The 10th MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images)Film festival, which concluded recently, was indeed one of the best and biggest editions of the festival till date. The range of subjects, quality of films and their recentness (most of the entries were critically acclaimed 2007 releases) was impressive. Here’s presenting a dedicated attendee’s pick of the festival’s most impressive from its non-competitive section - Global Vision - that showcased over 90 films from 40 countries including first time entrants like Uruguay, Peru, Colombia and Romania.
Cristian Mungiu’s Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) revolving around the issue of abortion, told against the backdrop of a deep friendship between two girl students, in the final days of communism, not only emerged as one of the festival’s biggest attractions, but also released to enthusiastic reviews across India this week. The film had also bagged the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival. Accolades at Cannes seemed to be a driver attract behind most of MAMI’s top draws this year like the concluding human drama from Japan, Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest (2007), which won the Grand Prix winner at the 2007 Cannes festival. According to the festival’s artistic director Sudhir Nandgaonkar, one of the highlights of this year’s MAMI was the procuring of an all time high number of films from Cannes and Berlin. Most of the entries in the Global Vision seemed to have made a tour at various film festivals apart from picking an award or two too.
However, festival awardees apart, there were some heart-warming non-festival feted films too, like actor turned director Antonio Banderas’ adaptation of the Spanish novel Summer Rain (2006). If one had to explain it’s must see status to an Indian audience - it’s Dil Chahta Hai in Spanish. This slice of life journey of three youngsters on the threshold of adulthood through the first experiences of love, pain and responsibilities, enjoyed a universal echo. It revolved around a hot headed, but very protective Babirusa, a poetically inclined introvert Miguelito, (who also shares more than a fling with an older woman) and a rich, libidinous Paco and how they wake up to life’s lessons through individual and communal bitter sweet experiences. Banderas’ direction was one of the festival’s best films celebrating youth and friendship.
European entries led the MAMI show list this year with Spain, (outside the Carlos Saura ‘Filmmaker in Focus’ showcase), Poland and Germany topping the list of maximum entries per country. However, while the films from Spain and Poland had more to offer in terms of choice of subjects, the contemporary central Europe collection disappointed a bit in its sameness of stories often revolving around adultery and cheating couples. Matthias Luthardt’s Ping Pong (Germany, 2006) and Sabine Derflinger’s 42 Plus (Austria, 2007) - for instance revolved around predictable plot lines involving middle-aged mothers having sex with teens of their kid’s ages. 42 Plus, however, did have some well-written moments and lines on life’s loves and losses, a subject quite realistically tackled in the lesser known Egyptian entry, Kamla Abou-Zekry’s In Passion and Love (2005), which was a more believable version of a Laaga Chunri Mein Daag .
But it was the Germany/Turkey spanning Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) that could easily count amongst not only one of the best European entries, but also one of the top 10 films at this year’s festival. Proceeding a bit like Inarritu’s Babel , weaving totally unconnected people into each other’s lives, the Palm D’or nominated film on the quest of a young Germany based Turkish professor through Istanbul looking for the daughter of his father’s former girlfriend told an empathetic story on family values and human bonds narrated with the touch of a thriller interspersed with masterly scripted moments of ifs and buts. Human bonding was also the theme of another Cannes feted, witty, yet poignant Israel film Jellyfish (2007) on three different women living in Tel Aviv with a heart warming track between a tough Jewish lady and her non-Hebrew speaking domestic worker from Philippines.
The films from Africa and the Middle-east were more on celebrating and cementing the family bond through testing moments of personal and professional turmoil. Case in point was the South African entry, Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana (2007), based on the memoirs of the South African leader, Nelson Mandela’s white prison guard, James Gregory, on his individual journey from a racist to humanist through his 20 years of guarding the most famous political prisoner of the 20th century.
While on jails and wars, the Jamil Rostami directed Iraqi film Jani Gal (2006) based on a novel by the same name about a Kurdish Iraqi man coming to terms in a post war Iraq on his return from jail, 10 years after he was mistakenly arrested on his way to secure a mid-wife for his pregnant wife, did leave a mark as a poignant ode to life in a war ravaged nation. The film raises a pertinent question on whether life outside the jail (along with its brutalities) is really better or safer, though hope lives in that still intact famed Arabic hospitability, warmth and value for one’s word. A must watch contemporary war tragedy, just like the inaugural film Andrej Wazda’s Oscar nominated Polish film Katyn (2007), on the tragedy of a generation of Polish citizens massacred by Soviet authorities in 1940 told through individual stories of the suffering women -wives, mothers, daughters and sisters - left back.
War and the effect of changing regimes in a citizen’s life inspired an interesting telling in the Berlin Film Festival FIPRESCI prize winner, I Served the King of England (2007) by Jiri Menzel, one of the best known Czech directors . Moving as two parallel stories, it documents the past exploits of an ambitious young waiter ‘whose only luck was in courting bad luck,’ and then of his present in an abandoned German village, which he has made his home after serving a prison sentence of 15 years. Laced in humour, in spite of the backdrop of a global tragedy, cine lovers will find an echo to Life is Beautiful in this offering.
Celebrating living in spite of the wars was the Lebanese entry by debut director Nadine Labaki, Caramel (2007). Shot on a location that was bombed, days after the film’s shoot, Labaki in a previous conversation had stated that her sole reason for making the film was to tell the world that there’s more to Beirut and its stories than the never ceasing wars and bombings. The story consciously moves away from any mention or images of war, concentrating instead on the highs and lows in the daily lives of five Lebanese women tackled with an undercurrent of humour.
Though the uncomplimentary tag of maximum walk out would perhaps go to Stefano Odoardi’s A White Ballad (2007), with not a single audience staying in for the film’s post screening Q&A with the director, Odoardi defended the film’s space arguing that it was reflective of its protagonist old couple’s slow and repetitious life that unfolded like an old record player. It’s slow treatment with often the camera staying on for long silent close-ups though reflective of a style of filmmaking very typical to some of the great European masters, it could seem quite taxing for someone who’s not a student of serious cinema. The film, lent itself to a lot of individual interpretation, he had stated prior to its screening, but then sadly not many in a festival want to sit and think, when it’s all about hopping films and viewing as many as you can.
Though one event that did have many pause at length, were the ‘ Master Classes ‘ introduced this year and addressed by the likes Govind Nihlani, Stefano Odoardi and Sriram Raghavan, amongst others. Sharing tips on how to spot a winner while Odoardi in his master’s class on international filmmaking stated that “Introspective and realistic films get awards at festivals,” Nihlani put a strong case for the Indian style of filmmaking arguing that there was nothing wrong in our mainstream films. “They have a lot of strength and have lasted for over 100 years. We don’t have to be apologetic about our traditional art forms because it has been so robust and has been connecting with the audience irrespective of the language,” he says. Raghavan’s session on scripting had many quotable quotes like one from Kundan Shah: ‘The plot has no life and a life has no plot.’ Stating that it’s not the story but how you say it that is important, the Johnny Gaddar director said, “To be a good scriptwriter you have to keep writing and writing, till you evolve. A script should be simple, give the maximum economy and introduce a strong story.”
Quite like the lone but impressive entry from Singapore (a nation that has come a long way making 10 films a year today, from one or two in the nineties) The High Cost of Living (2006) made at a modest S$ 1,00,000 (Rs 26 lakh). Debut director Leonard Lai Yok Wai’s saga of two committed, young, professional killers on opposite sides of the law stood out for its subtle tackling of other issues affecting the average Singaporean ranging from the abuse of Indonesian maids by their Chinese masters to the Chinese majority state’s trade links with mainland China.
China, which was MAMI’s ‘Country in Focus,’ this year had quite a few interesting stories to tell, beyond the martial arts fare, like the bright and sonorous Ganglamedo (2007) by Dai Wei. If one dismissed the China-ised viewing of Tibet in the film, its story about a Chinese singer seeking balm for her inherent restlessness in a legendary Tibetan lake with the help of a drummer for companion beautifully married mysticism into a love story set to a pulsating, rich background score with frequent song and dance interludes a la Bollywood.
Closer home, while the much hyped Love Songs (2007) by Jayabrato Chatterjee seemed more of a predictable nostalgia fare, with a screeching test-of-patience performance by Mallika Sarabhai (the film’s lone high point being Om Puri’s poetry recitations in his signature baritone) it was the rooted to soil Bangladeshi film Swapnodanay (2007) by Golam Rabbany Biplob that would easily top the sub-continent’s show list for its earnestness and honesty. Visually akin to the NFDC funded art house films of the 80s, its appeal lay in a story that had its heart in place and was rooted to the soil. A satire, this winner of the Best Director Asian New Talent Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival, told the story of Fazlu a street peddler and father of three, who accidentally gets a wad of foreign currency stashed in a second-hand pant he bought. The story tenderly captures the changes and mood swings in a person vis-à-vis his loved ones on the threshold of the promise of a better life, till the dream crumbles in an anti-climactic finale.
The travails of the common man; rather four common women in this case - a prostitute, a virgin, a housewife and a spinster - were the subject of Adoor Gopalkrishnan’s beautifully photographed Four Women (2007), with an aching performance by Nandita Das as a spinster forever waiting to get married, while all her younger siblings tie the knot. Marriage, however became a backdrop for unintended humour and the rekindling of broken old ties in the much-feted Swiss film, Jean-Stephane Bron’s My Brother is Getting Married (2006) on a Swiss family’s efforts at maintaining a façade of unity at the wedding of their adopted Vietnamese son Vinh when his biological mother suddenly decides to pay the family a visit after 20 years of correspondence.
Inter-racial equations once again made for an interesting, occasionally funny echo in the Polish film-within-film Extras (2006) on the equations and interactions between a local Polish cast of extras working in a Chinese film. Poland’s undoubtedly was the most eclectic and richest bouquet of films from a country at this year’s MAMI, with subjects ranging from a gripping legal drama Immensity of Justice (2006), to the bitter sweet Jasminum (2006) or the autobiographical Several People Little Time (2006) based on the famous, self-centered Warsaw poet Miron Bialoszewski; not discounting the festival’s opening film, the war tragedy Katyn .
But if it was about picking just one film, I would reckon France’s To Each of His Own Cinema (2007), a collection of 35 vignettes revolving around films and the cinema watching experience from across the world captured by 35 directors, including the likes of Roman Polanski, Wong Kar Wai, David Lynch, Alejandra Gonzalez Inarritu, Abbas Kiarostami, Ethan and Joel Coen, Claude Lelouch, amongst others made in honour of the 60 th anniversary of the Cannes film festival. While cine students can view it as a quiz to identify the director from a narrative’s style (as most of the director names are revealed at the end of a film) others can partake from the experience of watching glimpses from various national cinemas celebrating the global phenomenon that cinema itself has become today. Though one wonders how a tribute to cinemas spanning across continents ignored an input from the world’s largest movie making country, India!