Film Appreciation with K S Sivakumaran:

Memorable musings of SAARC films

The four-day SAARC film festival which concluded recently included eight films from Bhutan, India (Marathi and Bangla language films), Pakistan (Urdu) and Sri Lanka (Sinhala). This columnist has already given his impressions of the Sinhala films when they were screened in Lanka sometime back. Of the remaining films I could see only two films.

For the benefit of the readers who may not have known what films were shown, here is the list: Chortan Kora II (Bhutan directed by Wanhchuk), Vihir (Marathi-India- Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni), Mohabbataan Sachiyaa (Urdu- Pakistan-Shahzad Rafique), Ira Handa Yata (Sinhala - Sri Lanka - Bennett Rathnayake), Shaddsemo (Bhutanese language - Bhutan - Tshering Wangyel), Amai Aadu (Bangla- India -Somnath Gupta), Shackles Yet To Open (Urdu- Pakistan- Shazad Raffique) and Bambara Wallalla (Sinhala -Sri Lanka -Athula Liyanage)

Before I give my impressions of the two films I managed to see, Mohabbataan Sachiyaa and Ami Aadu, I must report that a profitable workshop was conducted on May 12 at the National Film Corporation’s audience hall with the Director of the SAARC Centre in Colombo G L W Samarasinghe and Deputy Director Sanjay Garg, D B Nihalsingha, Glen S Davis, M Ramachandran, Edwin Ariyadasa and a few keen people interested in the film medium.

Dr D B Nihalsingha, veteran film personality, gave a superb presentation on many aspects of cinema under the title ‘Societal Role the Filmmakers: Balancing Commercial success and Social Commitments’. I wish that he publishes his article in a newspaper for a wider audience.

Amai Aadu

Let’s turn to the films seen. I enjoyed Somnath Gupta’s Bangla language film Ami Aadu, a beautiful aesthetic film governed by the meticulous care in observing the grammar of cinema. Truly it was subscribing to the Moving Image concept.

The film satisfied me at several levels:

It has a realistic story happening in West Bengal State’s sub urban Kolkatta with the backdrop of the U S bombardment of Iraq. It was a beautiful love story of a naïve pretty Hindu Brahmin girl and a well meaning Muslim boy. But it was not a mere love story; it had many subtle presentation and interpretation of social imbalances. It is a tragi-comic film that ends well.

The director Somnath Gupta succeeds in conveying his message to an enlightened and aesthetically attuned audience with images that convey without words the subtleties of conjugal relationship and family bondage. Class, caste distinctions, the hope and confidence in reaching the goals, the cultural traits of Hindu and Muslim culture, the life of the proletarians, the war and the violence, the deceit, the politicos and their arrogance are some of the features brought briefly as images with tight editing. There is a smooth flow in the film.

The camera, the technique of voicing the epistle on cassette, the mere sweet of the lovers in lovemaking without visual all add to the pleasant enjoyment of the film.

***

The other film in contrast though entertaining was lacking in appreciable presentation. But the masses not worried about artistic structure would have thoroughly enjoyed the film for their mere ingredients of a ‘masala’ film: songs, dances, fights, love, colour, costumes, pretty actors and the like.

The film Mohabbattaan Sachiyaan was like any other Bollywood and Kollywood and Tollywood film that entertain the masses and not so much the educated and the elite. The film is a blockbuster.

[email protected]

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page