6th July 2008 : Shyam Benegal's Nishant

Nishant

A film by Shyam Benegal
Original Screenplay : Vijay Tendulkar
Year : 1975
Run time :140 minutes
Hindi with English sub titles
6th July 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Contemporary Indian filmmake Shyam Benegal’s second film, NIshant (1975)explores the corrupt world of landowners and local bureaucracy in India on the cusp of independence.

Shyam Benegal has a well-deserved reputation for making hard hitting social dramas which tell true Indian stories in a realistic manner. He seems to be ever pre-occupied in supporting the forces which are taking India from tradition to modernity, from a deeply conservative and rigidly hierarchical society to a more open, democratic and egalitarian one. In Nishant the oppressed revolt openly against the long reign of terror let loose by a family of landlords. Significantly, the revolt does not come from the land, it is brought about by the middle class - the school teacher and the priest. The plot is brutal and compelling which reveals how people's lives play out in the many parts of the world where civilization is still primitive and brutal. Nishant was nominated for Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival (1976).

Shabana gives a rangy and volatile performance There is a certain raw tension in Nishant, an anticipatory mood that is compelling even when nothing is happening. Shyam Benegal's dusty, dusky visuals, along with many silent or near-silent scenes, seem to enhance the tension with their spareness. And it is a great treat to see so many giants of parallel cinema displayed in their unpolished youth - Shabana, Smita, Naseer, Kulbushan, and Mohan Agashe and Anant Nag (as the zamindar's other two brothers) are all fresh out of school; none of them had more than two films' experience prior to Nishant, and even Amrish Puri had only played half a dozen roles.

The film won the 1977 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi, and was invited to Cannes Film Festival, the London Film Festival 1976, Melbourne Film Festival 1977, and the Chicago Film Festival 1977, where it was awarded Golden Plaque.

(Thanks to Film Geek http://www.filmigeek.net/2006/10/nishant.html )

Shyam Benegal

Contemporary Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal has been an important figure in the new wave of Indian directors. Benegal originated what has come to be called "middle cinema". He was initially involved in the advertising industry and produced over 900 advertisements before his interest turned to films.

Shyam Benegal was born on 14 December 1934 at Aliwal, Hyderabad, British India (now Andhra Pradesh, India). The son of a still photographer and one of 10 children, Benegal's love affair with motion pictures began when he made his first home-movie using a hand-cranked camera at age 12. He is nephew of the famous Indian Actor Director Guru Dutt.

As a young man, he went on to found a film society and get involved in acting while studying at Osmania University where he earned an MA in economics. After graduating, Benegal found a job as a copywriter at a large ad agency in Bombay. Soon he was promoted to writing scripts and directing advertising shorts and commercials. He remained there for over a decade.

In 1969 he received a special fellowship to study operations of the Children's Television Workshop in New York. Later he did a brief stint as a TV producer in Boston.

Since then he has become a popular director in India, noted for creating films sensitive to the role of women in Indian societies. His films have also gained international recognition and acclaim.

His film directorial debut was Gher Betha Ganga in 1962. Benegal shot to fame with Ankur 1973, which introduced Shabana Azmi, who also starred in Nishant 1975. The success that New India Cinema enjoyed in the 1970s and early 1980s could largely be attributed to Shyam Benegal's quartet Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977), which were artistically superior yet commercially viable films. Tapping fresh talent mainly from the FTII and NSD, Benegal has made several sensitive and stimulating films.

He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991. On 8th August 2007, he was awarded the highest award in Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005. He is only director to have won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi five times.

22nd June 2008 ; Screening of Casablanca

Casablanca
A Film by Michael Curtiz
Year : 1942
Country : USA
Run time :102 minutes
English with English sub titles
22nd June 2008 ;5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Amazing cast, memorable dialogue, unforgettable story.

Against the electric background of a sleek cafe in a North African port, through which swirls a backwash of connivers, crooks and fleeing European refugees, the Warner Brothers are telling a rich, suave, exciting and moving tale in their film, "Casablanca,"

The story, as would be natural, has its devious convolutions of plot. But mainly it tells of a tough fellow named Rick who runs a Casablanca cafe and of what happens when there shows up in his joint one night a girl whom he had previously loved in Paris in company with a fugitive Czech patriot. The Nazis are tailing the young Czech; the Vichy officials offer only brief refuge—and Rick holds the only two sure passports which will guarantee his and the girl's escape. But Rick loves the girl very dearly, she is now married to this other man—and whenever his black pianist sits there in the dark and sings "As Time Goes By" that old, irresistible feeling consumes him in a choking, maddening wave.

Don't worry; we won't tell you how it all comes out. That would be rankest sabotage. But we will tell you that the urbane detail and the crackling dialogue which has been packed into this film by the scriptwriters, the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch, is of the best. We will tell you that Michael Curtiz has directed for slow suspense and that his camera is always conveying grim tension and uncertainty.

Download the original CASABLANCA screenplay by clicking here.

The performances of the actors are all of the first order, especially those of Mr. Bogart and Miss Bergman in the leading roles. Mr. Bogart is, as usual, the cool, cynical, efficient and super-wise guy who operates his business strictly for profit but has a core of sentiment and idealism inside. Conflict becomes his inner character, and he handles it credibly. Miss Bergman is surpassingly lovely, crisp and natural as the girl and lights the romantic passages with a warm and genuine glow.

In short, we will say that "Casablanca" is one of the most exciting and trenchant films.

Michael Curtiz

(December 24, 1886 - April 10, 1962)

Michael Curtiz was one of Hollywood's most prolific and colorful directors. Born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Budapest, he ran away from home at age 17 to join a circus, then trained for an acting career at the Royal Academy for Theater and Art. He worked as a leading man at the Hungarian Theatre before directing stage plays and then films.

His first cinematic effort was Az Utolsó Bohém (1912), which was also the first feature-length film ever made in Hungary. Curtiz soon moved on to the more progressive Danish film industry, returning to his homeland in 1914 and serving a year in the Austro-Hungarian infantry before resuming his film career.He directed 21 European pictures in a seven-year period, including the epic Sodom and Gomorrah (1923).

In 1926, Curtiz was brought to Hollywood by Warner Bros. He had a lengthy and prolific Hollywood career, with directing credits on over 100 films in many film genres..Prime examples of his work in the 1940s are The Sea Wolf (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945). Michael Curtiz died at the age of 73 and was almost working till the last days of his life.

15th June 2008 ; Screening of Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

"In a world as badly made as ours,
there is only one road -- rebellion."
. . . LUIS BUNUEL

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

A Film by Luis Bunuel
Country : France
Year : 1972
French / Spanish with English subtitles
Run time : 102 minutes

All movies toy with us, but the best ones have the nerve to admit it. Most movies pretend their stories are real and that we must take them seriously. Comedies are allowed to break the rules. Most of the films of Luis Bunuel are comedies in one way or another, but he doesn't go for gags and punch lines; his comedy is more like a dig in the ribs, sly and painful.

"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) is about people who are trapped on the other side of the mirror: They constantly arrive for dinner and sometimes even sit down for it, but are never able to eat. They arrive on the wrong night, or are alarmed to find the corpse of the restaurant owner in the next room, or are interrupted by military maneuvers.

Dinner is the central social ritual of the middle classes, a way of displaying wealth and good manners. It also offers the convenience of something to do (eat) and something to talk about (the food), and that is a great relief, since so many of the bourgeoisie have nothing much to talk about, and there are a great many things they hope will not be mentioned.

The joke in "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is the way Bunuel interrupts the meals with the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of his decaying European aristocracy: witlessness, adultery, drug dealing, cheating, military coups, perversion and the paralysis of boredom. His central characters are politicians, the military and the rich, but in a generous mood he throws in a supporting character to make fun of the church.

The movie is broken into self-contained sequences, showing the bland surface of polite society and the lusts that lurk beneath.

"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" was Bunuel's most successful film; it made more money even than his famous "Belle de Jour" (1967), won the Oscar as best foreign film and was named the year's best by the National Society of Film Critics. It was released in a year when social unrest was at its height, the Vietnam War was in full flower, and the upper middle class was a fashionable target of disdain. How different to see it again in the 2000s, when affluence is once again praised and envied.

Luis Buñuel

Painting by Salvador Dali
22 February 1900, Spain .- 29 July 1983 Mexico

The father of cinematic Surrealism and
one of the most original directors in the
history of the film medium,

“ I have a soft spot for secret passageways, bookshelves that open into silence, staircases that go down into a void, and hidden safes. I even have one myself, but I won't tell you where. At the other end of the spectrum are statistics which I hate with all my heart. “

Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior). Bnuel subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein.

With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent Âge d'or, L' (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career.

After the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros. Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins, Olvidados, Los (1950), which won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country -and Bunuel promptly paid back by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Journal d'une femme de chambre, Le (1964). The films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour. After saying that every one of his films from Belle de jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with Cet obscur objet du désir (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films -a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.

8th June 2008 ; Screening of SHINE

A true story of the mystery
of music and the miracle of love

SHINE

A Film by
Scot Hicks
Year : 1996
Country : Australia
English with English sub titles
Run time : 105 minutes
8^th June 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Shine is a deceptively simple title for an amazingly powerful motion picture based on the true life story of Australian pianist David Helfgott.

Long before its American theatrical debut, Shine had already attained the status as one of 1996's few "must see" films. At Sundance, where it was among the hottest properties, the war for distribution rights exploded into a public confrontation. The movie has also earned 9 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards.

Shine has its roots in 1986, when director Scott Hicks read a newspaper story about David Helfgott, a pianist who performed a flawless classical repertoire at a Perth restaurant. Hicks' interest was piqued, and he arranged to see Helfgott in concert. For the better part of the next year, he worked to earn the man's trust with the goal of presenting his story in a motion picture. That odyssey, which is admittedly fictionalized to some degree in Jan Sardi's wonderful screenplay became Shine, one of 1996's most stirring and inspirational tales.

As "Shine" begins, the adult David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) appears pitiably, trying to come in out of the rain. Clearly damaged somehow, David fidgets and chatters nervously, keeping his eyes half-shut, clutching too eagerly at the people he sees. He repeats words frenetically and chuckles oddly at words that really aren't funny. "Ridiculous tragedy" is one of the phrases he mutters.

Love can have many faces, and Shine shows two of the most extreme. The first is David’s father Peter's obsessive, domineering love. Hicks's graceful exposition explores the pathos in David's relationship with his father.. The film watches helplessly while this father's love and pride destroy his son. The other face of love is the healing, undemanding one, as embodied by a middle-aged Gillian (Lynn Redgrave). She offers her strength and understanding to David, helping him to rebuild his life.

The film's final scene directly contrasts Peter and Gillian's approaches, as David attempts to bring closure to one of the great, unresolved issues of his life.

SCOTT HICKS

SCOTT HICKS was propelled to the forefront of international filmmakers in 1996, following the release of his film Shine. Its triumphant premiere at the Sundance Film Festival was just the beginning of world-wide box office success and numerous honors, including seven Academy Award nominations.

Even before Shine, however, Hicks had made his mark as a documentarian. He won an Emmy in 1994 for Submarines: Sharks of Steel and a coveted Peabody Award in 1989 for The Great Wall of Iron.

The progeny of adventurous parents, Hicks was born in Uganda and lived in Kenya, just outside Nairobi, until the age of ten. His family then moved, first to England and, when he was 14, on to Adelaide, Australia.

Hicks entered Flinders University to major in English and Drama and cinema studies were part of the curriculum. Instantly attracted to the medium, he threw himself headlong into the study of great directors, film movements and filmmaking techniques.

By the mid-1980s, he had managed to make a couple of low budget features, one for the South Australian Film Corporation. In 1988, he came to Los Angeles for the American Film Market with his children's movie, Sebastian and the Sparrow. Hicks began to make non-fiction films. But Hicks was not able to rest on the laurels of his documentary achievements because he was passionately involved with the development of the film Shine, inspired by the life of pianist David Helfgott.

Hicks continues to live in Adelaide with his wife and collaborator, Kerry Heysen, and their two sons. He has projects in varying stages of development at several studios.