. It’s on the floor again during the fight with Macduff, which Macbeth picks up. Polanski’s Macbeth is set in a bleak medieval Scotland with dark skies and an unforgiving landscape. In this film, even the carcass of a baited bear when dragged off leaves a trail of blood.

Shrabani Basu,

M.A. Ist semester,

October '07

Schedule for the month of October

06-10-07 Annie Hall
13-10-07 Amores Perros
20-10-07 Classmates
27-10-07 Pirated Copy

Bommarillu

Bommarillu, starring Siddharth and Genelia, is a complete family entertainer. Siddu is the son of an over-protective businessman, played by Siddharth - a frustrated youngster, forced to live his life according to his father’s instructions. Prakash Raj as the controlling, yet loving father gives yet another convincing and fantastic performance. However, Genelia (Hasini) as the bubbly girlfriend often goes over the board. Her dialogues were overly cheerful to the extent of being irritating. The plot of the movie is nothing truly novel, but debutant director Bhaskar has developed the story well. The film focuses on the need for the realization of today’s youth to come out of the protective shell of one’s family and stand on their own feet. Catchy music adds spice to the film. All in all, it was an entertaining watch.

Amritha G.K.,

M.A. Ist semester,

October '07

Remembering Antonioni

The EFLU Film Club paid tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni as the world of cinema lost one of its widely acclaimed directors, Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director par excellence. He has left behind a wide selection of films that are considered as some of the most influential works in film aesthetics. He was often identified with the Neorealist movement and his films like Blowup, The Outcry and The Chronicle of a Love are hailed as masterpieces. Most of these films were neorealist in style and are semi-documentary studies of the lives of the common people.

Neorealism was a movement that began in Italy during the 1940s in the fields of literature and cinema and remained popular for some twenty years. Neorealist films told stories of the poor and the working class. They captured the everyday life of defeat, poverty and desperation in post-World War Italy. And because of this, the Neorealists were always at conflict with the Fascist regime of the times. Despite that, the movement flourished and produced many accomplished film-makers.

Michelangelo Antonioni was one such filmmaker. His films, like those of other Neorealist directors, dealt with the themes of poverty, loneliness and social alienation. His characters lived empty and purposeless lives or lived for the gratification of pleasure and accumulation of material wealth. Antonioni believed that even in this modern age of science, mankind lives within a stereotyped reality. Man recognizes this but is too lazy to bring about any change in society.

Following the Neorealist technique, Antonioni mostly used non-professional actors for secondary, and sometimes primary, roles – like Satyajit Ray, who too made prolific use of non-professional actors in his films. With the help of these amateur actors, Antonioni vividly captured the life of the impoverished, emphasizing realism without any self-consciousness of amateur acting. Another very notable feature of Antonioni’s films is the use of children to play major roles. However, his child actors were mostly observers than participants.

What is also notable about Antonioni’s films is the amount of screen time that he gave to explore the setting. Here as well, he followed the Neorealist trend of shooting outdoors, amidst the devastation of a war-ravaged Italy. In any case, the film studios at that time were occupied by refugees, which necessitated the use of outdoor shots. These were mostly shot in long takes. They are uninterrupted shots lasting longer than the conventional editing span. The technique is nothing but an extension of the Neorealist belief as he tried to portray life as it flows past in front of him. The shots were often accompanied by ambient sounds in the background, like the clanking of the wires in L’eclisse, where a woman stands staring at a post. Antonioni was also noted for his use of colours, which was a significant expressive element of his cinematic style.

Antonioni closely depicted life as it is and therefore his films had very little dialogue and the plots were also very simple. He wanted to capture life as he stood back and watched. Indeed, his films are a classic example of open-ended narratives. His stories raised questions about life but he never gave an answer. That was left for the audience to understand and realize by themselves. Hence, while films like Blowup and The Passenger are considered some of the best examples of Antonioni’s craft, his sparse style and his purposeless characters have not always been appreciated by critics.
However, Antonioni’s films influenced the making of many subsequent art films, and he set an example for other filmmakers to explore the immense possibilities of cinema.

Asmita Das,

M.A. Ist semester,

October '07

Wicked Wonderland

A brilliant colour palate enhances the impact of Guillermo del Toro'sfantasy that effortlessly incorporates various themes into a dense,seamless whole. The oscillation between the imagined and the real andsometimes the simultaneous existence of the two is defined by theperception of the protagonist Ofelia (Ivana Baquero).

The plot revolves around the allegorical tale of Ofelia who is asked by amysterious faun (Doug Jones) to complete three tasks in order toreturn to her underground kingdom. This quest is embedded in thebackdrop of post-civil war Spain where fascist forces embodied byCaptain Vidal's (Sergei Lopez) establishment seek to brutally crushnot only the resisting revolutionary guerrilla elements but also everysemblance of humanity in a country ravaged by conflict. An arrestingmedley of magic, terror, devotion, oppression pervades an atmosphereunderscored by the haunting notes of the lullaby.

The director wonderfully captures the degenerated condition of the fascist society and its reign of terror that exists together with Ofelia's journey towards that glorious destination which will liberate her from all human miseries. The construction of this parallel dream world reads more like man's desire for a perfect condition, free of the "whips and scorns of time".
The characters also help define the binaries clashing headlong in del Toro's recreation of Fascist Spain under General Franco. Captain Vidal's psychopathology and senseless cruelty are contrasted with the generosity of Dr Ferreiro. Lopez outlines Vidal's character with ease and force whileBaquero delivers a soft, charming performance. Pan's Labyrinthcombines sorcery, beauty, pain, fear and loss with tantalizingambiguity. The truth about the existence of the fantasy world offairies and fauns is left entirely to Ofelia's perception and theaudience's discretion. Was it all simply conjured up by a little girlseeking happiness? Guillarmo del Torro refuses to elucidate on that.

Debasmita Biswas,

M.A. Ist semester

EDITORIAL

With this year, the EFL-U Filmclub will complete seven years of existence. It has come a long way from being started by a heady bunch of film-buffs, who took pleasure in screening films for a larger public. Rummaging through our archives, we chanced upon the first issue of the Filmclub newsletter, which carried the opening statement of the pioneers of the club. It reinstituted my idea of the film club and its objectives. Having been in existence for quite long, the club has undergone a lot of metamorphoses, good as well as bad. But nonetheless, the entire process has given it its dynamic quality that it proudly exhibits today. Over the years it has been reshaped into what it is today. This is where the vital question arise–who or what is the film club? Today, as I write the editorial as a representative of the present set of students who have taken the responsibility of running the club, I can still see in us as a set of enthusiastic film-buffs who derive an innate pleasure in not just watching films but also screening them for the wider EFL-U public.
Cinema has always been considered a medium of mass entertainment in India. But now, the not-so-young discipline of Film Studies has been able to refocus the meaning of cinema to a larger extent. Realizing the potential for such an organization to have a life of its own in this campus, the initiating members (some of whom are still around, and whose reassuring presence makes the present members bolder in their stance while taking a decision regarding the future of the club), decided to launch a film club that would provide a forum for watching movies that people usually do not get to watch. Preserving us in an age of laptop and individual film viewing is the deep commitment at fostering a sense of community and a forum for dialogue in a nation, the divisions wherein we are never shy to divulge. . The film club is an attempt at creating a forum for a healthy exchange of views and ideas without the fear of being judged or snubbed. The Club also vindicates its existence by being firmly placed in a position that opposes institutional infringements on the modes of popular life and aspirations. The club successfully exploited the connections that the Institute had with the foreign embassies and other international institutes to foster a growth in the interest of cinema and to bring to the forefront the role played by cinema (of any type or form) in our lives.
The Film club has had a longstanding commitment to documentary films. There has been filmmakers who have personally come down to our campus to screen their films and interact, like Sanjay Kak, Madhusree Dutta, Paromita Vohra, K. Stalin, Anjali Monteiro, KP Jayashanker, Vipin Vijay, Dr. Said Shah and more recently the Egyptian filmmaker, Nadia Kamel. Each of these directors have come with their bagful of films . We have also organized a number of short Documentary Festivals like the WSF Documentary Film Festival– Other Worlds are Breathing- the Hitchcock Festival, etc.
Down the years what has kept the volunteers and office bearers to keep the ball rolling was through the immense support lent by members their interest and enthusiasm giving us another excuse to do what we usually do, that is, screen films.

The importance of being a film club

After a year of non-existence and seven-eight months of vigorous- in your face existence, carrying a history of seven odd years (give or take a few months here and there), the English and Foreign Languages University Film Club is now all set to be part of a BIG documentary film festival, over five days and many many films.
Most things seem to be going all right, with the occasional hitch regarding the laptop/ projector incompatibility, the terrible sound system and the rapidly crumbling auditorium: but these are circumstances that the film club manages to take in its stride, fairly confidently. So this might just be the moment to rethink the whole point of the film club and its journey from the time when there were computers only in the computer lab, to the present day with the bounty of laptops and p2p networks.
Over the years we have seen a lot of changes in the audience, in the kind of films that are demanded and are being screened and the whole act of screening and viewing a film. A film club in a place like EFL-U where the domain of film studies is taken very seriously (despite a diversity of methodologies) a film club can be expected to accomplish more than the bare act of screening certain films. In fact the simple act of screening films in itself speaks a lot about the way the film club might be visualising its aim, that films are (often and preferably) meant to be watched in a theatre and even though a lot of people in the campus now have computers and an unlimited supply of downloaded films, there are some (and interestingly, an ever increasingly number) who don’t have these facilities, and those who choose the auditorium over small screens.
But that over, what else is the function of EFC in a newly emerging central university? Predictably, there have been a lot of questions raised about the film club’s status in the university and its rights (legal?/ ethical?) to collect subscriptions from participants/ others. The argument against subscription goes along these lines: this is a “welfare” university, the EFC uses university’s resources (auditorium/ projector) and therefore the participants ought to be let in free.
Sadly, all those who raise these objections seem to sorely lack a historical memory. Even less than a year ago film club volunteers were repeatedly thwarted in their quest for a projector. Reasons cited: the film club is not an academic part of the campus (!), the film club does not fall under any centre or school and therefore can not be helped and that irresponsible students can not be trusted with such important (read expensive) equipments (the same students however are called on every time some faculty finds fiddling with a projector or dvd player too complex to comprehend). Generations of film club volunteers (a term synonymous with office bearers) have had to run after innumerable academic section employees and registrars, without great success. A projector is used for screening things, and the auditorium is equipped with a screen (albeit dirty ); but it is evident that something as directly related to screening and to an auditorium, namely the screening of a film can not be guaranteed when left solely to the powers that be.
But this is logistics. And there is more. The moment the film club stops generating its own money ( and I must add at this point: all of this money is accounted for, there is a bona fide treasurer elected from the members, detailed calculations can be made available to those who wish to have a look.) it becomes dependent on the university and its various departments for simple things like photocopying posters and newsletters, arranging for the auditorium technician’s overtime, conveyance/ refreshment/ accommodation of the many reputed film makers who have been present during their screenings and thousand other odds and ends. And this is only the money part of it.
The ideological imperative of losing monetary control is far graver. The film club has gained significant (dis)repute for the controversial films and directors it insists on associating with: issues of caste violence and atrocity and sexuality, coupled with the recent documentary about Kashmir have not only generated concern and discussion, it also brands the film club as an organisation with a distinct ideological focus. The aim of the film club has not been to court controversy for the sake of it, sensationalism is not its desire; again to avoid something merely because of its controversial nature has not been the way the film club has functioned either.
While the politics (or apolitics) of the individual members of the film club may be widely divergent, the film club nevertheless maintains that it is of extreme importance to recognize films to be the most powerful ideological tools of our times, and the easiest way to deal with this powerful media is by actively engaging with it. And this active engagement is fostered through verbal interactions, discussions and newsletters, through the very act of screening certain kinds of films that face censorship elsewhere, or are often not deemed suitable for certain audience. The EFC is a product of a university that has raised many important questions in various disciplines, radically changing the faces of these disciplines and the nature of the university space itself. Standing at such a juncture, with a tangible heritage of sensitivity and activism, giving up on financial autonomy is moving one step closer to succumbing to normative understanding of films and control over viewers’ rights and possibilities of creative engagement. The unilateral directives that can stop the functioning of the most popular cultural and political forum of the university for a year, can, in the garb of financial assistance, control what we view, and why.
Freedom of expression does not come easily, freedom to view and to screen, to discuss, critique and to condemn has been earned in the context of the EFC, has been earned after years of hardships, and once it is earned, it is our responsibility to not let it go.

Samata Biswas

PhD

PARALLEL PERSPECTIVES: An Introduction

This 3-day festival of contemporary documentary cinema from India and France brings the EFL University Film Club in touch with several institutional collaborators, known and new. Over the years, we have organized several screenings, film-packages and discussions with friends at the Alliance Francaise and Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies. Our university has had close academic connections with the University of Hyderabad, but this is perhaps the first time we are coming together for a major film festival. With our most recent collaborator, the Hyderabad Documentary Circle, we share the commitment of making documentary films available for a growing, caring audience. Thus, Parallel Perspectives is a commemoration of ongoing work as well as new beginnings, of parallel modes of thinking and acting that keeps each of our institutions unique as well as of shared perspectives that make the act of collaboration a possibility and a pleasure.
All the films that will be screened as part of this festival have been made during the past decade. Most of them have received fairly wide acclaim at film festivals across the world. Some of them, it is safe to assert, have even achieved the status of contemporary classics. Each of these films offers a thoughtful and thought-provoking glimpse into the many realities that make up our world. They are of course films about real people, real institutions, and real events—but they are also films that invite us to reconsider how to relate to a reality that is inevitably partial: incomplete as well as mediated through the “secret heliotropism” (Walter Benjamin) that bends the knowledge of worldly reality towards protocols of power. In some quarters, such a realization may lead only to existential hand-wringing, but the best non-fiction films of recent decades have responded to it through a range of inventive, incisive modes of communicating—using newer avenues and technologies for reaching wider audiences—and these have combined to make the documentary genre more successful than ever before.
Parallel Perspectives, we hope, will be a delectable treat for those who love cinema and for those interested in globalization, culture, and the politics of social change across the world. We also hope that this interactive event will become an annual fixture in the cultural calendar of Hyderabad.

The EFL-U Filmclub

Gautam Sonti

GAUTAM SONTI is a freelance documentary filmmaker who does his own camerawork and editing. His method of filming lends itself to ethnographies of places and institutions and he has collaborated with anthropologists, sociologists, educators and social workers. He is particularly interested in filming institutions of science and technology. His documentary Coding Culture (2006):deals with the issues relating to Work culture in Bangalore based software companies.

Supriyo Sen

SUPRIYO SEN is an award winning documentary filmmaker. His film The Nest won the National Award, BFJA Award and was selected for the Indian Panorama, IFFI in 2001. Before that he directed a 54-minute documentary investigating genocide caused by a stone-crushing factory (Wait Until Death ) and also a film called The Dream of Hanif . Feted by critics, his Way Back Home is his most powerful film to date .

Pankaj Rishi Kumar

PANKAJ RISHI KUMAR graduated from FTII in 1992 where he specialized in Film Editing. He began his film career in 1993 as an assistant editor on Sekhar Kapur's "Bandit Queen" . He edited documentaries, and TV serials before turning to making films himself.
Filmography: KUMAR TALKIES (1999), Pather Chujaeri (2001),The VOTE (2003), 3 Men and a Bulb(2006). Pankaj is currently working on his new project, a documentary on women boxers in India. The film is being made with support from Majlis foundation, Sarai and Jan Vrijman fund.

Surabhi Sharma

Born in 1970, Surabhi Sharma graduated in Psychology and Anthropology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. As part of theater group Arpana, she acted in plays directed by Satyadev Dubey and Sunil Shanbag. She also studied at the Social Communications Media division of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai after which she went on to do film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Worked as an associate director on Kumar Talkies, a documentary film directed by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (YIDFF ’99). Ms Sharma freelanced as a scriptwriter and filmmaker for television for sometime. Jari Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories is her first independent film after graduating from the Film and Television Institute of India.

Excerpts from The Search,

I remember my first public screening in the mid eighties with a film called Strike. The film was about a strike at a construction site and focused on working and living conditions of construction workers in India. The screening was in a hall filled with construction workers and a few union organizers. The moment the last shot faded to black and the credit roll began, one of the organizers switched on all the lights picked up the microphone on the dais and said – “okay! What’s next on the agenda?” immediately the meeting carried on without any discussion or response to the film. This was difficult to accept as it had taken almost a year of work to reach that day but it was a good lesson. It forced a cautious introspection for the next film that was about the Workman’s Compensation Act and the Maternity Benefit Act. This time the film was telecast and it immediately disappeared through the sky into this vast nation. Again, no discussion, no response, except for an encouraging postcard in the mail six months later from Itarsi. A few more screenings on construction sights and soon I had had enough and decided not to make any more films. It seemed pointless to continue unless the films emerged from meaningful relationships with the ability to move and disturb audiences. Once released the film must be able to find new homes so as to continue to live. Of course, it must not be boring and tiresome to watch.
I restarted working again after a couple of years only to face the option of – “hook the audience in the first few minutes” presented by television industry or to become part of the ‘dry’ educational public service broadcast industry. The options were clear – either you entertain like a motorcycle racing driver with speed tricks and impact, or you were a bore. There were of course two types of bores to choose from- either the arty bore or the message bore. After a decade later, today, risks are being taken, innovations being tried out and we can firmly say there is a life outside television. In India, we are passing through an incredibly exciting time for short films.
Documentaries are supposed to be about real life of the people around us. It opened up the world, confronted those who all this while chose to ignore or to remain silent and gave a voice to those who were not supposed to talk.
From the 80s onwards there were many ‘methods’ which were floating around. The ‘all knowing activist voice over’ was being used and discredited at the same time. These documented magnificent moments in the lives of the struggling people and political movements and carried the stories of these struggles all across the globe.. No matter how much you criticize, there is always a ray of hope somewhere. At least there is a passion that is linked with the lives of the people and their struggle for justice.
These films became inspirations for other filmmakers. It is not easy to be a crusader filmmaker. There were some who quickly abandoned the voice over and dived intimately into the lives of the characters, as if to correct the mistakes of the past Soviet Empire. It was a new skill to learn – how to make the filmmaker seem invisible and reunite the audience in the process with the characters in the film.
There was always another non-crusader route to follow, one that worked best in the west - to appear strange but charming, intelligent but with no analysis, intimate but ironic. This was a skill that opened the underbelly of somewhere in the third world; but no politics, no message, no trying to improve the world. This was a real option…
How do you combine intuition, analyses and memory? Some fragments of dreams with the book on the shelf from a strange, several half sorrows with memory of a welcome embrace from a stranger? What stories lie in the coal dust that he washed down the sink, the spicy food, a half empty glass and the burst of cackling laughter from the other room? What is recalled when the camera moves across the cement wall over the blue painted pumpkin music instrument to rest on the picture of his father the nomad singer? Is the spider on the window, the master weaver of words from below the earth? Confronted by this night so full of the unknown, the unexplained fragments of a million memories, desires and thoughts, documentary is forced to continuously reinvent itself, its gaze and the alphabets of its vocabulary. At the same time it keeps asking the viewer to reconfigure as well.
It appeared increasingly so, that the political film need not only be about great struggles or exposes of exploitative regimes. Theses stories needed to be told but they also urgently needed to have the capacity to connect with the inner lives of the people. Not just of those in the film but also of the multiple characters within diverse audiences. What was the web that connected all of us inside and outside the frame? What image network triggered personal introspections that were capable of change and resistance?
Memory with its magical images and secret sounds seem to be one important reservoir and sifting through it, another way to relate to reality in its many dimensions. Continuously interlacing image, sound, music, ambience and words in a way that allows different individuals to find different sets of meanings in it. Then you find your audience starts saying that they want to see the film again. Again and again, because every time they find more hidden there and more hidden within. All, in our own search for meaning, truth, peace, love and strength.
Film then becomes a space for a set of experiences. Suddenly it becomes possible to find new “magnificent” moments and the political film cease to become repetitive and dogmatic in form and content. Everything becomes political and all things become personal as well. The story begins to oscillate between the tangible real and the intangible real. That’s probably when the fun starts and work becomes more enjoyable as you start slip-sliding into the different and even the opposite overlapping words. Suddenly there us less pressure and less anxiety to find the right pieces/images of the jigsaw because the images are all there before you. Each image has a custodian and they pass you onwards like a relay from one to the other as you tell your story, their story. You are able to find a way to weave through the hidden secrets of ordinary objects and the intimate spaces of peoples’ inner lives and their struggle for justice. Continuously connecting and releasing between the intimate and the public. You soon let go and enter a certain journey. The message and the solution do not lie at the end of this journey. Instead the journey through the film is the solution. To get lost becomes to find yourself, the passage becomes the experience that propels you forward into a continuous search for a new vocabulary in the film at home in all politics of power.

Published in the Festival Book of “Films for Freedom 2004 Festival, a ‘Say No to Censorship’ Festival”

'Limited explorations of reality suits us fine’: Documentary Outlook of Amar Kanwar

In December 2003, I was part of DocuRama, a workshop on documentary filmmaking at IIT Mumbai. Some of the participants were young film-makers and aspiring assistants, some were advertising professionals, others were mass communication graduates on apprenticeship with television channels, there was even an American girl who’d almost got a break in Bollywood. I was the odd-academic-out with an interest in film theory—and perfectly at home with this motley bunch. In between learning to nervously grip the sleek DVCams and developing a crush on the FinalCutPro editware in magical Apple machines, we were treated to screenings aplenty as well as lectures by master-technicians and documentary directors. I’d gone with guarded curiosity about a neglected genre, and returned with an enthusiasm that grows to this day. When exactly did the shift occur? Cinematographer Ranjan Palit showed us a film that he had shot: King of Dreams, a brooding meditation on sexualized masculinity in India; and there was immediately a buzz among the participants about the director—Amar Kanwar. Most of us had not seen any of Amar’s films earlier. Some of us had heard, approvingly, of how he’d recently accepted a national award for the best environmental film only after he was allowed to make a statement, in the presence of the home minister L. K. Advani, against the “genocide of unprotected Indians in Gujarat.” My roommate Neeraj Bhasin, who was from Delhi and basking in the warm reception for his marvelous debut film My Friend Su, told me quietly: just make sure you watch all of Amar’s films. And Palit himself spoke of Kanwar’s style of filmmaking as an important alternative to self-appointed clones of Anand Patwardhan (for whom my admiration was bounded yet immense). So the hall was packed, and buzzing, when Amar Kanwar arrived a couple of days later to talk to us about “making personal documentaries.” He showed us the stunning Night of Prophecy, a film about rebel poetry from different locations in India, a documentary without any voiceover commentary, nosey interviews, or explanatory inter-titles, an artwork that deploys montage and political emotion to build unexpected bridges across communities resisting the violence of the state. It was difficult to speak for a while after the film, yet there were many questions and an insightful discussion.

Amar Kanwar

In Conversation with Amar kanwar...

A dense passion for documentary art is evident in your choice of images and meditative voice-track in films like A Season Outside and King of Dreams. Both picture and sound was an invitation to think along. What do you enjoy most about making documentary films?
Well, I honestly find making documentaries a hell of a pain… I don’t enjoy the process of raising the money, I don’t enjoy answering questions about my objectives and my target audience, having to be a jack of all technical trades while filming and later realizing, while editing, that a part of what I’ve managed to get fits, and a part doesn’t. It’s quite troublesome, not in a noble but a really tedious way.
Yes, but aren’t these problems of a mundane sort, which fade away as soon as cinephilia proper takes hold? Surely the satisfactions of making well-crafted and socially relevant films make up for all these difficulties?
It’s not so simple. As a documentary filmmaker, you keep meeting people who expect you to reveal the truth, to show the way forward. Earlier you were expected to preach on behalf of the State to unintelligent villagers, now you are expected to preach on behalf of developmental NGOs to insensitive citizens. Everybody ends up making similar films. Because once you experience a heavy dose of unemployment, you get quite skilled at being “successful.”
And so you have responded by deciding to make very personal films?
Is it really possible to make impersonal films? I know people expect documentary films to present an objective, detached view on certain kinds of issues. You first had the voice-of-God perspective, which was later criticized as a Stalinist voice. Then the filmmaker was supposed to efface himself, and just record reality and other people’s testimonies for the viewers, just facilitate the interaction between the viewer and the holy truth! Today, of course, viewers have learnt to see the filmmaker’s perspective and manipulation even if the filmmaker removes himself from the frame. So some of us today feel less defensive about bringing our way of looking up front. And we don’t feel obliged to make films that are well-researched reports on big, broad themes. Limited explorations of reality or individual experience suits us fine. If you can work on other individuals, you can work on yourself as well. Film is a wonderful medium for personal exploration.
Night of Prophecy is an aesthetically compelling political film, yet isn’t there also a problem of appropriating ‘located’ political critiques for merely entertaining distant audiences? Don’t you feel uneasy, for example, that Gadar’s songs mean something in Telengana and something altogether different at Documenta in Kassel or DocuRama in Mumbai?... Of course, it is necessary to spread the awareness and broaden support for the political struggle, yet there is also a problem, isn’t there?
You’ve raised many relevant questions and answered most of them yourself… [laughter]. I agree there is always a danger of appropriation, not just in this film but in most documentary films. Scruples that lead to inaction are equally dangerous, you will agree. So what are the options? In Night of Prophecy, one of the things I decided was to choose and to share what I found important. In the case of each poet or singer, I chose the poems and songs that I’d heard or read earlier and liked, then went ahead and filmed it. If others, elsewhere, too liked the poem or song, chances were that the politics too might get across. And connections might emerge that were not visible earlier. As for Gadar, I remember I went to him and said “I don’t want to interview you and ask you to explain your beliefs and your politics in general, I don’t even want to talk about your life in general. I just want to talk to you about poetry, and to record this particular song of yours which I like.” And he just said, “In that case, come in and have a drink. Let’s talk.”

Dr. Satish Poduval
Dept. of Media and Communication

UMBERTO D: THE CINEMA OF ENCOUNTERS

Italian neo-realist cinema, as Zavattini termed it, is an “art of encounters”, where, the sequence which is shot, saunters over the montage of representations. It constitutes of what Bazin calls “fact-images”, images which are self constitutive and precipitates no reaction laden performance on screen. Considered one of the high points of Italian neo-realist cinema, Umberto D (1952) by Vittorio De Sica, dispenses the elemental example of the movement's guileless, experiential style, which accentuates the “to be deciphered real” without evoking any assiduity to the emotional or dramatic impact. The callow, natural performances also contribute to the film's plausibility, decidedly the lead performance by non-actor Carlo Battisti.
Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti) is an august, retired civil servant combating to eke out an exiguous existence on his government pension. The film opens one morning to a group of pensioners, including the frail Umberto, taking their case for evened compensation to the streets of Rome, only for their demonstration to be extirpated by the local police for failing to file a permit. Umberto's rent is in arrears, and despite his twenty year residence at the house, his landlady (Lina Gennari) has threatened to evict him if he is unable to settle his debt by the end of the month. His only sources of comfort are his allegiant and well-behaved dog, Flag, and the landlady's cheerful, attentive maid, Maria (Maria-Pia Casilio), who is equally in danger of losing her employment and lodging after the discovery of her pregnancy.
Umberto’s one chance at human contact, through brief conversations with the pregnant maid, proves sadly disappointing. In order to raise a portion of the rent money as a sign of good faith until his pension arrives, he visits a cafeteria and passes his pocket watch around the table to other diners in an attempt to find a buyer. He ventures out in the evening in ill health to sell his cherished books to a street merchant. He visits old friends in an attempt to gain sympathy and request a loan. Yet, despite his exhaustive efforts, the landlady is unwilling to accept partial payment, and Umberto is faced with the agonizing decision to humble himself, or to accept the unthinkable prospect of losing his home.
Another distinctive feature of the movement, the camera in the film remains highly objective, capturing exactly what is demanded. Characteristically, sometimes the foreground cannot be discerned from the background and hence it is hard to locate actual subjects. The psychology of the frame, as encountered in the movie, is astounding. The maid always looks out of the window in Umberto’s room, looking for her boyfriends, and hence the window constitutes the frame to look into the outside world for her. Then again, in the sequence where the maid goes into the kitchen and begins her daily chores, which I will take up shortly, the camera zooms in on her from the outside through a window, and hence the composition of the frame is remarkably conceived. This famous sequence by De Sica is discussed in great detail by Bazin, which Deleuze restates in Cinema 2. The maid is seen doing different mechanical and weary gestures like cleaning, driving away ants, grinding coffee, when suddenly her gaze gets fixed on her pregnant venter. This anticipates a profound exodus of misery and destitution but is rendered as a pure optical situation for which the maid has no reactions. This is exactly the cinema of encounters which Zavattini points out. Little sequences like Umberto’s reluctance at begging and the mental strife he undergoes, shown by the spreading of his palm and eventfully retracting it, when actually one tries to offer alms, renders this simple case study as a highly poignant human drama. Interestingly, Umberto’s checkered existence is interspersed with moments of impassioned joie de vivre and hence the film never takes up a depressive comportment. For example in the last sequence of the film, when Umberto tries to commit suicide with his dog, after repeated and failed attempts at parting with it, he fails again, but this time at dying.
The dog runs away from him and the movie ends with Umberto re-establishing the severed trust and bond with his dog, the joy of companionship overriding every distress.
Umberto D completes a cycle of neo-realist masterpieces that was the fruit of a remarkable collaboration between film director Vittorio De Sica and the legendary screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. This series of films, which includes Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), paints a sobering picture of society in post-war Italy, where economic hardship appears to have made individuals indifferent to the plight of orphans, the poor, the unemployed and the old. Every one of the films has a remarkably simple story to tell, but it is told in an overtly gritty and searing manner, not only putting cachet on the socio-political context of contemporary Italy, but also representing a radical break from film making conventions.


Abhirup Dam
MA English
EFL University


(Written for the April 2007 issue of the Anveshi Newsletter. A Festival of Italian Cinema, organized in erstwhile CIEFL, occasioned the review.)

THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN

When you meet a family like that of Lien on a sleepily beautiful morning, you never bother to think about the family as a cross-sectional study of post-liberation Vietnamese society. Unlike The Scent of Green Papaya, which was set in 1951 Saigon, director Tran Anh Hung has chosen a modern day Hanoi as his stage of action for The Vertical Ray of the Sun. As the action unfolds, a family of three sisters and a brother falls into the grip of worries, anxieties and complex family dynamics brought about by some unwarranted secrets. Incestuous Lien who keeps flirting with her brother Hai and her two elder sisters, Khanh and Suong share some disturbingly intimate fantasies.
The brilliant cinematography of Mark Lee (In the Mood for Love) and the exquisite direction of Tran make The Vertical Ray of the Sun a treat to watch. Not only the teasingly erotic moments but also the long silences are very nicely covered by some visually eloquent photography and the enchanting voice of Lou Reed. You are taken away to a different world at times and led to a different level of film watching which is beyond the boundary of language.
In a way The Vertical Ray of the Sun is an audio-visual treat that gives a first-hand experience of feeling the unknown passion of the characters, of enjoying the scenic beauty of the lush country and of course comparing the post-liberation social milieu of Vietnam with that of pre-liberation.
Santosh Mahapatra
B. Ed.,
EFL University

Mithya… kya yeh love story tha?

It has been a long time since Bollywood has seen a movie which has a realistic take on life. Mithya comes with its two feet firmly planted in the outwardly incompatible worlds of Bollywood and the underworld. Director Rajat Kapoor pieces together a melancholic, deeply metaphorical and yet straightforward tale of moral redemption. Ranvir Shorey steals the show by playing a Kafkaesque hero who specializes in playing an urban loser in whose shoes you’ll never like to be in. VK is a Bollywood extra hailing from Noida, with uncommonly realistic actor ambitions. even his dreams don't contain moments of sunglass'd superstardom. He's content trying to siphon off a little extra from the production manager, and hopes he eventually gets a role with an actual line of dialogue.
For now, VK is content standing at his regular wine-shop and picking up his quarter-bottle of whiskey. He asks the shopkeeper for his free drinking glass, a demand made with the considerable ease (yet fastidiousness) of the more-than-occasional drinker -- leading us to believe he could likely be building up a set of these humble glasses. So sits the actor with fifteen years of on-stage experience, drinking cheap whisky sitting by the everyman splendor of the sea. Time and again there is a startling resemblance to the 1978 movie Don. With a simple act of role reversal, Mithya’s bizzare incidents like the similarity between VK a simpleton and a ganglord mocks Don. Here the protagonist is not a heroic figure and unlike Don it is he who survives a little longer than his powerful look alike. The idea of a pretentious memory loss is real in VK’s case and provides further twists in the tale. Even after he is sent out of the lavish household of Raje who he is impersonating he misses the children and this makes us sympathize with the character. His love for the two women pulls at our heart strings even more.
There's the aging wizened head honcho (Naseeruddin Shah) and his smouldering moll (Neha Dhupia) who play a vital part in Ranvir's journey from anonymity to doom. These characters are almost cartoonish in their telltale characterisations. And yet "Mithya" has the audacity and the creative energy, the sense of wonderment at life's eccentric twists and turns, to make Ranvir's journey an emblem of life's most lingering lessons learnt in ways that are terrifying in their finality. Whether its similarities to Don were intentional or not need not be commented upon because the movie can stand alone all by itself without being categorized as a spoof. However after watching the movie the audience must reflect upon the question which the director throws at us “Was it a love story?” kya yeh love story tha?


Amrita Dasgupta
M.A. English
EFL University

India Untouched: some observations

Interestingly caste has become one of the most widely talked about and written about categories in the previous and present decades as opposite to the centuries preceding them. Publishing houses have recognized the value of the writings on caste after the emergence of the new interest in academia accelerated and advanced by the various progressive movements within academic institutions and out side. However, it must also be recognized here that there has been so much of work done on caste by European as well as Indian Sociologists and Anthropologists; to some extent certain regions have been exhausted. By now we are clear that the kind of Caste we need to focus; is not the Anthropologist understanding of castes. In fact one of our objectives is to move the debates on caste far away from the Anthropological/ sociological understanding of caste. Our Objective is, in general, to encourage inter-disciplinary research on caste and to liberate the category caste from the constraints of various disciplines
. The practice of untouchability no longer stays within the semantic boundaries of the word itself. In other words the practice of untouchability can not be confined to the literary meaning of touch and it need to be thought beyond the literal explanations of touch as such. It is not a polemical to argue that the violence of untouchability could be manifested in the excess of touch; in certain ways, the excess of touch could be explained in relation with untouchability. Does untouchability take only body as the site of its function? Body being the site of untouchability is quite obvious. What are the other operational sites of untouchability? One particular item of food or artifact or even a piece of knowledge could bring the profanity to the ‘sacred public’ realm. Along with bodies, a whole lot of abstract and material things can get exposed to the violence of untouchability. There is no denial here that the things subjected to untouchability are associated with the untouchable bodies. In fact, these things are dear to the untouchable bodies; they are being either consumed of produced or both by those bodies. Interestingly, one has to take the note that all things that are dear to the untouchable bodies do not exposed to the violence of untouchability.
There is a need to understand the subtle operations of caste in the modern spheres of our democracy. To put it in another way, the function of caste in various modern institutions, governmental policies, etc., has to be examined carefully. And also we feel that the various discourses need to be evaluated by having caste as an analytical tool. This is to say that we have realized the inadequacy of having class or gender as a single analytical tools in various research fields. Having caste as an analytical tool, along with other tools, would help us to understand the everyday discourses on people’s Movements, Struggles, Electoral procedures, and practices and so on in a much more profound fashion.

M. Parthasarathy
Ph.D
EFL-U
(sharathisharathi@gmail.com)

KIREEDAM AND MORE...

I remember watching Kireedam as a school boy. In a seat too big for his little body, lost in the darkness of the theatre the seven-year old gaped at the brilliant screen, his eyes widening to catch more of each of those blows Sethumadhavan landed on the goliath, Keerikkadan Jose, in the film's crescendo. I remember how in my school and the village, the name "Keerikkadan" got popular very soon. It almost became a synonym for "terrifyingly giant" and denoted aggressive and criminal natures. Later, when the school boy grew up and lost his pure pleasure of being inside whatever he watches, he came across this movie one too many times. And invariably, always, he avoided watching it fully. The knowledge of the sordid ending repulsed him somehow from sitting through the whole 190 minutes.
However, the movie left one imprint which I could never avoid willingly: its sense of doom. Captured in the framework of 'conventional' cinemas, the spirit of "Kireedam" continues to stymie my imagination. As I believe, one needs to first give in to fear, temptation, failure and repulsion if s/he has to survive them. I wanted to survive the film. Therefore, when I went home this time, I bought the video print.
The titles flashed on the computer screen with their stark background animation. And now, I can see how the school boy must have registered the disturbing pattern of the title-cards in his frame of perception. The sequence must have captured him all the way with its visual (and logical) confusion. But this time, I noticed something that I failed to register any time before: the continuous flow of music in the first four minutes of the movie. Neatly divided into four chapters and with scarcely any dialogue, the music told a lot even before the movie started. The seven year old might not have been too concerned about the music that played behind, obsessed that he was with the gruesome sting and ricochet of blue and red onscreen. But now, I readily caught the music with its spirited percussion and guitar; the synthesizer is in full swing to create the sense of a violent tension and satanic fury. And the scene that played on, was not a mere blue-red fuss: it was the climax of the film edited tightly in Blue/Red filters. You could make out two men fighting in full abandon. There are people around, cheering for the victor. It includes you as well. And their cheer is taken on by you. The percussions beat up feverishly. Guitar strings are pulled on with a vengeance. And thus the title-cards end. And the film begins.
First there is silence, which is more intense after the eerie percussions. A police-jeep stands at the end of a deserted street. It pulls up in front of the police station with the screech of its tires. Now the second mode of music starts. It is a march, this time, commencing with a steady bugle. The only people present in the scene are those in uniform. The band plays on meticulously. In contrast to the previous slide, everything here rings of order. Music sounds planned and practiced, which is repeated over ritually. The constable who was immersed in some writing takes to his feet as the inspector enters, and turns in a studied salute. And now comes the third turn of the music scheme as the march gives way to a harmony with Veena and Tabla.
We tune up impulsively to it. After the riot of the synthesizer, and the judicious march, here is some refined relieving music. With Veena and Tabla moving to a crescendo, suffused in it, unnoticed first - but growing, begins the fourth chapter of music: church bells.
The church bells are paced in regular intervals. The ecstasy of Veena gives way to this regularity and ritualistic monotony. In the continual resounding of bells, we enter the police station again in the next frame. Achuthan Nair is sleeping. It was his dream that we shared earlier. He smiles in his sleep; the smile inflates into a laugh and then, in the growing laughter wakes up his sub-ordinate. And "Kireedam" starts, all over again.
But what did the sequence of music pieces mean? Let’s put them in order, in isolation, and see:
The electronic music referred fury and 'violence-as-spectacle' in the sequence. A non-Indian form in its origin, electronic music does not sound very pleasant to the ears. There is also this branding of rock/electronic music as a defiance of the 'peacefulness'/harmony of the Western classical music, and thereby a defiance generally of the conventions of modernity, including its judiciary and liberal democracy. It is a kind of music that is built on structures of resistance and ideas of freedom. In the earlier frames, this runs continuously for a full two and a half minute. There is an intangible tension built up, and a pleasure in unwinding, a feel of reveling at a wrestling match.
The second mode, that of a march refers to ordering the people under the conventions of State. State bestows powers upon its disciplining mechanism, and the music they use, for the very reason, stands for discipline and order. Frenzy and abandon totally sapped, carried out mechanically (more mechanically than the machine-born music), and played as a ritual (thereby gaining a position of taken-for-granted ness), the music of a band gives you a special sense of discretion. It is the same music all over the world - in all states of democracy, and modernity with a standing army. It is as if the music calls out to you in its assertive confidence and says:
"The State's machine is moving as it should be. It is all around you. You are living (in) it - a lawful society. And being a law-abiding person, a regular tax-payer, the state recognizes you as a Citizen. Your peace is guaranteed with us, because violence is not accessible to any of those who live around you. We, the State, reserve it with us. And anybody who tries to propagate or perpetrate violence shall be curtailed from doing so, by dispensing the violence that we hold with us.”
Comforted with the myth, we go home and sleep. We do like watching a 'march' once in a while, at least to derive this assurance of the myth of the state.
The third turn, the Veena and Tabla chapter is a qualified return to the roots. The popular music of present-time Kerala could be traced back to three major figures: K. Raghavan, Baburaj, and Devarajan. They started three traditions of music, per se, in the Malayalee popular music. K.Raghavan's tunes were folk based, Baburaj composed with an overt leaning to generally north Indian and specially Hindustani variety music, and Devarajan was someone who adhered strictly to the Karnatic classical music. It was not that they were not ready to move outside these boxes but the statistical majority in their songs back my general inferences. After them, we had composers like Johnson, Ouseppachan, Shyam, Jerry-Amaldev, Mohan Sithara and Raveendran. The first two had their apprenticeships with Devarajan and they only advanced his way of composing with a little bit more sophistication. Raveendran set out to clear an altogether fresher field of experience tagging onto Karnatic classical music bases. His songs blazed leads for savoring a newer kind of film music, which mellowed the effects of Karnatic music to suit the mass. Without any doubt, he was the most heard and loved of all new generation Malayalam music directors. What evidences out of this extremely limited survey, however, is that as Shyam and Jerry Amaldev dissociated themselves with the field, any strain of western/ electronic music that would have entered the Malayalee music consciousness also got ousted. Now Raveendran, Johnson and Ouseppachan held the helm with a strictly Karnatic classical brand of music. This became the determining taste for songs in Kerala thereon. And this music, being the most emotionally accessible one, therefore, is used most of the time in Malayalam films for background effects.
The fourth ring of music is that of the church bells, which carries the colonial ghosts within. The Catholic churches with their imposing architecture and music, reveal their connotations of spiritual profundity and fear of the lord. The point is that church bells in their depth and resonance represent the spirit and its purgation.
Coming back to the film, the sliding of the music from one category to another in the first four minutes of "Kireedam" signifies more than what the film pretends to say. It speaks of a few modes of imaging a society and the tensions within. Above all, it is music in four contexts which is guiding our perceptive awareness. It connects vis-à-vis its music to the below-conscious levels.
K.Arunlal
PhD. EFL University
(For the complete article log on to www.kappummal.blogspot.com)

Tere darbar mein khwaja…

With “khwaja mere khwaja” A R Rahman has paid yet another musical tribute to his spiritual mentor Khwaja Mohyuddin Chisti, the sufi saint. The story is that the song was not actually composed for the movie, but was meant to be in a separate album by Rahman under the label K M Music. Ashutosh Gowariker happened to hear it and wanted it for Jodhaa Akbar. Thus, while all the other songs in the film were penned by Javed Akhtar, Khwaja… ‘s lyrics are by Kashif. And KM is Khwaja Mohyuddin. In fact, this whole intersection of the sufi saint, the film about the Mughal emperor, the private music label, its discovery by the director, all lead us to more important questions regarding Rahman and his music. When we go further into it, it also concerns questions of autonomy of the different constituents of the industry.
On the launch of KM Music, A R Rahman said, “My label will be devoted to putting out alternate music – the kind of sound I don’t have the freedom to create in movies.”(1) It is known that music directors are bound by the film directors in ways more than one. The film director decides the number of songs, the settings; he selects the final version from a variety of versions(2), and even suggests the singers.(3) But this doesn’t mean that the music director is at the mercy of the director, for, it is also the choice of the music director whether to work with a particular director for a particular film. Rahman himself makes this clear, “After Roja, I tended to be very repetitive and stereotyped as a music director because most of my films had numbers, which were dance-oriented. In the past three years(4), I was very keen on working on a period music. I could get that opportunity with Lagaan. You see, it is difficult to set your mind to Chennai and Mumbai audiences. I do confess that I was struggling to come out of the rut in which I started finding myself. It was very difficult.”(5)
We can number it this way:1) Rahman wants to move away from dance-oriented music to period music, 2) He wants to set his music to audiences other than that of Mumbai and Chennai, and 3) He has finally achieved it. This brings us to the question: what is the relationship between period music and the audiences other than that of Mumbai and Chennai? What is the connection between Rahman’s internationalism, his film selection in Bollywood in the past few years(6), and the audience that Rahman has in mind?
Rahman’s first grand international project was in Munich in the year 1999 with Michael Jackson, titled Ekam Satyam. The project had English and Sanskrit lyrics, to be performed by MJ and Rahman. Actually meant to be a part of “Michael Jackson and Friends Concert”, its popularity with Jackson fans in the west resulted in it being released as a single. Then came Lagaan, nominated for Oscars. Rahman continued with period music in The Legend Of Bhagat Singh, Bose: The Forgotten Hero, Mangal Pandey and now Jodhaa Akbar. In between came Rang De Basanti, noted for its patriotic theme, and Guru(7). Bombay Dreams, Warriors of Heaven and Earth and Lord of the Rings too find their place. While it might be the compulsion of the period movies, it is worthwhile to notice the number of religious songs he has composed in this period too – Piya Haji Ali (Fiza), O Paalanhare (Lagaan), Zikr (Bose), Al Maddath Maula (Mangal Pandey), Ek Onkaar (RDB), and more. There is a marked difference in Rahman’s musical style too, as he tries to delve more into folk and Sufi, and away from his earlier dance numbers.

The musical output of Rahman in the past few years, being as they are expressions of piety and patriotism, is not out of sync with his internationalism. In fact, it is the “indianness” that allows him to be international. In other words, Rahman is an example of a continuing Orientalism in the western mind, a figure through whom they explore the intricacy that is India. It is the compulsion of this orientalism that the more Rahman is international, the more he should be Indian. This representation of a nation through a man is achieved in various stages, Vande Mataram being the most important moment. Jana Gana Mana added more to it as Rahman fused the anthem, the nation and its diversity in his octave. And when Rahman sang One Love, it was but natural, for Rahman Had become the musical ambassador of India.(8) In other words, Rahman’s internationalism is exigent on Rahman’s authenticity as an Indian(9). Rahman’s events then transform into “Indian” events and a celebration of “Indianhood”.(10)
Contrary to discourses of cosmopolitanism, Rahman thus becomes the essential Indian, devout, a musician with a purpose, a musical equivalent of the celebrated mystics of the Orient.

Footnotes
(1) A R Rahman floated his music label on April 18, 2007. The label does not propose to bring out music on its own label, but to sell them to companies like Sony.
(2) a link to a variation of “ey khuda hafiz” from Yuva is available in the A R Rahman Fans community in Orkut.
(3) It was Maniratnam’s wish that “Tere Bina” from Guru be sung by Rahman.
(4) The interview, I guess by the reference to Lagaan (2001) and Ekam Satyam(1999)in the full text of the interview), should have been in 2001-2. But I couldn’t find any way to know for sure .
(5)http://www.bollyvista.com/article/a/34/2814/
(6) I will be referring to Bollywood but not Kollywood, because, though Tamil films have wide international audience, they do not compare with the Bollywood films. Sivaji:The Boss, released 2007, was the first-ever Tamil movie to make it to UK Top Ten- at no.9.
(7) not forgetting Yuva, which stands apart. Lakeer and Tehzeeb were however not very arresting, and therefore ignorable.
(8) One Love(Ek Mohabbat) was to promote Taj Mahal as one of the seven wonders of the world.
(9) Interesting to note is the role of Rahman as a musician from East in the reviews of Bombay Dreams. London Opening Night press quotes says “The Wonder of East has worked its magic in the West End”, “BOMBAY DREAMS brings wonder of East to West End”.
The theatre review by Matthew Murray says, “Those musical numbers could hardly be more authentic”.
“…A R Rahman’s music seems to be Indian but sometimes tinkered with for the Western ear. It’s pleasant enough and repetitive to be catchy but never satisfying, I suspect, to either culture”, writes Elyse Sommer, “Bombay Dreams comes to Broadway”, Curtain Up: the internet theater magazine of reviews, features, annotated listings. a review more negative is by Simon Saltzman for July 7, 2004 edition of US 1 Newspaper, “Indian composer A R Rahman, who is ostensibly known throughout India as “the Asian Mozart”, has written a monotonous and irritating east-meets-west score that thrives on the sound of drums”.
(10) The Strait Times of Singapore reports of a Ms. Akike Tavaka, 34, who flew into Singapore from Japan to attend Rahman’s concert. After arriving there, she shopped for a salwar-kameez which she wore to the show. Bhagyashree Garekar, “Four Hours of Music Magic”, Sep. 23, 2005.


Mohamed Shafeeq K
M.Phil., EFL University
(This article is part of a larger study. Please feel free to write in your
suggestions, opinions and corrections to shafeeq.vly@gmail.com)