Nachom-ia Kumpasar gets a ticket to Paris

Panaji: The director and president of Extravagant India!, an international Indian film festival in Paris told TOI they found the Konkani film ‘Nachom-ia Kumpasar’ extraordinary and are inviting the film that pays tribute to the Goan musicians of the 1960s and 70s, to the third edition of the festival.
Very picky when it comes to selecting the right Indian films for the festival to suit the sensibilities of the French audience, festival director Gabriele Brennen, participating in the 46th edition of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi) said there is no set criteria for choosing films, but a good film that has universal appeal instantly hits a person and ‘Nachom-ia Kumpasar’ is one of these films.
The president of the festival, that takes place at the heart of Paris in Gaumont Champs- Elysees, Pierre Assouline watched the Konkani film at the All Lights India International Film Festival in Kerala and says it had extraordinary beauty and must be appreciated because of its great music, good cinematography and excellent acting.
“It’s a musical specific to the period and unlike other Indian period films that often have wrong clothing or leave out other important elements that ruin the credibility of the period, this film with its coherence of mood, the tone of colours feels authentic from the beginning to the end,” Assouline told TOI. “To add to that the film has love, drama, music and much humour. It’s striking because it’s different from other Indian films,” he also said. The French would appreciate Goa’s ‘Cuban jazz’, he said.
The organizers of the festival aren’t too concerned about how recent the films are as long as they present something new for the French audience as the target audience is not the Indian diaspora, but the French people.
After holding two editions of the festival in 2013 and in 2015 the week-long festival will become a yearly affair and celebrate its third edition in October 2016 for which the organizers hint the Konkani film has convinced them to have a Konkani highlight at the festival where some Konkani classics as well as newer Konkani films can be screened.
The festival has an interesting story of how it came about., Festival director Gabriele Brennen was down at IFFI in 2008 when the Mumbai terrorist attacks took place, leaving her unable to take her scheduled flight back home. She didn’t crib and instead spent time at the festival’s short film section watching 120 films back to back. When her own short film entry ‘L’ Ecrivain’ (The Writer) won a Jury prize along with the Golden Lamp Tree in the International Short Film Section, she decided to use the 2 lakh prize money to promote Indian films in France.
The very next year she organized a short film festival and went on to showcase student films the following year when the money for another festival ran out. In 2013 Extravagant India! began showcasing feature films, documentary, short films and retrospective films on a fairly large scale. “I felt the both the countries didn’t know enough about each other’s culture and films. Aside from Satyajit Ray’s films and Bollywood films, the French didn’t know much of Indian cinema. I wanted the many beautiful films from different parts of India to reach them,” Brennen says.
There’s a misconception among young filmmakers in India today, Assouline says, where they feel they need to have misery in their films to get the film accepted abroad and have a theatrical release.
“Of course there are social issues that need to be highlighted but people feel India is all about what is portrayed in ‘Monsoon Shoot Out’, ‘Titli’ and ‘Miss Lovely’. They begin to believe that all of India is a slum and that girls are getting raped around each corner and widows getting beaten up. This conveys a very terrible and false image of India. There is so much beauty to export from India including its spiritual beauty,” he said, adding that the French were a little tired of seeing such negative stories.
The third edition of the festival is expected to be a pillar during the three-month long Indian French cultural festival promoting the arts called Namaste France. Film entries for the festival open in January and Ramesh Tekwani India coordinator says shorter versions of the festival will move to eight towns in France and Netherlands. It is Brennen’s dream to take the festival to other parts of Europe in the years to come.
The last edition of the festival saw ‘Q’ by Sanjeev Gupta win the best feature film, Vishal Bharadwaj win best director for ‘Haider’, Geetanjali Thapa win best actress in ‘Liar’s dice’, Vinay Pathak win best actor in ‘The Story of Gour Hari Dastaan’. ‘Astu-So Be It’ by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar and ‘Filmistaan’ by Nitin Kakkar received special jury mention. ‘Gulabi Gang’ by Nishitha Jain won best documentary and Farida Pacha won special jury mention for ‘My Name Is Salt’. ‘Kush’ by Shubhashish Bhutiani won best short film and ‘Time Machine’ by Arati Kadav won special jury mention.