FROM
BOSNIA Luckily for the diehard film-buffs religiously attending yet another film festival, the fog — it comes so suddenly and lifts so lethargically — has lifted over Siri Fort. The low white domes gleam palely in the weak sunlight but that doesn’t dampen the determined cineaste rushing madly from one screening to another, desperately chasing films in the hope of achieving filmic nirvana or sorts. Hope triumphs over experience yet again. But this time, in the familiar scenario of much of a muchness, the four film package, Perspective From Sarajevo, made the festival a worthwhile exercise. The war in Bosnia has been too much with us and images from TV have been an overkill of an ongoing, insoluble tragedy. The overload of information had destroyed our perspective and inured our conscience. It is precisely to shake us out of collective apathy that these outstanding films seem to have been made with the kind of urgency which has often been missing in an era when a new sensational story pushes an interminable war to the backburner of history. It seems only right that European filmmakers bring both a historical perspective and contemporary urgency to a war in their backyard. But even more remarkable is the way Bernard Henri Levi (director of Bosnia) and Michael Winterborrom (director of Welcome to Sarajevo) have explored the interconnectedness of film and television. Levi’s film links the struggle of Bosnians against the surge of Serbian expansionism to the fight in Spain against fascism and the horrors of Nazism. Levi indicts European politicians and their apologist for their apathy to the plight of Bosnia even while television brought the horrors of ethnic cleansing to discreetly tasteful living rooms in Europe and America. Levi is reportedly an apologist of French nationalism but he is unsparing in his criticism of the policies of his country and that of the West in general. What his film sets right is most significant: don’t treat the brave Bosnian fighters as poor victims. They are nationalists fighting for their homes and an integrated way of life. Levi’s film, which marries a deeply analytical, intellectually stimulating commentary with heart wrenching visuals, underlines a message which the world would rather forget. And that is simply this: Sarajevo is a cradle of European culture and not the stage to fight out ancient, internecine, tribal enmities supposedly endemic to the Balkans. And also the fact that the Bosnian Muslims are not the dreaded fundamentalists but a liberal lot who tolerate dissent. That is why, sending mere aid to the beleaguered Bosnians is an insult because what they need is military support. If Levi’s film is intellectually invigorating in its typically Gallic argumentative style, the UK/USA co-production, Welcome To Sarajevo concentrates on the personal dilemma of a British reporter based in Sarajevo. Michael Winterborrom’s film questions the ethics of what makes news. The hardy and tough TV reporters spend their nights in desperate drinking bouts, huddled together in the one surviving international hotel while all around them, death strikes the young and the old with chilling indifference. Deprivation stalks the once glittering and fashionable resort while orphaned children face a bleak and uncertain future. Michael rebels against the lopsided sense of newsworthiness as dictated by the producers tuned into popular taste. He files a story about the concentration camps while it is the divorce of the Duke and Duchess of York which becomes the lead story. The film juxtaposes the two seeming irreconcilables: the reporter’s objectivity and his responsibility as a sensitive human being. Michael risks his professional standing to smuggle out a 9-year-old Bosnian girl to whom he is particularly drawn to England and to the safety of his own home. Though the film ends on an upbeat, heartwarming note, it never lets us lose sight of the greater tragedy going on within and outside the limits of the script. The third film seen so far at IFFI ’98 is a poignant feature, The Perfect Circle, made by Ademir Konovie of Bosnia. A middle-aged poet chooses to stay back in Sarajevo even when his nagging wife and adored daughter leave for the safety of Italy. Two orphaned brothers, one of them a deaf-mute, seek shelter in his house. The director who has made the film from his heart depicts the bonds of affection — delicate as silk and strong as steel — which grow with the spontaneity of flowers unfolding. There is humour, warmth and unbearable if inevitable tragedy as the poet and his friends try to smuggle the boys — who are minus the all important papers — to a safe place. The endearing little boy Adir dies in yet another replay of the sacrifice of the innocents. These are films which deserve urgent wider viewing and Doordarshan — or Star TV which has shown a willingness to telecast non-Hollywood fare — must acquire them. Because the questions these films raise go beyond Bosnia. Who says genocide and the underlying urge to find the hated Other (whom you can blame for all that is wrong in your own society) is not out stalking the Indian countryside? The passion and rage these films provoke somehow diminish the impact of the other films seen so far, even though they are worthy enough cinematically speaking. The opening film, Carlos Sauras’ Pajarico may not have the breathtaking spectacle of his classics like Carmen and Blood Wedding. Nevertheless, it is an engaging and many-layered film which combines the simple story of a young boy visiting his large extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins (which lives in the vibrant South) and a meditation on Spain, its varied cultures and turbulent history. Perhaps most filmmakers feel this urge to face their family story and fuse memory into the wider spectrum of history. |
|
||||||
|
