6th January 2008 ; Screening of Wind Will Carry Us

Film begins with D.W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami

- Jean-Luc Godard

THE WIND WILL CARRY US

Film by Abbas Kiarostami
Country : Iran , Year : 1999
Run time : 113 minutes , Persian with English sub titles.
6th January 5.45 pm , Ashwin Hospital Auditorium , Ganapathy , Coimbatore

"We're heading nowhere," a disembodied voice complains as a battered jeep crawls up a winding road through harsh, scrubby terrain. So begins The Wind Will Carry Us—the latest and perhaps the greatest film by Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami.

A busy video producer/engineer Behzad from Tehran is sent to a remote Iranian village to capture an obscure burial ceremony. But the 'subject' of his film , Mrs. Malek is ill, not dead, forcing the man and his production crew to slow down, linger in the village, and mingle with the local families.

Along the way, the engineer encounters a radically different lifestyle than his own, with different priorities. In doing so, his perspective on the natural world is changed.

Behzad recites a poem in the film , a poem by Furugh Farrukhzad (1935-67), one of the most extraordinary Persian or Iranian female poets of the twentieth century, which gives the film its title and which treats the central conflict in the film, “life in the face of death.” In Iran, people at all social levels know poetry and quote it to each other constantly, for all sorts of reasons Poetry and Sufism. Both are useful coordinates for anyone trying to get a fix on the intent behind this gorgeous, semi-opaque film, The Wind Will Carry Us

This film is remarkable in its sustained pace, perspective, and ability to focus so sharply on a single character without revealing too much of that character, allowing him to retain a sense of mystery and delightful ambiguity.

In the title sequence of The Wind Will Carry Us absences define presences in numerous ways. In fact, many major characters in the film -- including Mrs. Malek, Youssef, and all three members of Behzad's crew -- are never seen. Most of the sequence unfolds in semidarkness.

The Wind Will Carry Us offers an intricately constructed spatial world that's as breathtakingly beautiful, as various, and as cosmically evocative as a Brueghel landscape -- a world teeming with diverse kinds of life and activity -- and it teases us whenever we want to get to know this world better, seducing and evading us at the same time. If you're open to the possibility that the world is bigger than you typically give it credit for, and you're willing to invest some effort in letting go of your usual way of seeing, this film will be a revelation for you.

Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian filmmaker who is widely considered one of the world's greatest living directors has written and directed some 41 movies since the early 1970s, and has been compared by critics to such titans of international cinema as Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa.

In her survey of recent achievements in film, Susan Sontag declared, “Iranian cinema has been the great revelation of the last decade.” Surely one of those largely responsible for this phenomenon is the screenwriter and director Abbas Kiarostami.

Few new films draw comparisons to classics like Mr. Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," Michelangelo Antonioni's "Red Desert" or Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt." Mr. Kiarostami's movies not only evoke such parallels; they also seem to infuse the beleaguered art-film traditions with fresh urgency.

Born in Tehran in 1940, Kiarostami worked as a commercial artist and children’s book illustrator until he was invited to lead the department of cinema at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. Given this background, it’s not surprising that many of his projects feature children. Kiarostami is a graduate of Tehran University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in Painting

Mr. Kiarostami's own filmmaking began at the end of the 1960's when the loose-knit movement later labeled the Iranian New Wave was just gaining steam. One hallmark of Mr. Kiarostami's work is its esthetic consistency. "Bread and Alley," the first short he made, in 1970, has qualities that distinguish his films up to "Taste of Cherry": a lyrical but concrete feel for the particulars of place and visual atmosphere; a way of eliciting strikingly natural performances from nonactors; and stories in which an anecdotal surface disguises a rich substratum of philosophical, allegorical or social concerns.

Mr. Kiarostami did not consider leaving the country during the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, he said, "because of a revolution going on in my own house." His own marriage was failing.
Pierre Rissient, an executive with Ciby 2000, the French company that handles worldwide sales of "Taste of Cherry," says that Mr. Kiarostami "proceeds the way the Greek philosophers like Heraclitus do, or Chinese figures like Laotzu, or Japanese Zen poets like Basho -- the poetry is completely linked with philosophy."

Seven of his films are best known to us: Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Homework (1989), Close-Up (1990), And Life Goes on... (1991), Through the Olive Trees (1994), Taste of Cherry (1998) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999).

The protagonists of his films are the ordinary people who surround us. Their lives represent no more and no less of what constitute ours. Their presence in films provides us with an opportunity to think about the everydayness of our existence and relationships; an opportunity to see them as a mirror that reflects the depth of our human feelings and thoughts..

Abbas Kiarostami's films seek to uncover the deepest human emotions in the most ordinary events in life. His works are a demonstration of the significance and relevance of these emotions to the restless, captive, and tormented individuals of the twentieth century.

Everything in Kiarostami's films speaks to the matter at hand. His films direct the spectator toward central human problems. He has deeply-held ideas and feelings. He wants to say certain things about life. So he doesn't waste his time or ours. Nothing has been done merely for effect, to impress the spectator, to enhance the director's reputation. There aren't so many artists like that around, unfortunately. We need more.

23rd December 2007 ; Screening of 2 Short Films by Krzysztof Kieslowski

TWO SHORT FILMS OF POLISH MASTER
Krzysztof Kieślowski

23^rd December 2007 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

1.

Concert of Requests

‘ Concert of Requests ‘ (Polish : Koncert życzeń ) is a 1967 short film by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski and starring Jerzy Fedorowicz, produced while Kieślowski was a student at the Łódź Film School. A rare opportunity to see one of Kieslowski’s first fiction films – his graduation short from the Lodz Film School in Poland (whose students also included Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi) made when he was 26 years old.

The film follows a group of young people on a trip in the forest near Przewoz, Poland. They drink, smoke, listen to rock and roll music, and litter before leaving in a bus. A young man and woman who had been camping leave on a motorcycle. The motorcycle passes the bus on the road, accidentally dropping their tent and the woman's identification card, and the bus stops to pick it up. The motorcyclists drive back to the stopped bus and ask for the tent. The bus driver agrees to return the tent only if the woman comes with them. Ann the story continues .

Concert of Requests is more Godard or Truffaut than Kieslowski - but works either way.

Year : 1968 , Runtime : 16 minutes . Polish with English subtitles.

2.

Dekalog

One of the great achievements in cinema of the last generation, The Decalogue combines tough-minded realism and hallucinatory style.

Dekalog (The Decalogue) (1988) is a Polish film series, originally made as a television miniseries, directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and co-written by Kieślowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner. It consists of ten one-hour films, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments and explores possible meanings of the commandment—often ambiguous or contradictory—within a fictional story set in modern Poland. The series is Kieślowski's most acclaimed work and has won numerous international awards, though it was not widely released outside Europe until the late 1990s. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick described it as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.

Though each film is independent, most of them share the same setting (a large housing project in Warsaw) and some of the characters are acquainted with each other. There is also a nameless character (Artur Barciś), possibly supernatural, who observes the main characters at key moments but never intervenes. The large cast includes both famous actors and unknowns, many of whom Kieślowski also used in other films. Typically for Kieślowski, the tone of most of the films is meditative and melancholy, except for the last one, which (like Three Colors: White, which features two of the same actors) is a black comedy.

The Decalogue films are noted for their tight dramatic constructions, vividly rendered characters, and emotionally resonant ethical dilemmas depicting characters attempting to live in the modern world according to (or in search of) presupposed ideals.

Dekalog 7 ‘ Thou shalt not steal.’

A young woman (Anna Polony) abducts her own child, who has been raised by her parents as her sister. . A six year old blond girl, named Ania (Katarzyna Piwowarczyk), is kidnapped by her sister Majka (Maja Barelkowska), who is really her mother. Ania believes her grandparents, Ewa (Anna Polony) and Stefan (Wladyslaw Kowalski), are her parents, but Majka decides to tell the truth. She takes Aniato her real father, who was her teacher at a boarding school her mot her still runs.

An extremely believable and thoroughly tragic tug-of-war, Dekalog 7 leaves the viewer emotionally stranded, dying to know more.

In Dekalog 7 Kieslowski takes an upsetting and oblique approach to the commandment that "Thou Shalt Not Steal". Rather than confronting the issue head-on with material possessions, he poses the question of whether you can steal something that is already yours, in the process unearthing highly subtle forms of theft.

Year : 1988 , Run time : 55 minutes . Polish with English subtitles.

Krzysztof Kieslowski

b. June 27, 1941, Warsaw, Poland
d. March 13, 1996, Warsaw, Poland

Kieślowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, a tuberculosis patient, could find treatment. At sixteen, he briefly attended a firemen's training school, but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 .

Leaving college , Kieślowski joined the Łódź Film School, the famed Polish film school that also produced Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda. He attended from 1964 to 1968, during a period in which the government allowed a relatively high degree of artistic freedom at the school. Kieślowski decided to make documentary films. Kieslowski also married his lifelong love, Maria (Marysia) Cautillo, during his final year in school (m. January 21, 1967 to his death), and they had a daughter, Marta (b. January 8, 1972).

Kieślowski's early documentaries focused on the everyday lives of city dwellers, workers, and soldiers. He soon found that attempting to depict Polish life accurately brought him into conflict with the authorities. His television film Workers '71, was only shown in a drastically censored form. He abandoned documentary filmmaking due the censorship of Workers '71. He decided that fiction not only allowed more artistic freedom, but could portray everyday life more truthfully.

Kieslowski’s work consists of 40 feature / documentary/ short films made during his short life span which include the evergreen classic Tricolours Trilogy of three films - Red, Blue and White and his 10 parts Dekalog. Series.

The death of Krzysztof Kieslowski in March 1996 was
widely mourned.

16th December 2007 : Screening of Tokyo Story

Ozu doesn't sentimentalise or condemn;
he merely observes human nature with calm and clarity.
- Colin Covert

TOKYO STORY

A film by Yasujiro Ozu
Country : Japan ; Year :1953
Run time : 136 minutes
Japanese with English sub titles.
16^th Dec 2007 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium, Ganapathy , Coimbatore
Call 94430 39630

It ennobles the cinema. It says, yes, a movie can help
us make small steps against our imperfections.
- Roger Ebert

Made in 1953 as Japan pulled itself together to face a democratic future after 50 years of aggression and seven years of American occupation, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story is the supreme masterpiece of one of the cinema's greatest masters.
Those brought up on the energetic diet of American cinema may find it hard to appreciate the quietist art of the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. He has been called the poet of family life, capable of taking the seemingly trivial and making great drama of it. Nothing was too small to be significant.

No story could be simpler. An old couple come to the city to visit their children and grandchildren. Their children are busy, and the old people upset their routines. In a quiet way, without anyone admitting it, the visit goes badly. The parents return home. A few days later, the grandmother dies. Now it is the turn of the children to make a journey.

From these few elements Yasujiro Ozu made one of the greatest films of all time. "Tokyo Story" (1953) lacks sentimental triggers and contrived emotion; it looks away from moments a lesser movie would have exploited. It doesn't want to force our emotions, but to share its understanding. It does this so well that you are near tears in the last 30 minutes. It ennobles the cinema. It says, yes, a movie can help us make small steps against our imperfections.

It does this with characters so universal that we recognize them instantly -- sometimes in the mirror. It was made 50 years ago in Japan, by a man who was born 100 years ago and it is about our families, our natures, our flaws and our clumsy search for love and meaning. It isn't that our lives keep us too busy for our families. It's that we have arranged them to protect us from having to deal with big questions of love, work and death. We escape into truisms, small talk and distractions. Given the opportunity at a family gathering to share our hopes and disappointments, we talk about the weather and watch TV.

Ozu is not only a great director but a great teacher, and after you know his films, a friend. With no other director , you do feel affection for every single shot. "Tokyo Story" opens with the distant putt-putt of a ship's engine, and bittersweet music evokes a radio heard long ago and far away. There are exterior shots of a neighborhood. If we know Ozu, we know the boat will not figure in the plot, that the music will never be used to underline or comment on the emotions, that the neighborhood may be the one where the story takesplace, but it doesn't

matter. Ozu uses "pillow shots" like the pillow words in Japanese poetry, separating his scenes with brief, evocative images from everyday life. He likes trains, clouds, smoke, clothes hanging on a line, empty streets, small architectural details, banners blowing in the wind (he painted most of the banners in his movies himself).

His visual strategy is as simple (therefore as profound) as possible. His camera is not always precisely three feet above the floor (the eye level of a Japanese person seated on a tatami mat), but it usually is. "The reason for the low camera position," the writer Donald Richie explains, "is that it eliminates depth and makes a two-dimensional space

Except for a single panning shot and a short sequence in which the old couple go around Tokyo on a shuddering tourist bus, Ozu never moves his camera. Every shot is expressively composed in depth, with the camera placed a little above floor-level. This sense of life quietly observed and captured in tableaux is contrasted with the trains that thunder through the town and the fishing boats and ferries that chug in and out of the harbour, representing life going on, people making journeys elsewhere.

This is an exquisite movie, emotionally tough, psychologically perceptive, universally truthful

(Source : Roger Ebert, Gurdian , & Observer )

Yasujiro Ozu
12th Dec 1903 - 12th Dec 1963

"I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others." - Ozu

Ozu was born on December 12, 1903 in Tokyo. He and his two brothers were educated in the countryside, in Matsuzaka, whilst his father sold fertilizer in Tokyo. Ozu developed a love of film during his early days of school truancy, but his fascination began when he first saw a Matsunosuke historical spectacular at the Atagoza cinema in Matsuzaka. Ozu's uncle, aware of his nephew's love of film, introduced him to Teihiro Tsutsumi, then manager of Shochiku. Not long after, Ozu began working for the great studio—against his father's wishes—as an assistant cameraman.

Ozu's work as assistant cameraman involved pure physical labour, lifting and moving equipment at Shochiku's TokyoThe Sword Of Penitence that became his first film as director (and only period piece) in 1927. Ozu was called up into the army reserves before shooting was completed. No negative, prints or script exist of The Sword Of Penitence—and, sadly, only 36 out of 54 Ozu films still exist. studios in Kamata. After becoming assistant director to Tadamoto Okubo, it took less than a year for Ozu to put his first script forward for filming. It was in fact his second script

Days Of Youth (Wakaki Hi, 1929) is Ozu's earliest extant picture, though not especially typical (and preceded by seven others, now lost) as it is set on ski slopes. Stylistically it is rife with close-ups, fade-outs and tracking shots, all of which Ozu was later to leave behind. Three years later came what is generally recognized as Ozu's first major film, I Was Born, But... (Umarete wa Mita Keredo..., 1932). This moving comedy/drama was a great success in Japan both critically and financially. It was one of cinema's finest works about children.

Thirty years into his filmmaking career Ozu was making films which, like Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952), questioned the sense of spending your whole working life behind a desk—something that many of his audience must have been doing.

Ozu's films represent a lifelong study of the Japanese family and the changes that a family unit experiences. He ennobles the humdrum world of the middle-class family and has been regarded as “the most Japanese of all filmmakers”, not just by Western critics, but also by his countrymen

9th Dec 2007 ; Konangal Outreach Programme screening : Chemmeen

CHEMMEEN
A film by Ramu Kariat
Year 1965 , Run time : 140 Minutes.
Malayalam with English subtitles
6pm 9th December 2007
Aruna Thirumana Mandapam
N S R Road, SBColony, Coimbatore

Directed by Kerala's one of the most renowned directors Ramu Kariat, Chemmeen is based on a highly acclaimed Malayalam novel by Jyanpeth award winner Takazhi Shivashankara Pillai. By becoming the first south Indian film to win the President's Gold Medal for best film. At Chicago Film Festival, the movie won a Certificate of Merit. At the 2005 Brisbane International Film Festival, the movie was screened in a retrospective on 50 years of Malayalam Cinema. Chemmeen put Malayalam cinema on the Indian cinema map. While considering the history of Malayalam cinema, the film is attributed epic status.

Chemmeen was recognized as a technically and artistically brilliant cinema. Incidentally, it was also one of the first Malayalam movies in colour. Chemmeen had some of the best names then in India for its technical support, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, the editor and Marcus Bartely the cinematographer. Lyrics by Vyalar Rama Varma and the music composed by Salil Choudhury made the songs of Chemmeen highly popular.

Karutthamma (played by Sheila in the movie) is the daughter of a poor fisherman, Chembankunju (Kottarakkara). She is in love with a fish trader, Pareekkutty (Madhu), who helps her ambitious father buy a boat and net. In return, Chembankunju promises to sell his catch to Pareekkutty on credit. However, once he launches the boat, he dishonors the agreement . Chembankunju prospers. .Traditions prevent Karuthamma to marry Pareekutty, and she is married off to Palani, a total stranger who arrives in their village. Even though the affair of the past between Karuthamma and Pareekutty is a matter of talk among the villagers, Palani ignores them and loves Karuthamma while Karuthamma can not erase her love for Pareekutty from her heart.
At the core of the film are the three central performances of Sheela, Sathyan and Madhu. The film offers all three of them their career-defining roles. The three are strongly supported by Kottarakkara Sreedharan Nair bringing alive the wily and greedy Chembankunju.

Chemeen’s tale is multilayered. On one level while it is a tragic love story of forbidden love. On the other hand it proves that true love recognizes no religious, cultural or geographical boundaries. If the film reaffirms the required commitment to relationships, it also shows how deep, passionate love can both save and destroy man. It tells you how people can change with greed and jealousy and it illustrates the deeply rooted nature of superstition in the Hindu psyche while looking at the life of a typical Kerala fishing community of Allapuzha. While its grandeur flows from the wild and powerful ocean that rules the fishing community, its poetic beauty lies in its depiction of those small moments that can make or mar our lives

Direction: Ramu Kariat , Screenplay & Story: Takazhi Shivashankara Pillai
Cast: Satyan, Sheela, Madhu, Kottarakkara Sridharan Nair, S.P.Pillai, Adoor Bhawani
Cinematography: Marcus Bartely , Editing: Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Music: Salil Choudhury