Screening on 1st July 2007: KWAIDAN (Ghost Stories )

Since its release in 1964, KWAIDAN - an anthology film featuring four separate spooky tales - has earned a reputation in the West as one of the classic Japanese ghost movies. There had been a tradition of such films before, but with its lavish budget and production values, KWAIDAN was not just another routine genre item; it was clearly intended as high-class art.

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Directed by the Japanese master MASAKI KOBAYASHI and Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, Kwaidan represents a considerable departure from the works of its director, who made his initial fame with such socially conscious dramas as Black River (a study of corruption brought about by U.S. military bases in Japan) and The Human Condition (an expose of Japanese mistreatment of Chinese in POW camps). Shot almost entirely in enormous studio sets, with a completely post-synched and carefully controlled soundtrack, Kwaidan is about as far from moviemaking realism as it is possible to go. Yet in going to such dramatically ambitious lengths as adapting aspects of Kabuki and Bunaraku puppet theatre to filmmaking techniques, Kobayashi achieves a subtle synthesis of realism and stylization. He makes palpable a vision in which beauty and horror not only coexist but complement one another.

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Kwaidan contains four distinct, separate stories
* In "Black Hair," a faithless samurai abandons his wife for a rich replacement. Later, filled with regret, he returns to his first wife, but he wakes up the next morning to find something else....

* "Woman in the Snow" - features two woodsmen caught in a snow storm. The older one dies at the hands of the title character, a kind of female demon, but she takes pity on the younger, letting him live in exchange for a promise never to reveal what happened.

* "Hoichi the Earless" is about a musician who is summoned to sing his songs about an ancient battle. It turns out his audience consists of the ghosts of those who perished in the battle. A priest protects Hoichi by covering his bodies with tattoos that hide him from the spirits.

* "In a Cup of Tea" - the author tells us - is an unfinished fragment of a tale of what befalls someone who drinks a cup of tea with a "soul" in it, leading to ghostly visitations. The film ends with something similar happening to the author...

"Kwaidan" is a symphony of color and sound that is truly past compare. It is also well acted in a technique of Japanese gestures by a large and orderly cast, the most conspicuous and memorable of whom is Katsuo Nakamura as the blind ballad singer. It is a film that commends itself mainly to those viewers who can appreciate rare subtlety and grace.

Masaki Kobayashi

Masaki Kobayashi is considered one of the great cinematic masters of the Japanese immediate post-war era No one of that generation of filmmakers was affected quite as strongly by the war as Kobayashi. His most acclaimed films are unflinching explorations into the dark side of Japanese culture, the side that drove men to commit gory suicide for the name of honor and commit horrific atrocities in the name of the Emperor. Kobayashi's exacting professionalism makes his films a visually and emotionally power experience.
Born in February, 1916, in Japan's northern-most island Hokkaido, Kobayashi entered prestigious Waseda University in 1933 . Kobayashi eventually left Waseda to enter Shochiku's Ofuna studios. Kobayashi worked as an assistant for a mere eight months before he was drafted and sent to the front in Manchuria. Opposed to the war, which he viewed as senseless, he refused to rise above the position of private. In 1944, he was transferred to the southern Ryukyu Islands, where he witnessed the war's final bloody tumult. There he was captured by the U.S. and held for a year in a detention camp in Okinawa. In the fall of 1946, Kobayashi returned to Shochiku and served for six years as an assistant director under Keisuke Kinoshita.

He garnered international acclaim and a prestigious San Giorgio prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1960 for his Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1958), the first installment of sweeping trilogy about the war. Kobayashi's films brought to life by the masterful performances of Nakadai in such Kobayashi classics as Harakiri (1962), Kwaidan (1964), and Rebellion (1967).With the acclaimed Kwaidan, his first color film, he pushed this emphasis on composition with his expressionistic use of color. Kobayashi died in of a heart attack in 1996.

Screening at Ashwin Hospital Auditorium, Ganapathy , Kovai.
On 01 07 2007 at 5.45 pm
Call 94430 39630 Email konangal@gmail.com

The realism of Ritwik Ghatak

Pankaja Srinivasan's write up on the Ritwik Ghatak Film Festival conducted by Konangal published in Hindu Metroplus dated 21 06 2007

Retrospective / Cinema

Never known to sugarcoat his films, Ritwik Ghatak’s in-your-face portrayal of life still wields tremendous impact, writes Pankaja Srinivasan

Idealism Vs Realism

Stills from Subarnarekha, which Ritwik Ghatak called his most philosophical film

Ritwik Ghatak was born in 1925, and came of age during the great Bengal Famine, the Second World War and, the upheaval when twice, Bengal was “physically rent apart—in 1947 by the Partition … and in 1971 by the Bangladeshi War of In dependence”.

Like millions of others, he had to leave home in Dhaka, and the uprooted, the dispossessed and the homeless became the leitmotif of most of his films, including the three — Subarnarekha, Meghey Dhaka Taara a nd Komal Gandhaar — that were screened at the Ritwik Ghatak retrospective by Konangal Film Society.

Brilliantly erratic

Inevitably, Ritwik Ghatak was compared with Satyajit Ray. But, while Ray was the toast of town and the blue-eyed boy of Indian films, Ghatak didn’t quite make the cut.

He was as in-your-face, unpredictable, and uncomfortable to be with as Ray was refined, suave and one of the boys.

Says writer-activist Jacob Levich: “Viewing Ghatak is an edgy, intimate experience, an engagement with a brilliantly erratic intelligence in an atmosphere of inquiry, experimentation, and disconcerting honesty. The feeling can be invigorating, but it’s never comfortable.”

Ghatak is “like an undesirable guest: he lacks respect, has ‘views’, makes a mess and disdains decorum”.

So in Subarnarekha, idealism always comes a poor second to realism. In a flush of enthusiastic patriotism, schoolteacher Hariprasad wants to start a new life in Calcutta for himself and his fellow refugees from East Pakistan. But, t he protagonist Ishwar wants no part of it, and he accepts a job in a foundry elsewhere, and moves with his sister Sita and a little boy Abhiram (who is separated from his mother in the chaos after partition). Hariprasad calls Ishwar a ‘deserter’.

Ishwar prides himself on being upright and principled, but is unwilling to let his sister marry Abhiram who is from a lower caste. Abhiram spurns a lucrative offer to go abroad in order to write, but abandons his idealism and becomes a bus driver for survival after he elopes with Sita to Calcutta. However, he dies in an accident.

Meanwhile, Ishwar, devastated by the hand life has dealt him, along with his erstwhile friend Hariprasad (who has since discovered lofty ideals get one no where, and that there is no distinction between being noble or cowardly), decides to live it up in Calcutta.

In search of carnal pleasures, Ishwar lands up with a woman who is soliciting a customer for the first time. And, in one horrifying sequence she takes a machete and kills herself. She is none other than his sister Sita.

There aren’t too many sunshine moments in Ghatak’s works. In Meghey Dhaka Tara, it is a bleak house all the way.

Neeta’s story

Neeta is the sole breadwinner of a family. The father does no more than quote Keats and Yeats; a brother does endless riyaaz hoping to become a renowned musician; another gets a job, but contributes nothing to the house. Neeta’ ;s younger sister only has new clothes and romance in her head. The mother sees nothing wrong in marrying off her younger daughter to the man Neeta loves. How will the family survive without Neeta’s money, asks the mother.

Komal Gandhar, often referred to as Ghatak’s favourite, portrays the rivalry and jealousy between two rival theatre groups as they struggle to put up a joint production. A Rabindranath Tagore poem is the inspiration for the t itle where a girl is compared to a musical note, which in turn, is likened to Bengal.

In the film, Anasuya mirrors the divided leadership of the People’s Theatre Movement, and ultimately, a divided Bengal.

Symbolism and metaphors abound in all three films. The debris of an aircraft, an abandoned runway, a truncated railway track, wastelands, snatches of music that are abruptly interrupted, all go towards depicting loss, helplessness and hopeless yearning.

Hope not lost

Ghatak’s films were a stinging critique of modernity. For, the euphoria that erupted after independence slowly turned into ashes for many.

Instead of an improved life, existence became even worse. Industrialisation dehumanised values, and cynicism and pessimism smothered patriotic fervour and optimism. But, Ghatak’s films did not cut off hope altogether. The filmmaker leaves the door a little ajar, for a ray of hope to enter.

Ritwik Ghatak Film Festival

We thank all cinema lovers who attended Ritwik Ghatak Film Festival at Kasthuri Sreenivasan Auditorium on 17th July.
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RITWIK GHATAK FILM FESTIVAL ON 17th JUNE 2007

(Venue : Kasthuri Srinivasan Auditorium .Please scroll down this post for full details of screening )

REINVENTING THE CINEMA

RITWIK GHATAK
1925 – 1976

In an age when film makers masquarade as reformers , it is only apt that one remembers the flag bearers of the REAL New Wave in Indian Cinema that had its inception in the early ’50s through the mid ’70s. A beacon of this New Wave was Ritwik Ghatak. The Anarchist. The Rebel. The quintessential Bengali Intellectual. The man who influenced a generation of film makers.

Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). He belonged to an illustrious family. Ghatak and his family formed part of the massive exodus from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to Kolkata owing to Partition of 1947 - the tragedy that haunted him all his life and kept coming back as a recurring theme in his films. Heavily influenced by Sergei Eisenstein and Berltolt Brecht, he had always intended his cinema to be harbinger of social change.

In 1948, Ghatak wrote his first play Kalo sayar (The Dark Lake), and participated in a revival of the landmark play Nabanna. In 1951, Ghatak joined the Indian People's Theatre Association ( IPTA ). He wrote, directed and acted in plays and translated Bertolt Brecht and Gogol into Bengali. In 1957, he wrote and directed his last play Jwala (The Burning).

Ghatak entered film industry with Nemai Ghosh's Chinnamul (1950) as actor and assistant director. Chinnamul was followed two years later by Ghatak's first completed film Nagarik (1952), both major break-throughs for the Indian cinema. Ritwik Ghatak directed eight full-length films.

He taught at FTII, Pune , and his legacy lived on through the works of his illustrious students - Mani kaul, Kumar Sahani, Ketan Mehta and John Abraham.

THE TRILOGY OF GHATAK

The 3 films chosen for our retrospective are his best-known films, Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (1960), Komal Gandhar (1961), and Subarnarekha (1962), a trilogy based in Calcutta .

Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960 ) Considered Ghatak’s masterpiece, this powerful and innovative melodrama revolves around a refugee family from East Bengal, victims of the Partition, who struggle for survival on the outskirts of Calcutta. Ghatak captures the complex play of creative and destructive forces at work in the attempt of each family member to survive. At the center of this domestic tragedy is the self-sacrificing Neeta, the family’s eldest daughter and provider for all, who struggles away at her job in the city. Closer to home, an elder brother practices to become a singer, while a younger one turns to factory work. The father realizes the worthlessness of his liberal education in a modern world that has no place for Yeats or Milton and no regard for the ideals of nineteenth-century Bengali liberalism.
Runtime : 120 min / Bengali with English subtitles.

Komal Gandhar (1961) Said to be Ghatak’s favorite film, the quasi-autobiographical Komal Ghandar portrays the People’s Theater Movement of the late 1940s, agonizing over its jealousies and schisms as two rival groups seek to put on a joint production. The title comes from a Tagore poem in which a girl is compared with a particular melody and the melody, in turn, with Bengal. The script has an equally elaborate structure in which the divided mind of the film’s heroine, Anasuya, mirrors the divided leadership of the People’s Theater and, ultimately, a divided Bengal.

Runtime : 110 minBengali with English subtitles

Subarnarekha (1962)

In Subarnarekha, Ritwik Ghatak takes the stuff of melodrama and turns it into a piercing political cry. Set in Calcutta after the partition of Bengal, the film focuses on two Bengali refugees, Ishwar and his younger sister Seeta, who are reduced to living in dire poverty on the banks of the river Subarnarekha. Amidst a floating population of refugees building temporary homes, they are joined by many other uprooted Bengalis, including an abandoned boy they attempt to educate and an idealistic school teacher and his family. Ghatak’s characters are emblematic of the trail of human debris left by colonialism in an increasingly industrialized, post-independence society. Still, as with all Ghatak’s films, Subarnarekha ends on a note of optimism, however frail.

Runtime : 125 min / Bengali with English subtitles.

Venue : Kasturi Srinivasan Auditorium - near Aravind Eye Hospital , Peelamedu, Coimbatore

Time : 17 06 2007 , Sunday 9.45 am to 6.30 pm

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