Kolkata Film Festival: Day 2 story

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If the morning belonged to Kim Ki-duk, the evening was won over by Nandita Das. Removing all confusions over the fact whether she is a Bong or not (as her surname is Bengali), she told the wide-eyed audience seated in the Nandan-I auditorium that she does not hail from Bengal.

From 8.30 in the morning, there was only one buzz at the Nandan complex - "Aren't you watching The Bow?" Every other person was seen rushing to occupy the seats at Nandan-I leaving the other four theatres almost empty. And what a revelation it was! Kim floored everyone once again with breath-taking cinematography, a seering background score, simplicity of techniques and a lucid, yet unbelievably, beautiful story-telling. Kim is first and foremost one of the best story-tellers and he sure knows how to form a narrative around a simple plot. His films seem to be inspired by the form and structure of the short story. Leave alone the story of Bow, the music is still ringing in my years. Everyone, who watched the film, is planning to download the soundtrack from the Net.

In between the screenings, the organizers have arranged for an open forum where directors and film personalities hold discussions on various topics related to film-making and people get to interact with the directors. The topic for today's discussion was Digital revolution - a boon or a bane? The speakers were G. R. Biplob, a film-maker from Bangladesh and Indranil Sarkar, a digital film-maker from India. The session was chaired by eminent scholar Dhiman Dasgupta.

Biplob said that he was not too sure if the film industry should invest on digital technology as there are many pros and cons to it. The major drawback being that, in this age when new technologies are coming up everyday, it will be very difficult to rely on this medium and not make the mistake of waiting for the arrival of newer technologies which will redefine film-making in a new way. For him, the greatest concern was that if a film was produced fully in the digital manner, then it would be no place for the film-maker's ideas and it would actually be the ‘˜death of the director'. He cited the conflict between the manufacturer of digital equipments with the guys who used to make the film equipments that have so far been used, as the place where the film-maker is sure to lose his/her identity.

For Indranil, however, there has been a loss of aesthetics so far as digital film-making is considered. Sounding very puritan, he pointed out that the as a result of digitaol film-making being easily available to everyone, many unskilled people are making films which lack filmic grammar. At the same time, there are people who put in their capital for digital films without having any knowledge of the medium. He rightly showed that the discovery of the technique of chroma had actually rung the death bell for celluloid as one can shoot an entire film without using the different departments of film-making like lighting, locales and even acting. The shooting can be done in chroma, the background will be changed accordingly on the editing table, lip sync will add to the voice of the character and animation techniques will enable the characters to speak, sing, emote and act.

After the discussion, the cineastes headed for Nandan-I for attending the premiere of Firaaq, Nandita Das' directorial debut. As the autumn evening set in on the dusty roads surrounding the complex, the place started swarming with people. The line was so huge that it could put an anaconda to shame. Added to it, was the huge list of celebrities who had come down to see the first ever screening of Firaaq. From television personalities to noted directors like Goutam Ghose and Mrinal Sen, and bureaucrats, Nandan became packed with people and as usual, the cops sealed it off from the outsiders. Only those who were in the queue for over two hours, were the lucky ones.

Based on the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, the film depicts the various emotions of different families who were directly or indirectly affected by the carnage. Apart from brilliant performances put up by each of the actors, Shahana Goswami stands out. And Deepti Naval and the little boy, who played Mohsin. Beautifully portrayed by Ravi K. Chandran, cinamtographer of the film, the viewers felt Nandita could have made it much more fulfilling. Certain strands here and there seemed incomplete. Considering this to be her directorial debut, hats off to Nandita and it is very rightly so that at the end of the screening, the audience stood up and clapped. But one should also keep in mind films like Parzania, which have already been made on the riots. It seemed that the film is very specifically for the urban audience. We will be eagerly waiting to see how the film fares in all parts of India, when it is officially released in January 2009.