The biggest surprise package of the festival was the screening of Satyajit Ray’s Sikkim, taken to have been ‘lost’ from history. This film was part of a screening programme featuring restored films of Ray such as Paras Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), Aparajito (The Unvanquished), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters) and Joy Baba Phelunath (The Elephant God.) These films were brought all the way from the US under the auspices of the Ray Society. Paying homage to Ray was a screening of his favourite Hollywood films. Buster Keaton’s The General, Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble In Paradise, Sam Wood’s A Night At The Opera, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window formed this package.
Among the Indian select, Girish Kasaravalli’s Gulabi Talkies and Nandita Das’s Firaaq were major draws but worthy of mention are Sachin Kundalkar’s Marathi film Nirop and Manju Borah’s Assamese Ma. The noted Nandanar, a writer of pre-independent times, forms the source material for M.G. Sasi’s Atayangal. East Coast Vijayan’s Novelis about the trials and tribulations of a poet-turned businessman. But the cream on this mixed cake clearly belongs to Gulabi Talkies followed by Firaaq. Gulabi Talkies is a beautiful celluloid essay on the trials and tribulations of a poor Muslim woman, Gulabi, a midwife, whose life and the lives of other women and children in a small fishing village in Andhra Pradesh change when she is gifted with a television set and a satellite channel. Firaaq is an insightful and incisive approach towards the impact of the Gujarat communal killings on members from either community whose lives change forever. Through a few characters belonging to the minority community, Nandita paints a powerful portrait of the identity problems of this victimised lot.
And how often does one get the opportunity of watching Ernst Lubitsch (Germany) rubbing shoulders with a tribute to Carlos Saura (Spain) and Theo Angelopoulos (Greece) with homages to Fassbinder (Germany), Alain Tanner (Switzerland), Eric Rohmer (France) Jacques Tati (France) and Werner Herzog (West Germany) all at the same time? Then there were ‘celluloid pearls’ in the shape and style of films made by Doron Eran (Israel) and Tom Tykwer (Germany). The only filmmaker featured in the ‘Discovery’ section was Kim Ki Duk whose films are a revelation unto themselves. The sole homage to an Indian was to Devika Rani on her centenary.
Italian filmmaker Cristiano Bortone’s Red In The Sky (2007) inspired by the true story of blind Mirco Mencacci, considered one of the most gifted sound designers in contemporary Italian cinema, was the inaugural film. The film is a moving tale of a ten-year-old boy who rises above his loss of vision in a freak accident to concentrate on his hearing ability. Aesthetically too, the film wanders across the greens beyond the corridors of the special residential school and then moves in and out of the boy’s secret experiments with his tape along with like-minded friends who rally around him.
The short films and documentaries section, contrary to common expectations, drew a packed house every time and rarely ran empty. Among films by local directors, worthy of mention were Kishore Mukhopadhyay’s Madhya Rekha, Arup Ratan Ghosh’s Moonstruck and Creation Of Saraswati, Sankar Mukherjee’s Sonali Swapna and Shila Dutta’s Seba, a satirical documentary on the corruption among doctors.
Among the outstanding screenings, mention must be made of Andrej Wajda’s Katyn, a moving fictionalised version of the mass assassination of 22,000 Polish military officers by Stalin’s Bolsehiv Army and how the mass murder, suppressed under the Soviet regime for 45 years in Poland, surfaced only after the collapse of communism. Among the victims was Wajda’s own father Stanislas Wajda. A disturbing yet mind-blowing experience was Tom Tykwer’s Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer (2006), the celluloid version of Patrick Siiskind’s famous novel. It narrated the horrific tale of Grenouille who was born with a miraculous sense of smell but was never a part of mainstream society and therefore, completely devoid of emotions like love, feelings and a sense of values. To attain excellence in manufacturing perfumes, he goes on killing 12 girls whose corpses he uses for his bizarre experiment.
The six-film package of South Korea’s Kim Ki-Duk, was outstanding, to say the least. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter revolves around the life of a probationary monk abandoned to the lone preacher of a serene and secluded monastery floating on a pond surrounded by picturesque hills and valleys. 3-Iron is a silent saga of the subterranean flow of life mixed with suspense, violence and surrealism. The Bow is the story of a 60-year-old man who has lived with a 16-year-old girl on a boat afloat in the middle of the sea. His entire life is focused on preparing his arrow to hit this girl’s mind the minute she attains legal age.
Doron Eran’s films were another revelation who loves to tread on different facets of filmmaking. His Marriage License provided the much-needed relief to a festival spilling over with serious themes and issues. Based on a famous play by Jewish playwright Ephraim Kishon, the film is a tribute to the genre of classical comedy. For the first time since it opened in 1995, the KFF had more organised crowds despite the Nandan complex dotted with strong security, while there were many other theatres spread throughout the city that offered festival fare for those who could not travel all the way to Nandan.
