Celebrating Asian cinema

This week Suman Tarafdar brings you glimpses of the Asian cinema festival Cinefan.

Paanch director Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday was the centrepiece of the festival.

A dreamy, almost perfect 10 days. That was the reaction of most cinephiles in Delhi at the conclusion of the 6th Cinefan, the 10-day festival of Asian Cinema.

With over 90 films and some of the biggest names in town for the festival, including the Makhmalbaf family and legends like Christoher Doyle mingling amongst the ogling fans, it was no wonder that the queues were more often than not serpentine.

Queues? And serpentine ones at that? When there were no films from either of the two largest cinema factories in the world? For those not clued in, yet, the parameters of cinema are tilting not just towards Asia, as famously claimed by Shekhar Kapur awhile ago, but also towards a ‘better’, a wide-ranging gamut of Asian cinema.

Asian cinema has increasingly been penetrating and making its presence felt in the West. The Opening Film at Cinefan this year, Gegen Die Wand (Head On) won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year. Made by Fatih Atkin, a second generation Turk living in Germany, the film led a slew of Asian films that won accolades at Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Montreal and other festivals around the world last year.

And Cinefan, this year renamed Osian’s Cinefan, has been for the past few years been bringing the best of Asian cinema to Delhi. Starting from modest dozen-odd films in its first year, it has grown manifold, showcasing about 90 films from 30 countries this year.

The festival paid tribute to three greats of Asian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and his family, Wong Kar-Wai and Guru Dutt. The Wong Kar-Wai films, which included Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together and In the Mood For Love, had people queuing up more than two hours before the start of the shows, and still sometimes failing to get in! Even jury star members like Aparna Sen and Shabana Azmi got to see some of the films once others made way for them.

The presence of almost the entire Makhmalbaf clan – Mohsen, daughters Samira and Hana and son Meysam, all filmmakers, was perhaps unique in the annals of any festival.

Waheeda Reham in a still from the film Chaudhvin ka Chand

The tribute to Guru Dutt, which had seven films, attracted die hard fans, who perhaps wanted a large screen glimpse of Gulab as she mesmerized Vijay in

Pyaasa

, or see the coquettish Madhubala strut across the screen keeping Preetam’s charms at bay in

Mr and Mrs 55

.

The Special Screenings section was titled Intolerance and included Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution, a detailed documentation of the aftermath of the riots in Gujarat in 2002, which still awaits censor clearance and had to be shown as a private screening.

The India Bazaar section was smaller than usual this year, nine films including Roysten Abel’s In Othello, Rajeev Nath’s Moksham and Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan’s Devi Ahilya Bai. The audience got to choose their favourite film in this section and the prize went to Sandip Ray’s Bombaiyer Bombete, which resurrects Satyajit Ray’s detective, Feluda.

The Competition films were however excellent and with 13 films to choose from, the jury had a tough time selecting the winners (if one could trust their sibilant whispers during the screenings). And eventually two films, Earth and Ashes (Afghanistan), a fable of devastating loss, redemption and the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of atrocities of war and The Missing (Taiwan), a touching tale of dislocation and contemporary societal malaise, ended up sharing the top prize, Osian-Cinefan Award for Best Film.

The festival, held over four venues in the capital, attracted not just the regular film buffs but many who otherwise stick to the routine fare offered by Bollywood. And as the festival went by, there were many who were left to solve that ultimate dilemma often faced by a festival regular – how to I see two films at different venues at the same time!

There was special focus on cinema from the Arabic diaspora, Arabesque – where 13 films from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Palestine were shown to appreciative audiences, especially struck by the beauty and power of the films.

Asian Frescoes, the section showcasing the best of Asian cinema was not surprisingly the most sought after section, and included masterpieces like Omer Kavur’s Encounter (Turkey), Ann Hui’s Goddess of Mercy (China), Dan Wolman’s Ben’s Biography from Israel, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Taiwan) and of course the first feature film made in Bhutan, Travelers and Magicians, directed by Khyentse Norbu among others.

The venues were central and accessible, the programme had not change too many times, the electricity faltered only at the French Cultural Centre, there weren’t too many changes to the schedule, there were plenty of stars for lesser mortals to ‘star gaze’, as one such fan put it, most importantly the films were largely the ones people wanted to see.. all in all a satisfactory time was to be had by all.

And it was not just films alone that were on display. There was an exhibition on cinematic landmarks from Osian’s Archive for Indian Art and Cinema, which took the people on a nostalgic trip with posters and exhibits from many favourite Indian films of yore.

There was also a Talent Campus, where 50 young filmmakers got to interact with some of the cinema’s biggest names. Organised on the lines of a similar exercise at Berlinale, it attracted some of the best young filmmakers in India.

And who were spotted at the festival? Adoor Gopalakrishnan dropped in, Samira Makhmalbaf was the toast of the media, Tsai Ming Liang and Sahiba Sumar were present, as was Nonzee Nimbutr. Jury members Oussama Mohammad, Olivier Pere and Kim Dong-Ho were of course seen. Indian delegates included Kiron Kher, Anjan Das, Shekhar Das, Makarand Deshpande and Sanjob Sabhapandit, all whose films were on show. Also seen Dev Benegal, ‘just as a visitor’.

Kirron Kher in a still from the film, Khamosh Pani

But what perhaps brought out the fact that Asian cinema had arrived was the tumult just before the screening of Pakistani director Sahiba Sumar’s

Khamosh Pani

, starring Kirron Kher. Though one of the most eagerly anticipated films in the festival, the queues for it caused the organisers to go berserk and the director to plaintively appeal from the stage for her invitees to be let in, including the former minister for Human Resources Development, Murli Manohar Joshi. In vain, as he along with hundreds of others were turned away from the already jam-packed theatre.

In the land of ministers-are-almost-gods, for one to be turned away was indeed unprecedented. And this augurs well for the time when Asian cinema can be exhibited not just at festivals but across the thousands of theatres across the land.