Editor H.N.Narahari Rao Advisory Board, Gautam Kaul Premendra V.T.Subramanian Dilip Bapat Executive Assistance R.

Mani Cover and Layout U.T.Suresh Editorial Office Federation of Film Societies of India, th th 230, 45 Cross, 8 Block Jayanagar, Bangalore-560070 Email: [email protected] All signed articles in the journal represent the views of the authors and not necessarily of FFSI.

The President and the CEC members of FFSI profoundly thank all the authors who have contributed the articles for IFC-16.

Front Cover Still : Kurmavatara

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Indian Film Culture- 16

1. Editorial 2. Ray and Tagore by Chidananda Dasgupta 3. Tributes to Chidanand Dasgupta: Some stray thoughts about a friend by Vijaya Mulay Chidananda Dasgupta, The Doyen by Aruna Vasudev Chiduda: Always Inspiring by Parimal Mukherjee Chidananda Dasgupta, the man and the critic by Ranjita Biswas 4. In Memoriam - Theo Angelopoulos by Dan Fainaru 5. Leila and A separation - A comparison by M.K.Raghavendra 6. Film Festivals - Then and Now by David Sterritt. 7. A Tribute to Soumitra Chattopadhyay by Premendra Mazumder 8. Film Criticism today - by H.N.Narahari Rao 9. Chandulal J. Shah - by Rafique Baghdadi 10. Hindi Cinema's Nehruvian Yatra (Journey) by Darius Cooper 11. The Future of Film Society Movement by Sudhir Nandgaonkar 12. Reviews: Kurmavatara - 71, Byari - 74, The Tree of Life - 76 15 19 22 24 28 31 36 42 47 54 59 68 3 5

Chidananda Dasgupta
- A Tribute

Editorial

Chidanand Dasgupta (1921-2011) This issue of Indian Film Culture is dedicated to the memory of late Chidanand Dasgupta, the world renowned film critic and a pioneer of the film society movement in India, who passed away on May 22, 2011, at Kolkata. Born in 1921, Chiduda as he was fondly addressed was best known as a film historian and film critic. He has written over 2000 articles on cinema published in various periodicals of India and abroad. His articles published in British magazine Sight and Sound in the 1960s are considered to be of great significance and that won him international acclaim as a celebrated film critic. It was on October, 5, 1947, in Calcutta that 19 film enthusiasts assembled in a garret in South Calcutta and founded Calcutta Film Society. Chidanand Dasgupta was one among them who took the initiative along with Satyajit Ray, Hari S.Das Gupta, Hiran Sanyal and Radha Mohan Bhattacharya. This group of young film lovers were convinced that there is urgent need for telling the people that there is another kind of cinema in the world that needs to be seen and appreciated.

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The enthusiasm and the passion for cinema of these enthusiasts was so great that they took it up seriously and immediately launched the screenings of such great classics of the world cinema like, Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, David Lean's Brief Encounter(UK), Carol Reed's The Way Ahead (UK), Jean Renoir's This Land is Mine (France), Flaherty's Nanook of the North, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane and many such highly acclaimed films. It was a revelation for many intellectuals and many film lovers who were habituated to see the routine formula films with songs, dance and fights in commercial theatres. It was not that easy to arrange screenings of such films in those days. They had to spend their own personal money, and had to beg the theatre people to spare the hall in the unusual timings like in the morning and procure films from the foreign mission using influence and personal contacts. They did all this but the result was not encouraging at all. Only a handful of people numbering around 50 to hundred used to attend. But they persisted their task with a missionary zeal. It was in 1958 that Chiduda took personal interest and prepared a blue print for building an active film society movement in the country. The document he prepared was for the formation of Federation of Film Societies of India was given a suitable shape with recommendations from Mr. M.V.Krishnaswamy and Mr. Bhownagary who were in Films Division at that time and ultimately the Federation of Film Societies of India took shape and was formed on 13, December 1959 at the residence of Krishna Kripalani the then secretary of the Sahitya Academy at New Delhi. Chidanand Dasgupta and Mrs. Vijaya Mulay took over the crucial posts of Secretaries under the presidentship of Satyajit Ray. Their pioneering works in the early years of formation and his sustained involvement in this activity for decades inspired many film buffs to start film societies all over India and during the last fifty years this movement though not mass based in its size has definitely created awareness in many areas where it matters most. He was

also the pioneer of film criticism in India taking interest in promoting FIPRESCI- India a wing of the Federation of International Film Critics as its first President. It was again on the initiative of Chiduda that the first issue of Indian Film Culture (IFC) was published in Apr-June 1962. The first editorial board consisting of stalwarts like Chidanand Dasgupta, Jagmohan, B.D.Garga, Marie Seton, Kobita Sarkar, Satyajit Ray, P.V.G.Raju, A.Rehman, K.Rangachari, Anantharaman and Satish Bahadur. The objective and the intention behind starting such a publication were made clear as it is reproduced here: 'Indian Film Culture, however is not intended to be a house magazine for members of the Federation. As its contents will show, it aims being a journal of Film appreciation, written from the Indian point of view. Chiduda took enormous interest in editing this magazine and his coverage of Foreign Film festivals under the caption Diary of a film critic became a regular feature of IFC in most of the earlier issues. In those days only a very few film critics could afford to attend foreign film festivals and Mr. Chidanand Dasgupta, as a renowned film critic attended all major film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Moscow, Karlovy Vary and many others as an invitee and IFC had the benefit of publishing his reviews of the films he saw and also the coverage of the events. He has authored several books including Talking about film, The painted Face, Seeing is Believing and many others. His book The Cinema of Satyajit Ray remains one of the definitive works on Satyajit Ray. He also directed many documentaries including Portrait of a City (1961), The Dance of Shiva (1968), The Stuff of Steel (1969), Zaroorat ki Purti (1979), Rakto (1973) and two feature films Bilet Pherat. (1972) and Amodini (1994). On behalf of the Film societies and the Film critics in India, we pay our tributes to him for pioneering the film movement in India. H.N.Narahari Rao President, FFSI.

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Indian Film Culture

Ray and Tagore

by Chidananda Dasgupta

Chiduda It was NOT FOR NOTHING that Truffaut (reportedly) walked out of a showing of Pather Panchali (1955), it was because he could not bear the slow rhythm. Arriving once in a rush to see Postmaster, I was irritated beyond measure by the time Anil Chatterjee took to turn his head less than 180 degrees. But, slowly, the film cast its spell, one was lifted out of breathless pace of middle-class city life and placed in the heart of Indian reality, surrendering to the rhythm of life As it is lived by the majority of people, and has been, for hundreds of years. The waterlogged path, the little hut surrounded by bamboo groves, became real, every movement of a face took on meaning, became a personal experience. Yet Satyajit Ray does not nostalgically idealize traditional India. The Postmaster cannot stick life in the village and must go back, he is too city bred. Apu moves from his village to Benares and finally to Calcutta, inexorably drawn towards a more modern world. Jalsaghar records the decay of feudalism, no matter with how much melancholy. Devi gently

(Just recently we celebrated the 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, and Satyajit Ray made films on Tagore's works and also a Documentary on Tagore. Late Chiduda wrote an article on 'Ray and Tagore', which was published in British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound in winter -1966/67 issue. We are reproducing it here with the kind courtesy of BFI and NFAI Pune- Kind Courtesy: Sight and Sound Winter 1966/67)

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points to the protest against superstition naturally arising out scientific education. And Amulya in Samapti sports a portrait of Napoleon and wears tartan socks and Oxford shoes a wayward mixture of tradition and modernity. In India, the hiatus between modern and traditional, educated and uneducated, rich and poor is so great that this process of identification with the rhythm and reality of the life of the people is essential to any art which is not prepared to be ephemeral. The rhythm of Ray's films is one of the finest things about his work, for the very reason that it expresses a wider reality than the one we are used to in our islands of modernity in India.

Jalsaghar For those who look upon the cinema as a vehicle of action and drama, Ray's work is anti-film. In the one sequence of Jalsaghar in which he essays a sudden spurt of dramatic action the death by drowning of the old man's wife and son- he is acutely uncomfortable, and becomes almost banal both in the symbol of the upturned boat and the manner of introduction of the dead boy. In Jalsaghar as in Devi, he takes a story with great 'dramatic' potential and persistently plays down his element. Perhaps he feels, like Auguste Renoir, that: The hero portrayed at the moment when he is defying the enemy, or a woman shown in the hardest pains of labour, is not a suitable subject for a great painting, though men and women who have passed through such ordeals become great subjects when later on the artist can portray them in repose. The artist's task is not to stress this or that instant in a human being's existence, but to make comprehensible the man in his entirety. (Renoir, My Father, by Jean Renoir.)

Jalsaghar It is also intimately bound up with the contemplative nature of his style, the preoccupation with what happens in the mind rather than on the surface. Ray's work abounds in long wordless passages, in which his characters do very little and yet express a deal. Think, for instance, of the long, slow opening of Jalsaghar, showing the old man sitting on the terrace in the twilight, his back to the camera, and his servant handing him his long pipe. It sets the note of the entire film-the passing of an order, the twilight not only of his life, but of age.

Jalsaghar

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Indian Film Culture

The inevitability and the direction of change is never in doubt in Jalsaghar or Devi; that is why Ray is content to express the individual in his entirety and never feels the need to take up the cudgels for social reform. In Devi, he has no less sympathy for the father- in- law who becomes obsessed with the idea that his son's wife is the incarnation of the goddess, than for the unfortunate girl who gives her life to it. To Ray both are victims: one of his superstition, the other of its consequences. There is no anger, no sense of urgency, and no obvious partisanship for the forces of change. In this sense of resignation and fatality, Ray is Indian to the core. Indian tradition views existence as a continuous line of epic sweep rather than as a tight circle of drama in which death brings tragedy. The Apu trilogy is almost as littered with dead bodies as Hamlet, yet the feeling is totally different. Durga dies, followed by Harihar, and then Sarbajaya; finally Aparna. But life goes on, and hope never dies. The tragic view of life of western literature is totally absent from Ray. In today's India hope is not just an eternal tradition: It underlines the here and now. A vast process of change has been developing more than a hundred years through the influence of Western scientific thought. Until Independence, this was largely confined to educated class; now that a faster tempo of industrialization has set in, it has begun to spread more widely. The poorest or most skeptical Indian realizes today that although material prosperity and the modern age are not just around the corner, India cannot remain in its present condition for ever. Perhaps in the past hope had something to do with the hereafter or at most with the imminence of Independence; now it springs from the aspiration towards a better life in this world. Dialectically enough, the hope of material prosperity produces a sense of faith, and faith is an important element in art. Ray's work does not merely record the poverty of India; it is imbued with confidence in the human being.

The spiritual restlessness of a Bergman or a Fellini lies in the search for hopes and faiths which they cannot find. Inevitably, the difference in spirit gives rise to differences in form. The slow tempo of Ray's films reflects a deeper sense of Indian reality. In that respect, it is very different from the slow rhythm of an Antonioni film, which demands a response which is not natural to the western way of life, but rather runs counter to it and so create bitter controversies. Ray's images are (like Antonion's) what I would call musical in expressiveness; they send out ripples far beyond any conscious understanding of the elements contained in them. They are decorative, pronouncedly so in Charulata, but to varying degree in other films as well. This, too, is embedded in the Indian tradition, in which decoratif is not a word of abuse as it is in France. In Rajasthani miniatures or classical music, decoration and expression are one and the same thing. And the deliberation of Ray's composition does not inhibit the spontaneity of the work, which flows like Indian music. improvising freely with in some broad definitions. Even his background music often becomes memorable by itself, as in Pather Panchali and Charulata, and is not the 'unheard music' that background music in films ideally supposed to be. The melodic themes are often recognisable and memorable, and emphasize the lyrical-decorative aspects of his films.

Charulata

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Indian Film Culture

In Pather Panchali Ray created his basic style and technique. It was not without its rough edges (think of the sequence of Durga's illness, with element of theatrical contrivance), but the truth of inspiration carried it along. In Aparajito his technique becomes more mature and polished and capable subtlety. Less obvious emotions can now be expressed with more restraint (as in the death of Sarbajaya). In Jalsaghar Ray made his first important film in a studio, with a professional actor and more complex resources. And Jalsaghar is the outstanding example of his technique until Charulata in his handling of a vast set, mixing the real and the artificial. Significantly, it came out of the oldest and most primitive of Calcutta's studios. In the terrace scene of the opening, the moonlit veranda sequence, the music-room in session, the ride to death, every shade of atmosphere is subtly drawn out. Mood and atmosphere dominate, and it is because of their dominance that craftsmanship plays such an important role. From here on, Ray is completely sure of himself and uses the camera almost with its fluency of a writer using his pen. To master technique and subordinate it completely to one's will is the first requirement for individual expression; and in the cinema it often becomes the supreme enemy, because of the enormous complexities and temptations. But Ray's unit (he works always with the same group of technicians) moves as easily under his hand as a well-ordered machine. Watching him shoot Two Daughters, what struck me was his sheer technical fluency. It is not the perfection of technique, however, that makes Ray's films important. The world and mind he projects are basically those of the Bengal renaissance which started up in the 19th century. In a way he is the chronicler of the past; yet the inner assurance of the hope and faith is not a thing of the past, for these feelings are buried under the surface of modern India, in the Nehru dream. Nehru stood somewhere between Gandhi and Tagore; and the truth of the Tagore

value-world never quite lost its appeal in Nehru's India. In fact, it found new expression in the ideals, if not in all realities, of the Nehru era. The Calcutta of the burning trams, the communal riots, refugees, unemployment, rising prices and food shortages, does not exist in Ray's films. Although he lives in this city, there is no correspondence between him and the poetry of anguish which has dominated Bengali literature for the last ten years. On the whole Ray has portrayed the past evolution of the middle class as reflected in the long period dominated by Tagore. It has something that has gone into the making of himself and his generation; something he knows and understands. In a broad way, it forms the background of his experience. The experience need not be directly personal; the people, the customs, the attitudes reflected in the Tagore era become, through repetition and constant explication, part of the fabric of personal experience. A certain image of the villager, the young man getting to know the world outside, the women slowly liberated through social evolution, became crystallized in the poems, plays, novels and essays not only of Tagore but of writers of his period; and it is this image which projects itself in Ray's films. His characters are powerfully simplified, and contained within very broad outlines of the typology of the period. Look at Ray's heroes, Soumitra Chatterjee's resemblance to the young Tagore in The World of Apu is far from accidental, for he reappears without the beard in film after film. And in the Apu trilogy Ray veers away from the novelist Bibhuti Bhusan's slightly dewy-eyed vision of Golden Bengal to the Tagorean attitude of someone who is deeply attracted towards Western science and feels the urge to create a new Indian identity. Bibhuti Bhusan's wonder child never grows up; Ray's Apu lives through the experiences of childhood and youth to become a man.

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In Devi we meet Soumitra Chatterjee again, by now already an embodiment of Bengali youth of a certain period and type both of which are distinctly derived from Tagore. Already in Devi the weakness of character has become apparent: he is thinker more than a man of action, a bit of a Hamlet. He has read Mill and Bentham and disapproves of his father's superstitious visions, but he is not strong enough to withstand the pressures of tradition or repudiate what he considers to be the evils of ignorance. In his political thinking Tagore eschewed both the violence of the terrorist and the shrewdly practical non-violence of Gandhi; but he provided inspiration towards the general ideals of patriotism which is not narrow, individualism which is not intolerant. Ray's heroes also represent a noble philosophical outlook, but are not men of action on the plane of reality.

whole unselfconscious, and capable of moral action, in going away when he realizes that he is about to betray his brother. Of what is to come after, we see rather more in Kapurush: the 'Ravindrik' (Tagorean) generation has finally revealed his failure in the weak- minded slightly parasitic intellectual ( a film writer), who is no longer made a coward by his conscious but by sheer lack of courage. In the series of films the trilogy, Devi, Samapti, Charulata and Kapurush the Ray hero has emerged in a straight line from the Tagore mould of protected innocence into the contemporary world, only to find himself inadequate to contend with it. The type of hero represented by Soumitra chatterjee in various Ray films is no longer noble in his motives and irresolute in his actions: In Kapurush he is weak without being noble. But this is an end which is surely not untypical of the romantic Bengali youth brought up under the Tagore umbrella. They have become cynical under the disillusionment in Independent India. Their past idealism has become a drag on them and has made them unable to cope with a society where, whether we like it or not, the law of the jungle has acquired some currency. But even the evolution never takes him to its furthest limits, limits which Tagore himself had explored.

Charulata By the time of Charulata, Soumitra Chatterjee has evolved further from his earlier, Tagorean base. The Mill and Bentham reading character (inspired by Ram Mohan Roy, a 19th century social reformer often described as the 'father of modern India') now belongs to the older generation, and is embodied in the bearded, princenez-sporting Bhupati with his affluent idealism. Amal (Chatterjee) himself stands between the pure Tagore and what is to come after. But he too is devoid of cynicism, on the

Abhijan

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Indian Film Culture

Even though the working class garb of Abhijan, the Tagore-oriented middle class minds of Ray and Chatterjee show clearly through the thin disguise of the different-style beard of its hero. Soumitra has tried in many ways to play 'tough' not only in this film but in others; but he has not ceased to represent the charm, innocence, unselfconsciousness, and the accompanying weakness of the young Bengali romantic hero of the Tagore period. A sort of protected hero, with a dominating father-figure lurking somewhere in the shadows, who is not destined to battle on his own, still less to win. In Kanchenjunga, the hero comes from an altogether new social class, and his line of thought is different from that of the Tagorean dreamers. He is a product of today, with idealism that is more capable of contending with realities, because it is more clear-eyed and much more of a piece. He is not the affluent son turned idealist: he belongs more to the larger middle classes which ceased to be land lords long ago. He is not in the least ashamed of his comical uncle, would call spade a spade any day, and even if he is attracted to the daughter of the impossible Ray Bahadur (a low-grade British title), he sets no great store by her vague promise of seeing him in Calcutta. If the liaison did not work out, he would have no hesitation in breaking it. But this different hero is hinted at in the splendid isolation of the picture's Darjeeling setting, and in this lightweight film obliquely bypasses a set of values unfamiliar to the Tagore mythology. Another modern type, less of a hero, is presented by Anil Chatterjee in Postmaster. But in both films the basic emphasis is away from him; in one on the child, in the other the woman. As a result he is a somewhat shadowy figure, brought in to fill the place of the traditional none-toobright middle-class individual. He has acquired the outward mental accoutrements of the Tagore world, to the extent of wanting to teach the child in Postmaster and counseling the wife to take a

job in Mahanagar, without any sense of dedication to either. His relationships, his emotions, never reach the larger-than-life size achieved by other Ray heroes, especially Soumitra Chattertje, in their representation of an epoch or an outlook.

Devi One could say that in the films preceding Mahanagar, Ray's preoccupation is with man. The trilogy's heroines are the women of Indian tradition, loving and sometimes loved, providers of anchorage to the nomadic male who goes out to do battle and whose fate is therefore of greater importance. The girl in Devi is not much more than an object, owned by her father-in-law even more than by her husband; even Sarbajaya, patient and loving in a motherearth way, cannot decide either her own or her family's future. In the Postmaster, the child is little mother, already burdened with the responsibilities of an outgoing love. In Samapti, although the husband is a somewhat 'enlightened' young man the measure of selfdetermination which the wife is destined to enjoy does not seem to be too great. The film does record a change in the outlook towards marriage, but more from the man's point of view than from that of girl, who accepts, with happiness, what all others have accepted before her.

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better when they are what people call openended. The sureness of touch is much more evident in Charulata, and because Ray understands of character is perfect, everything falls into place. Charulata is observed entirely from the inside. obsessively so, in fact, with the result that we do not see into the minds of the men. Except when he breaks down in the carriage, Bhupati is more of a type than a character-the agreeable 'young Bengal' liberal of the 19th century, affluent, idealistic, touching in his innocence and lack of self-consciousness. Amal, too, reveals himself only in the scene in the press room after the robbery, where, standing in the half-light behind the brother, he awakens to the truth of his situation. His inner conflict elsewhere is so muted as to be missed almost completely by many people.

Mahanagar It is in Mahanagar that for the first time, we come across a woman who is awakened to the possibility of determining the course of her own life. Typically enough the awakening touch comes from the husband, for men have been traditional liberators of women. But traditionally, too, they have retracted when they have seen consequences of their action. Aarati is unable to exert herself in her brief freedom, but she has had a glimpse of a world where she is somebody in her own right. When she resigns from her job her one act of protest-it is in obedience not to her husband's wish, but to her own impulsive fellow-feeling for the AngloIndian girl who is unjustly dismissed. Ironically enough, in this act she also gives up the freedom she has won. Somebody, protesting against this thesis, said that as for her rights, Aarati is perverted. So she is; the adjustment to a sudden inner feeling of economic independence is not easy. It comes out in little awkward ways which add to the truth of the situation. But I find Ray's first essay on Indian woman tentative and unsure of itself. The characters are not seen sufficiently from the inside, and there is an excessive dependence (itself uncharacteristic of Ray) on outward incident. The meeting under the doorway, when the husband says Do not worry, it is a vast city and one of us is bound to find a job, provides too pat a solution for a problem which will continue to plague us for a long time to come. And it is unlike Ray to seek such four-square solutions; his films are much

Charulata But where Charulata herself is concerned, every thought in her mind is clearly visible. In Madhabi Mukherjee, Ray found the embodiment of a certain type of Indian women, just as he had found the man in Soumitra Chatterjee, Deeply intelligent , sensitive, outwardly graceful and serene, inwardly she is the kind of traditional Indian woman of today whose inner seismograph catches the vibration waves reaching from outside into her seclusion. The world outside is changing, and down in the drawing-room English 19th century social philosophy and Ram Mohun Roy ideas inevitably working towards the liberation of women.

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Mahanagar

Ray at work Mahanagar

Charulata

Charulata

Mahangar is a contemporary story and Charulata a period piece. Yet in the latter, the woman is more self-aware and one might even call her ruthless. If her conscious does not trouble her too much, it is not merely because of her innocence; she has a strong character, she finds pout what she wants, and the knowledge does not shock her. It only makes her to go forward to get her man. She reminds me perversely, of Lady Macbeth in Wajda's Siberian film. In a society which tells a woman 'here is the man that thou shalt love' she does not shy away from an impossible relationship. And, I repeat this is only partly due to the innocent nature of her self-awareness. It does come to her so slowly that it is hard for her to draw the line; but in that unforgettable garden scene she perceives the dark truth, without a shadow of doubt. A 'transparent' moment and a great one at that. I see in Kapurush, irrespective of the fact it is a somewhat sloppily made film by Ray's and Charulata's standards, a continuation of the theme of the woman's quest for happiness of her own making. She is the same character, as self-possessed and serene as ever; but she has herself changed, through her previous experience, as it were, in Mahanagar and Charulata. She tasted economic independence in the first and wanted it; in the second she found the man she loved, and longed for the right to go on loving him. In the Kapurush she is the woman who has lost both. She is married to a vapid tea-planter whom she has

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never loved; she stays married to him because that is the only way for a woman. She is almost in the same state of suspended animation as she was at the end of Charulata. And suddenly, to disturb her peace, her earlier love reappeared on the scene. She knows already, unreasonably, that he failed once to take her away; and she knows that he will fail again- this time not out of any noble sentiment for a brother, but out of inability to defy society. Again her character is more eloquent in its silences than are the others in their long speeches, Again, the director's mind is thus weaker re-statement of the same proposition, and its importance lies only in the continuity of the theme and the sense of finality it brings to it. With increased freedom for the woman, the system of marriage has proved inadequate, and in Western society shows signs of cracking up. Whether that is a good thing or not, let the social philosophers work out. But the inescapable fact is that such pressures are beginning to be felt in our country, with the progress in women's education and economic independence. It may well be that Ray never thought consciously of such a continuity. All the same it is clearly discernible, in spite of the fact that the films were not conceived in a neat time-sequence. It is typical of Ray that the most contemporary and truest statement of the theme should be achieved in the exquisite period piece rather than in the modern setting. In the first place, contemporaneity is not something that belongs to the story of a film, but to the outlook the director brings to bear on it. Ray's contemplative, lyrical style is symptomatic of remoteness from the immediate problems of the day. And if he had not been able to stand back and look at what has happened in our country in the last hundred years, he could not have made the trilogy, or projected so completely the Tagore era, the 19th century Bengal

renaissance, and taken in even the fringe of the post-Tagore period. Where Ray's apprehension of character tends to fall down is in dealing with characters (the capitalist of Jalsaghar, the tea-planter of Kapurush) more or less unfamiliar to the typology of Tagore era. Its idealism often underplayed unpleasant truths of character and the contradictory urges inevitable in human beings. Biographies of this period, for instance, never bring out the man in his total psychology; they select the more pleasant, publicly displayable traits. Tagore himself never reveals his personal life in the way of Gandhi. Gandhi's outlook was not contained within the framework of the rise of middle class in India; Tagore's was. At its best, the Tagore trend resulted in the emergence of noble images of character; at its worst, it was hypocritical, a little puritan, a little afraid of Freud. It was never suited to the depiction of life in the raw. The furthest that it goes in revealing human weakness is the delicate and forgiving treatment of it in Charulata. Neither the more violent and ugly aspects of our society, nor the 'poetry of anguish' generated by the struggle of the Tagorean to cope with them, are reflected in Ray's films. In fact, whenever he has taken a tentative step towards them, he has tended to burn his fingers. Take Abhijan, for instance: the attempt to enter the underworld of the working class results in total failure. And the reason for this failure is that it cannot be drawn from the myths and types of the Tagore world. One is not surprised to hear that the film was originally to have been made by someone else from a script by Ray, until at the last moment he decided to take it on. Even the atmosphere of the office in which Aarati works in Mahanagar is just not complex enough. It never exudes quite the darkness, the monumental indifference, the cynicism and self-seeking, which make up the

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fabric of such inelegant reality. It is strenuously woven, and the clear-cut characters in the office situation carry no suggestion of unseen depths. Here the powerful simplifications of Ray's earlier films lend towards over-simplification. In other words, he fails to enter the post-Tagore world, in which the young idealist has turned cynical, or has turned away from patriotism, politics and social reform because all this proves too dirty for him and makes him take refuge in the 'poetry of anguish'. It is a moot question whether the later generation brought up on Tagore in the pre-independence era of hope was toughened enough in its training to cope with the pressures of disillusion, greed, corruption and ruthlessness released in the post-independence era. Even the rural scene today has changed, and the typology of the past no longer fits. The image of village life conjured up for so long by literary habits has at last become untrue. New types are being created by the incursion planned investment into the countryside, the invasion of the radio, the Block Development offices, family planning drives, the commercial cinema, the money generated by soaring food prices, the

opening up of communications. The old myths are no longer adequate: they provide a rich background to the middle-class mind, but the need to translate these values into a tougher outlook and languages has become painfully clear. The post-Tagore age has finally caught up with us. It is an age that might call for a passionate involvement on the part of the artist, and the film is an art which, willy-nilly, must in some way reflect these changes in social reality. Whether Ray will enter into another phase of development to do so, or new artists will arise out of these new and less serene urges of the times, it is impossible to say. Or will the most significant expression of intellect and sensibilitywhich in the years of Ray in Bengal has been the domain of the cinema-move to another medium? In his documentary biography about Tagore, Ray does for the man what his films as a whole do for the Tagore age: accept a value- world created by another, and proceed to illuminate it brilliantly, to project and extend it in terms of the cinema.

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Some stray thoughts

Tributes to Chduda..

about a friend

(Vijaya Mulay, known as Akka elder sister in Marathi, born 16 May 1921, is a documentary filmmaker, film historian, writer, educationist and researcher. The Government of India honored Vijaya Mulay with the V. Shantaram Award for Lifetime Achievement for documentaries at the Mumbai International Film Festival - MIFF, 2002.She is also national award winner for her book From Rajahas and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond. More importantly she is one of the pioneers of the Film Society movement in India being one of the co-founders of the Federation of Film Societies of India along with Chidananda Dasgupta in the year 1959. She makes a sincere effort to remember those days of adventure they undertook to initiate a movement that opened the windows for many of us to see the great classics of the world cinema.)

Quite often, what makes one follow a particular path and creates bondages seem to be decided by factors that are entirely fortuitous. For example, my interest in films and in film society movement developed entirely on account of the fact that in 1940, I married a young man who was working in Patna in Bihar and that the society in Bihar at that time, was extremely restrictive in respect of women. A simple act of riding a bicycle in Patna of that era became a disaster as street children ran around me, shouting to all to come out and see the spectacle of a woman on bicycle. I was scared of hurting them and myself and beat a hasty retreat. Things that I used to do in Mumbai, - namely playing badminton or ring tennis, participating in dramas, or even going for walks were no longer possible. The only thing that one could do was seeing films that came to Patna theatres. My husband and I watched them and we discussed them between us and other friends. Out of these discussions, grew my interest in the medium of film; and this led further to my friendship with many persons in that field including Chidanand Dasgupta.

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The social restrictions that the Bihari society of the day imposed on women had also a positive side. Patna University allowed women to appear privately for its examinations. I studied at home up to B.A. Later when my husband could afford to pay for my college fees, I attended Patna College and did very well in post graduate studies. I was then able to get a state scholarship in 1946 to study in England at Leeds University. Having looked at umpteen numbers of films in Patna, the first society I joined there was the university film society. I then saw film classics and participated in discussions that followed. That taught me a bit about film language and its grammar. I returned home in 1949 and longed to see more meaningful cinema than the fare that was then commercially available. I wanted a film society, but as none existed, it meant starting one. Fortunately my husband was very supportive and soon we found like-minded people like Arun Roychoudhury, Akbar Imam, and Prof. Devi Prasad Chatterji. With Calcutta Film Society vaguely held up as a model, we set up Patna Film Society. Arun worked very hard both to get good films and arrange good projection. He negotiated a deal with two cinema theatres that we could rent for a film show on Sunday mornings. (In those days theatres started screening films only in the afternoons). Our source of films was embassies that were anxious to show films from their countries since only Anglo-American films were being marketed. I remember that for every new film society, the opening film was Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, obtained from the Soviet embassy. We also learnt the exciting news that one of the young film society chaps from Calcutta was planning to make a film based on a book by Bibhutibabu. Both Arun and I had corresponded with Calcutta Film Society (CFS) in respect of programs that it was organising but there was no contact at personal level. After being selected by the

Union Public Service Commission, I took up a job in the advisory cadre of the Education Ministry. The Delhi scene was equally bleak in terms of cinema, so some of us decided to set up Delhi Film Society. By this time, the young chap mentioned above had made his first film Pather Panchali. It won the national award of best film in 1955. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the then chief minister of West Bengal and a well known personality in his own right saw it and showed it to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Panditji was enthusiastic about it and despite some opposition, the film was sent in 1956, at his insistence to the 9th Cannes festival. It won the best human document award and well-known film critics from the West praised it very much. A Fifth Avenue theatre showed the film in New York for several months. This success had long term effects on the film scene in India and especially on the film society movement. The Government of India recognised that film societies were worthy of its support and when six film societies came together to set up the *Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI), Govt. of India supported the effort by providing a small yearly grant to the Federation. Our dialogue with the Government of India and the fact that the prime minister's daughter Indira Gandhi was one of the vice-presidents of the FFSI also helped. I had known her since the days of the Indian council for Child Welfare (ICCW) that was part of my official portfolio. Both Smt. Tara Ali Beg and Indira Gandhi were very much involved with the ICCW. On one of my trips to the Nehru house, I asked Mrs. Gandhi whether she would agree to be the vice president. Her first question to me was who the president was. When I told her that it was Satyajit Ray, she readily agreed. Being in Delhi meant better opportunities for meetings with film personalities from Calcutta. I remember my first meeting with Ray. He had brought three reels of his film Parash Pathar.

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After the screening we met at Muriel Wasi's house at Pandara Road. We had a question and answer session. That must have been sometime in early 1958. I do not quite remember when I first met Chitu and whether I met him when I went to Calcutta or when he came to Delhi. All I remember is that by the time we met to form the Federation of Film Societies of India, in 1959, both he and his wife Supriya had become good friends of mine. I met their three daughters Aparna, Ratna and Lakkhi later, when I took up my job as a censor officer in Calcutta in 196566. Bengalis have this unique institution of 'Adda', where talking, discussions reign supreme and no subject is barred. At one such adda in Calcutta, I remember Chitu reading a poem of Supriya's paternal uncle Jibanand Das in Bengali. He first read the poem in Bengali and then his translation of it in English. The poem was about one Banalata Sen of Natore. I was amused to see that the last line always was 'Natorere Banalata Sen' on which he would pause like a dancer holding a pose. To me both the Bengali original and Chitu's English version sounded excellent. Later I discovered that he had the rare ability of writing equally well in both languages. In 1963, after I had moved to Mumbai, he once came and stayed with me and I remember being spell bound by the wealth of his knowledge about films, its craft and his understanding of the Indian way of life. He was a very gentle and a civilised person, with a fine sense of humour. I discovered that he was actually in Patna till 1942 though I never met him then. But apparently he left Patna as a result of the Quit India movement. Outwardly, Chitu looked like a boxwallha in the employ of the Imperial Tobacco Company; but he had a soul of a poet and a dreamer. He read assiduously and was familiar not only with Sanskrit and Bengali literature but had a deep

knowledge of world literature. I was appalled when I learnt that he had decided to quit his cushy job with ITC. He had a whole household to look after and his daughters were still studying; one of them Lakkhi also had lot of health problems. When I spoke to him about it, he said that he did not want to spend his life promoting sales of cigarettes and he and Supriya would try and manage. By that time, he had already made his first film The Portrait of a City about Calcutta under the aegis of Calcutta Film Society. It had rightly received some praise but I knew that it was not enough to put maach bhaat on everybody's plate. Later, when pressed for money, for some time, he took up a job with the U.S. embassy as editor of their magazine SPAN but he gave that up soon. He did not particularly like Delhi. Like Ray, Sen and Ghatak he was most happy when he was in Calcutta. Later when Aparna had established herself, and Ratna was married, he and Supriya had moved to Shanti Niketan. I had a standing invitation to visit them and I was planning to go there sometime but that never happened. They had to come to Calcutta for medical reasons. They lived with Aparna.

Chidu with Aparna

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I do not have to write about his films or what he wrote. There are many who are more competent to do so. I want to say what I admired in him most. And that was the courage of conviction. He had no problems to kick up a good job if he felt it was necessary. He tried to follow his star that guided him and led him wherever it would. I am rather intrigued that a film that he made immediately after quitting his job with ITC and that I saw for certifying as a censor officer does not seem to figure anywhere in any of the write ups on him. Its title was 'The Crossing' and it was about a place where people take boats to cross a river. It was charming and thought provoking. I remember that when I congratulated him about it, he was very pleased. One wonders what has happened to it. It certainly would be worthwhile to locate it. I was in Calcutta as censor officer between 1965 and 66. So the records of the censor board office in Calcutta could perhaps be checked. Satyajit, Chitu and I were born in the same year 1921. Manik preceded me by a fortnight and Chitu followed me by four half months later. Of the three I am the only one on this side of the shore. A line of a Bengali folk song used by Manik in one of his films comes to my mind. It says, 'Hari din to gyalo Shandhya holo, paar karo amarei'. (Hari, the day is gone, it is now the evening. Do please take me across).

*We met at 10 Allenby Road at the house of Shri. Krishna Kripalani who was then associated with Sahitya Academy. The six societies were: Calcutta Film Society, Delhi Film Society, Roorkee Film Society, Patna Film Society, Bombay Film Society, Madras Film Society, and Films Division Society. Shri. Khandpur head of the Films Division was present at the meeting and though that society never formally joined FFSI, Shri. Khandpur was extremely supportive of what we were doing. Another society called Cine Club also existed in Calcutta at that time but it had not joined the FFSI.

Vijaya Mulay

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Chidananda Dasgupta
- The Doyen
Aruna Vasudev

Given the accelerated pace at which we live our lives now, pioneers are rapidly and easily forgotten. And even more so in the world of 'entertainment', a category to which cinema has unfortunately been relegated.
Aruna Vasudev is FounderPresident of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC). She was the FounderEditor of Cinemaya, and FounderDirector of Cinefan, the Cinemaya Festival of Asian Cinema. Author and film critic with a PhD from the University of Paris, she started out as a filmmaker before turning to writing on cinema and to painting in the Japanese sumi-e style. She is the author of two books on Indian cinema and editor and co-editor of several books on Indian and Asian cinema.

The launch of the film society in Calcutta by Chidananda Das Gupta with Satyajit Ray, Harisadan Dasgupta and a few others, was a revolutionary and path breaking step. Now with films- and internet - at one's fingertips, it is difficult to imagine a period when it was impossible to see anything of world cinema, or even Indian cinema beyond Hindi and one's regional language. There were not even any film festivals. A handful of film addicts read about what was happening in the world Sight & Sound was a treasure - but the impossibility of gaining access to these films unless you yourself travelled abroad, was a source of extreme frustration. To start a film society where such films could indeed be shown was a step of magnitude in those days in the immediate post-Independence era. So when one says easily Chidananda Das Gupta was a

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pioneer it is difficult to imagine what that actually signified. It was the same with his writing. He showed new ways of thinking, looking, understanding, and he inspired a generation of young people.

Chiduda at a Festival Inauguration He remains a towering figure for film critics and filmmakers especially for the knowledgeable film buffs. Perhaps the first serious writer on film who became the doyen of film critics, he remained secretary until 1967, of both the Calcutta Film Society as well as the Federation of Film Societies when it took shape in 1960. With such a grounding in cinema it is hardly surprising to find in his writings a depth of knowledge and understanding of the art and craft of filmmaking together with a sense of the history and development of cinema in India and internationally.

Writing on cinema, running a film society, were hardly professions that one could live on in those days. Like most educated young men of the time, a British company usually in Calcutta - was the aimed-for ideal. Chidananda Das Gupta too, found his source for earning a living with the then Imperial Tobacco Company. When I first met him in the early '60s, he was the impeccable pucca sahib, always in a suit and tie, a packet of cigarettes in his hand, elegant in speech and thought. But the love for cinema was not to be denied. It took several years but eventually he found the courage to give it all up and follow his passion. However, now writing no longer sufficed, he had to make films himself. He had already made a documentary Portrait of a City in 1961. The style of shooting, the ambience he created, the feelings the film aroused, were all very new at the time. After he left Imperial Tobacco, he launched initially into making documentary films, among them the memorable ones on Birju Maharaj and a much longer one The Dance of Shiva (1968) on Ananda Coomaraswamy. Then came the feature film he had been dreaming of making Bilet Pherat in 1972 Three stories, told with his characteristic humour, his wry approach to life. The title itself was a homage to the early Indian film director Dhiren Ganguly's satirical and zestful comedy England Returned . But filmmaking was still not a viable livelihood when you have a family to support. He did take up jobs again some years with the American Centre in Delhi, then, many years after leaving that also to continue with writing and making films, with INTACH when it started and where I joined him later. There he launched a 13- part series of films for Doordarshan on the Natural Heritage Virasaat. One of the films we commissioned in the series was on Anna Hazare (directed by K Bikram Singh). Chitu as he was called by those close to

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him made the first film himself, on Cherrapunji, and I made the last one. Aravindan shot the title sequence of the series. Through those years, he continued to write with restraint and wit and humour articles as well as books and even translations, both prose and poetry, from Bengali into English. His 1980 book The Cinema of Satyajit Ray remains one of the definitive works on Ray. His The Painted Face, opened other doors on filmmaking and in his last book, published very shortly before his death, Seeing is Believing, the essays From The Crisis in Film Studies to How Indian is Indian Cinema to Cinema takes Over the State stretch the boundaries of knowledge and incite the reader to raise questions rather than to passively receive. His second and last feature film Amodini, won his wife Supriya - a talented writer herself - the national award for costume design in 1994. His

family has indeed done him proud. The eldest of his three daughters is the celebrated actressdirector is Aparna Sen, his granddaughter is Konkona Sen Sharma. I tried very hard at one point, to persuade the Ministry of I & B, to confer the Dadasaheb Phalke award on him. But no. Not for writers the Ministry said. So, when I was in a position to do so, having started the Asian Film Festival, Cinefan, in Delhi in 1999 and two years later instituted awards, we chose to present a Lifetime Achievement award to a writer in recognition his/her role in filmmaking - as critic, commentator, author or script-writer. And we started out by presenting it first of all to Chidananda Das Gupta in 2004.

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Chiduda:
Always Inspiring
- Parimal Mukherjee

The pioneering role of Chidananda Dasgupta in building and promoting film society movement in India is well known and no further elaboration is required from my end. But it is necessary to bring in to light his smiling encouragement to all young people who were devoted to the cause of film appreciation movement. In the mid Sixties of last century, especially just after the 3rd International Film Festival, there was an upsurge among young generation of this city to view world cinema. But it was next to impossible to get enrolled in either of the existing two societies. So the best alternative was to form our own film society. Thus Cine Central, Calcutta came into existence in 1965. In the very first year we decided to hold Indian Film Festival. For this in the month of January 1966 we approached various persons including Chidananda Dasgupta. He was then a high official in the ITC and Secretary of the Federation of Film

PA RIMAL MUKHERJEE is associated with Film Appreciation movement for nearly 48 years. He is a founder member of Cine Central, Calcutta and presently one of the Vice Presidents. He was In-charge of Cultural Page of a Bengali daily for eight years. He also edited the first published script of PATHER PANCHALI.

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Societies of India. That was our first interaction with him. He listened carefully our plan then said, How can you do it? The idea is good but it is very difficult as you will not be able to get good quality sub-titled prints of regional films. But he promised us necessary help. Remember, Indian Panorama was not there then. In the month of May, 1966 Cine Central, Calcutta presented a festival of Indian films comprising 11 regional films. Perhaps, that was the first occasion in India when different regional films were screened in a festival. True, some films were not subtitled and one or two films were not of very high standard. On 10th May, 1966 Chidananda Dasgupta came as a Speaker in Symposium. Other Speakers were Shri Dhiren Ganguly (DG), the pioneer of Bengali Cinema, and a galaxy of veteran film directors like Debaki Bose, Madhu Bose, Prabhat Mukherjee etc. Shri Chidananda Dasgupta at the outset declared, I was skeptic and doubtful. But I am glad that I am proved wrong. Here is a film society who can achieve what they plan for. Film Society movement is not for screening foreign films alone. We should give more emphasis on Indian Cinema. When he alighted from Podium we just hugged him. From that day Chidannanda Dasgupta became our dear Chiduda. We met him a number of times. On many occasions we sought his advice and received valuable input. He was always smiling and inspired us to move further. In 1966 we decided to bring out a quarterly publication entitled CINEMA. For a new society to publish an illustrated journal was a hard task as huge cost involve. But Chiduda helped us by providing a number of photo blocks of which he had used earlier in the Indian Film Culture. Let me state here, that a film society's relations with the parent FFSI is not always smooth. At one point of time in the Seventies we had serious

differences with FFSI, over the ban imposed on societies regarding negotiations with the diplomatic missions for films. We stood by the right of the society and fought bitterly. But during the entire episode our personal relations remain as cordial as before.

Alok, Jiri Menzel & Chiduda at Cine Central Chidananda Dasgupta had graced many of our Functions and Ceremonies as Honored Guest, Chief Guest, Main Speaker etc. The fact is he never declined our request, so deep was our bonding. I feel nostalgic to remember the last occasion. In November 2003 we presented a Retrospective of renowned Czech film director JIRI MENZEL, who came to receive the Satyajit Ray Life Time Achievement Award. At that time Chiduda was staying in Shantiniketan, about 200 Kms from the city. In spite of ill health, he came to the city at our request to hand over the Award to his friend Jiri. This showed his love for Cinema, and his love for film society movement. We should emulate from this Pioneer of Film Society Movement.

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Chidananda Dasgupta,
the man and the critic
by Ranjita Biswas

A journalist based in Kolkata, Ranjita Biswas writes widely on arts & culture, films, travel, women and gender issues, etc. for a number of national and international publications. Additionally, she is editor of the syndicated feature service, Trans World Features. Biswas is a member of FIPRESCI and served as a jury member at international film festivals in Mumbai and Toronto. She also writes fiction and is an awardwinning translator of fiction from vernacular language into English. There are four published books to her credit.

When Chidananda Dasgupta, universally addressed as 'Chidu-da', passed away last year at the age of 89, the film fraternity lost an icon, literally. Critic, historian, humanist, and ever ready to encourage the aspiring writer, he was an institution, one can say without being unduly effusive. On a personal note, if I may share, when I came to Kolkata to settle down and was looking for avenues to write, he gave me a 'break' as he must have had others. At that time he used to edit the Art and Culture page of The Telegraph newspaper. When I went to meet him- without an appointment, he readily listened to some of the ideas I tentatively suggested on ethnic culture of the North East (which he felt was a neglected area) and promptly gave me the assignment. For a newcomer in the city to get the support of a highly regarded critic and writer was elating indeed. Later as we got to know each other better, he suggested that I become a member of Fipresci and recommended my name. As he got on years and he was rarely out of home, save for attending the Kolkata Film Festival at Nandan sometimes, when admirers and grateful scribes like us went to convey a 'namaskar' he would recognize each one

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immediately. Indeed, he wore his knowledge, not only about films but a wide range of subjects, lightly. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Dasgupta initiated the movement of serious film criticism in India. The winds from the West- of the film culture of Hollywood and Europe , was blowing into the intellectual milieu of Calcutta/Kolkata and people like Satyajit Ray, Harisadhan Dasgupta, Bansi Dasgupta and he himself had their own hub to discuss art, literature, film et al. The arrival of Jean Renoir in Calcutta for shooting The River was a momentous occasion for film lovers like them. Ray recalled in Our Films, Their Films how he went to meet Renoir with apprehension how he would be received. But the encounter led to an instant rapport between them as it happened with Chidananda Dasgupta too. Veteran cinematographer Ramanada Sengupta, who also became a unit member with Renoir, recalled in an article in a Bengali magazine: Renoir used to stay at the Great Eastern HotelChidananda Dasgupta and Satyajit Ray often went there on way home after office for an adda. Renoir told them how he conceived the Bengal landscape - the background of his film, and what he liked about the land and he also asked their opinion on his assessment. They too expressed their views frankly. All three of them were extremely gifted people.

Sengupta also recalled that he, along with other film buffs arrived at the doorstep of Chidananda Dasgupta's house every weekend. There was a room on top of the garage where discussions on films went on for hours. Satyajit Ray was a regular too at these meets. By that time Ray and Dasgupta had established the Calcutta Film Society (1947). Though Bombay/Mumbai had already launched two film societies, one in 1937 and another in 1942, they really did not turn into a movement. Dasgupta, Ray and likeminded people wanted to change that. With a princely sum of Rs 5.00 per month for membership and under the presidentship of economist Prasanta Mahalanobis, the founder of Indian Statistical Institute, the Society started functioning with 50 members. Dasgupta was a founder member of the Federation of Film Societies too in 1959. He also made a few documentaries and two critically acclaimed features Bilet Pherat and Amodini. Besides the hundreds of articles he wrote on film and other subjects, Dasgupta authored books like Talking About Films (1981), The Cinema of Satyajit Ray (1980) and The Painted Face Studies in India's Popular Cinema (1991) all of which have now become essential reading for students of cinema and film aficionados. Going through his books and writings one cannot but help marveling at his in-depth analysis and keen observation. He took film criticism to a different level in India and set a standard for others to emulate.

Chidanand Dasgupta at Cine Club of Calcutta

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His sharp observation about Bengali films till Pather Panchali (1955) happened illustrate his keen understanding of the medium: In the thirties, the Bengali cinema displayed some signs of reformist patriotism but its main anchor was in traditionalism. Its social-reformist patriotism deals were not based on a pervasive world view. As a result, its style never developed the independent view of cinema as an art free of the baggage of literature that Rabindranath Tagore had urged upon it. Its links with world cinema were indeed limited by the violation imposed by British rule and by the problem of language in the talkie; but apart from these outward difficulties, there was no movement within it to break out of its confines which were basically selfimposed. Thus neither in content nor in style did Ray's films own anything at all to Bengali, indeed Indian film traditions. That is why he was able to cut the Gordian knot with the one stroke of Pather Panchali and thereafter to follow his own thoroughly independent course. Such level of film criticism with a deep understanding of the social context is rare to come by in the Indian scenario. Not for nothing that Dasgupta was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Best Writing at the Sixth Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema, 2004. This was the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award to have been conferred on a film critic and scholar. At that time he had said in an interview: I am getting this award at a time when film criticism is almost dying out in India. We spent our lives teaching people the value and worth of cinema. When we

first asked for government help to form the first film society, the official at the ministry said, 'Film society, what's that? But he also acknowledged that things had changed afterwards. Dasgupta often said that though he had the opportunity to travel around the world, and interact with filmmakers internationally and his books on cinema were rather broadbased, he tended to zero on Indian cinema. His sense of rootedness is similar to his friend Satyajit Ray. In his book The Cinema of Satyajit Ray, he writes: Ray was a classicist, an inheritor of a traditional Indian approach to art in which beauty is inseparable from truth and goodness. Despite his fine understanding of a very wide range of Western culture-which Jean Renoir in 1949 used to find 'fantastic' it is his Indianness which gives him his value for India and for the medium imported from the West in which he worked. His knowledge of the Western' medium of visual art i.e. cinema, was deep and perceptive. Rooted in Bengal, and more affiliated to the genre of 'art film' in absence of better terminology for films grounded to reality, he was by no means cocooned from the milieu of commercial cinema. Wellknown writer and critic Yves Thoraval calls him One of the most brilliant Indian critics and historians of Indian cinema (The Cinemas of India). In the book Thoraval writes how Dasgupta perceived Hindi commercial films , as All India Films' [which] appeared after the War, by which he meant the Hindi films being produced in mass quantity and their regional counterparts

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The best years in the profession were those when the Indian cinema itself was coming of age, feels film critic Swapan Mullick (article Powers and Pitfalls of the Critic). Those were the years when the film society movement was born in Kolkata with Satyajit Ray and Chidananda Dasgupta writing on the cinema with as much excitement as they were writing film scripts and looking forward to the day when they would break out of the traditional mould of the studio-production so as to give films in this country a language of their own.

That passion and excitement, many observe, is on the wane today. In a paper, The Black Hole of Indian Film Criticism Dasgupta had pointed out what he felt was lacking among Indian film critics at present times. Indeed, for self-examination and for appreciating the depth of his art of criticism one needs reading and re-reading his writings.

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In Memoriam
- Theo Angelopoulos
by Dan Fainaru

(Dan Fainaru has been a film critic for the last fifty years, he is a honorary vice president of FIPRESCI, he has been the director of the Israeli Film Institute, he has written film reviews for several Israeli publications, he is the coeditor of the only professional film magazine in Israel (Cinematheque) and the editor in chief of the European Film Reviews, also a critic for Variety, Moving Pictures, International Film Guide, and have been for the last ten years or more a film critic for Screen International. The University of Mississippi has published his book of interviews with Theo Angelopoulos)

Theo Angelopoulos Theo Angelopoulos died on the set of his last film, The Other Sea in the late afternoon of January 24, 2012. The sun, whatever there was of it on that chilly winter day, was practically gone, the light was murky and grey and a misty shroud covered the port of Piraeus. He was walking backwards, lost in his thoughts, tracing the path the camera would take in his next shot. Retreating slowly, he never looked behind, immersed as he was in his own thoughts, visualizing the film which seemed more real than anything else around him. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a policeman riding his scooter rushes into the frame, that is the frame of real life, and hit him, as if the Angel of Death who had decided to take a hand in the proceedings. Was it really like this that it all happened? I don't really know, but I would like to think so, at least to make some sense out of this senseless, foolish, infuriating accident, make it look like an ominous sequence shot in an Angelopoulos film. I'd like to believe that in some sort of way, it fits into the existence of this extraordinary man, no doubt one of the greatest filmmakers of our times.

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Theo Angelopoulos Theo Angelopoulos was born on April 27, 1935, in a middleclass family. He was supposed to become a lawyer, but quit to go to France and study cinema at what used to be at the time the most significant film school in the world, the Paris IDHEC (Institut de Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques). After one year, he was asked to take a walk, his conception of cinema considered unacceptable by some of the teachers. Rightly so, for he never thought cinema in the same terms as everybody else. Instead, under the protective gaze of the legendary Henri Langlois, he became an usher at the French Cinematheque, an unexpected chance for him to see all the classics which he dearly loved, without paying the admission, which anyway he could not afford at the time. Back in Greece, he kept going to films and he wrote reviews for a publication named "Democratic Change", while trying to put together a never-released documentary on a band called the Forminx (1965). Then came his first feature, The Reconstitution (1970), and the world of cinema, certainly of Greek cinema was never the same. Black and white, shot in a mountain village in the north of the country, it was a police investigation into the murder of a Greek man working in Germany, who had come back home to visit his wife. Stark scenery, bare

and arid landscape, cold winter lighting, gritty characters, a portrait of the economically devastated Greek countryside, already announcing not only some of the major themes Angelopoulos would explore for the rest of his life but also the complex film language he would further develop and employ in his later pictures. On the one hand, the state of his own homeland and the migratory syndrome, sending people away from their homes to chase the mirage of a better life elsewhere, on the other hand, the long, complex, breathtaking sequence shots, deep long breaths which kept the audience hanging on every turn and twist of the camera. That is, some of the audience, for the rest never could quite cope with his kind of fractured narrative that never told them all the details and God forbid, expected them to use their own imagination and fill in the gaps. Angelopoulos was already announcing his intention to trust the intelligence of his viewers, and their readiness to be active participants who would meet him halfway. And if they won't, so much the worse for them, he did not intend to change. Next came his trilogy, Days of 36 (1972), The Travelling Players (1975) and The Hunters (1977), digging deeply into recent Greek history, the years preceding WW2, the war and the ensuing civil war and its tragic results. The Travelling Players, the trilogy's centerpiece in every sense of the word, confirmed Angelopoulos' unique position at the forefront of modern cinema, with its assured style, its sophisticated mixture of political observations and sheer poetry, breathtaking visual imagination and an entirely new way of telling a story. He looked at modern Greece as a reflection of its ancient myths, legends and history, the cursed tales of the house of Atreus and the shadow of Homer a constant reference in all his films, a 20th century echo of Euripides and Aeschylus. Very much a man of his time, deeply rooted in the Greek soil, growing up in the midst of constant turmoil, never hiding his sympathy for the left and the necessity of a revolution that would change the face of the world, Angelopoulos was for a while one of those who June 2012

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looked eastward for the emergence of new gospels. But by the time he made O Megalexandros (1980), the story of a failed peasant revolt and its fiery leader, he was beginning to waver, shocked by the corrupting effect of power which shattered the bestintentioned principles. Voyage to Cythera (1984) and The Beekeeper (O melissokomes, 1986), were both heartbreaking portraits of idealists deprived of their ideals, Landscape in the Mist (1988) offered a desolate image of Greece helplessly seeking its salvation elsewhere. The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991) clearly announced the theme that was to preoccupy him for the rest of his life: the vast, ever-growing masses of refugees, victims of political upheavals and economic catastrophes, homeless, nationless crowds looking for a shelter they are consistently denied. With Ulysses' Gaze(1995) he fully crossed the borders out of his own homeland and put to sleep, once and for all, his communist illusions in the magnificent funeral cortege of Lenin's statue prostrate on a Danube barge, and painted the war-torn Balkans in all their misery. Many believed the film deserved Cannes' Golden Palm, Jeanne Moreau's jury that year thought otherwise, but at least the festival paid its dues the next time around, when Eternity and a Day(1998) got the main award. In The Weeping Meadow (2004) and the following The Dust of Time (2008) (two parts of a trilogy that was never completed), Angelopoulos summed up the entire 20th century, in his own way, painting not only

personal despair, anguish and tragedies, but also the ideological calamities which shook the world through it. The Other Sea was supposed to be his first glimpse at the Third Millennium and its moral conundrums and again, no silver lining to the numerous clouds in sight, either. But if ideas can be expressed in words, there is another dimension in Theo Angelopoulos' films that goes much further, those magic moments of pure emotion which no words can describe, recurring again and again, a poetry of the image in time that very few, if any other filmmaker, achieved. An old man and an old woman on a raft drifting away from the shore in Voyage to Cythera, a shocking, silent rape scene, where all you see is the back of a truck and yet you know exactly what's going on in Landscape in the Mist, the ceasefire in the fog in Ulysses' Gaze, the bus ride in Eternity and the Day, the flight from the flooded villages in The Weeping Meadow, Michel Piccoli entering a Berlin bar at one end and coming out, years later, at the other end, all in one shot, in The Dust of Time. Disparate, random choices out of countless examples, for every Angelopoulos sequence shot was a unique event on its own. Shortly before he died, the great Russian cellist, musician an humanist Mstislav Rostropovich said death doesn't worry him, for he knows that his dear friends Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Britten will be waiting for him on the other side. Hopefully, Theo Angelopoulos is now discussing the affairs of this world and the next one, with his dear Kurosawa and Antonioni. He hasn't lost that much, we have.

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Dariush Mehrjui's Leila (1998) and

Asghar Farhadi's A Separation (2011): A Comparison
M.K.Raghavendra

MK Raghavendra is a film critic and a scholar. He received the National Award (the Swarna Kamal) for best film critic in the year 1997. He was awarded a two-year Homi Bhabha Fellowshipin2000-01toresearch into Indian popular film narrative as well as a Goethe Insitut Fellowship in 2000. He has published three books on cinema hitherto - Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian popular Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2008), 50 Indian Film Classics (Harper Collins, 2009) and Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, (Oxford University Press), 2011 . In the recently concluded Bengaluru International Film Festival (Dec 15-22, 2011) there was a package of Dariush's films (with his presence) and two films of Asghar Farhadi About Elly and A Separation which won the Oscar later. These films formed main attraction and they were received very well by the largely attended delegates. Mr.MKR makes an interesting analysis of the two films Leila and A Separation.

An art film is the result of filmmaking as a serious, independent undertaking aimed at a niche rather than mass market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_film - cite_note-0 Film scholars typically define 'art films' through those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films, which includes, among other things, a narrative dwelling upon the real problems of everyday life, an emphasis on the authorial expressivity of the director rather than generic convention and a focus on the subjectivity of the characters rather than on plot. If the art film finds it difficult to reach wide audiences, the place where it thrives is the international film festival in which films that rarely get public releases are shown to a discerning public. But the unfortunate fallout of this is perhaps that filmmakers eyeing international acclaim can make their films virtually to fit a formula as this brief examination of two key films from Iran tries to show. Both these films have been acclaimed internationally, with Asghar Farhadi's film hailed as a masterpiece and universally cited as among the best films of 2011.

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provided by the affluent Reza. Their child is now to be looked after by Reza's mother. Leila, however, has been estranged forever and she refuses to return to the man who still loves her.

Leila In Leila, the eponymous heroine (Leila Hatami) marries Reza (Ali Mosaffa) and the two obviously love each other. They plan on having children 'several' is Leila's wish. As luck will have it, however, Leila finds out that she is barren although Reza is normal. There are not so many options available to them because adopting a child is time consuming and difficult. Reza tells Leila that he is perfectly willing not to have children but his mother starts putting other thoughts into Leila's head. If Reza does not have children their line will die out is the mother's primary fear. Leila knows that Reza married her for herself and not to have children but a few stray remarks in which he indicated his desire to have children resurfaces. In due course Leila finds herself actively collaborating in a plan by which Reza will marry again. Reza is completely unwilling but Leila joins hands with his mother and he finds himself less and less able to resist. Mehrjui sets up several touching sequences in which Reza and Leila discuss his forthcoming marriage almost flippantly and the deep irony is that this is likely to deeply affect the love they have for each other. In due course Reza finds a woman who is suitable and Leila consents to the wedding a condition made by Reza. The two are married but Leila is unable to bear this and goes away to her mother's house. Reza tries to get her back but is unable to persuade her. Reza's new wife gives birth to a daughter and, since the purpose of their union has been fulfilled, they divorce and she marries someone else and is set up in a new home

Leila The New York Times described Leila as 'devastating' and indeed it will be to Western audiences to whom love and marriage are till 'death does them apart'. Divorce rates in the West are climbing all the time and they are even becoming lucrative especially when there is no pre-nuptial agreement. Still, cinema (especially from Hollywood) deals with love and marriage as through only one 'true' love is possible in one lifetime. When a story deals with a second marriage, there is always an effort to designate one love as 'truer' than another. Two previously married persons who become romantically attached are treated as people who finally 'find love' after incessantly searching for an ideal companion all their lives. My argument here is that this view of love cannot be equally applicable to a society like Iran's in which marriage is not a sacrament but a contract and where divorce is also easier. My sense here is that since there is little clamor in Islamic societies against polygamy, even Iranian women who love their husbands are unlikely to look upon a spouse's second marriage as the stuff of tragedy. I suggest that in a society in which there are no strictures against polygamy, 'love' will not carry the same connotations that it does in Hollywood. Since notions like 'love' are

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socially constructed and do not carry the same connotations everywhere, why is Dariush Mehrjui making a tragedy out of Leila and Reza's story? My sense is that he is 'reporting' on Iranian society to Western audiences who can be expected to bring their own values into their reading of the film instead of regarding it as specific to the Iranian context. To draw a parallel, an arranged marriage in India is not only commonplace but legitimate and although Westerners often react with horror to the notion, a filmmaker who treats it as a social calamity/ evil for their benefit would be opportunistically casting doubt on the legitimacy of a local institution simply to suit the sentiments of an international audience. Winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes would not undo the fact that such an exercise would be dishonest. One must perhaps address one's own society before one addresses international art cinema audiences and this is apparently not what Mehrjui is doing. The 'tragedy' in Leila is heightened by the fact that Leila Hatami and Ali Mostaffa make a very handsome couple. Love stories often rely on the strategy of pairing off between the physically most appealing man and woman in the story and this strategy is used by Mehrjui as well although his film hardly convinces that there is a genuine intimacy between husband and wife. Leila Hatami is stunningly beautiful and she appears once again in Asghar Farhadi's A Separation with another extremely handsome male actor Peyman Maadi, who is almost a dead ringer for Ali Mostaffa. A Separation begins with Nader and Simin trying to get a divorce. There is no animosity between them but Simin wants to leave the country to get her daughter better opportunities while Nader refuses to leave because he needs to look after his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Simin wants a divorce only because Nader is adamant about staying on and she cannot leave while being married to him. Their appearance in the family court is inconclusive because the judge decides that the disagreement is too trivial for a divorce. Simin now arranges for a servant woman to

come every day and look after Nader's father. The woman Rajieh is poor and takes up the job although she does this without consulting her husband Houjat, as she is required to because her work involves cleaning a man. She tries to get Houjat to work instead without revealing that she worked there first but Houjat's creditors pounce on him and contrive to get him put into jail. Rajieh therefore returns and takes up the job of tending to Nader's father once again.

A Separation Things go well initially but Rajieh has problems dealing with the old man who soils himself constantly. She also finds him missing when the door is open and locates him in the street hundreds of yards away. One day, when Nader and his daughter return home, they find the door locked and Rajieh absent. Nader's father has been tied to the bed but he has slipped out, fallen and injured himself. Rajieh returns a short while later and apologizes. She had to leave on some urgent work, she says without revealing what it was. But Nader still sacks her and also accuses her of stealing money although we in the audience have seen that the money was taken by Simin to pay some movers the previous day. When Rajieh demands money for her exertions, Nader pushes her out roughly. The next morning, Nader finds that Rajieh and her husband have brought a case of assault and murder against him. She was apparently pregnant and lost her child when he pushed her and she 'fell down the stairs'. The unborn child was over four months old and that makes it murder.

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portrayal of the court (as in Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up 1990) virtually establishes the Iranian state as the most reasonable of arbiters. If Rajieh and Nader belong to different classes, the classes themselves are not in conflict although individuals belonging to them may squabble. Rajieh being unable to swear on the Quran about the cause of her child's death is also problematic, not least because it furnishes the film with a moral resolution mediated by the official religion and by implication, the theocratic state. A Separation A Separation works by enlisting our sympathy for everyone in it. Simin and Rajieh come closer when Simin understands the poor woman's difficulties. Nader is a good man but he lies when he tells the court that he didn't know about her pregnancy and he is caught out. Rajieh's husband has fewer scruples than she has and wants to use the opportunity to get some money. But he is also in serious trouble and the director gets some sympathy for him as well. But the crux of the matter is that Rajieh lied when she blamed Nader for the loss of her child. She was hit by a vehicle when she was retrieving Nader's father from the street the previous afternoon and that actually caused the miscarriage. In any case, Nader agrees to pay blood money for the dead child but when he insists that Rajieh swear on the Quran that he was responsible for the child's death, she is unable to do so. Simin's daughter knows that her mother will never go abroad on her own and the film ends on an open note with the daughter having to make up her mind in court on which parent she will go with. A Separation is brilliantly made; it has the authenticity of real life and no one in it even seems to be acting. But there are some aspects to the film that cast doubt on its value as a commentary on Iranian society. While the film includes a large amount of detail how a certain part of the populace lives and even on some legal/ social issues in Iran one does not get a sense of how Iranian society is constituted its social structure, the exercise of power etc. The

A Separation From my description of the film it should also be evident that Nader and Simin's divorce is not the central issue in A Separation. It is only the issue which sparks off another kind of conflict to which it is not intrinsically related. This being the case, one is left wondering why the title of the film privileges their separation. As in Leila, the two protagonists make a handsome couple and since neither of them bears any animosity towards the other, the film is bound to have audiences accustomed to monogamous heterosexuality as the standard in family stories wishing that the two come together again. The single issue keeping Simin and Nader apart revolves around whether the two should remain in Iran or emigrate. Once this issue is defined as the key one, the director perhaps introduces the second story to illustrate what the two might do well to escape from. My sense is that international audiences are deliberately made to follow Nader's emotional trajectory and learn about daily living conditions in Iran through his

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'education'. In order to facilitate our education about issues in Iran, Nader is made innocent of the daily issues that an Iranian might be wellversed in and he appears to learn about them. Each society lives by its own rules governing daily life which will appear strange to outsiders. If the rules governing daily life in the US are not strange to us it is because we have been kept informed of them through American films, the media and our own kith and kin who have tried to make their lives there. It is perhaps the hegemonic influence of American culture which makes American values more 'universal' than those of, say, Lapland and not any aspect intrinsic to it. The best films from an unfamiliar culture like, say Yasujiro Ozu's work do not deliberately inform outsiders of how local people live but expect that the issues dealt with will be universal in some sense. It is in the context that Farhadi's method in A Separation, which is to deliberately estrange Iran from us, becomes suspect and as in the case of Mehrjui's Leila, the director appears to be reporting on his own society to outsiders who are additionally awakened to the 'tragedy' of a man who cannot emigrate from his own land. Rather than take the position of a critical insider perhaps the only legitimate and honorable one for an artist in any society Farhadi's film pays lip service to the legitimacy of the culture it is set in but also suggests that escape from it would be the best

course. One gets the sense of a society difficult to live as in Slumdog Millionaire although A Separation is not made by someone foreign to Iran. It is common knowledge that there is large scale repression in Iran and while censorship will be blamed for its portrayal of Iranian society, censorship may not be entirely culpable here. China has a repressive society as well but with all the censorship in that country, a director like Zhang Ke Jia (Still Life, 2006) can still give us profoundly disquieting insights into the social processes under way in China. Iranian cinema of the kind celebrated at film festivals has consistently neglected to give us incisive portraits of life at home and when directors like Abbas Kiarostami suggest tyranny (Where is my Friend's Home, 1987) or class divisions (Through the Olive Trees, 1994) they also provide comforting resolutions that effectively negate these suggestions. 'Censorship is the origin of metaphor,' wrote Jorge Luis Borges but A Separation does not even use metaphor in the service of excavating social or political truths about Iran although it does its best to suggest that escape to the West would be the best course for a liberal Iranian national today. MK Raghavendra

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Film Festivals
- Then and Now
By David Sterritt

(David Sterritt was a longtime member of the New York Film Festival selection committee. He is currently chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, chief book critic of Film Quarterly, and an e d i t o r i a l b o a rd m e m b e r o f Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is past chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation and has written for Cahiers du cinma, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Hitchcock Annual, and many other publications. His books include screening the Beats: Media Culture and the Beat Sensibility (2004), Guiltless Pleasures: A David Sterritt Film Reader (2005), and The Honeymooners (2009): for more details: http://www.davidsterritt.com/, In this essay , Mr. Sterritt traces the history of the ' film festival', its genesis and growth. Kind courtesy: FIPRESCI International.)

Nobody knows who first uttered the term "film festival," and its near-universal use probably stems more from its alliterative lilt than from its descriptive precision. Most film festivals have festive elements, of course glitzy opening ceremonies, guest shots by celebrities, and so forth. But for the movie buffs, industry insiders, and journalists who make up their main audiences, festivals call for prolonged and intensive activity including long hours of screenings, press conferences, q&a sessions, and networking with like-minded professionals and fans. Beyond this it's hard to generalize. Some festivals are regional, focusing on movies with limited ambitions and drawing primarily local audiences. Others are national or international, drawing attendees from near and far with pictures from many lands. Some showcase hundreds of titles, while others limit their slates to a modest number of rigorously selected entries. Some are eclectic; others target specific genres or formats. Some give prizes; others do not.

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Events of all kinds have been known to thrive, so there are no strict rules. The only requirement for film-festival organizing is an ability to intuit what the free market of cinema enthusiasm will currently bear.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde The first film festival per se was a direct result of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's enthusiasm for movies as a propaganda tool. Eager to cultivate state-run Italian cinema in the face of foreign competition, he spent lavishly to build up the native film industry while heavily taxing the dubbing of foreign-language movies. One of the projects he supported, the Biennial Exhibition of Italian Art, gave birth in 1932 to the International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art in Venice intended to make the Biennial more varied and multidisciplinary. Its first program began with the premiere of Rouben Mamoulian's horror classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and continued with twenty-four additional entries from seven countries - among them James Whale's Frankenstein, Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth, Ren Clair's nous la libert, and Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel.

Benito Mussolini The exhibition's stated intention was to shine "the light of art over the world of commerce," but power politics were a major subtext of the event, which became a yearly festival in 1935, presenting official prizes in place of the popularity poll and "participation diploma" of the 1932 program. These prizes may themselves have amounted to a popularity poll, however, with fascists heavily favored to win: Domestic movies competed for a Best Italian Film award, and pictures from Nazi Germany an Italian ally at the time won the Best Foreign Film prize four times between 1936 and 1942. Even more incestuously, Leni Riefenstahl's epic documentary Olympia, which presents the 1936 Olympics as a showcase for Aryan supremacy, shared the Mussolini Cup in 1938 with an Italian drama about a fascist soldier, and it just so happened that Il Duce's oldest son was credited as "supervisor" of the latter film. Americans and Brits quit the festival jury when these awards were announced. French participants also walked out, partly because of the Mussolini Cup decisions and partly because they were still fuming over an incident the previous year, when festival honchos vetoed a top prize for Jean Renoir's 1937 war drama The Grand Illusion.

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Cannes opens, closes, and reopens After the Grand Illusion brouhaha, French cineastes struck back with a new festival meant to outdo and overshadow its tainted Italian counterpart. A committee went to work on the project, recruiting minence grise Louis Lumire as president. Overcoming fear of Mussolini's anger, the French government agreed to provide funding, and the French Riviera city of Cannes was chosen as the venue. Other film festivals had sprung up in Europe by this time, but it was Cannes that established such events as staples of modern culture. Its 1939 debut took place in September organizers hoped to prolong the tourist season by a couple of weeks with two of the year's major Hollywood productions, Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings and Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz, on the program. Norma Shearer, Gary Cooper, Mae West, Tyrone Power, and Douglas Fairbanks were on the "steamship of stars" sent to Cannes by Hollywood's mighty MGM studio, and a cardboard model of the Ntre-Dame cathedral was erected on the beach, heralding William Dieterle's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame as the opening-night attraction. In a shocking twist, however, the opening film was the only film to be screened: Germany's invasion of Poland that very day (1 September) led the festival to close its doors only hours after they had opened. They didn't open again until September 1946, when the festival restarted with a program that proved highly successful (despite the showing of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious with the reels scrambled). The next two years were difficult England and the Soviet Union were absent in 1947, and in 1948 the program was cancelled but in 1951 Cannes became a reliable yearly event, with its timeslot changed to spring, when more major movies are available. New York, Tokyo, Ouagadougou, and beyond Festivals proliferated during the 1950s, and politics kept chugging away below the surface of some. When the ambitious Berlin festival

began in 1951, for instance, it presented itself as a meeting ground between East and West as the cold war climbed into high gear; but until 1975, no Eastern bloc nation would officially participate. The most important debut of the 1960s was the New York Film Festival, founded in 1963 at Lincoln Center, one of the city's leading cultural venues. Modeled to some extent after the London Film Festival, the New York event focused mainly on art films from Europe and Japan, documentaries, and avant-garde movies. Unlike the heavily programmed festivals at Cannes and Berlin, the New York festival showed a limited quantity of films about two dozen features and a similar number of shorts and it awarded no prizes, reasoning that its selective nature made every work shown there a "winner." The event has broadened its scope over the years, adding more special screenings and sidebar programs, including an annual weekend of avant-garde cinema. It remains noncompetitive, however, and considers itself a "public festival" where the audience consists primarily of movie buffs rather than the large contingents of film professionals who attend larger-scale festivals. The 1970s brought two key events. The first was the 1976 debut of the Toronto International Film Festival, originally called the Festival of Festivals because it specialized in importing films from other such events. It had a setback in its first year when Hollywood studios decided to withdraw their contributions, apparently considering the Toronto audience base too parochial. The joke was on Hollywood, however. In subsequent years Toronto grew into one of the most comprehensive film events in the world, presenting a sweeping array of international art films, domestic productions, and (ironically) more Hollywood products than are likely to be found in any comparable venue. No prizes are bestowed at the Toronto festival, although an independent jury administered by the International Federation of Film Critics gives a single award for the best work by a debuting filmmaker. (More commonly known by its European acronym, FIPRESCI, this organization establishes prize-giving juries,

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composed of film critics, at many festivals around the world. It also publishes Undercurrent, the online magazine you are reading now.) The other big development of the 1970s was the founding of the United States Film Festival, set up in Salt Lake City by the Utah Film Commission to promote the state as a film production site. In its first three years it concentrated on retrospectives, discussion sessions, and independent films sought out through a nationwide competition. In 1981 it moved to the smaller community of Park City and sought ways to increase its visibility and influence. It was acquired in 1985 by actor Robert Redford and the four-year-old Sundance Institute, which Redford had established to foster filmmaking outside the Hollywood system. Renamed the Sundance Film Festival in 1989, it became an eagerly covered media event as well as a wide-ranging discovery spot for independent and international productions. Alongside the famous world-class festivals, more modest events have sprung up by the score more than 1,000 of them worldwide, according to a New York Times estimate. The time is long past when the United States and Europe had a corner on the market, as is well known to anyone who's attended the Shanghai, Tokyo, or Pusan festivals in Asia, the Ouagadougou festival in Burkina Faso, or many others around the globe. Success breeds success It's as hard to summarize the nature of film festivals as it is to count them. By common consensus, Cannes is the most important because of its age, because of its size, and because success breeds success. (The festival considered most influential is most influential for that very reason.) Cannes divides its programs into several categories. The predominant one is the Competition, comprising about two dozen features, many of them directed by established auteurs. Films directed by favored newcomers, including actors with Cannes credentials on the order of

Johnny Depp (The Brave, 1997) and Vincent Gallo (The Brown Bunny, 2003), also make their way into the Competition from time to time, although the results in those cases were disastrous. The main sidebar program, Un Certain Regard ("A Certain Look"), focuses on movies by newer or less-known talents. Two other series operate outside the festival's formal boundaries: the International Critics Week, where selections are chosen by a panel of critics, and the Directors' Fortnight, founded in 1969 to compete with the official festival, which was interrupted in the politically charged year of 1968 by protests involving Franois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and other activists of the new wave period. These programs coexist peacefully with the festival and the concurrent Film Market, established in 1960 as a place where producers, distributors, exhibitors, and others involved in the circulation of new movies can meet, network, and do business. Overall attendance at Cannes is skewed heavily toward film professionals, including film journalists and critics, who attend press screenings beginning at 8:30 every morning and proceeding until well into the night. Prizes are awarded by a jury of directors, producers, performers, screenwriters, and other notables. The jury announces its awards on the final day, sometimes startling other attendees with its decisions as when Bruno Dumont's idiosyncratic French production L'Humanit (1999) won three awards, including the Grand Prize of the Jury, after being booed and jeered during its press screening. The highest prizes at Cannes, especially the Palme d'Or, are seen as the most prestigious of all motion-picture honors except the Academy Awards. Madness, tortured artists, Krazy Kat Festivals with lower profiles, from the interestingly specialized to the deservedly obscure, are also plentiful. No fewer than thirty abide in New York City alone. Others across North America range from the Hardacre Film Festival in Iowa to the Hi Mom Film Festival in North Carolina. Some signal their specialties

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via unusual names the Rendezvous with Madness Film and Video Festival in Canada, focusing on mental illness and addiction; the Madcat Women's International Film Festival in California, featuring female filmmakers; the Tacoma Tortured Artists International Film Festival in Washington, centering on lowbudget independent films; and many more. One of the most respected specialized festivals is Pordenone-Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, established in the north of Italy in 1982. Devoted entirely to silent cinema, it draws an international audience of archivists, scholars, critics, and adventurous fans to a schedule that has included everything from century-old kinetoscopes to Krazy Kat cartoons. Also highly regarded is the Locarno festival, a Swiss event launched in 1946 and celebrated for its unusual attention to new directors. The hugely ambitious Rotterdam festival in the Netherlands has earned high marks for its commitment to avantgarde cinema as well as children's films, new features by innovative directors, and an Exploding Cinema sidebar featuring multimedia projects. This festival also presents film-related lectures and awards monetary grants to promising directors from developing nations through the Hubert Bals Fund, which it administers. The San Francisco festival, established in 1957, blazed many trails for the mushrooming American festival scene with its eclectic blend of major new productions, restored classics, and retrospectives devoted to filmmakers better known by art-film enthusiasts than by the general public. Among the more intriguing American events is the Telluride Film Festival, founded in 1974 in a small Colorado town once a mining community, now a popular skiing site and widely regarded as one of the world's most intelligently programmed venues. It keeps the schedule secret until patrons arrive at the entrance gate, shifting the emphasis from hotticket premieres to faith in the programmers and delight in the reclusive Rocky Mountains setting. To make sure celebrities will be on hand,

the festival presents tributes to three film-world notables each year honorees have ranged from Shirley MacLaine to Salmon Rushdie complete with in-person appearances and showings of pertinent films. Many festival events take place in an intimate opera house where Sarah Bernhardt and Jenny Lind held forth during the mining-boom era; the building's original marquee, displaying the word "SHOW" in large upper-case letters, is still standing and serves as the festival's trademark. The legendary Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones, a frequent presence there before his death in 2002, once paid his respects to Telluride's lofty 9,000-foot elevation by saluting the festival as "the most fun you'll ever have without breathing. My own festival-going over the years has been influenced by my duties as sole film critic for a daily newspaper (The Christian Science Monitor) published in the US and nominally serving both national and international audiences, although its editors have swung its cultural emphasis increasingly toward massmarket American movies. (Partly because of that, I retired from full-time reviewing in 2005.) I first flew to Cannes in 1974, when The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola won the top prize and FIPRESCI honored Ali: Fear Eats the Soul by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lancelot du Lac by Robert Bresson, who declined the award. As a yearly attendee starting in the 1980s, when I joined the New York festival's selection committee, I saw an enormous number of worthwhile films, quite a few stinkers, and several masterpieces, which I often saw again back home as soon as possible, since the fatigue induced by such crowded daily schedules (I call this the Festival Overload Syndrome) makes it hard to evaluate many films especially subtle, delicate, and intellectually demanding ones in the heat of the moment. This said, Cannes is unquestionably one of the festivals that have best satisfied my hunger for stimulating global cinema. Another is Toronto, thanks to the teeming variety of its offerings and the creativity of its

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programming by festival director Piers Handling (and before him Helga Stephenson) and a gifted team of associates. Telluride lasts only a few days during a holiday weekend in late summer, but I've found it the most exciting American festival on a day-to-day basis -where else, for example, would I have been asked to moderate public dialogues with filmmakers as different as Stan Brakhage and Mike Leigh? On the other end of the spectrum, I've found the Moscow International Film Festival quite unimaginative in its programming; more interesting fare has shown up in small regional events like the Bermuda, Israel, and Newport (Rhode Island) festivals. Into the future Film festivals are changing their selection standards and exhibition formats as technological developments digital cinematography, 3-D projection, and so forth alter the nature of cinema itself. In times of financial uncertainty, festivals also face ongoing questions as to whether they should focus on the best of cinematic art which may include obscure, difficult, and esoteric works or court movies with catchy themes and major stars that will draw large audiences, attract press attention, and please their all-important financial sponsors.

In the future as in the past, film festivals will hold their own as long as movie lovers find them a stimulating alternative to multiplexes and other directly commercial venues. Exhibition patterns play an important role in shaping cinematic styles, and festivals have provided crucial exposure for new and unconventional works that might not otherwise be seen by the producers, distributors, exhibitors, and others who control the financial infrastructure of theatrical film. Also invaluable is the frequent festival practice of reviving interest in overlooked or forgotten movies from the past that would otherwise remain unknown to or unviewable by scholars, critics, and curious fans. All signs point to a healthy and productive future for their manifold activities.

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A Tribute to
Soumitra Chattopadhyay
Premendra Mazumder

Premendra Mazumder is the Vice President of FFSI, Eastern Region, a noted film critic, and consultant / programmer for several International film festivals in Asia, Europe and America. He has served as a member of the jury at various film festivals and has contributed articles on cinema in several film journals. Premendra in this article for IFC has sketched the profile of one of our renowned Actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who has been honoured with Dadasaheb Phalke award for the year 2011.

Soumitra Chattopadhyay, a.k.a. Soumitra Chatterjee, the living legend of the Bengali Cinema, the recipient of the 'Officier des Arts et Metiers' the highest award of arts given by the Government France and also the recipient of the 'Lifetime Achievement Award' from Italy, has finally been selected to be honored with the coveted 'Dadasaheb Phalke Award' the highest recognition by the Government of India for the lifetime contribution to Indian Cinemas. He was awarded 'Padma Shri' in 1970 and 1972 but refused to accept the award both the times. However, he accepted 'Padma Bhushan' in 2004. He also refused to accept a National Award for acting in 2001 to protest against the bias of the Government to praise the mainstream cinema. But in 2008 he accepted the National Award for Best Actor for his role in a Bengali feature film Padakshep (2006) directed by Suman Ghosh. In 1995 he got the 'Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award'.

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Soumitra Accepting the 'Dadasaheb Phalke Award' for 2011, Soumitra said: I feel honored and accept the award with humility. This is the highest honor in the country that can be bestowed upon someone connected to films. It vindicates my faith in my countrymen for sustaining me for more than five decades. I miss my elders like Satyajit Ray, who was my mentor and made my life. And also the great Tapan Sinha who had been a great teacher. He added, The National Award has lost its credibility, no one believes in it anymore. I don't value awards but this one (Dadasaheb Phalke Award) has seldom been sullied because it has not been given to undeserving people. He also told, In 50 years of acting I have been feted by Sangeet Natak Academi for my contribution to stage, with Padma Bhushan for contribution to Bengal's cultural life. But the National Awards overlooked my performance in several powerful roles. He further explained, The President's Award is a big thing. But the democratic process that decides it does not always help artistic merit. However, the Padma Bhushan has changed my approach. Now I feel I don't have

the right to hurt my viewers by rejecting an award. In a recent interview with CNN-IBN he told, At my age it hardly matters what I get. It is much more important that people who have loved me, tolerated me and nurtured me with their love for 50 years are happy that I am being decorated. I have long since lost all interest in these awards because they have so often been given to someone who does not deserve it or to someone who is not really worth naming. It's not attitude or ego problem, it is simple, reasonable thinking. I feel I have worked in fourteen of Mr. Ray's films and I was not considered to be the best actor in any of them. Madhabi Mukherjee, Ray's famous ' Charulata ' reacted most brilliantly saying: If Amal were to win an award, won't Charulata be thrilled? Madhabi also added He should have got the award much earlier.. Renowned novelist and poet, the head of the Sahitya Academy, Sunil Gangopadhyay reacted, It is a matter of pride for Bengal. A hundred congratulations to him. He should have got the award long back, but that does not diminish our joy. Mrinal Sen said, I was speaking to Soumitra over phone this morning and I told him that I was sure that he would get the Phalke award. I am seeing him since he acted in Apur Sansar and he is getting better day by day. Buddhadeb Dasgupta said, It is good that a real artiste has been recognized, although late. Soumitra was born on 19th January 1935 at Krishnanagar in West Bengal. His father's name is Mohit Kumar Chattopadhyay. He received his early education in CMM St. John School Krishnanagar, Barasat Government School, Darjeeling High School and Howrah Government School. He joined City College in Kolkata and completed his graduation with Honors in Bengali literature from the University of Calcutta. He joined this University for his masters but was unable to appear for the M.A. examination. He started his profession as an announcer in All India Radio. His career in cinema as an actor started in Satyajit Ray's 'Apur

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Sansar' in 1959. Satyajit Ray's assistant Nityananda Dutta was a very close friend of Soumitra. Dutta introduced him to Ray for his film Aparajito but he was not selected for the role as his age was not suitable for it. Later in 1957 Ray had given him the first break in his film Apur Sansar, the final film of the great ApuTrilogy. His extraordinary performance in the film marked his permanent place of repute in the film industry which is still continuing without any break. Since then, he collaborated with Ray in fourteen films, in some of which the screenplays were written by the maestro especially keeping Soumitra's role in mind. Besides Ray, he also worked with almost all the well-known directors of Bengali cinema like Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Tarun Mazummder, Asit Sen, Ajoy Kar, Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Sandip Ray and many others. Regarding his career Soumitra said to CNN-IBN, I was very closely associated with the great Shishir Kumar Bhaduri and so it was almost predestined that I should be an actor. I made up my mind when I was doing my graduation. But to be very frank, I never thought I would be a very famous film star. In fact, before witnessing the revolutionary change in Indian cinema with Pather Panchali, we had a snobbish kind of disdain for cinema. I did not like Bengali cinema of those days although I was an avid cinema fan. According to him: In 1958, I started acting onscreen. I began as a child actor in theatre, got close to Shishir Bhaduri in his final years, and I was with AIR when I portrayed Satyajit Ray's Apu. I did not have to look back with although the formidable Uttam Kumar was at the peak of his career. I went on to do 300 films that include 14 Ray's plus, gems from Tapan Sinha, Mrinal Sen, Asit Sen, Ajoy Kar, Tarun Mazumder'. He has analyzed his own cinematic career as, Apu was a huge break that became a classic. Abhijaan (1962 by Satyajit Ray) and Jhinder Bondi (1961 by Tapan Sinha) established me as a hero distinct from others. A divorced husband

in Saat Paakey Bandha (1963 by Ajoy Kar) , an aging poet in Dekha (2001 by Goutam Ghosh), the protagonist of Wheel Chair (1994 by Tapan Sinha), a swimming coach in Koni (1986 by Saroj Dey), teacher in Atanka (1986 by Tapan Sinha), thief in Sansar Simantey (1975 by Tarun Mazumder) I dreaded getting stereotyped. Perhaps that explains my popularity. Soumitra is one of the most talented actors of Bengali cinema and acknowledged most internationally for his versatile brilliance on screen and on stage simultaneously. Ray made three films based on Tagore stories Charulata (1964), Samapti (a part of Teen Kanya, 1961) and Ghare Baire (1984), and in all of them he selected Soumitra in male leads. Relationship with Soumitra and Ray is often compared with Mifune and Kurosawa, Mastroianni and Fellini, De Niro and Scorsese, Max von Sydow and Bergman, Jerzy Stuhr and Kieslowski. He was cast in different types of roles by Ray. Ray's famous private detective Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joy Baba Felunath (1978) were specially designed keeping Soumitra in mind. Besides his extraordinary works in the films of Ray, his performances in all other great directors of Bengal have also been appreciated very highly. In the role of an imposter in Mrinal Sen's Akash Kushum (1965), a splashy teaser in the box-office hit Teen Bhubaner Paare (1969 by Ashotosh Bandyopadhyay), a comic bachelor in another box-office hit Basanta Bilaap (1973 by Dinen Gupta) and in so many others he proved himself as a versatile genius. His famous twist dance with the super-hit song ke tumi nandini to woo his love-interest Tanuja made him popular superstar overnight keeping his intellectual image intact. Tanuja has recently said My memories take me back to the early 70s. I was pitted opposite Soumitra Chatterjee in Teen Bhubaner Pare and Pratham Kadam Phool. Both were big hits. Soumitra Chatterjee is an original actor, natural reflexive never influenced by Hollywood.He deserves the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

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In 1995 when I was editing a Bengali literary journal 'Loukik Udyan', I had an opportunity to take his interview for our special issue on '100 years of Cinema'. He spoke on different issues on cinema but the most interesting interpretation he gave me on the film society movement which I should share with my readers of the Indian Film Culture. Soumitra told me: Federation of Film Societies of India is marginally successful to propagate film culture in the country. It failed to build up a very successful movement. But it was quite different at the initial stage. People like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak were associated with the movement who were involved with making good film and propagation of film culture. Naturally they realized the immense potential of the film society movement, its historical importance, its future strength. They took the initiative so that a proper film culture could be developed in the country. And it was an obvious necessity of the time, many cultural movements were being developed during that period. In this interview when I asked him about the contemporary Bengali cinema, he was very depressed. He said: In general the quality of today's cinema has been deteriorated. Main cause is the declension of people's taste. Moreover no new filmmaker like Satyajit Ray or Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen or Tapan Sinha is coming up. I am sorry to say that the famous directors of these days don't understand this medium properly. In every step of film making they prioritize the international film festivals, how to get recognitions from those festivals. So a possibility to be acclaimed in the international festival might have been created but it fails to reach the common people. The way Ray used to treat his films by pulling up the common people to be communicated cerebrally is not the cup of tea of the contemporary filmmakers. In reply to my question about his favorite actors in Indian cinema he mentioned categorically that he admired most Balraj Sahani, Sanjeev Kumar,

Sabitri Chatterjee and Wahida Rehman. His favorite Wahida also praised him in a recent interview saying that, I made my debut in Bengali films opposite Soumitra Chatterjee in Satyajit Ray's Abhijan in 1962. He was a sport and very co-operative right from our first day of shooting. As I performed my dance mudras saying toke nach dekhabo babuji in Abhijan, he looked straight into my eyes with a meaningful expression. That conveyed volumes. We again made a special appearance in 15 Park Avenue. I am glad he has been bestowed the highest award of Indian cinema. Soumitra, a versatile genius in all most all types of roles also proved himself a very successful comedian as well for his perfect sense of comic timing in the box-office hits like Basanta Bilap (1973 by Dinen Gupta), Chhutir Phande (1975 by Salil Sen) and Baksho Badal (1965 by Nityananda Dutta). On one hand he was highly acclaimed for his excellent cerebral performances in so many films and on the other, he was equally successful for his brilliant roles in several commercially successful films which undoubtedly proved him as an iconic actor, the living legend of Begali cinema. Not only cinema, practically Soumitra is considered as an icon of Bengali culture as a whole. At the age of 77 Soumitra is dominating the Bengali cinema and the Bengali theatre simultaneously. A thespian of highest repute Soumitra acts directs and writes plays regularly. Right now he is playing in the lead role of the famous 'King Lear' of William Shakespeare produced by the 'Minerva Repertory Theatre Kolkata'. Its really a lifetime experience to see him as the King Lear on stage continuously for three hours. Soumitra, who successfully headed the 'Kolkata Film Festival' for a long period during the Left rule in West Bengal, has been removed from the post by the present Government in the state for his leftinclination. But his recognition by the Government of India with 'Dadasaheb Phalke Award' however satisfied his innumerable admirers.

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It is impossible to give his total filmography as the number may stand something between 300 and 400. However, a very shortlisted filmography is given below to remember his works: Apur Sansar (1959, Satyajit Ray) Devi (1960, Satyajit Ray) Khudito Pashan (1960, Tapan Sinha) Teen Kanya (1961, Satyajit Ray) Jhinder Bondi (1961, Tapan Sinha) Punascha (1961, Mrinal Sen) Abhijan (1962, Satyajit Ray) Saat Paake bandha (1963, Ajoy Kar) Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray) Kapurush (1965, Satyajit Ray) Akash Kushum (1965, Mrinal Sen) Baksho Badal (1965, Nityananda Dutta) Joradighir Choudhuri Paribar (1966, Ajit Lahiri) Baghini (1968, Bijoy Bose)

Parineeta (1969, Ajoy Kar) Aranyer Din Ratri (1970, Satyajit Ray) Ashani Sanket (1973, Satyajit Ray) Sonar Kella (1974, Satyajit Ray) Joy Baba Felunath (1978, Satyajit Ray) Noukadubi (1979, Ajoy Kar) Ganadevata (1979, Tarun Mazumder) Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980, Satyajit Ray) Ghare Baire (1984, Satyajit Ray) Koni (1986, Saroj Dey) Atanka (1986, Tapan Sinha) Ganashatru (1989, Satyajit Ray) Shakha Proshakha (1990, Satyajit Ray) Mahapritivi (1991, Mrinal Sen) Ashukh (1999, Rituparno Ghosh) Paromitar Ek Din (2000, Aparna Sen) 15 Park Avenue (2005, Aparna Sen) Padakshep (2006, Suman Ghosh) Angshumaner Chhobi (2009, Atanu Ghosh)

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Film Criticism today

H.N.Narahari Rao
(Fipresci International had its General Assembly meeting at Bari (Italy) on March 25 and 26, 2012 and there was one specific question on which discussion was initiated: What can we do to ensure the future of our profession and protect our reputations? Our vice-president Alin Tasciyan who prepares this discussion writes: "The role of the film critics in media has dramatically changed. Film critics are less and less employed in mainstream media. Even if we are employed we cannot make a living out of film criticism. Let's look for practical solutions. Let's discuss the ways of adapting to the new media and / or finding a way to keep our positions." Colleagues attending the assembly are kindly asked to contribute to this theme by reporting the situation in their countries and by informing about their own experience. In the light of this initiation Mr. Rao has written this article touching upon different aspects of film criticism in the present context. Mr. H.N.Narahari Rao is the president of the FFSI, Secretary of FIPRESCI India and also the Artistic Director of Bangalore International Film Festival. He is the author of several books including The Most Memorable Films of the World, which has been widely acclaimed. He has been teaching film appreciation in colleges and educational institutions.)

Even before going to the main topic I would like to dwell upon a very interesting question that has cropped up many times in the recent years: Is Film Criticism an Art? In fact it was discussed exhaustively at some of the meetings held by the Film critics at various seminars and at international film festivals. Interestingly this question raises many issues. Basically a film critic writes on the works of a filmmaker. Even though it started as a scientific development cinema is universally accepted as a gift of science to art, and we definitely treat it as an art form. It is a composite art combining technology with collective work. To make it simpler it is story telling through moving images. Writing a review on this art form, can it also become art? This is what we have to discuss now. What is Art? Another issue that comes up is what is the definition of Art? Art is generally considered a mode of creative expression that touches our sensibility. We are familiar with some of the

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modes of expressions like Literature, Music, Theatre, paintings, Dance, sculpture, which are traditional art forms and joining this category is Film which is the youngest of all of them and it is also the only art form whose date of birth is recorded by the historians. We can also further expand this perception by classifying Art into different categories such as Creative Art, Performing Art and Decorative art. Cinema comes under both creative and performing art. In general practice we have come across several instances where people extend this phenomenon to call many things as art, for example, Public Speaking (Oratory), Teaching, Leadership, Journalism, sports, and many other professional performances. Whenever people are impressed by some extremely good performances they call it in an exalted way that it is artistic. So it is quite difficult to draw a line to demarcate its boundary. For many, writing on performing arts is a profession, and similarly writing on cinema is also a profession, and we have many film journalists with us who are fully devoted to this particular field. But I am sure most of us agree that many of those who write reviews for dailies and other periodicals do not fit into the category of film criticism. Normally they are allotted limited space and on a routine basis, they write something on the films they see for public consumption. It is more of reporting than a serious analysis of its structure and its impact. It is also true that nowadays none of the print media publications allot enough space for writing scholarly treatise on cinema since according to them it does not receive any attention by majority readers. It is like art films, no takers, only awards. The situation is same throughout the world. Art Criticism / Literary criticism / Film Criticism Let us now discuss what film criticism is.

But even before going to this subject, we should accept that the activity of Art criticism existed even before cinema made its presence. We have literary criticism that is in practice since a long time. Many of our Sanskrit classics of early days, like Mahabharata, Ramayana, and many other dramas, and even Greek drama and literature like Shakespeare classics gave rise to scholarly writings by eminent commentators. Subsequently we have come across writings in India in different languages on literary classics. Such writings and commentaries do exist in other art forms also. In Kannada literature also many eminent writers have written extensively on some of the great literary works of eminent poets. This activity in fact has found its firm footing in the evolution of our cultural heritage. It is no wonder that film criticism also joined this stream. Considered to be the most powerful of all art forms in its impact as a medium of mass communication, film criticism attained more importance because of its immense popularity. Film Appreciation and Film Criticism We are quite familiar with the subject Film Appreciation in the Film Society circles. Marie Seton, the noted film activist from Britain who played a significant role in the promotion of Film Society movement in India took initiative in introducing Film Appreciation as a subject in the FTII. And later on it is being regularly conducted at Pune by the NFAI and also by many film societies and educational institutions. Film Criticism is an extension of Film Appreciation. While Film Appreciation provides a forum for understanding the creativity of the filmmaker to ordinary spectator, or a film lover, the function of film criticism does not stop at that. What a film critic does is of much more importance because he acts as a link between the spectator and the filmmaker to explain the nature of creative art that the artist (filmmaker) has created. It is June 2012

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necessary because this is altogether a different faculty. Normally the filmmaker may not be equipped with resources to explain the process that he has created. A good film critic with his linguistic skill, with fairly good knowledge of film language can bridge this gap. This is a very important job and a healthy film criticism is crucial for the development of film art and its evolution. What are the qualities of a good critic? - is the next important issue. A good critical analysis of any art form for that matter will contain two things which are important. One is its content; the second is how it is presented. Many times we have seen that good contents are not properly presented, and the vice versa is also true; there will be good language, sometimes a maze of jargons but poor in its content. A good critique is one which unravels an objective appraisal presented in an appropriate language. This comes only to those who know the subject well and have good control over the language in which they write. Qualities of a good critic: Basically a critic should have an open mind. He or she must not see a film with preconceived notion or with prejudice. For example, with strong political affiliation or with some strong views, or with likes and dislikes on certain issues, or a particular ideology the critique that is made lose ground in the long run. The moment a reader comes to know that a particular person has written a review they do not even read it, unless they also belong to the same group. The same thing applies to the filmmaker also. Example: Costa Govras He made Z, and it became a big success and at the British Film Institute, when questioned about his ideology he said: When I made Z lot of people said he is a communist- When I made

The Confession (1970) the communists said he is a right winger. But for a filmmaker movie is a passion, at least it is for me. It is true with a film critic also. He should be dispassionate in his outlook. His pen should try to understand the inner meaning of the visuals that the filmmaker wants to portray and act as a bridge between the audience and the artist. Example: Zhang Yimou I would like to make reference to the world renowned, contemporary, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou who admits that he does not believe in any political idealism, and he makes film with an open mind and with a dispassionate outlook. He belongs to the Fifth Generation of Filmmakers who took courage to make films that portrayed some of the dreadful events that took place in China in the name of Cultural Revolution. I quote here his own words: The Cultural Revolution was a very special period of Chinese history, unique in the world. It was part of my youth. It happened between when I was 16 and when I was 26. During those 10 years, I witnessed so many terrible and tragic things. For many years, I have wanted to make movies about that period to discuss the sufferings and to talk about fate and human relationships in a world which people couldn't control and which was terrible. I would like to make not just one but many movies, both autobiographical and drawing other people's stories. I will just have to wait. Learned film critics all over the world give special importance to this filmmaker and his films receive welcome reception at all the major film festivals. Many writers consider his films are highly artistic and to write on them itself is a great opportunity. Today any film made by him receives coverage in more than two to three June 2012

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hundred acknowledged print media publications around the world. It means to say that a good film critic also needs a good cinema to write, and then only it gives scope for a good critique that can be called artistic. Celebrities I can give some good examples of critics who have become celebrities. The one name that instantly comes up is of course that of late Pauline Kael (1919-2001), the lady from US, who is respectfully acknowledged as a legendary film critic.

the film history. This article mentally prepared the audience to receive the film in a way that it never created the commotion that was anticipated. People simply accepted the film without any adverse comments. That is the power of a great critic. Pauline Kael is one such celebrity. I also quote here her remarks on Film Criticism. Pauline Kael: I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde film artist. My dear anonymous letter writers, if you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets. Chidanand Dasgupta

Pauline Kael When Bertolucci made Last Tango in Paris (1972), it created a sensation because the cinema for the public had never witnessed such erotic scenes earlier. It was first shown in New York film festival to a packed audience. It was a shocking experience for the audience, because of the eroticism that it portrayed. It was more so because Marlon Brando the most popular and admired actor was the main protagonist in the film with a bizarre performance. Just a couple of months before the film was released Pauline Kael wrote a review of the film which remains even today as one of the most historic reviews in

In India, Mr. Chidananda Dasgupta, one of the pioneers of the film society movement in India was an internationally acclaimed celebrity in the June 2012

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film criticism. Many of his writings that appeared in the highly reputed British Film Institute magazine 'Sight and Sound' are very highly rated by world fraternity of film critics. His treatise on Satyajit Ray and his films that appears in his book The Cinema of Satyajit Ray, being his long time associate in the film society movement is perhaps a very authentic documentation of his creative writing on his complete works. In his analysis of Ray he makes a remarkable assessment of some of the intricate issues that none of the other writers have brought out in their books on Ray, written by many film critics both from India and abroad. Writing on Ray's Mahanagar (1965) (The Big City), he points out that in The big city, Kolkata, after which the film is named, the political unrest, the tension and the daily protest rallies with red flags that passed through the city lanes relentlessly are never shown in detail at all. This was a very valid remark and many film analysts agreed that this absence is very conspicuous. Even Ray took note of this in the right spirit and made amends in his later film Jana Aranya (1975) which gives a good account of the social tension that prevailed during that period. Writing on Film Appreciation, he makes a very interesting observation regarding the difference between the filmmaker, the artist and the exponents of other art forms like music. He quotes a story which he calls apocryphal concerning the famous musician Ustad Fayyaz Khan. This example however is quite effective in conveying its essence. Late Ustad Fayyaz Khan, one day during the years of World War II, he interrupted his singing Darbari Kanada to ask one of his pupils, I hear there is a war going on. Who is fighting whom? The Germans and the English, replied the pupil, they were fighting in 1914said the master and they are still carrying on, that is a long time to fight. Having made this remarks he continued his singing. Would Fayyaz Khan have been a

better musician had he read the newspaper every morning, we do not know. But it is impossible we should think to practice filmmaking in such splendid isolation. This is a classic example of how a good film critic brings to light some of the issues that arise when he sees the works of great artists. When such writings are made what is wrong in calling it artistic. Ray as a humanist Mr. Chidanand Dasgupta, in his book on Ray tells us the predicament under which he had to work which I am reproducing here: The trilogy consolidated very early in his career, the nature of Ray's humanism. Living in an emerging Marxist intellectual ambience in Bengal, Ray held on to his Tagorean beliefs and rejected the methodology of Marxism. The crux of this social philosophy lies in the importance of the growth of the individual mind and the influence idealism exercises, through religion and art to prevent it from extreme self-seeking at the cost of welfare of others. While many other artists faithfully followed the dictum of idealism that prevailed on a mass scale, only Ray could withstand the pressure mainly because his was a towering personality. There are instances where the artists had to pay dearly for not toeing the line of the majority approach. Examples Ray was subjected to harsh criticism by the intellectuals on his last three films (Ganashatru / 1989, Shakha Proshakha /1990, Agantuk /1991) he made during his ailing period. This was a very unkind treatment to a person who was universally considered to be one of the great masters of the world cinema. This is a typical example of how prejudiced view of an art form spoils the very spirit of criticism. Such criticisms never go anywhere near becoming art. It is more a propaganda writing June 2012

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Let me also quote here what Pauline Kael wrote about Ray: It is a commentary on the values of our society that those who saw the truth and greatness in the Apu Trilogy, particularly in the opening film with its emphasis on the mother's struggle to feed the family are not drawn to a film in which Ray shows the landowning class and its collapse of beliefs. It is part of our heritage from the thirties that the poor still seem real and the rich trivial. Devi should however please even Marxists if they go to see it. It is the most convincing study of upper class decadence I have ever seen. But it is Ray's feeling for the beauty with in this disintegrating way of life that makes it convincing. Eisenstein cartooned the upper classes and made them hateful, they became puppets in the show he was staging. Ray, on the contrary gave them respect that he gives the poor and struggling, helps us to understand their demoralization Like Renoir and De Sica, Ray sees that life itself is good no matter how bad it is. It is difficult to discuss art which is an affirmation of life, without fear of becoming maudlin. Here is what Roger Ebert the famous film critic who writes for Chicago Sun Times has to say about Apu Trilogy when he revisited the films recently. :

I watched the Apu Trilogy recently over a period of three nights and found my thoughts returning to it during the days. It is about a time, place and culture far removed from our own and yet it connects directly and deeply with our human feelings. It is like a prayer, affirming that this is what the cinema can be, no matter how far in our cynicism we may stray. Let me now come to the point Film Criticism Today. I am sure many will agree with me that for a good film criticism there should be good films made. You cannot make a scholarly treatise on a film that does not deserve even a single viewing. It is a waste of time. Most of the films that are made in the main stream do not give any scope for writing a good critique. Even if we want to write on films that merit such writings there will be no takers to publish it. There are no publications that can accommodate such writings. This means to say that we should have film periodicals exclusively devoted to cinema. Then only we can invite people to write and the evolution of good criticism will take place. Even in the western countries where film criticism had its hey days in the 1960's and 1970's, there is a steep decline in both quality and quantity. The only magazines that still pursue this act of publishing critical analysis on films are 'Sight and Sound', 'Cahier du Cinema' and a few others. Film Critics and their influence All said and done, we should accept that film critics play a very important role through their writings. Also, established film critics play a very influential role in promoting films at the various levels Film Festivals, Awards, commercial distribution etc. For example it was only because some of the critics were able to June 2012

Roger Ebert

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appreciate the qualities of some of the great works that masters like Akira Kurosawa, Bergman, Ray, Fellini and others shot into fame. E-magazines I am not very pessimist in my assessment. I am quite optimistic in my vision that the Internet that has become a part of our lives today is an ideal forum where we can accommodate such film writings. This is taking place in a big way and I am sure this will be the order of the day in the coming years. There are many advantages in publishing magazines through internet There is no necessity of getting the articles printed. We can receive the articles, edit them on line. We can accommodate good still photographs that are available on the internet. More than anything else we can reach people in hundreds and thousands with one stroke on your

computer. Today there is innumerable number of such e-publications swarming our computers. But we should be choosy in our selection to suit our needs. This is also one of the reasons that we are able to gather information on films made around the world and such information and writings become handy in procuring films for film festivals. This is how we can spread a healthy film culture around the world and ultimately this is what we are aiming to achieve. There are many critics who are publishing their writings on world cinema in book form. There are books available in hundreds today. And yes, we need them the writings on cinema.

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Chandulal J. Shah (1898-1975)

The Stockbroker and the Showman
By Rafique Baghdadi

(The Indian Film industry is celebrating its 100 years of the first feature film Raja Harischandra made by D.G.Phalke considered the father of the Indian motion picture industry. Mr.Rafique in this article goes down the memory lane to present a profile of one of our pioneers who made films from the silent era and continued till 1960s and made rich contribution to the Bollywood cinema. Mr. Rafique is a noted film journalist having won the National award for Best film critic for the year 2006. He regularly writes for Business India on cinema. And conducts film appreciation lectures in Mumbai.)

Chandulal J. Shah was born in 1898 in Jamnagar, Gujarat. But Bombay was where he was educated and where he found footing almost simultaneously in stock trading and making movies the inherent speculative nature of both no doubt is their attraction. He studied at Sydenham College in Bombay and prepared for a career in business. After graduation, Chandulal worked for a while with his brother Dayaram Shah, who had written mythological films for several rising Bombay producers.

Chandulal Shah

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In 1924, Shah got a job on the-Bombay Stock Exchange and settled down, he thought, to a life of business. That he thereafter entered the film industry was pure chance. A chance that came his way through brother Dayaram, then publicity manager of Bombay's Majestic Cinema, and Amarchand Shroff, solicitor for the Laxmi Film Co. In 1925 he heard the Imperial theatre was desperate for a film to be launched during the Eid festival. Chandulal (backed by his brother's reputation and his own vague association with several of his brother's 'mythos') offered to have a film ready before Eid. He delivered the film before the deadline and it ran for ten weeks. Chandulal, who had a literary background, was next called upon to direct a picture Vimla (1925, cast: Raja Sandow, Putli) for Laxmi Film Co., as its director Manilal Joshi bedridden and unable to wield the megaphone. Chandulal not only did a good job, he stayed on with the same company to direct two more silent pictures Panch Danda (1925, Cast: Raja Sandow, Yakbal, Putli) and Madhave Kamkundaia (1926, Cast: Raja Sandow, Miss Blanche Verni), before returning to his first love, the stock exchange. The movie business seems to have made him prematurely wise by this time all his hair had turned grey! Persuasion from solicitor friend Shroff brought him to the Kohinoor Film Company. They were the mythological experts of the times. Chandulal joined as an assistant director for their film Samrat Shiladityo (1926, Dir: M. Bhavnani, Cast: Gohar, Salochana and Raja Sandow). This picture brought him in close contact with Gohar, a contact that was eventually to develop into a lasting partnership. They were full partners in film business and survived the initial scandal of a liaison that was later accepted as a de-facto marriage. The same panache and daring to flout conventional

morality is found in some of their films. Miss 33 ('33) and Barrister's Wife ('35), despite their melodramatic excesses, explored bold themes centred round a non-conformist heroine.

Miss Gohar K Mamajiwala (1910 - 1985) On Footing with the Mytho The very first film independently directed by Chandulal Shah far Kohinoor was Typist Girl/ Why I became a Christian, which was produced in a record period of just 17 days. (Dir: Chandulal J Shah and Deware, Cast: Sulochana, Gohar, Rajo Sandow, RN Vaidya). It was an instant success at the box-office, which led to Chandulal directing five more films for Kohinoor, including Sumari of Sindh, Educated Wife, Sati Madri, and Gunsundari / Why Husbands Go Astray (all starring Gohar and Raja Sandow). Chandulal was also writer of the

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enormously popular Gunsundari, thus breaking the monopoly of Kohinoor's permanent story writer, Mohanlal Dave. Gunsundari about the dilemma of a dutiful wife burdened by household problems who sets out to be a good companion to her husband was a milestone that marked the rise of the Indian Social Film. It was later remade by Shah as a talkie in three different Indian languages and each was a huge box- office success. Typist Girl (it had only an English title) and Gunsundari, radical in that they transplanted elements of western life to eastern settings, proved sensational at the box office and according to Krishnaswamy/Barnouw, set the Social on footing with the Mytho. Gunsundari's heroine, Gohar, now came to be known as Glorious Gohar. Jealousy among the staff at Kohinoor drove Chandulal and Gohar to seek new pastures at Gokul Das Pausta's Jagdish Film Co. Chandulal wrote and directed four movies for Jagdish, with Gohar and Raja Sandow in the lead: Vishwa Mohini (1928), Griha Laxmi (1 928), Chandramukhi (1929), and Raj Laxmi (1930). These films mode an indelible impression on the minds of the educated audience because Chandulal dared to break many taboos in days when heroines were mainly projected as good, kind, virtuous and dutiful wives. Shri Ranjit Film Company was founded on May, 29, 1929, by Chandulal J. Shah in partnership with Miss Gohar K Mamajiwala (1910 1985) leading screen actress of the day. It was still the era of the silent film and their very first film 'Pati Patni starring Gohar and written, produced and directed by Chandulal Shah, put the new concern firmly and finally on the film map of India. Ranjit had arrived to stay. Ranjit eventually acquired four stages and boasted a roster of about 300 artists, technicians

and others. They made two kinds of films: Socials and Stunt in Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati. The budget ranged from Rs.35,000 to 60,000, the stunt film costing a little more than the social. Ranjit studio produced variety of genre, socials historical, mythological, devotionals, dramas, and romances period pieces, tragedies and comedies. Ranjit Film Co. gave audiences hit comedies like My Darling / Diwani Dilbur (1930), Beggar Girl (1929), Rajputani (1929) and Wild Flower / Pohadi Kanya (1930). Pahadi Kanya had the distinction of gaining both public approval and critical appreciation from the Press. It was voted Best Picture of 1930. The list of stars discovered by Rahnjit studio is impressive : Trilok Kapur, E. Billimoria, Iswarlal Bhagwandas, Charlie, Dixit, Ghory, Keshri, Suresh, Sitara, Madhuri, Ila Devi, Madhubala, Shamin, Kamala Chatterjee, Meena Kumari, Khurshid (Junior), Purnima, Nirupa Roy and Kurshid. The directors who got their first big break under the Ranjit banner are Chatubhuj Doshi, Jayant Desai, Manibhai Vyas, Nandlal Jaswantlal, Nanubhai Vakil,, Taimur Behram Shah, Ratibhai Punnatar and Charlie. Musicians who owed their first chance at Music direction to Mr. Chandulal Shah are Master Zandekhan, Master Bamse Kahn, Revashankar Marwari, Jnan Dutt, Khmechand Prakash, Bulo C Rani and Hansraj Behl. With stars like Gohar, E- Bilimoria, Madhuri, Motilal, Khurshid and K L Saigal on its payroll, the Studio's boast, there are more stars in Ranjit than in the Heavens was more than the publicist's hyperbole. According to Chandulal Shah They all came to Ranjit as Artists and left as friends, because we took a close personal interest in them. Chandulal Shah took the lead in June 2012

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adopting Western promotion techniques, including mammoth posters and neon signs. With the coming of sound, Shree Ranjit Film Co. acquired Audio-Camex sound equipment and was renamed Ranjit Movietone. According to Chandulal Shah, when the Talkies came to India, they had four silent pictures on the floors at Ranjit. The success of several films during this early period of the Talkies gave confidence to this pioneer seeking fresh fields. Ranjit's first Talkie, Devi Devoyani (1931, Dir: Chandulal Shah, Music: Ustad Zandekhan, Dialogues Aga Hashar, Cost: Gohar, Bhagwandcis, D. Bilimoria, Keki Adajania), was a mythological based on the love - story of Kacha and Devyani. Most of the Ranjit movies between 1931-34 did very well in the first run in Bombay theatres Miss 1933 (9 weeks), Toofan Mail (8 weeks), Gunsundari (13 weeks). Ranjit sold off the rights of Miss 1933, Tarasundari, Gunsundari, Toofan Mail and Sitamnagar for Rs.50,000 each in the north. These were sensational sales in days when making a feature film cost Rs.60, 000. Sardar of The lndustry In 1940, on the opening night of Chandulal Shah's film Achhut, India's 'Iron Man' Sardar Vallabhai Patel was the chief guest. Achhut, promoted as nationalist film, addressed Gandhiji's anti-untouchability campaign and was endorsed by Gandhi and Sardar Patel even before its release. Gohar plays Lakshmi, daughter of a harijan-turned- Christian father and Hindu mother, who is adopted by a rich businessman, and becomes friend of his daughter Savita. When Lakshmi and Savita fall in love with the same man, she gets sent back to her original family home where, with her

childhood friend (Motilal), she leads the harijan revolt.. .Achhut was Miss Gohar's last film and she retired from films in 1939. But the business partnership lasted far another three decades. According to Chandulal Shah Gohar has been the inspiration of my life and career, a true friend and unparalled and exemplary as a business partner. During the years of our association I have earned lakhs of rupees and lost them, and she has never once asked me what I did with all the money. During the studio system's heyday, which can roughly be placed between the beginning of the sound era and end of World War II, Ranjit with the dynamic Chandulal at the helm was easily the most prolific, producing between six to eight films a year. They covered every conceivable genre. But as free-lancing became the order of the day, things deteriorated. Even established studios like Ranjit tried to sustain themselves by hiring out floor space to independent producers. By 1945/46, the studio system was collapsing. Ranjit Movietone, which had kept up regular supplies to the notion's theatres, suddenly found itself bankrupt, proprietor Chandulal Shah having incurred huge losses in and at the stock exchange.

Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Papi (1953) directed by Chandulal Shah In 1952, a massive fire destroyed part of the studio along with almost the whole negative June 2012

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material of more than 100 of their productions. There was labour trouble. The studio was handed over to technicians who formed Technician United. Shah had no option but to allow them to take over of his studio. The lost Ranjit Movietone film was Akeli Mat Jayyo (1963) with Meenakumari and Rajendra Kumar. It was the last film Shah produced. Sardar Chandulal Shah was sethji (as his employees and artists called him) of the Ranjit film company with a white horse for its emblem. With his spotless white dhoti and long coat he was familiar sight at the race-courses or at the card table or cotton, gold and silver markets. Chandulal Shah had produced 36 silent and over 120 talkies. He was Studio Owner, Producer, Director and Story- writer. Always actively interested in the development of film industry, he was regarded as one of its chief spokesmen.

He was the first President of the Film Federation of India and was on the Executive Committee of Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA) ever since its inception in 1937, serving twice as Vice-President and four times as President. He was also member of the Central Board of Film Censors and leader of the goodwill mission to USA (1952). He was generally acknowledged as an elder statesman of the industry which in deference gave him the title of 'Sardar' or leader. The 'leader' died in penury on 25th November 1975. He was 77 years old. Rafique Baghdadi

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Hindi Cinema's
Nehruvian Yatra (Journey)
Darius Cooper
On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead as he hurried to his prayer meeting. India lost one father, but interestingly in Jawaharlal Nehru, it gained another. Gandhi's death enabled Nehru to walk, finally, out of his gigantic shadow into a different kind of India he had wanted so long to create: an India where industry would replace temples; where the urbanized city would become the industrial center of progress instead of the village farmer and the ancestral zamindar anchored to their ploughs and their two acres of land.

Darius Cooper is a prof of Litt and Film and Humanities in the English Dept of San Diego Mesa College, US. . He has published a critical book on Satyajit Ray in 2000, Cambridge Press, and another book on Guru Dutt, published by Seagull Books. His writings have appeared a lot in numerous journals both in India and in America. Darius is a committed film buff and a film society activist. In this article he makes an interesting analogy of the evolution of early bolly-wood cinema with the Nehruvian ideology.

Kalpana The Hindi film that reflected this early phase was Uday Shankar's Kalpana, released in 1948. Its theme was about the establishing of a progressive art center where the artist's kalpana or imagination would be given free reign to create. Shankar's vibrant film was determined to move into the future even formalistically, especially in its choreography that was distinctly modern and replete with all kinds of western "isms" deliberately incorporated into its natya-shastra structure. It literally took an ancient India "as a semi divine being" into

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that modern India that Nehru's five year old plans were about to give shape to. In Nehru's First Five Year Plan (1951-56), the emphasis was on agriculture, irrigation, and power-projects. In its agenda, iron and steel competed with fertilizer and water harnessing. The manufacture of locomotives and the growth of cotton; the production of cement and that of paper were all encouraged on the same scale. Nehru's dream incorporated the grand occidental visions of massive industrial plants, and the steady hum of machinery.

Indian basuri or flute, and the trumpet and saxophone silenced the shenai. C. Ramachandra, the film's maverick westerncrazy-music director, under Bhagwan's black bowtied and white shark-skinned baton, literally shook, rattled and roll'd Nehru's new India with his Hawain "Sholajo bhadke" or "when embers explode" song and dance that the entire nation was soon dancing and singing to. In 1952, the Central Government threw a spanner in Nehru's nation-building plans. It created a conservative censorship policy, separating A or Adult Viewing from U or Unrestricted Viewing. It banned all popular Hindi film-music from its All India radio stations. Fortunately Radio Ceylon resurrected the liberated Nehruvian vision that was constantly emphasized in the songs by popularizing Hindi film-music through successfully sponsored radio programs like "Binaca Geet Mala" fashioned on the familiar western models of the Pop Songs Hit Parade.

Albela The West, for most progressive Indians, had always functioned as a constantly referenced signifier. In the 1951 runaway hit film Albela, Master Bhagwan, a popular Bombay-based comedian, showed this interesting split between an old India that the hero, a poor dispatch clerk, wanted to leave behind. It weighed very heavily on him, first in the form of filial responsibility and dharma or duty to his aged mother. Our clerk dreamed of the new Indian cities he was hearing so much about. He wanted to utilize his unique talents as a singer and dancer in their urban brightly lit citylights ambience. Nehru's occidental impulse was also heard in the excessive use of westernized instruments that rang out loud and clear over the traditional Indian ones. The bongo, for instance, replaced the tabla; the oboe and clarinet overwhelmed the

Boot Polish In 1954, two films, literally presented "Chacha" or "Uncle" Nehru (since he was very fond of children) and showed how children responded to the Nehruvian Utopia of the first Five Year Plan. In Raj Kapoor's Boot Polish, the orphaned brother and sister go from the shameful act of begging to the more honest activity of boot polishing. While the wicked aunt who feeds them insists on their begging by trapping the two

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infants into all kinds of cunningly delivered filial blackmail, it is the one-legged bootlegger, John Chacha (maybe a cunning surrogate of Nehru himself), who shows them the boot polish way to respectability. His song "Nanhe munne bacche teri mutti mein kya hai" or "Sweet children, what do you hold in your fists" confirms that children can create and control their own destiny and don't need to rely on a decaying Indian tradition or their cruel elders.

Raj Kapoor's Shri 420 that came out at the same time, was a conspicuously weak stereotypical critique of Nehru's urbanized progressive schemes. The city's corruption, to which the rural hero initially succumbs, hardly carried any critical weight. Binaries were simplistically offered with the warm-hearted poor always winning. The Virgin Mary archetype was Vidya, the poor but enlightened school teacher, abandoned temporarily for

Taxi Driver From 1954, I also want to pull out Chetan Anand's Taxi Driver for its representation of the maligned community of India's Anglo-Indians as actual characters in the film's narrative. Nehru's vision of India had particularly demanded the inclusion of all marginalized communities. Usually, the Anglo-Indians (products of British and Indian miscegenation), featured merely as musical extras in Hindi films because of their uninhibited abilities to perform western dances exceedingly well. The drummer in the Anglo-Indian cabaret dancer's band is a real Anglo-Indian musician, one Vernon Corke. But he doesn't merely mess around only with drums. His striking brown haired presence is also used to wash cabs and he even saves the hero's life. In Nehru's new India, the film seemed to be prophesizing, there was a place for everyone. (Satyajit Ray would invoke this same theme again with his brilliant characterization of the Anglo-Indian sales girl, Edith Simmons, in his 1963 film, Mahanagar.)

Boot Polish Maya, the rich femme fatale illusion who literally Mary magdelained the country bumpkin. Even the songs (like the women's names) were hopelessly clichd. The extravagantly westernized trumpet playing dancing girls number "Mudmud Ke Na Dekh mudmud ke" or "Are you looking at me, all bent over?" is defeated by the vernacular folk song choruses of the honest footpath city dwellers' "Dil ka haal sune dilwala" or "let us sit down and talk freely of our troubles." It was in Guru Dutt's Aar Paar (1954) and Mr and Mrs 55 (1955), that the Utopian possibilities, in the Nehruvian sense, of a newly minted Indian nation, released from over two hundred years of British colonial rule, and the overwhelming difficulties of trying to create a new social and cultural order on its own terms (and certainly also those, imaginatively borrowed, from the West), were captured very sensitively and convincingly.

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What was most conspicuous was the enactment, in both films, of a deliberately iconoclastic carnivalesque spirit. Illiterate taxi drivers spent late nights learning English to find better jobs in these newly resurrected metropolitan centers. Unemployed cartoonists did not mind communist labels being hurled at them. Respectable daughters, who massaged their stern father's legs and their egos behind strictly closed doors, were ready to elope into the dazzling outdoors world, with lovers who offered them its passions, its excitements, and its risks, instead of their mournful enactment of tedious morals and suffocating codes of duty. Wealthy nieces were willing to break all the locked doors of their conventional guardians to elope with jobless talented men, who often went hungry and slept on park benches when their landlords threw them out for not paying their rents. Nehru's Second Five Year Plan (1957-61) pushed industrialization considerably, but soon cracks started to appear. In 1957, All India Radio relented and started serving "light entertainments" in its "Vivid Bharati" service, knowing it had to compete with Radio Ceylon's overwhelming popularity. A new kind of ambitious business man emerged on the Indian horizon in the likes of the highly westernized Parsee, J.R.D. Tata who worked hard to establish an Air India Airline out of his own Tata Airlines, which he had started with a capital investment of 200,000 rupees. A local banya or money-lender (Gandhi's own caste), G.D. Birla, defiantly moved away from his traditional family in Pilani, Rajasthan, and started the very first prosperous Birla Jute Mills. While attracted to their visionary enterprises, Nehru was not willing to offer the Tatas and the Birla's any kind of Government support because he despised their entrepreneurial profit motives. The business of making money, simply, had no room in Nehru's India.

Pyaasa It was Guru Dutt's memorable Pyassa, released in 1957, that accurately questioned the failure of many of Nehru's five year plans. The nation was being betrayed and national interest was being replaced by personal interest. Sahir Ludhianvi's great song "Jiney naaz hain Hind par vo kahan hain" or You Who are Proud of India, where are you now" became the film's compelling thesis. When the celebrated poet, who dared to attack his newly awakened country, was finally thrown out of the auditorium, he was still singing. "Jalao do ise phook dalo ye duniya" or "burn this India that everywhere surrounds me." The poet and the whore, the film's two conspicuous outsiders, were ultimately defeated by the combined forces of their hostile families and their greedy friends, both in their domesticated and in their metropolitan spaces. They left, at the end, to seek an utopia outside the city where they hoped to find some kind of purity and salvation.

Naya Daur

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The resistance to Nehruvian technology and the threat to abolish old agrarian ways was also expressed very openly in B.R. Chopra's Naya Daur in 1957. While electric machinery and automobiles threatened to retire the plough and the bullock cart permanently from the Indian landscape, a race between a petrol-driven bus and a horse-drawn carriage was waged to prove the merits and demerits of both, traditional and the newly manufactured machine, technology. In the final analysis, humanism prevailed, with the farmers learning how to manage the new forces and instruments of industrialization that would multiply their harvests and add a different kind of verdure and plenty to their primitive serene fields. 1958, Hindi films began with a revival of the carnivalesque spirit that Guru Dutt had inaugurated in 1954/1955. This time the filmmaker was Satyen Bose, and the film was Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi. It introduced, perhaps for the only time, Hindi film's one very valiant attempt at rivaling the anarchic antics of Hollywood's very famous trio: the Marx Brothers. Bose presented us with India's own version of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo in the familiar trinity of the Bengali Ganguly brothers. The eldest, portrayed by Ashok Kumar, was good at two things. He ran a garage with his two brothers, and when not tinkering with cars, loved to box and was a confirmed misogynist. He came through as a curious combination of Groucho, especially in all his nasty asides about the world, and possessed the haughty demeanor of the stoical Margaret Dumont. The middle brother, portrayed by Anoop Kumar, was the dumb one and the constant bumbler. He took on the Harpo mantle and had to have his acts of anarchy actually explained to him by his brothers since he was constantly complaining "Manoo, aab mere Kya hoga" or "Manoo, what will happen to me?" It was the youngest brother, played by Kishore Kumar, who with his combination of Chico's chicanery and Groucho's irreverence really unleashed the Marxian iconoclasm directed against the respectable likes of Raja Hardayal and his son

Kumar Pradeep. Aiding them in their deliciously riotous enterprise was a voluptuous heroine played by Madhubala, and a 1928 Chevrolet jalopy. While the former had to bear the slings and arrows of the two elder brothers plus the cupid darts of the youngest one who had fallen madly in love with her, the later functioned with all the oiled panache borrowed gleefully from Hollywood's Mack Sennet silent-film tradition of comedy, speeding up and slowing down the zany action from Bombay's Nariman Point to its Bandra suburban garage. Even the superbly composed and rendered musical numbers by S.D. Burman showed a skillful and clever adaptation of popular western songs. Burman's sexy "Ek laadhki bheegi bhaagi see" or "a lady, wet and running in the rain" was based on Tennessee Ernie Ford's hittopper "Sixteen Tons," but in the context of the film was orchestrated brilliantly by musical sounds all created from common garage implements and tools, some weighing less and some weighing more than sixteen tons! On April 18, 1955, President Sokarno of Indonesia inaugurated the first Non-Alignment Conference at Bandung. Twenty-nine countries attended it. But the man who had brought them here was none other than Nehru. He presented to the world a new kind of nationalism forged as a self-sufficient ideology that would not tolerate any kind of colonialism and would insist always on equality, mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

Phir Subah Hogi

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Ramesh Sahaigal's 1958 film Phir Subha Hogi dared to critique Nehru's newly defined nonaligned liberalism. Sahir Ludhianvi's great song, "Cheen-Arab hamara / Hindusthan Hamara/Rehnein Ko Ghar Nahen Hain/Saara Jehan Humara" or "China and Arabia are ours/ The whole of India is ours/We don't have a home to live in/But the whole world is ours" openly mocked the so-called friendly visits to India, on Nehru's invitation, of China's Chou-en-lai and Egypt's Nasser. The Indian Prime Minister, in spite of his nonaligned zeal, was not blind to other spheres of influence, especially the one that came from America, in the rock an' roll music explosion and the surfacing of the first popular India/American rock an' roll star, Shammi Kapoor, in Hindi film. Here was a new kind of hero that Nehru must have really chuckled at, secretly. He had no Indian tradition buried within him. He was loud, obnoxious, and displayed an enormous amount of passion even when performing simple gestures like passing his fingers over his long disheveled hair. He refused to play hide and seek, especially in his hot sexual pursuit of the females. And when he sang, he sang with his entire body and not merely his mouth. There was nothing noble or Apollonian about him. He was a pure Dionysian force, constantly on the prowl. He ate and drank with grand abandon and often expressed his wild mood swings in either frantic songs accompanied by gyrating females, or stalked the stage in mournful solos, accompanied by a single throbbing saxophonist called Darius! The title song of alliterations in Del Deke Dekho was borrowed outright, by music director Usha Khanna, from the popular chewing-gum American ditty "Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime" with the obvious pun on "sugar" as "sweet morsel" and "sweetheart."

In another film Tumse Aacha Kaun Hain (1969), Shammi began a provocative song with the single word "KIS"? In Hindi, it means "who," but this is also a pun on the English word "kiss." So when he sang, "Kis Ko Pyar Karu?" or "who should I love?" both connotations were implicated. In 1962's China Town, he actually did a very fine impersonation of Elvis Presley, especially in the song "Bar bar dekho" or "Keepa-keepa looking," where again, every verse ended with his asking the appreciative crowd to "talli ho" or "clap now," and when they did, to mimic immediately his role of the lothario hunter with the pun on those two exclamatory words now shifting to the proverbial English hunting call meaning of "Tally-ho!" In 1960, Nehru's patient encouragement of the largest minority caste and community in India, the Muslims, was richly rewarded in the Hindi film world by two very popular Muslim-ethos based films. The first was the Guru Dutt produced and M. Sadiq directed Muslim social Chaudvin Ka Chand. The film had nothing much to offer narratively except an authentic rendering of everyday Muslim life in Lucknow, in all of its carefully researched and presented nuances. It was refreshing to hear the Urdu alfazasses or terms of 'ammi jaan' for mother and 'abba jaan' for father and even the vernacularized "yaar" sounded much nicer than the regular "dost."

Mughal-E-Azam June 2012

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It was K. Asif's Mughal-E-Azam, however, that, in the same year, put a consummate Muslim spell over the entire nation. The story revolved around Prince Salim, Akbar's son from his Hindu wife Jodabai. Salim fell madly in love, first with the statue of a female slave, and then with the live dancer who inspired that statue, the beautiful Anarkali. When Salim wanted to marry this woman, doubly disgraced by her lowly slave origins and her profession as a cheap dancer, Akbar pressurized Anarkali to give up Salim. What interests me, however, is the peculiar parallel this film evoked of a similar love drama that was actually taking place within the Nehru household itself! Nehru's only daughter Indira had fallen madly in love with a lowly Parsee by the name of Feroze Gandhi (no relation to the Mahatma who was a Hindu!). In spite of his liberalism, Nehru had opposed this match with all the zeal of an Akbar, but had finally agreed to it. Now, saddled with a brash Parsee son-in-law, the Parsees of India, especially in Bombay, had just begun to celebrate their own Parsee-EAzam when Feroze (actually) did a salim, instead of a salaam, to his famous badsha fatherin-law. Right after his marriage, Feroze went out of his way, to sit under the Prime Minister's nose, in the very first bench of the opposition in the Lok Sabha or the Peoples' section of the Parliament. And from there, he daily issued a series of critical and negative diatribes against Nehru and his Nehruvian policies. This so enraged Nehru's Akbarian efforts that he issued a final ultimatum to his parseekaleed and anarkaleed daughter: either she come with her two sons and live with him and look after him (since he was getting on in years), or the doors of his house would be permanently closed to her and her children, if she chose that namak haram or not worth his salt Parsee. Indira, of course, was no Anarkali. Sensing her own dreams of one day sitting in her father's chair, she obeyed and left her husband. Stunned by this betrayal, Feroze took to excessive eating and drinking (in

typical Mugal style), and thankful to the Nehru's suffered and died of a massive premature heart attack on September 8, 1960. On October 23, 1962, Nehru's India was alarmed to learn from its morning newspapers that India was actually "at war with China." The "Hindi-Chini-Bhai Bhai" or the "Brotherhood Pact of India and China" that Nehru and Chowen-lai had so emphatically and publicly demonstrated was suddenly over. Six hundred Chinese troops had made their first moves and defeated the unprepared Indian army at strategic places in the mountainous Ladakh region in the North. China's resounding defeat of India was an event that Nehru took personally as a betrayal. 1962 ended with Nehru, a very broken and bitterly disappointed man.

Haqeeqat The Hindi film Haqeeqat, directed by Chetan Anand in 1964, was actually dedicated to Nehru because the 1962 debacle with China had seriously punctured and nullified many Nehruvian ideas of non-alignment. The war had also demoralized India's military capabilities of defending its borders from its foreign neighbors. The Hindi film industry had to rally the troops and filmically establish this treacherous Chinese betrayal to rebuild national confidence. This film focused on a small

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platoon of Indian soldiers who sacrificed themselves like those three hundred Spartans, by holding the powerful Chinese army at bay, while the rest of their comrades retreated to safety. The film was openly anti-Chinese, and often in a stinging polemical way. While an Indian soldier actually bayoneted Mao's Little Red Book malignantly, a commanding officer openly denounced the Chinese against a documentary footage showing Chou-en-lai's friendly visit to India. As the camera picked out the dead and martyred bodies of the brave Indian soldiers, Kaifi Azmi's powerful song "Kar Chale hum fida jaan-o-tan saathiyon" in Mohammed Rafis's agonizing epitaphed voice bade farewell to these martyrs and personified movingly India's nationalized grief. Added to this elegiac moment, were documentary shots of Nehru himself addressing the troops of his confidence in them at the Republic Day Parade. China, however, had entered Hindi films in other peculiar ways as well. In Shakti Samantha's Howrah Bridge (1958), the Hindi film ventured into the immigrant space of the specified area of Chinatown that sprang up in many of India's leading westernized cities. The Chinese immigrants, in addition to introducing Indians to Chinese cuisine, were well known in India for their dentistry and shoemaking skills. But in this film, it was their trafficking in crime that registered their "other" presence. Helen, the popular cabaret dancer, who usually portrayed the Anglo-Indian vamp with the proverbial heart of gold, disguised herself in this film as a Chinese dancer and sang and danced the film's famous cabaret number, sung by Geeta Dutt, "Mera naam (or "My name is") Chin Chin ChooChin Chin ChooBaba Chin Chin ChooDastaan mein Mai Aur TuHello Mister, how do you do?" 1963 was a quiet year for the exhausted and ailing Nehru. Repeatedly attacked by senior members of his own Congress Party, like the ultra conservative Moraji Desai, for preparing

his own daughter, Indira Gandhi, to take over his coveted prime-ministership, Nehru at the age of seventy-four in 1964, saw the end finally approaching. On January 6th, he suffered a stroke. On May 27th, at 6:00 a.m., he collapsed with a rupture of the aorta. He slipped into a coma, and at 2:00 p.m. he was pronounced dead. Perhaps the Hindi film that best personified his sad and lonely exit was Sunil Dutt's Yaadein or Only the Lonely that came out in 1964. In the expanse of two hours, a successful businessman was shown returning to his home that had steadfastly emptied itself of all the happiness it had once contained. His wife and two children had left him. Only their memories lay, scattered all over. The other woman that he had turned too, was also gone. Her traces, however, remained. Trying to find excuses and victims for his own self-justification, his gnawing prejudices slowly turned inwards. And when his childrens' toys started attacking him in his hallucinations, the nadir was finally reached, and he hanged himself with his wife's discarded sari. In the words of A.K. Ramanujan, this man, came into his house: to lose (himself) among other things lost long ago among other things lost long ago. Both, he and Nehru seemed to have arrived at a point where they realized that they had lost all their plans and all their dreams, which they had once designed for their homes and their nation. Memories were now painful and hopeless because they only produced a long parade of scapegoats. One finger may have pointed at the world, but there were three others which were bent and pointing to the self. Some battles were won, but many had been lost. And there were miles to go before one sleptmiles to gobut what had really happened?Where, o where was that desh or that nation in which the Ganges or the ganga had once flowed?

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Note: All background material related to Nehru and all the events that transpired during his long tenure from 1947 to 1964 are taken from India/50: The Making of a Nation. Edited by Ayaz Memon and Ranjona Banerji. Bombay: Ayaz Memon & Book Quest Publishers. 1997. All material related to selectively chosen Hindi films that best represent the Nehruvian era are taken from Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. New Revised Edition by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. What was truly amazing was how both these books with their valuable information and insights released from my own psyche, (now in its fifty-ninth year) stored and buried memories of events, actual scenes from films, and songs that I had literally witnessed, heard, and experienced, having been born in 1949 (two years after India had achieved independence) and having lived both with Nehru's vision and the ones expressed by the Hindi cinema of that period.

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The Future of
Film Society Movement
Sudhir Nandgaonkar

Sudhir Nandgaonkar is a veteran film society activist, serving the movement for over forty years now. As a grass root worker he took initiative as the co-founder of Prabhat Chitra Mandal, Mumbai, a pioneer film society in the country. He is well known in the film festival circles as the Director of MAMI for the first ten years and as Diretor of Third Eye Asian film festival for over ten years now. He is passionately concerned with the well being of the movement and tries to set the path for the growth and suggests remedial measures whenever the film society activity faces problems. Here in this article he makes an assessment of the present position and suggests how the movement should tread its path in the changed scenario with the growth of digital technology.

The dramatic technological developments of cinema and digital distribution today poses new challenges to the Film Society Movement and unless we take far-reaching measures to arrest the deterioration, the downward spiral of the movement would not be stalled. Therefore, it is important that we delve into the reasons why the movement faces its biggest battle for survival in the days to come. The Film Society Movement has faced similar challenges in the past. It may be recalled that the movement faced a similar threat in mid-1980s when colour television and video distribution arrived in India. Doordarshan began screening Indian and foreign films in late night slots on the weekends. The trend of home-viewing directly impacted the footfalls in cinema halls and consequently the membership of the Film Society Movement. The number of film societies shrunk from 300 to 150 across the country. The societies which survived the onslaught of these social and cultural changes experienced sharp drops in

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memberships, and attendance at film screenings reduced to just 40 per cent. The mainstream cinema made significant changes in its content, technology and cinema-going experience to lure audiences back to the cinema halls. Film societies hosted international film festivals to hold on to the catchment of its dedicated patrons. While video had extensively damaged the film society movement, the introduction of DVDs surprisingly proved to be a shot in the arm for the movement. Always struggling for resources, the societies could save high expenses in screening 35mm films by showing easily available DVD versions. Now Societies will have only dedicated group of 200/300 members who are seriously interested in cinema. Pandit Nehru once described international film festival of India as the window to the world. However, now this window has transformed into an information superhighway with further technology leaps. Information of all kinds is easily available on television and internet at home and on mobile handsets for the common man. Now, we need not go to a cinema hall to watch films, but the films can reach you through multiple, digital platforms like satellite television, DVDs, internet and mobile telephone. With this new change, film societies will have to change its methods to stay relevant in the digital age. The 50-year-old movement needs a new wave to survive this tide. However, before we seek new solutions, it would be pertinent to understand the argument increasingly questioning the relevance of the film society. The critics argue that in the age of 24 x 7 TVchannels beaming world cinema into living rooms, easy availability of DVDs, and the internet providing swift downloads on 3G and now 4G speeds, the film society movement becomes irrelevant to the society. Dr Mohan Aagashe gave a fitting reply to this critique at a summer camp organized by the

Western Region. Nowadays, I hear the talk of how Film Society Movement is becoming irrelevant. I want to ask a counter question to the skeptics. When we have books available in the book shops, in libraries, why English or any other languages are taught in the universities at the graduation or post-graduation level? Agashe asked. If we further dissect the argument of Dr. Agashe, we will understand that the digital gadgets are merely performing one role of a film society ie. screening good cinema. However, the other important task of a film society spreading film culture by discussing films, organising film appreciation courses, creating literature on the aesthetics of cinema. Therefore, film societies are not obsolete, irrelevant. In fact, they are more sharply relevant in these times of information overload. Film societies can play the key role of a catalyst in guiding cinema lovers on the finer nuances of the film art. Earlier, screening good films was the prime focus of a film society. Now, societies should focus on the study of cinema, providing members with libraries of books, and DVDs, making accessible deeper literature on the art and craft of film-making. We must also note that Film Society Movement cannot run in isolation. Film societies should take cognizance of media atmosphere around us. For example, many universities have started Media Studies or Mass Communication studies. Sensing this new situation, I initiated the Campus Film Society concept in FFSI. West and South regions pursued it vigorously and today around 50 Campus Film Societies function in both the regions, catering youth in their formative years. The students who are members of Campus Film Societies will graduate after three years. Having experienced world cinema in college, we could expect them to enroll for Film Societies outside college as well. Thus the youngsters will be part of the movement.

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I would suggest that the FFSI, the apex body steering the Film Society Movement, as well as individual film Societies should both focus on study of cinema. Individual Society: A) Should form a study group. Not all, but few members will join it. But it will send out a subtle message to all the members that a film society does not exist only for watching films. B) Study group may meet once in a month. It should be informed in the beginning about the efforts of Govt. to create film culture in the country. The reading material on the films screened should be provided in regional languages. C) Excursions could be organized to visit film institutes or archives etc. D) To create a sense of study, we should associate with educational field. Invite a V C. or the college principal to inaugurate your four-day festival. E) Audience polls. Distribute slips before film screening and ask members their rating Good, average, Bad. These efforts will create awareness among the members that they are joining film societies to study cinema, not just watching the films. This sense of study will give him\her identity that he is different from average cinegoer going to watch popular films. Societies, if possible, can arrange lectures or one day appreciation courses, etc. FFSI: 1) To give impetus to the study of cinema, the FFSI should make structural changes and start a state council based on regional language basis.

2) The state council can organize five-day Film Appreciation courses with the help of NFAI in regional language. It will encourage people untouched by FSM to enter its folds. 3) State council can approach State Govt. for funding. It is already started in Kerala and Karnataka. Four page e-newsletter in state language should be provided to connect all the societies and mentioning their activities. 4) Institute the award for best film society in the state. The award should go to the secretary of the society. 5) Encourage film society members to attend nearby International Film Festival or IFFI Goa. 6) Guide & help film societies to solve problems faced by the Society. These are some of measures I could suggest. The State Council can devise more methods to emphasis the importance of international cinema and the study of cinema. Jadavpur University in Kolkata was the first to start cinema course in India way back in 1970's. During 80's, Chitrabani a small film society in Kolkata organized a one week film appreciation course and wrote to Ray about it. Satyajit Ray welcomed the idea and wrote back I find it most heartening that such an event (Film Course) has taken place. I have been hoping for long time that something concrete should be done about the dissemination of Film Culture among the young people in our country. This course is surely a step in the direction. I hope that the enterprise will continue. - (29th April, 1990.)

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Kurmavatara
(India/Kannada/2011/ 145 mins) Dir: Girish Kasaravalli

Reviews

The film Kurmavatara, deals with a very sensitive subject, which is very craftily and intricately handled to make it mirror today's contemporary social life in India in stark reality. The subject is very sensitive as it refers to the portrayal of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, in a TV serial to be telecast in a particular channel. The person selected to play the all important role of Gandhi is Ananda Rao, an honest, faithful and obedient Government employee who is about to retire from service. He goes early and leaves late from his office, spends most of his time there, and the only other activity that he is associated is to participate in evening Bhajans (Group singing of hymns) before retiring for the day. He is not intimately connected with his family; he has lost his wife because of cancer. He follows Bhagavadgita and accordingly he attends to his duty with all the sincerity. Ananda Rao does not know the rudiments of acting, and he also does not know anything about Gandhi, the only factor

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which counts in his favour is his resemblance to Gandhi. He is forced to accept the offer of playing Gandhi with much reluctance, mainly because of the pressure from his son Jayu and his wife who are enamored by the prospect of earning handsome remuneration for acting and hope to give a better education to their only son. His son is engaged in speculating share business, like gambling and he wants to make quick money. Playing Gandhi's role becomes a nightmarish experience for Ananda Rao. He gets ridiculed by every one for his bad performance, including his own grandson. In the process, he realizes that he did not care for his wife who longed for his presence during her last days when she died of cancer. He also regrets he was not able to give a better education to his son, because he remained non-corrupt. He is disillusioned, and in no mood to continue, but he is forced to persist at any cost by his family, and is made to study the life of Gandhi through books for giving a better performance. By studying Gandhi he also comes to know that the director of the serial has taken liberties to alter the story for his convenience to make it popular. When he raises objection to certain sequences, the director makes his intention very clear, that he has no reverence for Gandhi or his ideals; his only objective is to make it popular and make money. The only redeeming factor for Anand Rao is, he becomes popular for playing Gandhi. He is recognized by the public; he now has fans, obliges many with his autographs and poses for photographs. He is able to influence the corrupt establishment to get things done for his friends. His son wants to use his influence for gains. Interestingly, Rao develops intimacy with Susheela, the erstwhile star of the film world who is now in the twilight of her career and

playing the role of Kasturba. Rao admires her for her proficiency in acting and she in turn admires him for his knowledge on Gandhi and his ideals. This familiarity generates interest in him and he is inspired to dress well and look smarter. Unfortunately, there is no end for Rao's misery, it continues, he is not able to get the role of Godse, the killer of Gandhi for his young friend Iqbal for the fear of possible communal rift that it may create. His son is arrested on criminal charges for issuing a cheque that has bounced. He continues to get blamed by his director for blemishes in his performance. Ultimately when the climax scene was to be shot, his murder by Godse, his inept acting creates ruckus, a large number of shots wasted and as a climax Anand Rao confesses that he is a bad actor, can no longer tolerate this agony, it is better he ends his life. He tells Godse (actor) 'Please finish me.'

The concluding shot of the murder of Gandhi is shown in the midst of title credits in the beginning. Ironically when the Pistol shot is fired and Gandhi succumbs there is an all-round applause from the onlookers. For a moment it appears amusing as it conveys celebration. Anand Rao, the actor suffers an attack and collapses. The previous link for this shot is shown at the end of the film. It is pertinent that we should not miss the beginning of the film.

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The film as a whole reflects the true picture of the pathetic state of affairs that is prevailing today in the country after six decades of the demise of Mahatma Gandhi, who got us freedom, whom we adored as father of the nation, and accepted his ideals as the guiding factors in our public and private lives. All the evils he fought against, like rampant corruption in the corridors of power, degeneration in public life, distortion of historical facts, greed for power and money, devalued morality and ethics, strained domestic relations; all such factors prevailing now, have been effectively visualized in the film. No wonder, Anand Rao, the Gandhi in proxy, was totally disillusioned, in reality! It is definitely not surprising that Girish's name again figures in the list of National Award winners, and many feel that he deserved a better recognition for the film than what he got. It is to be mentioned here that Shikaripur Krishnamurthi, professor in a college and a noted HRD trainer has given a memorable performance as a 'bad actor' in a role that suits him perfectly. H.N.Narahari Rao

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Byari
(India / Byari / 2011 / 100 mins) Dir: K.P.Suveeran

Byari is a film made in Byari language, only spoken with no script, and prevalent in the border regions of Karnataka and Kerala. The film speaks vociferously on the suffering and predicament of an innocent girl, who is treated as a commodity by the ethnic group that follows the strict marriage laws of the religion that is prevailing in the Muslim community. It has a lean story, a story of relevance, and it is very effectively told through visuals that are highly absorbing. An young girl, Nadira who is yet to attain maturity, is got married to a man, Rashid, who is almost three times her age. But her marriage is a happy one, they have a child and they live in harmony and love each other. A trivial dispute between Nadira's father and Rashid turns out to be a disaster for the girl. Nadira and her child are forcibly taken away by her father. This is unbelievable, since even her husband, Rashid is caught unaware. After a few days the child is also snatched away from Nadira by Rashid's family. Nadira remains now without the child, spends agonizing days. The father now becomes restless; without Nadira's knowledge he

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forces Rashid to divorce her on the pretext that she is not willing to return to him, which is false. Now he is on the lookout for a new husband for Nadira. The search is on, but does not materialize. Rashid is still in deep love with Nadira, he wants her back. But the marriage rule does not permit. The rule prescribes that Nadira should be married to somebody else at least for a day, get divorce and then only she can come back to her husband Rashid. Again the search is on, this time it is for a temporary husband. Nadira is skeptical about the prospects. She is afraid, things may become complicated if she becomes pregnant, and the temporary husband may not oblige to divorce. However, she is married to her childhood companion who had a desire to marry her, and it ends there. The director Suveeran makes his debut with this film and has given a neat presentation. Having won the best feature film award of 2011 at the national level, Suveeran makes a promising beginning for a bright career. H. N. Narahari Rao

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Terrence Malick's

The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick, one of America's most respected filmmakers, first attracted attention through Badlands (1973) a film very much in the same mold as Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Robert Altman's Thieves like Us (1974) in that it is about a young couple going on a robbery spree in the depression era and eventually coming to a tragic or bad end. What distinguishes Malick's film from the other two is the director's lyricism, his deep sense of the beauty of the land where Bonnie and Clyde is straightforwardly dramatic and Altman's film places its emphasis on social satire. Malick followed up Badlands with Days of Heaven (1978), another startlingly beautiful film set in rural America in the early part of the century. Both these films set Malick apart from Hollywood as a visionary and artist rather than a storyteller with America being the constant presence invoked by his palette. Although both these films were critical triumphs, Malick made no films for twenty years when he made the exquisite The Thin Red Line (1998) a war film set in the Pacific in 1943. Unlike Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which came out in the same year, had a large star cast and garnered every conceivable Oscar, Malick's film is deeply melancholy and not the same exercise in American patriotism. After another film The New World (2005) which received mixed reviews, Malick has made another ethereal film which was under development for several years The Tree of Life (2011) which received near-unanimous praise as the best international film of 2011.

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At the centre of The Tree of Life is an American family, the O'Briens, in Waco, Texas. The O'Briens have three sons and the oldest is Jack who grows up to be an architect (Sean Penn). Somewhere in the 1960s Mrs O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) receives news of the death of her son RL at the age of 19 and this is communicated to her husband (Brad Pitt) when he is at an airport somewhere. A section of this part of the film is taken up by the parents' grief, how they are comforted by the community and how they try to get over it. The film travels back and forth between Jack in the present and his memories of his childhood and adolescence. Mr O'Brien is an authoritarian father who tries to 'do his best' but this means that he rules his family with an iron hand with his children especially Jack frequently receiving harsh punishment. Mr O'Brien wanted to be a musician but is now an engineer with various minor patents to his credit. He is not as successful as he might have liked to be and he is resentful of others who have been, attributing their success to declining moral standards. These segments of the film are wonderfully acted with Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken (as the young Jack) excelling. The tension between father and son especially at the breakfast table is palpable. Although the family life shown in the film apparently owes to Terrence Malick's own early life (about which he has been reticent), there are indications that the O'Briens are really an abstraction the archetypal American family with its dreams, hopes, tensions and disappointments. There is perhaps a clue in the casting of Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in the key male roles because one cannot imagine a Jack Nicholson or a Robert Downey Jr. in either of them.

Although both Pitt and Penn began their careers with character roles Brad Pitt perhaps in Thelma and Louise (1991) and Sean Penn in films like The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) they have gradually moved into another kind terrain which they share with Tom Hanks, playing the quintessential American male. In contrast to other contemporary Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise and George Clooney who specialize in genre roles, DiCaprio whose roles suggest an individuality of sorts, Pitt, Penn and Hanks allow people to inhabit them, as though they were stand-ins for the national identity. It is this quintessential 'American' characteristic of Brad Pitt that Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu shrewdly harnesses in Babel (2006) when he makes a political film about globalization. In Babel Brad Pitt becomes the American dealing with Moroccans, Mexicans and Japanese. To differentiate between Brad Pitt and James Stewart who also played an idealized American (It's a Wonderful Life, 1946), Jimmy Stewart's characters were slighter in stature, perhaps corresponding to 'local America' and not the global colossus that America has been for the past few decades. In The Tree of Life Brad Pitt plays the head of the archetypal American family and this means something very important because Hollywood valorizes the nuclear family as no other cinema does. It is clearly beyond the scope of this review to examine this issue deeply but in America the simplest kind of social organization existed independently before leading to more complex forms, and this also accounts for the moral significance of the family (and heterosexual monogamy) in Hollywood. As Alexis de Tocqueville notes in his monumental treatise on America, for the majority of the nations of Europe, political existence commenced in the superior ranks and was gradually communicated to the different members of the social body. In America, on the other hand, social organization began at the smallest level. The township was organized

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before the county, the county before the State, the State before the Union. The simplest kind of social organization led to more complex forms. The family plays a more significant role in the simpler kinds of social organization and there is perhaps an association between this and the mythical dimensions assumed by the nuclear family in American popular culture. As evidence, the western created a durable mythology out of the origins of the American nation and John Ford's films look to the white nuclear family (wife and children) as the civilizing influence in the frontier even while the man is fighting Indians and making the land safe for civilization. The American nuclear family is made important because it embodies the 'American way of life', becomes an emblem for the nation and therefore commands the same loyalty. So central is the family to The Tree of Life that there are few exchanges between members of the family and others from the community. Even in the present, the adult Jack spends his days reflecting upon his own past and one cannot recall a sequence in which he is not ruminating alone even when in company. At the conclusion of the film when Jack meets the people in his life, those he is united with are also from his own family. If this conclusion is reminiscent of the one from Fellini's 8 (1963) in which Guido encounters all the people from his past in a circus ring, those dancing around him are mainly from outside his family. The film begins with a quotation from the Book of Job. Job was a prophet punished by God for no reason and this part of the Old Testament has to do with deep suffering for which there is no ostensible rationale. Malick is evidently making a connection between this kind of suffering and what the O'Briens undergo at the death of their 19-year-old son. This is clearly problematic because death even of the young is a routine occurrence which cannot be compared to what Job underwent. This inordinate importance given to the boy's death, the reader must be

reminded, finds correspondence in America being overly preoccupied with 'zero casualty wars' its concern with protecting the lives of its own citizens when it is casual about taking the lives of other people across the globe. Once all these characteristics of The Tree of Life are taken note of, the film emerges as a dubious political undertaking. It is in this context that the most visually striking parts of the film also become suspect. Often framing segments of the family story about the O'Briens are magnificent bits dealing with creation and the origin of life on the planet from galaxies and nebulae to gushing rivers and erupting volcanoes to protozoa and dinosaurs. One is initially rapturous about these visual treats until one wonders about their place in the film's telelogy, about their purpose. All fiction, it is apparent, relies on the action in it being geared towards a purpose/ teleology of some sort. In fact, it is only teleology which makes a complete story out of a narrative because all recounting is narration but all narratives are not stories. At every instant of a film or a novel, therefore, we are asking the question 'Where is all this leading?' and our satisfaction with a story (novel or film) depends on how the conclusion follows from initial exposition because the two are intimately connected. Once this connection is granted, it begins to seem that the American family in The Tree of Life is the culmination of a process which begins with Creation and includes the dinosaurs. If this reading appears implausible, the reader may consider how it would look if the 'process' beginning with Creation culminated in a Chinese or Eskimo family. If it were an Indian family, would it not be ludicrous for the Cosmic Egg to hatch only to lead to the Anil Kapoor and/or Salman Khan in the same way that The Tree of Life leads to Brad Pitt and Sean Penn? If one were to look for a political pronouncement to reflect this belief in the elemental aspect of American life the sense of Americans rather

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than any other people being central to humanity, this may be in Condoleeza Rice's assertion that 'America is the essential nation'. The Tree of Life makes it seem that America is not the product of history but almost elemental, that culture has not even mediated in the construction of Americans. It is an entrancing, exquisite film but it will perhaps only be valuable for clues as to how America regards itself in the global age, its preoccupation with itself leading it to conclude that the sentiments favored by it have the characteristics of something owing to natural law. This covert significance is rendered more valuable because the author is not the average filmmaker trying to make a blockbuster but a genuine visionary. Terrence Malick is an extraordinary talent but The Tree of Life may eventually only serve anthropology and a visionary who produces a work useful only to anthropologists has evidently acted in folly.

MK Raghavendra

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