Filca’s 14th film festival scheduled to commence on September 26 will screen a selection of 35 films, during the course of a week, which will include feature films and a documentary.
The festival will be set rolling with the screening of the Malayalam film CR No 89 by Sudevan. The inaugural film, which received the State Award for Best Film (2013), the NETPAC Award at International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) last year, and the Aravindan Puraskaram, adopts a unique approach to laying bare the fissures in our society.
A no-frills film, CR No 89 maintains a pace and a starkness which grabs viewer attention, and raises our curiosity in no time.
Sharing the space in the Malayalam Cinema segment is yet another noteworthy film, Artist , by established director Shyamaprasad. The commendable acting by Ann Augustine in the female lead becomes the added ingredient that enhanced the quality of this film.
Asthamayam Vare, a debut film by Sajin Babu, is the other film that finds a place in the list of Malayalam films. The Retrospective, which features Theo Angelopoulos’ seven films, will give us a mind map of the less familiar Greece.
On his death in 2012, a tribute described his oeuvre of films thus: ‘The films of Angelopoulos remind us of another Greece and a different humanity. In his dreamlike historical films, he chronicled the melancholic nature of a nation torn between an invented tradition of classical glories and a traumatic history of repressive state policies, dictatorship, corrupt and dynastic politics. He narrated the lowly lives of the defeated in the vicious civil war of 1946-9, the degradations and melancholy of exile, the Odysseus-like return of people who go back to a place they nurtured in their memories but turns out alien and unwelcoming.’
The Hunters , Ulysses Gaze , The Weeping Meadow , The Beekeeper , Eternity and a Day , The Suspended Step of the Stork , and The Landscape in the Mist will take us through the films that portray the Greek soul.
The Festival has films from two countries, both of which attract the local film enthusiast – China and Iran. Films by Jia Zhangke – Touch of Sin , Wu Tianming – King of Masks , Tian Zhuang Zhuang – Horse Thief , Zhang Yimou – Red Sorghum , Wong Kar-wai – The Grandmaster, figure among those from China .
Here is an interesting coming together of films by Wu Tianming and the ‘Fifth Generation’ filmmakers (Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuang Zhuang) many of whom were mentored by the former at the Xi’an Film Studio. The Iranian package has films by Daruish Mehrjui – Beloved Sky , Alireza Raeisian – Forty Years Old , Humayoun Assadiyan – Gold and Copper , Nadir Moghadas – Family Bond , Masud Naqqashzadeh – The Child and Angel , and Mohammad Reza Bozorgina – Blue Silky Path .
The Indian Cinema this time is a lean one when one looks at numbers – Charulata by Satyajit Ray and Ship of Theseus by Anand Gandhi. This is the fiftieth year of Ray’s masterpiece, and what better way to remember the film and its maker than to watch the film again.
The Missing Picture by Rithy Panh is a documentary, which is not just a take on the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but is also the reclamation of a family’s ordeal to trace its experience under the Khmer regime. Rocket by Kim Mordaunt, which was earlier screened at the IFFK, finds a place among films in the World Cinema section.
Filca pays tribute to cinematographer-director, the late Balu Mahendraa with the screening of Moondram Pirai (1982).
The films will be screened at the University Students’ Centre Hall, PMG Junction, Thiruvananthapuram.
