Cinema Giant Ingmar Bergman dies aged 89

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A Legend Passes Away


Ingmar Bergman 1918 - 2007

One of the most legendary filmmakers in cinema history, Ingmar Bergman, died on Monday - 30th July 2007, at his home on Faro island off the coast of Sweden. According to his daughter, Eve, the director of The Seventh Seal and Persona died peacefully in his sleep. He was 89.

The influence and importance of Ernst Ingmar Bergman, who died Monday, to the language and art of cinema remains as solid today as it did when he first splashed onto the international stage some six decades ago. Bergman is undisputed colossus of the 'art' cinema whose work astonished with its recognition of cruelty, death and above all the torment of doubt.

Konangal celebrated this master of Cinema with it's very first one day Film Festival on 11th February 2007 . A retrospective of Ingmar Bergman's three all time classics , Seventh Seal , Hour Of The Wolf and Cries and Whispers were screened at Kasthuri Srinivasan Auditorium. . Again Konangal screened Bergman's ' Wild Strawberries ' on 20th May 2007.

Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in literature, Bergman strove to capture and illuminate the mystery, ecstasy and fullness of life, by concentrating on individual consciousness and essential moments. His achievement is unsurpassed. He is one of the few filmmakers that can be spoken of in the same breath with those artists and with other supreme figures of other disciplines. Bergman is at the pinnacle. He is in the pantheon. Without question, Bergman was one of the 20th century's greatest artists. He was sort of a poet of anguish whose best-known movies were existential meditations on the meaning of life. His films will continue
to inspire the current and future generations. Bergman will be greatly missed

And now, with his passing at the age of 89, the last legitimate old-school cinematic giant has fallen. He follows other luminaries into the realm of legend, and eventually through time, into the epiphany of myth.








Click here for link to view Ingmar Bergman's greatest scenes. Remind yourselves of the great Swedish film-maker's finest moments with these clips.

On 5th August 2007: Salaam Bombay !

If We Don't Tell Our Own Stories,

Nobody Else Will

Salaam Bombay! - A Film by Mira Nair
Nominated for Oscar | Won 25 International awards
35 mm | Color | 113 minutes | 1988
Hindi with English Subtitles
Venue : Ashwin Hospital Auditorium , Ganapathy , Coimbatore
5th August 2007 , Sunday at 5.45 pm.

The history of the making of Mira Nair’s "Salaam Bombay!" is almost as interesting as the film itself. The filmmakers gathered a group of the street children of Bombay and talked with them about their experiences, visiting the streets and train stations, bazaars and red-light districts where many of them lived. Out of these interviews emerged a screenplay that was a composite of several lives. Then many of the children were enlisted for weeks in a daily workshop, not to teach them "acting" (for that they already knew from hundreds of overacted Indian film melodramas), but to teach them how to behave naturally in front of the camera. Out of those workshops a cast gradually emerged. Shooting on actual locations in Bombay, director Mira Nair has been able to make a film that has the everyday, unforced reality of documentary, and yet the emotional power of great drama.

Click here to watch video clips from 'Salaam Bombay'

Chaipau is an intelligent boy, stubborn and wily, and he finds a job as a runner for a man who runs a tea stall in the street. Chaipau's job is to race up flights of tenement stairs with trays of tea, and in the tenements he finds a world of poverty, sweatshops, prostitution and drug dealing. One of the friends he makes is a pathetic 16-year-old girl who was sold or kidnapped away from her native village, and is being held captive by a rapacious madam who plans to sell her virginity to the highest bidder. The other characters in the neighborhood include a hopeless drunk and addict, who befriends the children as best he can.

One of the subplots of the film involves the relationship between a drug dealer and the prostitute who is his common-law wife. She lives for her child, and exists in daily fear that the child will be taken from her because of the life she leads. Nair treats this woman with such sensitivity that we feel great sympathy for her when the child is threatened, and this illustrates one of the underlying beliefs of "Salaam Bombay!": That the street life, however hard, is preferable to what happens to people once they are identified by the law and become the victims of official institutions.

It is remarkable how well Nair creates this street world and tells us its rules without seeming to force her story. One of her secrets is location shooting; not a single scene in this movie was shot on a set or in a studio, and some of the scenes - including a funeral procession - were shot with hidden cameras, to capture the unrehearsed behavior of the spectators.
Courtesy - RogerEbert.Com


Mira Nair



Mira Nair loves to tell a good story, no matter what the genre. From the gritty urban realism of her debut feature, Salaam Bombay!, to the gilded world of 19th-century England in Vanity Fair and the intricacies of romance, love, and family in her smash hit, Monsoon Wedding, she's a director who has continually defied easy categorization.

Accomplished Film Director/Writer/Producer Mira Nair was born in Bhubaneswar, India in 1957. Educated at both Delhi University and Harvard University, Nair began her artistic career as an actor before turning her attention to film. She found incipient success as a documentary filmmaker, winning awards for ' So Far From India ' and ' India Cabaret' . In 1988, Nair’s debut feature, Salaam Bombay!, was nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won the Camera D'Or (for best first feature) and the Prix du Publique (for most popular entry) at the Cannes Film Festival as well as 25 other international awards.

Nair’s next film, Mississippi Masala, an interracial love story set in the American South and Uganda, starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, won three awards at the Venice Film Festival including Best Screenplay and The Audience Choice Award. Subsequent films include The Perez Family (with Marisa Tomei, Anjelica Huston, Alfred Molina and Chazz Palminteri), about an exiled Cuban family in Miami; and the sensuous Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, which she directed and co-wrote.

Nair directed My Own Country based on Dr. Abraham Verghese's best-selling memoir about a young immigrant doctor dealing with the AIDS epidemic. Made in 1998, My Own Country starred Naveen Andrews, Glenne Headly, Marisa Tomei, Swoosie Kurtz, and Hal Holbrook, and was awarded the NAACP award for best fiction feature.

Nair returned to the documentary form in August1999 with The Laughing Club of India, which was awarded The Special Jury Prize in the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels 2000.

In the summer of 2000, Nair shot Monsoon Wedding in 30 days, a story of a Punjabi wedding starring Naseeruddin Shah and an ensemble of Indian actors. The film opened to tremendous critical acclaim and commercial success and went on to win the Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Film Festival and receive Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Foreign Language Film.

Nair’s next film, Hysterical Blindness, gave HBO its highest original film ratings in three years. Set in working class New Jersey in 1987, the film stars Uma Thurman, Juliette Lewis, Gena Rowlands, and Ben Gazarra. Over 15 million viewers watched Blindness on HBO and critics recognized the film with a Golden Globe for Uma Thurman and three Emmy Awards (including Best Supporting Actress for Rowlands and Best Supporting Actor for Gazarra).

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Nair joined a group of 11 renowned filmmakers, each commissioned to direct a film that was 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame long. In 2003, Nair produced “Still the Children Are Here,” an intimate documentary by Dinaz Stafford about the Garo peoples of Meghalaya, India.

In May 2003, Nair directed the Focus Features production of the William Thackeray classic, Vanity Fair, a provocative period tale set in Georgian England, filmed entirely on location in the UK and India. Nair was appointed as the mentor in film by the prestigious Rolex Protégé Arts Initiative, joining fellow mentors Jessye Norman, Sir Peter Hall, David Hockney, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Saburo Teshigawara to help guide young artists in critical stages of their development.Mira Nair has so far directed 18 features which include documentaries.

Nair currently lives in New York City with her husband and son.

Courtesy:MirabaiFilms.Com

On 15th July 2007 - Man On The Train

A Film by Patrice Leconte
Year 2002. Runtime 90 minutes .
French with English subtitles.
Venue ; Ashwin Hospital Auditorium , Ganapathy
15th July 2007 Sunday at 5.45 pm.

In this elegant French mystery, two strangers – meet late in life. One is a retired literature teacher. The other is a bank robber. Both are approaching a rendezvous with destiny. By chance, they spend some time together. Each begins to wish he could have lived the other's life.
From this simple premise, Patrice Leconte has made one of his most elegant films. It proceeds as if completely by accident and yet foreordained, and the two men--who come from such different worlds--get along well because both have the instinctive reticence and tact of born gentlemen. It is rare that a film looks unflinchingly at a friendship between men without placing sex, money, or power as roadblocks to overcome.

The real draw to "Man on the Train" are the believable characters created by the pen of scenarist Claude Klotz and the nicely textured spin put on them by Rochefort and Hallyday. The two actors establish their characters as three-dimensional beings that, after their long respective careers, crave a life completely different than they have known.

The dialogue of "Man on the Train" is minimal, especially for Hallyday, with periods of silence between the two men as meaningful as their spoken words.

Leconte paces his film like two trains gaining speed for a head-on collision, technically merging Manesquier and Milan's distinct color and sound themes until a swirl of surgeon's masks and stocking-faced robbers seal the men's fates together. A fantastical conclusion might be seen as an unearned happy ending that blunts the irony of where the men's original plans take them

The cinematographer, Jean-Marie Dreujou, has given the film an unusually rich look, all autumnal browns and golds.


Leconte brings his film to transcendent closure without relying on stale plot devices or the clanking of the plot. He resorts to a kind of poetry. After the film is over, you want to sigh with joy, that in this rude world such civilization is still possible

Man on the Train is a gorgeous reminder to know what you want, but also to appreciate what you have. Watching "Man on the Train" is like coming across one of those threadbare Persian rugs you see on public tours of private homes. Its elegance is more comfortable than cold, and it carries its worn, battered mien proudly .

The film provides a coherent end to both characters’ poems, and a little for us to ponder as we leave. Man on the Train is a journey well worth taking.

Patrice Leconte, Unlikely Auteur
a master of encounters

















"For me, there's nothing more enthralling than starting from reality - my inspiration always comes from reality, from ordinary people - and then going beyond it."

Director of Man On The Train , French filmmaker Patrice Leconte is as notable for his refusal to be easily categorized as he is for his long and productive career. Since making his major directorial debut in 1975 with Les Vécés Étaient Fermés de L'Intérieur, Leconte has established himself as one of France's most respected directors, at ease tackling subjects ranging from mental illness to sexuality to canny deconstructions of wit and society. He received particular acclaim for his 1996 film Ridicule, winning the admiration of an international audience while furthering his reputation as one of the French cinema's most treasured figures.

A native Parisian, Leconte was born on November 12, 1947. He decided to be a filmmaker at a very young age, and went on to attend France's most prestigious film school, I.D.H.E.C. During his education, constant visits to the Paris Cinémathèque aided in his understanding of cinematography culture. After graduating from I.D.H.E.C. in 1969, Leconte went against the cinematic grain, becoming a cartoonist for the French magazine Pilote. He made his living from cartooning until 1975, all the while shooting comic-fantasy shorts. The brand of humor he developed while making these shorts would later become the trademark of his most personal comedies.
In 1975, Leconte collaborated with Pilote colleague Marcel Gotlib to write Les Vécés Étaient Fermés de L'Intérieur (The Toilets Were Locked From the Inside). However, Leconte found greater success with his next feature, Les Bronzés (or French Fried Vacation). The 1978 film was the result of his involvement with the famed theater company, Le Splendid, where he wrote comedy and worked with actors like Michel Blanc, Josiane Balasko, and Thierry Lhermitte .

His next two films, in fact, proved to be compelling explorations of different types of madness, whether this madness assumed the form of murder and obsession or was irrevocably linked to sexual desire. The first of these films, 1989's Monsieur Hire, and the subsequent effort, Le Mari de la Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser's Husband) (1990), was also a critical success. Leconte's next major project was 1993's Tango, a black comedy . The film was a considerable success, unlike Leconte's next two major features, Le Parfum d'Yvonne (1994) and Les Grands Ducs (1996). The relative critical and commercial disappointments of these films, however, were to be more than made up for by his 1996 Ridicule, which was filmed while Les Grands Ducs was being edited.Ridicule was tremendously popular, chosen as the opening film at the 1996 Cannes Festival. It went on to win four Césars, including Best Film and Best Director.
Leconte is a director who knew his element, regardless of the period, style, or content of the films he made.
~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide