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After having its premiere at Cannes Film Festival, doing the international fest rounds, and bagging the National Award for Best Punjabi Film, Gurvinder Singh’s Chauthi Koot has finally released in India.
Official synopsis : Punjab. The mid 1980s. A train journey to Amritsar. A dog that barks. Unwelcome guests late in the night and early morning. Dilemmas and fears.
‘Chauthi Koot‘ is Singh’s second feature after ‘Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan‘. Based on the short stories of Waryam Singh Sandhu, it’s a reflection on the undercurrents of the 1980s in a fear ridden Punjab post the Bluestar.
Cast : Suvinder Pal Vicky, Rajbir Kaur, Kanwaljeet Singh, Gurpreet Bhangu, Tommy Crew :
Cinematography: Satya Rai Nagpaul
Sound: Sushmit Bob Nath
Executive Producer: Kartikeya Narayan Singh
Production Design: Priyanka Grover
Costumes: Navjeet Kaur
Associate Producer: Himmat Sarkaria
Click here to read what Dibakar Banerjee thinks about the film. And click here to read Singh’s profile in India Today. Waryam Singh Sandhu’s interview is here.
Here are the show timings across the country
Earlier this year, Singh had refused to accept the National Award for the same film. Our post on the same here and here.
Honoured and so happy to receive the National Film Award yesterday. Here’s the picture for you to like!
This is the image that filmmaker Gurvinder Singh posted on his FB with a status update. A post with such black humour, we couldn’t resist the urge to share it with our readers.
Gurvinder’s film Chauthi Koot was awarded the National Award for Best Punjabi Film, and the citation reads as follows – ‘Effectively captures the sense of fear psychosis and tension during the times of insurgency in Punjab’. The Rajat Kamal Award includes cash prize of Rs 1,00,000/- each to the Producer and Director. He refused the award as a mark of protest for the choices the jury made, especially for Baahubali winning the Best Film Award. We had written about it earlier. Though he made it clear that his producer friend will accept the Producer’s award.
Recently, he shared another anecdote on his FB questioning the choice of National Film Awards jury.
Accosted by a young man dressed smartly in a black suit at the Kayseri bus station helping us book a bus to Ortahisar in Cappadocia, the land of magical landscapes and cave homes where Nuri Bilge Ceylan shot “The Winter Sleep”, we drink Turkish tea to kill time as he tries to communicate with us jovially in his bare knowledge of English, sometimes with the help of ‘Google Translate’ on his mobile. Once he knows we are from India, the topic veers towards Indian movies. He tells us that Indian movies are very popular in Turkey and they like the songs and dances. This after a woman in a shop in Istanbul had said she loves Paro, but cannot remember her name as its too difficult to pronounce. Aishwarya Rai, we told her. Yes yes, she nodded enthusiastically. And after a man in the same market had proudly proclaimed to us that he is Shah Rukh Khan’s father!
Now the young man at the Kayseri bus station asks us if we have seen ‘Baahubali’? My jaw drops. Sunayana laughs. We ask him whether he likes the movie? Then he goes on to type something on his mobile in Turkish on Google Translate. It gets translated into English as ‘nonsense’! We all laugh and I heave a sigh of relief. To reiterate, he says its crazy and stupid.
This ‘nonsense’ will be awarded the Best Indian Film of 2015 at the National Film Awards tomorrow. Hats off to the esteemed jury for this remarkable selection.
An alumni of FTII, Gurvinder is one of the most promising and fearless young filmmaking talent in the current generation. Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction) premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2015. His debut feature film, Anhe Ghorey De Daan, was selected to premiere at Venice International Film Festival. And it bagged 3 National Film Awards – For Direction, Cinematography, and for Best Punjabi Film.
And as long as Singh’s fearless sense of (black) humour is intact, we will always be cheering for him.
After our last post on National Film Awards went viral, there’s some new development. Filmmaker Gurvinder Singh has decided to refuse the National Award he has won for the Punjabi film, Chauthi Koot.
The film was adjudged Best Punjabi Film and the citation reads as follows – ‘Effectively captures the sense of fear psychosis and tension during the times of insurgency in Punjab’. The Rajat Kamal Award includes cash prize of Rs 1,00,000/- each to the Producer and Director.
In his Facebook post, Baahubali = Gajendra Chauhan, Gurvinder has commented the following – I haven’t got it yet! It means I’m not going to accept it. But since the award is shared between Director and Producer and the majority producer happens to be NFDC, I’m sure they are going to go receive it. Can’t decide for them.
Gurvinder has been quite vocal about the bad choices made by the jury this year. Click here to read his comment.
An alumni of FTII, Gurvinder Singh is one of the most promising and fearless young filmmaking talent in the current generation. Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction) premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2015. His debut feature film, Anhe Ghorey De Daan, was selected to premiere at Venice International Film Festival. And it bagged 3 National Film Awards – For Direction, Cinematography, and for Best Punjabi Film.
Gurvinder Singh’s second feature ‘Chauthi Koot’ will play at Un Certain Regard as an official selection in Cannes 2015. The first trailer of the film has just surfaced on Vimeo (h/t: Jahan Bakshi).
Like his well-acclaimed first film (Anhe Ghore Da Daan), this one too looks largely a silent, mood-driven affair. FB page of the film is here for more updates.
It seems like another good year for desi indies at Cannes. Two films have been selected in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival this year, and interestingly, both the films are Indo-French productions. Masaan (Fly Away Solo) is directed by our own Neeraj Ghaywan and written by Varun Grover. Both are editors and contributors at moiFightClub.
The second film is Gurvinder Singh’s Chauthi Koot.
Here are the details –
MASAAN (Fly Away Solo)
Synopsis
Four lives intersect along the Ganges – a lower-caste boy in hopeless love, a daughter ridden with guilt of a sexual encounter ending in a tragedy, a hapless father with a fading morality, and a spirited child yearning for a family, long to escape the moral constructs of a small-town.
Neeraj Ghaywan had won the Global Filmmaker Award at Mahindra Sundance 2014 for Masaan, and was also part of the prestigious Mahindra Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab (Now Dhrishyam Sundance Lab).
The film is an Indo-French co-production produced by Manish Mundra, Macassar Productions, Phantom Films, Sikhya Entertainment, Arte France Cinema and Pathé productions.
Associate Producers: Ranjan Singh and Rati Shankar Tripathi.
Chauthi Koot
Chauthi Koot (Fourth Direction), Gurvinder Singh’s second movie after Anhe Ghore Da Daan, is based on two short stories by Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu. Chauthi Koot has been co-produced by Kartikeya Singh and Sunil Doshi in India, and Catherine Dussart in France. The film is about the state-sponsored crimes of the 1980s and the resistance movement it spawned.
Produced by NFDC and directed by debutant Gurvinder Singh, Punjabi film Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse) will be released by PVR Director’s Rare on August 10.
It will have theatrical release in Delhi, Mumbai, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Ludhiana.
Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan was selected in the Orizzonti Section (which showcases ‘New Trends in World Cinema’) of Venice International Film festival, 2011. After this the film was showcased at the 55th British Film Institute, London Film Festival, and the Busan International Film Festival. The film won the Special Jury Mention and the Black Pearl Trophy at the 5th Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the International Film Festival, Rotterdam for its lyrical and scenic narration.
It also bagged three National Awards – for Best Direction, Cinematography and for Best Feature Film in Punjabi.
And here’s the official synopsis…
On a foggy winter morning a family in a village in Punjab wakes up to the news of the demolition of a house on the outskirts of the village. The father, a silent sympathizer, joins the community in demand for justice for the affected family. The same day his son Melu, a cycle-rickshaw puller rickshaw puller in the city, is participating in a strike by his union. Injured and alienated, Melu spends the day quietly resting and hesitantly drinks with friends in the night as they debate the meaning of their existence.
Cycling through the city streets, Melu feels lost and wonders where to go and what to do. Back in the village, his mother feels humiliated at the treatment meted out by the landlords in whose fields she works. Gunshots are heard in the night and the village is tense. It’s the night of the lunar eclipse. A man wanders asking for the traditional alms while Father decides to visit the city with a friend, even as his daughter Dayalo walks through the village streets in the night.
Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan speaks about the margins where the socially repressed and exploited have been conveniently cast away. This is also a film about the signs of simmering fire and about cleft tongues that want to rise in unison, about the possibility of inchoate desire and the first cry of love.
And the Director’s comment…
The human face is a landscape. The lived reality of the face reflects time: endured, lived and suffered. Cinema unravels time through the movement in space. The visible evokes the invisible through relationships, contexts, gestures, and conflicts. There is the immediate invisible, off screen: the image confronting sound, space confronting space, time confronting time. Then there is the larger cosmic invisible, devoid of cause and effect paradigm, layered through centuries.
Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan tries to evoke the effect of years of subordination of the struggling classes reflected in the macrocosm of events spinning beyond their control. It’s about silent witnesses devoid of power to change or influence the course of destiny, about the invisible violence of power equation and simmering discontent reflected on their faces.
The cast & crew list…
Cast: Mal Singh, Samuel John, Serbjeet Kaur, Dharminder Kaur, Emmanuel Singh, Kulwinder Kaur, Lakha Singh, Gurvinder Makhna
Script & Direction: Gurvinder Singh
Story: Gurdial Singh (based on the novel of the same name)
Dialogues: Gurdial Singh, Jasdeep Singh
Music: Catherine Lamb
Camera: Satya Rai Nagpaul
Sound: Mandar Kulkarni
Editing: Ujjwal Chandra
Production Design: Pankaj Dhimaan
Line Producer: Kartikeya Narayan Singh
Executive Producers: Neena Lath Gupta & Vikramjit Roy
Creative Producer: Mani Kaul
Producer: National Film Development Corporation Limited
Gurvinder Singh’s debut feature Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (Alms For The Blind Horse) came into the limelight when it was selected for the prestigious Venice Film Festival last year. It premiered in the Orizzonti section of the festival which is presented as an exploration of the modes of contemporary cinema.
And now, almost after a year, two trailers of the film are finally out. Have a look.
The film has been produced by National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and is based on Gurdial Singh’s novel of the same name.
To know more about the film, click here to read an interview of Gurvinder Singh.
Venice Film Festival has announced its line-up for this year. The festival will take place from August 31-September 10, 2011.
Two Indian films have been selected for the Orizzonti section of the festival, which is presented as an exploration of the modes of contemporary cinema. According to official release, in open dialogue with the films of the main competition, Orizzonti questions reality, forms and representations. It seeks to unbalance the status of images, it tears open perception and meaning and allows us to perceive new directions.
The two Indian films are Amit Dutta’s Sonchidi and Gurvinder Singh’s debut film Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (Alms of the Blind Horse).
Film : Sonchidi. Director : Amit Dutta. Cast : Nitin Goel, Gagan Singh Sethi. Duration : 55’
Film : Anhey ghorhey da daan (Alms of the Blind Horse) Director : Gurvinder Singh. Cast : Mal Singh, Samuel John, Serbjeet Kaur, Dharminder Kaur. Duration : 112’
Dutta seems to be a Venice veteran now as two of his earlier films also premiered at the festival. And with such a unqiue and strong voice, he is easily on the best filmmaker of this country that most people are not aware of.
If you have any more info on the films (stills, poster, synopsis, trailer), do let us know. Click here to read more about Gurvinder’s film.
The festival will also screen Mani Kaul’s Duvidha as a tribute to the filmmaker. The film will be screened in Out Of Competition section which screens important works by directors already established in previous editions of the Festival.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 