KAUFMAN - "Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know ? Movie shit."
Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment - from "Adaptation".
We are all about CINEMA. That movie shit.
NOTHING is sacred.
NOBODY is spared.
Because we talk about films, dammit.
Not your sex life.
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After numerous fest rounds, Ritesh Batra’s critically and commercially acclaimed debut feature, The Lunchbox, is still making news. And for all the right reasons. This time, the film has bagged a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nomination. The film is nominated in the Foreign Language Film Category (or Film Not in the English Language). It’s a tough category as the other four films are much acclaimed too.
Film Not in the English Language
Ida
Leviathan
The Lunchbox
Trash
Two Days, One Night
So, except the FFI, we guess everyone saw the potential of the film.
Congrats to the team Lunchbox! Click here to see the full BAFTA nomination list.
And if you want to read the script of “The Lunchbox”, click here.
As we have done in the past, this year too we are trying to source the scripts of some of the best films of the year. As most of you know, the scripts of Hollywood films are easily available online, even the unreleased ones. But we don’t have any such database for Hindi or Indian films. So that has been the primary reason for this initiative. And it has been possible because some of the filmmakers have been very supportive about it. It’s only for educational purpose and much like the spirit of the blog, is a complete non-profitable exercise. Thanks to Abhishek Kapoor, Hansal Mehta, Vikramaditya Motwane and Nikhil Advani, we have been able to post the script of Kai Po Che!, Shahid, Lootera, D Day – here, here, here and here respectively.
Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox has been one of the most critically acclaimaed and successful film of the year. It’s still running in US and few other territories. It’s been a long time since an Indian film manage to go beyond the diaspora crowd and The Lunhcbox set a new benchmark in that regard.
Thanks to Ritesh Batra, we are posting the script of The Lunchbox. Since its US release was due, we could not post it earlier.
If you have read this earlier post on 17 terrific films of the year, the brief was the same for this new post. And this one is collaborative too. Only film has been replaced with scenes. So here are the 16 most memorable and powerful scenes of the year as picked by 16 film fanatics.
(If you missed our earlier post in this 2013 flashback series, here’s the list – 20 Things We Learnt At The Movies and 13 Unanswered Questions is here, Top 10 Musical Gems We Discovered This Year is here, 15 Film Fanatics on 17 Terrific Films That Have Stayed With Them is here, and 14 Bollywood Song We Played in Non-stop Loop Is here.)
Fandry, Nagraj Manjule’s charming story of Jabya, a young boy battling his inner turmoil of being born a Dalit, whose only source of income is rescuing the village from droves of pigs by chasing them out, and only happiness is a teenage infatuation and perhaps a non-existent bird, reaches an inevitable, satirical climax that can truly be described as the successor of the Mahabharata scene from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.
Cruelly hilarious and dripping with pathos, the last scene of Fandry is a portrayal of who we truly are. As Jabya is forced to help his aging parents chase the pigs down, the village gathers to celebrate this humiliation, almost like spectators at a T20 match.
At one point, one of the characters uploads Jabya’s plight on his Facebook page. That one moment points out how technology has invaded us and yet human values remain absent.
However, Manjule’s masterstroke is Jabya doing exactly what the viewer had been wanting to do all along. He gathers his frustration and desperation to plant a sounding kick into the belly of the very society that was trying to hold him down. Match over.
Sadly though, Jabya’s non-existent bird somewhere stands for the freedom from society’s humiliation that he shall never ever get.
Joseph Gordon Levitt’s hilarious Don Jon is the single greatest commentary piece on porn. It isn’t about porn but it’s a guy’s perspective on the necessity of porn. Early in the film in Don Jon explains why he watches porn despite scoring chicks whenever he pleases. He watches porn simply because it is more exciting and entertaining than actual sex. Real women don’t do the things that the ones in the porn videos do. Which is why always slips off the bed in the middle of the night, turns on his computer, rubs one out, and returns to snuggle with the girl in his bed.
Later in the film he falls in love with the Hollywood rom-com buff Scarlett Johnasson’s character Barbara who does everything with him except have sex. This tortures him. She becomes his porn. Whenever he opens his laptop he browses FB photos of her instead of looking at porn websites. After a lot of torment Don finally has sex with her. But as he lies in his bed, his voiceover tells us that he’s in love with Barbara, and he finally got to have sex with her after weeks and weeks of waiting, and that he’s sorry to say that it was STILL not as good as porn. Don skulks off to his computer and proceeds to rub one out.
The scene that brought down the house was the one where Barbara confronts Don about his porn addiction and calls it sick. He enlightens her that firstly, every guy watches porn and those who say who don’t are lying, and she refuses to believe him. And secondly they have sex all the time, whenever she wants, and it’s not like he’s cheating on her. When she asks him how he can even watch that shit, he replies by asking how she can watch those stupid unrealistic romcoms all day. Shell-shocked, she tells him that movies and porn are different things. And they give awards for movies. He tells her they give awards for porn too.
It was a beautiful and hilarious clash of irony, ideals and cultural norms. With one single scene JGL brought down the accepted definitions of ‘decency’ and ‘addiction’. He’s addicted to enjoying a perfect and unrealistic view of fulfilment and emotional satiation. She’s addicted to enjoying a perfect and unrealistic view of fulfilment and emotional satiation. And yet he is called a sicko and is dumped.
And most importantly, JGL pulled this off without coming across as sexist. That makes him a fucking great filmmaker.
I always believed that the past is truly yours and no one can deny you that. It’s like a drug which you crave for (un)knowingly. And this drug called nostalgia, like a termite, can eat through your present, one moment at a time. How many times have we watched that same video from 90s on youtube just to scrape whatever little memory you can from that time and place. When Sajan Fernandez watched Ye Jo Hai Zindagi on an old VCR, it killed something inside me. There is a sweetness to it and melancholy, still, a man lost in time trying to live his present through scraps from his past. That scene has stayed with me ever since i watched the film. Like those scenes where he smoked on his balcony, Irrfan Khan here emotes with minimal muscles and no words, and yet the entire back story of the character, his pain and his longing is laced before you.
The most powerful, stand out scene for me in any movie in 2013 – after careful deliberation – is from Short Term 12. Surprisingly, it doesn’t involve the lead characters, but one from the ensemble. Marcus – played by Keith Stanfield – is the standoffish kid on the verge of turning 18 and getting ‘released’ from the foster-care center for teens. He’s brooding, strong, and intense for most part of the story and, until the moment, paints himself as if pushed into a corner. When he does lash out, he does it – incredibly – with poetry. In a single, long take as his supervisor sits him down to talk, he unleashes a rap song no one knew he had the capacity to write or perform – heartfelt, expletive-ridden, and delivered with a gumption that’d give Tupac goose bumps. It is a remarkable piece of writing – not just the scene itself – but the build up to it. It is so carefully constructed, you will never see the character’s revelation coming. It leaps out at you from the pages, the screen, and yet goes with the grain of the narrative. Stanfield’s steely-yet-vulnerable performance and Destin Cretton’s choices as director only serve to heighten the experience and leaves you forgetting to breathe.
Scenes are like souvenirs an audience walks out with after a gratifying, enriching or, heck, even a revolting, experience. 2013 at the movies left me wowed, tongue-tied, startled, nostalgic, affected, bored, disgusted, thrilled, the works. But the one scene that stayed with me for all the right reasons and in all probability always will is from Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera. Resembling O Henry’s short story The Last Leaf only in the third act, Motwane creates a unique emotional history around Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh’s star-crossed romance. It’s this melting moment between an ethereal Sonakshi and her on-screen father (played by a brilliantly benign Barun Chanda) that resonates most with me:
Following a bad bout of asthma, the concerned dad is seen comforting his sickly daughter, gently waving a fan on her recumbent frame. They share a lighthearted joke, which leads him to innocuously thwack her wrist and promptly ask, “Laga kya?” Her made-up frown quickly drowns in peals of laughter (and coughing). On cue, with the opening strain of Amit Trivedi’s mesmerising Ankahee playing in the background, he begins to recount the story of an invincible, much feared Bhil King who just wouldn’t die no matter how fiercely the British attacked him. “Phir ek din pata chala ke Raja ne apni jaan ek tote mein chhupa ke rakhi hai.” To find the whereabouts of this peculiar parrot, the British sent out a beautiful spy who lured the King in her romantic trap and the two got married. One day she discovered the truth behind the King’s immortality and smothered the parrot to death without a second’s thought. “Phir?” quizzes his only child, somewhat, uneasily. “Phir…woh mar gaya. Beta, aap mera tota ho. Agar aap ko kuch ho gaya na…,” he doesn’t complete his sentence. He doesn’t have to. There’s so much more at its core though. Apart from highlighting the hearty father-daughter bond, it constructs a context to understand the magnitude of Sonakshi’s consecutive loss, heartbreak and need for retaliation. One has to possess a certain level of sensitivity to convey tenderness that doesn’t feel manufactured. Motwane does. And he lends it to this scene, which works beautifully even as a standalone.
Only in a state like Maharashtra, where right-wing is so strong that even after the death of their biggest ideologue I don’t feel confident and safe mentioning his name in a post that has no direct criticism of his easily-criticizable styles of functioning, where newspaper offices get ransacked for faintest of hurt sentiments, where people get beaten up for not standing up during the mandatory National Anthem before the film – a film like ‘Fandry’ is possible. (Just like BR Ambedkar and Vijay Tendulkar couldn’t have been anywhere else.) A state of oppression breeds an inventiveness and ferocity of protest like nothing else.
And in a protest film (though treated like a coming of age for the most part) like ‘Fandry’, comes a scene that makes all the protest scenes in the history of our cinema look tame in comparison. A Dalit family is trying to catch a pig next to a school, the Dalit kid is feeling humiliated ‘cos his friends might be watching the reality of his caste he has so carefully hidden from them, the pig evading them like a pro. After lots of chasing the pig finally seems to be cornered. The family now just has to move closer and catch it and end the misery on both sides of this hunter-hunted divide. The kid seems slightly relieved that the ordeal may be over as they encircle the pig. But, just before they could swoop down, the national anthem starts playing in the school assembly next door. Nobody can move now, except of course the pig. As the Dalit family stands in attention, paying ‘due respects’ to the nation they are equal citizens of, the pig walks away into the free morning.
The whole cinema hall jumped up and applauded the scene wildly. I guess the irreverence, cheekiness, and metaphor it stood for connected with all of us, so used to standing awkwardly before the film, one hand carrying smartphone, another carrying popcorn, thinking ‘Pandit Bhimsen Joshi ji, aalaap mat lo itna lamba. 56 second mein khatam hona chaahiye ideally!
My pick for the best scene of the year (apart from every other scene from The Great Beauty) is the 9 minute opening scene of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux ( I wasn’t too impressed by the film). Reygadas has outdone the brilliant time-transition shot from his previous film, Silent Light. Here we have a little girl left out in the open in the middle of barking dogs and horses, running around merrily, unaware of the ominous shift in the sky. Shot almost through the girl’s eye level, the 4:3 frame and the blurry edges shows the constricted world of the girl and in effect, take us closer to her experience. Watch and get hypnotized.
Towards the end of the Bengali movie “Goynar Baksho” a young woman in her 20s rides a scooter to meet a lover who has been incommunicado for a few months. The scene, in which she is accompanied on the scooter by one of the film’s protagonists – another headstrong woman who asks her to drive faster – is remarkable for a number of reasons. It’s a starkly happy contrast from one of the first scenes of the film (dated about 50 years earlier) where a 12 year-old child was married to a man much older than her; was widowed soon after and subsequently had to endure three indignities: of wearing white for the rest of her life, of remaining unmarried and of having her lustrous mane of hair chopped off. Moreover, startlingly, the year is 1971, around the time of the creation of Bangladesh; not 2011. Lastly, it’s a bittersweet reminder of progressive Bengali literary thought and the once ostensibly modern, well-educated and relatively prosperous society that influenced it. Sadly, the great Bengali dream, a burgeoning reality till the late 70s, was crushed by decades of preposterous Communist rule, aided by a general lethargy in the Bengali bhadralok. That one scene holds a mirror to our present, where many observers rightly despair about the position of women in India. In an increasingly intolerant and regressive Indian society, one can only wonder where the next well of inspiration will spring from?
@nagrathnam on Soodhu Kavvum’s confrontation scene
[SPOILER ALERT]
For me, it’s the confrontation scene between the honest minister’s errant son and the Tamilnadu Chief Minister. Only a veteran like Radha Ravi could pull off the dead pan humor with which he dispenses shakti-ka-santulan and casually hands over the mantle to his son, forcing the irritatingly honest minister into retirement. That is the turning point of the film. Fair is foul and foul is fair, Welcome to Kalyug. And followed by the kickass retro montage.
“See how he shakes his head. A minister should like him!”
Don’t worry about the spoiler. Because this isn’t a plot twist. Or a big reveal.
A man who has been told that his ex-wife who is in a coma hasn’t reacted to the smell of perfumes, carries the box out of the hospital room. We follow him out in the corridor. Moments later, he changes his mind. He comes back to the bedside. Takes a bottle of perfume out of the box. His. The one she used to like. He sprays a little on him and leans towards her face and says: “If you can smell this, squeeze my hand.” He holds her hand. We see a solitary tear roll down a still woman’s face. He doesn’t see it. The camera is not interested in that. The camera takes us to a close up of his hand in hers and it’s waiting for the squeeze. The camera lingers on that beautiful composition. The entire film is constructed to arrive at this scene.
This ladies and lads, is the story of modern relationships. We all think we are so bloody mature to move on but the first instance when someone tells us it’s possible to revive the romance, we are quick to go and revisit it. We hold on to the undead person from the past, waiting for signs of life but are rarely in a position to see it.
Absolutely beautiful. Heartbreaking. Depressing. But also reassuring. We are not alone. This is the story of our times. Of fucked up relationships and messed up choices. I liked this film because it gave me the courage to put it all behind and let go. Completely. Cut off. And respect the dead.
When Deepika runs into Ranveer, and they draw out their guns. That frame, that shot, those colours. Wow! The one time I must have cinegasmed at the movies this year. The song that follows. The kiss. Lahoo mooh lag gaya! Truly breathtaking. It jogged me back to how Balam Pichkari was shot in YJHD. The same Deepika, the same sort of boisterous set up, the same use of riotous holi colours, and yet, you can tell the difference in how a film-maker frames his shot. Balam was youthful, zany, messy and the colours were ‘khacha-khach bhara hua’ – no sense of symmetry in it. Look at how Bhansali co-ordinates/’arranges’ his colours – the blues, the pinks, the reds – all evenly sectioned for each one hue to stand out. This is how you separate the men from the boys.
@shripriya on 12 Years A Slave’s roll Jordan scene
To say “12 Years A Slave” is a powerful film is an understatement. Some of the scenes are very hard to watch and that is the point. But of all the scenes, a short scene, with no violence, is, perhaps, the most powerful.
What happened right before:
Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has just been betrayed by a white farm hand and had to burn a letter he very painstakingly wrote to his wife and with that, his last hopes of ending his bondage.
A slave collapses in the field due to overwork and Solomon and two others bury him. Solomon goes about the task mechanically. He’s even mildly surprised/annoyed when one of the other grave diggers wants to say a few words for the dead man.
The scene:
A group of slaves stand near the grave and start singing “Roll, Jordan, Roll”. Solomon is part of the group, standing right in front, but emotionally apart from the rest of the slaves, as he as been through most of the movie. Solomon, who was not born a slave, has always maintained his distance – protected himself by maintaining a distance.
We then switch to a shot of Solomon’s face. His face is anguished, full of despair and desperation, overwhelmed by the recent events. The camera just stays on his face as slowly, Solomon starts to sing. It is almost like the song is his lifeline and he grasps onto it, at first just mumbling the words. As he sings, his voice gets stronger and his face changes. The song powers him and finally, he accepts that he is a slave. He starts singing even louder and seems to embrace the group with whom he sings as his brothers. And finally, you can hear his voice stand out, powerful. Despite what he is acknowledging, it feels like a positive self-affirmation. Yes, I am a slave, but I will survive. Even as a slave, I will survive.
The shot of Solomon’s face lasts a minute and fifteen seconds. There is no dialog. Just the singing. For this scene alone, for all the complex emotions conveyed, Chiwetel Ejiofor needs to be a front runner for the Oscar. Brilliant.
@fattiemama on Blue Is The Warmest Colour’s break-up scene
I looked away. For a good ten minutes, I kept my eyes away from the scene. I would have loved to shut my ears too but not understanding the language helped. She kept hitting her and she kept crying, pleading for forgiveness. Tears, snot, blood all became one as the searing pain of betrayal and guilt broke through the barriers of language. I have felt all of it and in not a small degree to not acknowledge it, yet the sheer rawness was so testing I wanted to be relieved of it. They were so good together, so happy, so carefree, so intense and so young…young, I think that hurt the most…All of us love ‘happily forever afters’. The most cynical of us too, somewhere in the corner of their hearts they too believe and yearn. And to watch a love so young and so deep break in a moment hurts. It shatters all that we hold dear, dream of. Was it the beautiful performances of the two young actresses? Was it the single long take? Was it the unbridled tears and blows? Was it the resounding thud of a featherlite dream breaking? Was it my own connection to a story that wasn’t my own? The reasons could be all or any but that scene refuses to leave me. Someday it will be replaced with the eternal tenderness she feels towards her. At the end of great love does not lie emptiness or hate. At the end of great love lies great tenderness. Had the scene not escalated to that intensity the end would not have mattered as much as it did. Had the violence not been so visceral, the wound of the soul would not have been bared. Because a love as deep has to hurt as much too. I just wish the blows had not travelled beyond the screen to sear me.
@jahanbakshion Spring Breakers: In which Alien and the Girls become ‘Soulmates’
Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers was certainly one of the most divisive films of the year, lauded and loathed in equal measure. Some found it provocative, others called it puerile. For me, it was certainly one of the most hypnotic and immersive cinematic experiences of the year, and at the center of the film were 2 of the most memorable scenes of the year, one segueing into the other seamlessly.
The first scene begins with a gun-toting Alien jumps around his bed, Brit and Candy kneeling before him, seemingly in awe.
“You like it? You like my shit? Look at you fucking bitches. You fucking love it, don’t you? You a couple of bad bitches, ain’t you?”
He thrusts and rubs wads of money in their hungry faces and then begins to kiss both the girls. One of them picks up a pistol from the bed.
“Careful with that, it’s loaded.”
We see a look on Alien’s face we haven’t seen before. It’s the look of genuine terror. Suddenly, out of nowhere, both the girls have pistols pointed at Alien. The get him down on his knees and shove a pistol in his face, then another.
“Sick motherfucker, aren’t you? You think that you can just fucking own us? Open your mouth. Open your fucking mouth…. You’re a nasty little fuck. Yeah, you are. Do you like that? You like that in there?”
Alien is shitting concrete by now. You can see it in his eyes, almost closed shut out of fear.
“We have everything we need right here. We don’t need you, Alien. What if we just used you to come here? And in five seconds we just shoot you? Blow your brains out. And you’re dead… What do you think, Brit, should we kill him?”
And just then, something happens. Alien opens his eyes and stares into the girls faces. And starts to fellate the gun with unnerving glee. First one, then two loaded guns, and he’s going at them like a seasoned pornstar.
It’s a stunning scene- sexy, shocking, gender-bending, nail-bitingly tense and unpredictable- all at once. That’s what makes it so great, apart from how crucial it is in building the characters, their relationship(s) and the trust that forms the basis of their truly twisted love story.
“Y’all my motherfuckin’ soul mates, swear to god. I just fell in love with y’all…”
This flows into what is the most talked-about scene from the film, in which Alien sings Britney Spears’ Everytime, playing a piano as the girls do a ballet around him in pink ski-masks, bikinis and sweatpants, wielding shotguns like toys. As Franco’s voice fades into Britney’s, the scene cuts to a blizzard of hedonistic violence as Alien and his Angels perform their dance of destruction.
The use of contrasting music as a counterpoint to violence in cinema is nothing new, but Spring Breakers does it exceptionally well, managing to transform Britney Spear’s pop ballad not just into something darkly humorous but also a strangely beautiful elegy to the loss of innocence. It’s one of those scenes that lift the viewer into a trance and the film into transcendence. True to his name, Mr. Korine achieves that rare thing in cinema: Absolute Harmony.
@miyaamihir on last scene of Star (Bombay Talkies)
हिन्दुस्तान की ही नहीं, शायद विश्व की सबसे प्रामाणिक ग्रामीण फिल्मों में से एक बनाने वाले निर्देशक सत्यजित राय मूलत: एक शहरी फिल्मकार थे। हमारे वर्तमान महानगर के चितेरे। उसकी अाकांक्षाअों के, उसके अपमानों के। मुझे श्याम बेनेगल के उन पर बनाये उस प्रामाणिक वृत्तचित्र का अंतिम दृश्य याद अाता है। राय अपने घर में अपने घर में, अपने कमरे में अपनी वर्किंग डेस्क पर बैठे हैं अौर अपना वही मशहूर सिगार पी रहे हैं। अौर फिर कैमरा ज़ूम-अाउट होता है। एक ही सिंगल शॉट में हम देखते हैं कि कैमरा पैन-अाउट होता हुअा खिड़की से बाहर निकलता है, अौर हालांकि राय अब भी हमारे सामने हैं लेकिन उनके साथ अब अन्य बहुत कुछ इस फ्रेम में है। एक पूरा शहर इस एक सिंगल शॉट में जैसे राय के साथ चला अाता है। एक ही फ्रेम में हम बीच में उनका घर देख रहे हैं जिसकी बीचोंबीच खिड़की में अब भी राय बैठे दिखाई दे रहे हैं, वही सिगार के साथ। लेकिन अब इस वाइड एंगल में चारों अोर से कलकत्ता की बहुमंजिला इमारतें अौर बाज़ार भी चले अाये हैं। यह एक दृश्य फिल्मकार को उसके सबजेक्ट के ठीक बीचोंबीच स्थापित करता है अौर शायद हमें यह भी बताता है कि किसी भी रचना को जैसे उसके समय से निरपेक्ष नहीं पढ़ा जा सकता, ठीक वैसे ही किसी भी रचना को उसके स्थान से निरपेक्ष रख के पढ़ना भी मुश्किल है।
दिबाकर की ‘स्टार’ के उस अंतिम पोर-पोर जादू से भरे दृश्य में जहाँ पुरंदर (नवाजुद्दीन सिद्दीक़ी) अपनी बेटी को अपने जीवन का एक दिन पुन:रचकर सुना रहे हैं, दिखा रहे हैं, ठीक ऐसे ही एक पैन-अाउट होते हुए कैमरे के साथ पूरा शहर उनके दृश्य की सीमा के भीतर चला अाता है। यहाँ वो नायकत्व है जिसका दायरा अपनी चाल की बालकनी से अागे नहीं बढ़ पाया। यहाँ वो पिता है जो अपनी बेटी के लिए रची कहानियों में भी कभी नायक नहीं हो पाया अौर उसे कल्पना की दुनिया में भी सदा किसी ‘िहृतिक’ का सहारा लेना पड़ा। यहाँ वो इंसान है जिसकी असफलता अगर गौर से देखें तो हमारे वर्तमान शहर की वो बची-कुची ईमानदारी अौर असलीपना है जिसके होने के चलते ही पुरंदर अाज भी इस शहर में मिसफिट है।
‘स्टार’ सही मायनों में बम्बई की कथा है। यहाँ मुम्बई की बन्द हुई मिलें हैं अौर बेरोज़गार हुए मजदूरों के घरों का ठंडा चूल्हा है। तमाम सिनेमा की पृष्ठभूमि पर ऊँची चिमनियाँ है उन मिलों की जिनका धुअाँ जीवन की अग्नि की तरह कब का बुझ चुका है। यहाँ कुछ सर्वश्रेष्ठ अदाकार हैं जो विदर्भ से मुम्बई तक कुछ सौ किलोमीटर की दूरी अपने जीवनकाल में कभी पाट नहीं पाये। फाकों पर होता थियेटर है अौर उसमें फिर बराबरी का स्वप्न है। यहाँ अपने बाप की पेंशन पर जीता अौर समाज की नज़रों में एक असफ़ल इंसान है, अौर फिर एक निर्णायक क्षण है जब वह खुद पिता हो जाता है। सिनेमा के दायरों से परे एक अौर दुनिया है जिसमें अाज संतुष्टि को असफलता अौर असफलता को अयोग्यता का मूल मान लिया गया है। ऐसे समय में जहाँ अापके होने से ज़्यादा दिखाई देने का महत्व हो, ‘स्टार’ इशारा करती है कि सफल-असफल के खांचों के परे भी एक संसार होगा जिसमें योग्यता प्रदर्शन की मोहताज नहीं होगी। ‘स्टार’ उस जीवन के बारे में है जिसे अपने दायरे की पहचान करनी है, अौर जानना है कि उसका ‘स्टार’ होना, न होना दुनिया की स्वीकार्यता पर नहीं, सिर्फ एक बच्ची की हंसी पर निर्भर है। अौर इसके साथ ही यह हमें समझना है कि महत्वाकांक्षा का जयगान गानेवाले इस दुर्दांत समय में ‘संतुष्टि’ एक दुर्लभ मूल्य है।
@NotSoSnob on The Great Beauty’s opening party scene
The two most memorable scenes of the year for me are the climax of Frances Ha and Ilo Ilo. Frances Ha’s climax wraps up the film beautifully as its lead character gets what she wants from a relationship. Guess? It’s simple, unusual and still profound. Ilo Ilo’s climax is bitter sweet, as a kid gets slapped, you laugh at the scene first and then you realise what the filmmaker has done – completed the loop between two strangers who fought initially, bonded later and then had to separate. But am writing about another absolute favourite scene of the year. This one is from The Great Beauty.
When you are watching the film for the first time, you keep wondering what’s happening. Where is it going? It seems like a non-stop party music video. And all you see is bodies shaking vigorously in every possible way interrupted by chants of a bald man shouting, I’ll screw you, while looking at a lady dancing on top of the table. You see striptease, a woman shouting for her lost mobile, a dog in a purse, a very short woman lost in the crowd while sipping her drink, and then a tv showgirl appears with 6-5 written on her boobs. As Jep Gambardella turns back, you realise this is his birthday party. It continues for few more minutes, and then everyone starts dancing while matching their steps on the beats of Mueve la colita. After some time the music slows down, Jep gets out of the queue slowly, looks into the camera, the camera zooms in, slowly everyone gets out of the frame and we see only his face as his voice-over starts – To this question, as kid, my friends always gave the same answer – “pussy”. Whereas i answered, “the smell of old people’s houses”. The question was :
This scene not only sets up the film but also sums it up well. As Gambardella’s search continues through Rome’s rich and boring men and fashionable women, the only word that comes to your mind is decadence. I have gone back to the film many times and specially this scene. Just to hear the opening voice-over. But the impact is lost if you don’t watch the entire party scene – the dancer number, the slowing down of music and Jep moving out of the crowd. Because that’s where the separation begins. Jep and the rest. You are going to encounter all these characters in the film through Jep only. To go back to the madness of the scene, i have even saved this image as my computer screensaver. But i still can’t get enough of Mister Jep Gambardella, his voice-over and the insane beginning of his search for The Great Beauty.
Do let us know about your favourite scenes of the year in the comments section.
And who is surprised? Well, i guess esteemed members of the FFI jury who selected it as India’s entry for the Foreign Language Oscar and some other gyaani journalists who were fighting for it. This blog has always been critical about the film’s selection as a wrong choice. So i guess we are not surprised here at least.
So who all made it to the shortlist? The following 9 films.
– Belgium, “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Felix van Groeningen, director;
– Bosnia and Herzegovina, “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” Danis Tanovic, director;
– Cambodia, “The Missing Picture,” Rithy Panh, director;
– Denmark, “The Hunt,” Thomas Vinterberg, director;
– Germany, “Two Lives,” Georg Maas, director;
– Hong Kong, “The Grandmaster,” Wong Kar-wai, director;
– Hungary, “The Notebook,” Janos Szasz, director;
– Italy, “The Great Beauty,” Paolo Sorrentino, director;
– Palestine, “Omar,” Hany Abu-Assad, director.
And do you guys spot a familiar name there? Danis Tanovic. He is one of the co-producers of The Lunchbox who had proudly said that if I could give my place to The Lunchbox, I would give it. His film was selected as Bosnian entry for the same.
I guess FFI Jury members and some of the journalists understand the Oscar game plan better than Oscar winner Tanovic.
To quote a report, “You just blew it,” he said about India’s chance at the Oscar.
Asia Pacific Screen Awards has announced its nomination list for this year. It includes 4 Indian films. The winners will be honoured in Brisbane on December 12, 2013.
The films include Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, Amit Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout, Shilpa Ranade’s Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya and Amit Virmani’sMenstrual Man (Singapore, India).
Ritesh Batra earned an APSA Nomination for Best Screenplay for The Lunchbox, which he also directed (India, Germany, France), alongside Asghar Farhadi (Le Passé [The Past]) and Mostofa Sarwar Farooki and Anisul Hoque (Television).
Rajeev Ravi earned an APSA Nomination for Achievement in Cinematography for Monsoon Shootout, directed by Amit Kumar (India, United Kingdom, Netherlands). Ravi has a distinguished body of work, including shooting Gangs of Wasseypur directed by Anurag Kashyap, which won the 2012 APSA Jury Grand Prize winner in 2012.
Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya (The World of Goopi and Bagha) directed by Shilpa Ranade, a delightful animation feature film produced by Children’s Film Society, India, earned an APSA Best Animated Feature Film Nomination.
Menstrual Man directed by Amit Virmani (Singapore, India) earned an APSA Nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film (feature-length documentary), produced by Amit Virmani and Seah Kui Luan. It is on Muruganantham, a school dropout, who realizes that a majority of Indian women cannot afford sanitary pads, and trains women to make and use them, improving feminine hygiene, as well as creating livelihoods.
Shyam Benegal heads the APSA International Jury, and film curator and critic Meenakshi Shedde was on the APSA Nominations Council 2013 that decided the nominees for Best Feature Film and other categories, for films from 70 countries in Asia. The APSA International Jury also includes Sri Lankan actress Malini Fonseka, Korean director Kim Tae-yong and Hong Kong producer Albert Lee.
To read the complete list of nominations, click here.
Since the last two years, FFI or Film Federation Of India has suddenly changed its stance. Earlier all the jury members used to be in the presser to announce the name of the film selected as India’s entry for the Oscars. Now, it’s all a big secret. And that’s quite baffling because nobody says why it’s a secret. More because none of the renowned film festival or prestigious film awards keeps its jury a secret. I can’t think of any. In fact, most take pride in announcing the names of their jury members. It becomes more important when a controversy like this happens – why can’t the members publicly endorse and fight for the film they picked to represent the country? I don’t have any answers.
So here’s the list of the 19 FFI jury members who picked “The Good Road”.
1. Gautam Ghose – Filmmaker, Chairman of the jury
2. Rupa Ganguly – Actor
3. Agni Mitra Paul – Fashion/Costume Designer
4. Sujoy Ghosh – Filmmaker
5. Onir – Filmmaker
6. Bharthiraja
7. N Shankar – Filmmaker
8. K P Kumaran – Filmmaker
9. Mahesh Kothare – Actor/Director
10. Suhasini Mani Ratnam – Director/writer
11. Indraneel Bose
12. Sanjay Verma
13. Kamlesh Pandey – Screenwriter
14. Ramadoss Naidu
15. Kavita Lankesh – Director/Writer
16. Vijay Patkar – Actor
17. Aarti Anand
18. Vidya Sagar – Music Director
19. C V Reddy – Filmmaker
Strangely, we spoke to at least six of them and all are repeating the same lines – it was unanimous decision to pick The Good Road. 19 people and all felt that TGR was better than everything else. or all have been told to say the same thing? Now that the names are out, am hoping at least some people will speak up why The Good Road is better than other films. Seriously, forget The Lunchbox. Just tell us what we are missing. They need to enlighten us and make us see what’s great about TGR. Some of the names are quite well known and they know much more about cinema than all of us. So it will be good to know what’s good in their books and why. Waiting.
Because that seems to be the only reason why none of us could speak out openly about our “best” film to be sent for Oscars in the Foreign Language category.
Now that i have seen it, let me say it loudly – The Lunchbox is Casablanca compared to The Good Road. I will come back to the film later. Let me also clarify few things first. I have been reading articles, posts and tweets on similar topic since last 3 days, and some of them are on such a wrong tangent. So here it goes.
Oscars
No, it’s not white man’s approval. It’s not even the best function or festival as far as films are concerned. Some of the best American films and actors don’t even bag a nomination. So why are we getting jizz in pants about Oscars?
Because it still matters. Because it’s money, market and reach. Because one nomination (and win) not only puts the spotlight on the director’s entire filmography but the country also comes into focus. Because it opens every possible door for its lead actors. The examples are many. In the last few years only Chile’s No, Israel’s Ajami and Footnote, Algeria’s Outside The Law, Greece’s Dogtooth, Denmark’s In A Better World, Argentina’s The Secret In Their Eyes, Japan’s Departures and Denmark’s After The Wedding have brought so much attention to their country’s cinema just by being nominated. Same goes for actors. Who knew Matthias Schoenaerts before the Bullhead?
A Cannes win also has the power to do all that. Ask the Romanian filmmakers. But Cannes is not so mainstream, Cannes is French, and Oscar is Amreekan. You know the difference, and two shall never meet. One is purely about cinema, the other is more about box office. Btw, do auteurs eat big burgers?
That’s the simple reason why Oscars count. Not for any white man supremacy. In 2011, when Asghar Farhadi went on stage to collect his award for The Separation, almost everyone knew that it was not only the “best foreign film” but it was the “best fucking film of the year”. The white man supremacy and approval logic is so 80s. The world went back to all his films and he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world by Timemagazine in 2012. Difficult to believe that the journey started with “Nader and Simin” (title was changed later) getting the distribution fund at Berlin fest.
So do i believe in Oscars? NO.
An award ceremony which never did any justice to Martin Scorsese, how can they be fair?
Do i watch Oscars? YES.
The only day in the year when i get up early and see the rising sun. Why? Because Marty believes in it. Because it’s good fun to watch some of your favourite actors, directors, screenwriters, all under the same roof and still be so cool and candid. And because they still make it “look” professional. Some of the best talents never get their due but when they get, it changes everything. One nod is all it takes. That’s it.
Foreign Language Category & The Good Road
In the last few years, this has become one of the most toughest category. The number of submissions keeps on increasing every year. You are not just competing with the best of the Amreekan cinema but from best of the world. Last year it was a new record with 71 films. This year’s running list already has 45 films. Heavyweight Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster is already in the ring.
Since FFI’s announcement on The Good Road came out, anyone having any doubts about it, the first question asked was have you seen it? And as far as i knew nobody except the FFI jury had seen it. So, before writing any post on it, i decided to watch the film, and am so so disappointed after watching it.
So far i was only arguing that it’s always about the “right” film at the Oscars, it’s not about the “best” film. Why get so holier than thou and sentimental about putting our “best” film? Especially when Oscars is just another ‘market’ event that does wonders. Put the “right” film out, play according to the games, play it smart, and get a nod. Simple. Just look at the big picture.
Now, if i consider this is the standard of our best film which is being sent to the world audience, am sorry to say that people will laugh at us. Don’t believe me, go watch “The Good Road”. The film is easily available on dvds and #youknowwhere. It doesn’t even look professional. Except an idea and intention, it has nothing to offer. It’s boring, the production looks tacky, direction is bad, performances are inconsistent, and acting by non-actors look like non-acting only. The arid landscape and the use of music are the only things that work.
The only Oscars bait was a sequence involving young girls in prostitution racket standing on platforms surrounded by coloured tubelights. Haven’t seen anything like that on screen.
With “The Good Road” as our submission, what’s our chance at the Oscars? i think ZILCH. I hope am proved wrong but i doubt it.
And what i am most confused about is the sudden support for the film. As a friend pointed out, just because it has suddenly become the David in front of The Lunchbox Goliath with UTV, Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap in its support? Strange. Very, very strange. Watch both the films and compare the merits.
More strange is the fact that not a single mainstream critic in this country bothered to review the film when it released – in theatres and on dvds. That says more about the state of film criticism in this country.
The Lunchbox
With The Lunchbox, many of us believed it had a *chance*. Yes, just a chance. And we have been shouting about it. It’s a tough battle there. But with Sony Classics having its US rights and many influential American voices already pushing for it after watching the film at Cannes, Toronto and Telluride, it had the right visibility factor going for it. Michael Moore, Ted Hope and many others tweeted about it. Aseem Chhabra has written more about it here. Also, The Hollywood Reporter and Indiewire, the two ends of spectrum, were counting it among the frontrunners. And am sure they know (at least little bit) more and understand their Oscars more than us.
It was just not the “right” film but it’s a much, much better film than “The Good Road”. Just ideas and intentions don’t make a good film, or a good road.
So what did the FFI jury saw in the film which i could not? Let me quote from this interview of Gautam Ghose…
The criteria is simple — we had to select a film that represents the country perfectly.
WTF! Represents the country perfectly? As in peacocks and elephants? Do they watch the Oscars? Not sure what it means (Can someone explain?). After watching the film, all i can say is that The Good Road represents us amateurishly. You all made us look tacky in front of the world. Forget The Lunchbox, any other film would have been better too.
Though just Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur’s performances were enough to pick the film. These two are not just the best performances of the year in Indian cinema, but they can be easily counted as among the best ones in world cinema too. So I would sincerely like to smoke what the FFI jury was smoking. Anyone?
Because this was our chance. Because we needed it. We needed to tell the world that we do more than naach-gaana now. We needed to assure Sony Classics that you can look and pick more Indian films that can do wonders. You don’t need to wait for 10-15 years again. We needed to tell the world that it’s not just Iranians, Romanians, Koreans, Greeks and Australians, we are also heading in right direction. And this was the best stage to do it. We had a chance, a bright and fair chance. But what a fuck up! what a royal fuck up this turned out to be.
One more thing – who made the rules suddenly that FFI can’t disclose the names of jury members? I would surely love to know the names of those 12 or 15 or 19 people who thought The Good Road was better than The Lunchbox and every other film that was submitted for consideration. As far as i remember, when the jury meet used to happen in Mumbai, almost all the jury members used to present in the press conference to announce their choice. What happened suddenly in the last two years or so? Are they afraid to endorse the film publicly because their taste will be questioned? Someone enlighten me here too. Come on, come out, tell us you loved The Good Road. And as the saying goes, any festival selection or win always tells you more about the jury than about the film. I will still try not to judge you.
If you follow this blog and twitter feed of our regular contributors, you know that we have been plugging, writing and tweeting about Ritesh Batra’s debut feature ‘The Lunchbox’ for a long, long time. The film is finally releasing this friday. Thanks to UTV and Karan Johar who came on board and made it happen.
And Dear UTV, for Ship Of Theseus, The Lunchbox and Shahid, sau khoon maaf (or Chennai Express maaf) this year from our side. Do continue the good work, or at least just the balancing act will do.
Over to Fatema Kagalwala who tells you why ‘The Lunchbox’ is a must watch and is easily one of the best films of the year.
Cinema is a big lie. Loneliness isn’t as poetic as it pretends to be on celluloid. And nostalgia is a double-edged sword, its pain bitter-sweet but pain after all. Not many have the courage to show it as it is and we keep buying those lies, keeping the pretence going. Good things happen to good people in films but not real life. But who are we to conclude that? Definitely, not Ritesh Batra. Because, he is not pretending, nor bull-shitting us. He is simply throwing two situations, two people very real and painfully so, together and asking ‘what if’? And also, ‘what now’? And that is beautiful.
There is loneliness everywhere in the film. In every frame, every character. Accompanied by that unshakeably loyal bitch of a companion – longing. And along with it disillusionment, resignation and valiant attempts to overcome. In all the three central characters of the film played by Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddique.
I don’t know how to write a recco post without divulging too much. So free-wheeling it will be. In a Q and A, Ritesh Batra said there is a lot of nostalgia in every character, yearning for a time long past. And nostalgia is the step-child of loneliness, undesired yet cannot be shaken of. Always around to remind you the good times have long gone. But they needn’t stay gone. And as humans we will always wish for better times, strive for better times. And so do these three characters. Just like Georges in Amour. Or Salma of Lemon Tree.
How do you write about a film that you just liked and liked? No, there is nothing to dislike in the film. At least, there wasn’t to my eyes. Unless you are that guy who thinks old people and middle-class, married women with children cannot be protagonists of a film because their stories are drab. Had Ritesh Batra thought so, we wouldn’t have had Lunchbox, a deceptively feel-good film that goes just this much beyond feel-good, opening a world that is so ours yet painted with a warm, tender, home-grown, understated sensibility that till now we saw only in Iranian films.
So Irrfan Khan is an old man, Saajan Fernandes, who is about to retire from his job at the Claims Department in what I presume must be LIC, given it looks like a Govt organisation. He is a widower, childless, lonely and prickly like how the emotionally un-nurtured sometimes get. Work-wise he is punctilious, much respected and almost clock-work, again almost like how the emotionally un-nurtured sometimes get. He just might easily become Carl from Up in a few years. Or a middle-class Isak of Wild Strawberries.
One day, Saajan receives an unusually well-prepared lunch and then the next day a letter. He responds and a story grows out of those little bits of interactions that happen at lunch-time via a now-defunct medium – hand-written letters. The film packs such old-world symbols with aplomb, while just slipping them in casually. Letters, VCR with ‘Yeh Jo Hain Zindagi’ playing (Yes, sigh!), a song from Saajan; celebrating nostalgia with its characters and nudging us to try it too. Who knows we might like it too? And yes, I did. (Btw, is Yeh Jo Hain Zindagi on #YKW?)
The person on the other side of the letters is Ila, a young, middle-class housewife and mother, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, who is already spent fulfilling the thankless responsibilities of a home-maker for a long time now. A few years older and she will become Francesca of Bridges of Madison County. But she isn’t there yet so she is conspiring with her neighbour aunty, present only in voice (the awesome Bharti Achrekar with her distinct voice), to win back the attentions of her husband, which, as they do, have eroded over time. Special lunches with special masalas are prepared in the hope that her husband will notice her again. But the first tiffin she sends him doesn’t reach him. Nor does the last. And by then it is too late. Maybe, that is better because what happens otherwise is what we want for Ila, not the dregs of a dead romance rekindled with wet wood.
And then there is Sheikh, played by that annoyingly smooth and frustratingly effortless actor Nawazuddin Siddique. An orphan who has come up on his own in this tough world and loves saying ‘Maa kehti thi’ because it adds ‘vazan’ (weight) to his quotes. He is looking for an anchor too and under his lisping, people-pleasing, yes-man, we see that vulnerable and achingly lonely man longing for someone elder he could call his own. He influences Saajan’s life as much as Saajan does his. (SPOILER – The scene where NS asks Saajan to represent him at the wedding may seem cheesy and clichéd but when Saajan actually does, the heft of emotion actually weighs you down. Suddenly, you realise this is what it meant to him. This is how much having someone you can call family can mean. By then, our Saajan has begun thawing too and we revel in it. SPOILER ENDS)
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, if there is a film that personifies this, it is Lunchbox. Ila is trying to win her husband back through it, Saajan’s tough crust begins to melt in it and we also see Sheikh trying to woo Saajan’s confidence by his own culinary talent, but along with suitable pride he takes in his wife’s cooking. If at all food was a central motif in a film it was this. Nourishment. We all need it. Physical and emotional. After a point, the physical nourishment and the loveliness that comes with the excitement of change just becomes a symbol of emotional nourishment.
It is as tender as it gets, almost as tender as ‘Mary and Max’ was. The characters could just be Indianised versions of that touchingly, understated and very well-written film. The promises in Lunchbox are slightly more populist, a wee dream-like to really compare. But that is where it scores. In maintaining that thin line between selling dreams and mirroring reality while infusing hope. And if not for the ending, it could have killed the film, or dragged it down the much-beaten path of ‘potential thi, expore nahi kiya.’ Because, in the end, try as we might to resist it, suddenly it becomes our story, we are pulled in, by force. Forced to commit to it, engage with it at a deeper level because our own catharsis depends on it. How? Experience it and then we will talk.
I haven’t watched a movie on old age more painful than Sarah Polley’s ‘Away From Her’, which shows the pain of growing old in all its nakedness. Irrfan as Saajan is brilliant as he wears that pain as a daily accessory, treating it almost as a part of life. Yet, there is a balance in tone, where we never indulge in his sorrow vicariously, yet it touches us as we see him being rough with little kids and then staring longingly into other people’s houses, watching them eating noisily together. We worry what will happen to him now that he is retiring and from the looks of it, it seems he is worrying too. Just that his worries are masked with a longing he himself doesn’t want to admit.
Ila on the other hand has been brave enough to admit it. And brave enough to do something about it. She has a confidante in her neighbour aunty who has been taking care of her bed-ridden husband for fifteen years without complaint. And she has a mother who, instead of being in pain, feels empty and relieved, the day her husband dies. All she feels is hungry she says and it is a stunning metaphor of nourishment again. What comes out after the cork is removed on years of repression, years of living with an extinguished relationship? Maybe, Ila sees her future in her mother because, we surely do.
A lot of the film is editing. Ritesh Batra admitted it too. The stories of Saajan and Ila are inter-cut with an intuitive sense of excitement. It is all repetitive, everything the two do, they can’t help it, their lives are like that, mundane, boring and same always. What’s worse, ours is the same but the story-telling takes care of that, there is no boredom or ennui hitting us. Slightly mismatched voice-overs, visual exploration of possibilities and a sense of control in scenes showing Saajan and Ila alone transports the film out of monotony so much that the deliberately cultivated tedium becomes part of the fabric of the film without becoming an obstacle.
There is a refreshing un-self-consciousness about the film that is so rewarding, one is wonderstruck to know it is the director’s debut film. Irrfan Khan, we know isn’t a self-conscious actor, repetitive and uninspiring he maybe at times but never self-conscious. Nimrat Kaur isn’t either and it is a pleasure to watch two actors who know the meaning of restraint and understatement. Nimrat Kaur takes the staid and plaid Ila out of her very common characterisation and infuses so much warmth in her that we cannot but help root for her. All this without any manipulation. However, while the world was busy adoring Irrfan I gave away my awe and jaw to Nawazuddin Siddique. The man is something else. Would it be blasphemy if I say watch the film for him above all?
Mumbai is a silent character as well, looking on at its victims, as they grapple with their lives in this big, sprawling city of faceless people full of dreams waiting for a miracle to transform their lives. Do Saajan, Ila and Sheikh find theirs uplifted? Do their dreams find wings and their desires expression? Does loneliness consume them or release them to fly on? Is loneliness on celluloid different than it is for you and me? There is only one way to find out and that is by watching this delectable film this Friday. If only we got fare like this more often, we’d be feeding off the cinemas more often too. Here’s wishing Lunchbox a dream run at the BO.
London Film Festival (LFF) has announced its schedule for this year. The 57th edition of the festival will run from 9-20 October and will screen 234 feature-length films & 134 shorts from 74 countries.
India seems to have a good score at LFF this year as seven desi films have been selected for the fest. The titles include Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa, Ritesh Batra’s fest favourite The Lunchbox, Nagraj Manjule’s Fandry, Richie Mehta’s Siddharth, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran’s From Gulf To Gulf, Rituparno Ghosh’s Jeevan Smriti and Uday Shankar’s Kalpana. The Lunchbox is in official competition section of the fest.
But the one that we are most excited about is Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa (Sniffer). We have been hearing about it for sometime and now more details have come out.
ANWAR KA AJAB KISSA
Master Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta teams up with India’s hottest indie actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui in this richly textured black comedy, set against a magical, surreal tableaux of the Bengali city and countryside that’s typical of Dasgupta’s eye. Anwar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a well meaning if clumsy private detective, or ‘sniffer’, who can’t help getting personally embroiled with the clients he is spying on. His only true companion is an old dog. His pet and his regular drunkenness put him at odds with the local orthodox Muslim housing block, who want him out. At the same time, Anwar increasingly struggles to cope with his small-time sleuth work that shows him that, in the modern world, even love is for sale. When a case takes Anwar back to his rural homeland, he’s forced to confront his own love tragedy. Siddiqui lights up the screen, displaying a talent for deft comic timing that makes Sniffer a joy to watch.
– Director-Screenwriter : Buddhadeb Dasgupta
– Producers : Ajay Sharma, Archismaan Sharma
– With Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi, Ananya Chatterjee
– Duration :132 mins
FANDRY
The ‘untouchable’ Jabya struggles to reconcile his status with his dreams in Nagraj Manjule’s uncompromising indictment of India’s caste system.
– Director-Screenwriter : Nagraj Manjule
– Producers : Vivek Kajaria, Nilesh Navalakha
– With Somnath Avghade, Suraj Pawar, Kishor Kadam
– Duration : 105 mins
– Production company Navalakha Arts and Holy Basil Combine
Nagraj Manjule’s film is a scorching indictment of the caste system that persists in modern India despite legislation introduced since independence. It is depicted through the eyes of an intelligent Dalit (untouchable) teenager, Jabya, who has a deeply rooted inferiority complex about his looks, caste and his family’s staggering poverty. These feelings prevent him from expressing his affection for his fellow classmate and cherished love, the fair-skinned Shalu, who is the daughter of a higher-caste family. His father is against him going to school and aspiring too highly and fellow villagers expect him to do menial work like the rest of his clan.
SIDDHARTH
A modern-day quest to find his missing son leads Delhi tailor Mahendra on a perilous journey into the unknown in Richie Mehta’s cautionary tale.
– Director-Screenwriter Richie Mehta
– Producers Steven N Bray, David Miller
– With Rajesh Tailang, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Anuray Arora
– Canada-India 2013
– Duration 96 mins
– Production company Poor Man’s Productions
– Sales : Fortissimo
Director Richie Mehta returns to London with a powerful tale that is all too sadly a common story in today’s Indian cities. In Delhi, a door-to-door tailor, Mahendra, and his long-suffering wife, played by Tannishtha Chatterjee (Brick Lane), are struggling to make ends meet. They send their 12-year-old son Siddharth off to work illegally in a factory in Punjab, but when he doesn’t arrive back on the agreed date, the couple go to the middle men who arranged their son’s job and then the police. As they don’t have a photo of their son, identification is near impossible. As tales of child abduction are raised the desperate father borrows money from his fellow local street vendors and sets off on a quest to trace his son’s journey into the unknown.
FROM GULF TO GULF
Mobile phone video from the sailors who brave the routes between India and the Persian Gulf form the basis of grassroots true-life adventure.
– Directors : Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran
– Producer CAMP
– India-United Arab Emirates 2013
– Duration : 81 mins
– Production company : Sharjah Art Foundation
‘A film based on actual events, and videos of actual events.’ Four years ago the Indian artists’ collective CAMP started to work with the boats that crisscross the Arabian Sea from the Gulf of Kutch between India and Pakistan to the Persian Gulf. This film draws from these years of dialogue, friendship and video exchange with sailors, most of whom are from Gujarat in India, Southern Iran and Pakistan. Rather than directing, the filmmakers act as editors, deftly compiling from the sailors’ mobile phone footage an authentic grassroots picture of the experiences of these usually invisible sea workers. But, with the impressive wooden boats and the joyous soundtrack (chosen by the sailors themselves), this humble material is ultimately transformed into a modern adventure on the high seas.
JEEVAN SMRITI
The swansong of the late Rituparno Ghosh is a fittingly personal take on the LFF favourite’s own inspiration, the poet-artist Rabindranath Tagore.
– Director-Screenwriter : Rituparno Ghosh
– Producer : Sanjoy Nag
– With Sanjoy Nag, Samadarshi Dutta, Raima Sen, Anirban Ghosh
– Duration 78 mins
– Sales : National Film Development Corporation
This is a sumptuous, very personal docu-drama about his own inspiration – the legendary poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore. Flamboyant Rituparno, with his camera team, set off from Kolkata in the monsoons to Tagore’s country birthplace, on a journey of love and poetic admiration. On the way they uncover the lesser-known personal life of this Bengali hero. A stunningly photographed dramatic story, backed by great actors like Raima Sen, depicts the inner struggles of the young, introvert Tagore who, in spite of his comfortable background, was constantly tortured but also inspired by love and terrible loss.
Kalpana is Uday Shankar’s classic which has been restored by World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna/ L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the National Film Archive of India.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 