7th Sept 2008 : Screening of NOBODY KNOWS

Nobody Knows
A film by Hirokazu Koreeda
Year : 2004
Country ; Japan
Runtime ; 141 minutes
Japanese with English sub titles
7th Sept 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call : 9443039630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com

Of the multitude of films released each year, few travel into uncharted territory to capture the minutia of ordinary, extraordinary existence as well as this from director Hirokazu Kore-eda . Few allow us to be so present in the reality of his characters. This inventive and deeply human film is loosely based on a true story about four siblings, each from different fathers, and how they cope and carry on when their childlike mother abandons them in Tokyo. Writer-director Kore-eda has a true gift for fleshing out with simple, beautiful images, the interior recesses of the human experience, this time through the eyes of the children.

The oldest, a boy named Akira, is about 12. He regards his mother with guarded eyes. So do we. Kyoko is the second oldest. about 10. There is something too happy about the mother, as she acts like one of the kids. It is not the forced happiness of a person trying to keep up a brave front, or the artificial happiness of someone who is high, but the crazy happiness of a person who is using laughter to mask the reality of her behavior. It fools the little kids, Shigeru and Yuki, who are perhaps 7 and 4.

All act wonderfully like kids, but it is Yûya Yagira as Akira, who shoulders the film as the child-man whose nuanced performance captures the astonishing strength, pride, geniality, anger, resilience, anguish, and compassion of Akira. The mounting sadness on the children’s faces is heartbreaking but rendered without a shred of sentimentality. The scenes of unhurried daily events and strong use of lingering close-ups, mostly inside the little apartment, draws us in completely.

Mr. Kore-eda explores nearly every emotional nuance and implication of the story, without for an instant succumbing to sensationalism or melodrama. The content of "Nobody Knows,” consolidates his reputation as one of Japan's most interesting and original filmmakers.


Hirokazu Kore-eda
















Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda was born in Tokyo in 1962. Originally intended to be a novelist, but after graduating from Waseda University in 1987 went on to become an assistant director at TV Man Union. Sneaked off set to film _Lessons from a Calf (1991)_. His first feature, Maboroshi no hikari (1995), based on a Teru Miyamoto novel and drawn from his own experiences whilst filming _August Without Him (1994)_, won jury prizes at Venice and Chicago. The main themes of his oeuvre include memory and loss, death and loss, and the intersection of documentary and fictional narratives.

In a short period of time, Hirozaku Koreeda has gained a solid reputation as one of the most significant figures of contemporary Japanese cinema. His oeuvre is currently comprised of eight films including his television documentary work with TV Man Union, Inc. and his narrative films (After Life, Maborosi) which reflect the contemplative style and pacing of such luminaries as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. He has become a cinematographic tightrope walker who almost unnoticeably switches between fictitious and real territories, between narration and invention, the private and the public.

24th August ; Screening Of Satyajit Ray's MAHANAGAR

Mahanagar
A Film by Stayajit Ray
Year : 1963
Bengali with English sub titles
Run time : 122 minutes
24th August 2008; 5.45pm Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com
Call : 94430 39630

The power of this extraordinary film seems to come in equal parts from the serene narrative style of director Satyajit Ray and the sensitive performances of the cast members.

A young girl named Bani (Jaya Bhaduri) diligently studies for her exams. Her father, Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) asks, "Is it worth it? You'll end up in the kitchen, like your mother." The words are intended to be a playful tease, but they speak volumes about the role of women in society. It is the early 1960s, and the concept of dual-income families is still alien to most households, even in the big city of Calcutta. But Subrata's income as a bank accountant is not enough to support his extended family. His father (Haren Chatterjee), no longer able to earn a living as a teacher, spends his days working on crossword puzzles, hoping to win the prize money awarded for its successful completion. He needs a new pair of eyeglasses, and keeps reminding Subrata to call on an old pupil who is now a successful optometrist in the hopes of obtaining his services for free.


Beautiful and restrained, Madhabi Mukherjee powerfully highlights Mahanagar (The Big City) as a traditional Bengali housewife who transforms into a modern working woman in 1960's Calcutta. She is an incredible actress, who effectively communicates through her eyes, facial expressions, and pitch perfect body language.

Mahanagar is a deceptively lyrical, yet profoundly insightful examination of modern society: the obsolescence of cultural tradition, the financial instability of an emerging economy, the changing role of women. Using narrative perspective and graceful close-ups, Satyajit Ray portrays the gradual, often turbulent path taken by women on the road to independence and personal identity. It is a universal portrait of a contemporary family.

Ray's people have genuine emotions and ambitions, like the people next door and the people in Peoria and the people in Kansas City. There is not a person who would not identify and deeply with the characters in "The Big City."

Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta into an exceptionally talented family who were prominent in Bengali arts and letters. His father died when he was an infant and his mother and her younger brother's family brought him up. After graduating from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1940, he studied art at Rabindranath Tagore's University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. He took up commercial advertising and he also designed covers and illustrated books brought out by Signet Press. One of these books was an edition of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya's novel, Pather Panchali, which was to become his first film. In 1947 Ray established the Calcutta Film Society. During a six month trip to Europe in 1950, he managed to see 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (1948), which greatly inspired him. He returned convinced that it was possible to make realist cinema and with an amateur crew he endeavoured to prove this to the world.

In 1955, after incredible financial hardship (shooting on the film stopped for over a year) his adaptation of Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) was completed. Prior to the 1956 Cannes Festival, Indian Cinema was relatively unknown in the West, just as Japanese cinema had been prior to Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950). However, with Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray suddenly assumed great importance. The film went on to win numerous awards abroad including Best Human Document at Cannes. Pather Panchali's success launched an extraordinary international film career for Ray.

A prolific filmmaker, during his lifetime Ray directed 36 films, comprising of features, documentaries and short stories. These include the renowned Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito [1956] and Apur Sansar [1959]), Jalsaghar (1958), Postmaster (1961), Charulata (1964), Days and Nights in the Forest (1969) and Pikoo (1980) along with a host of his lesser known works which themselves stand up as fine examples of story telling. His films encompass a diversity of moods, techniques, and genres: comedy, satire, fantasy and tragedy. Usually he made films in a realist mode, but he also experimented with surrealism and fantasy.

Source : www.sensesofcinema.com

17th August 2008 ; Screening Of Luchino Visconti's White Nights

White Nights
A Film by
Luchino Visconti
Year :1957
Country :Italy
Italian with English sub titles
Run time : 97 minutes
17th Aug 2008; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital auditorium
Call : 94430 39630

Konangal film society is happy to introduce the great Italian master of cinema , one of the golden pioneers of Italian Neo- realist movement , Luchino Visconti . His other celebrated masterpieces - Ossessione ,Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard and The Earth Trembles are in our list for future screenings.

Luchino Visconti’s 1957 film, Le Notti Bianche / White Nights, winner of the Silver Lion Award at that year’s Venice Film Festival, and adapted from a Fyodor Dostoevsky story of the same name.Luchino Visconti’s Le notti bianche, an exquisite adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, translates this romantic, shattering tale of two restless souls into a ravishing black-and-white dream.

The time is never specified, but the story is likely set in the mid-twentieth century, as can be attested by scattered cultural markers such as neon signs and pop music. Yet, with just the slightest change of scenery and costume the characters could be living anywhere in history. Along the way we are treated to some wonderful acting, albeit in a very restrained manner, even when Mario performs a very Chaplinesque dance routine at a rock and roll club where he takes Natalia.

Mastroianni, as always, gives a great performance. We can see that, unlike in his many other roles, this time he is playing a truly shy man. Mario displays sincerity and an unwieldy presence around women, even though he is handsome and the object of affection for other women in the film — even the local prostitute (Clara Calamai) who is obsessed with him
Maria Schell, as Natalia, has a less formally demanding role — that of the classic naive waif. Throughout much of the film her character moons wide-eyed at the camera while recalling a scene from her past. She is the classic submissive woman waiting for a knight or prince to ‘take her away from all this’ — even though her life is not that bad, for her family obviously has taken good care of her.

White Nights, however, transcends the banality of contemporaneous American love tales by simplifying its story into a minimalist parable, while deepening its archetypes. Thus, the film avoids falling into all the easy clichés of the narrative form, resulting in a sort of operatic melodrama of the lost and naive.

Luchino Visconti

Aristocrat and Marxist, master equally of harsh realism and sublime melodrama, Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was without question one of the greatest film directors of the mid-twentieth century. Immensely rich and a bit of a dilettante, he went to Paris in the 1930s to escape the stifling culture of Fascist Italy. In Paris he met, and fell in love with, the fashion photographer Horst P Horst. But even more formative was his meeting with Jean Renoir in the heady political atmosphere of the Popular Front.

In 1937 he worked with Renoir on Une partie de campagne and was imbued with a lifelong love of cinema. Returning to Italy he took part in the Resistance and became a convinced Marxist, which he remained until his death. A leading light of the neo-realist movement in the 40s, he also acquired a reputation as an innovative theatre and opera director.

With the costume spectacular Senso in 1954 he applied his theatrical talents to a more melodramatic form, while retaining his commitment to a Marxist interpretation of Italy's troubled history. From then on, he mixed contemporary subjects - as in Rocco and His BrothersThe Leopard (1963), but also in Death in Venice (1970) and even more powerfully in the sublime Ludwig (1973). During the making of Ludwig he suffered a severe stroke, from which he never fully recovered. (1960) - with a meditation on the past and on a world which is lost but has left a deep mark on the present. The focus of almost all his films is families, either the disintegration of large families or the breakdown of couples, with betrayal - whether of marriages or of political causes - a recurring motif.

In all his films, regardless of period or subject matter, visual splendour is combined with meticulous realism and deep historical and psychological insight. Famous as the embodiment of art cinema, films such as The Leopard and Rocco were also hugely popular at the box office, particularly in Italy but also worldwide.

At the same time, however, Visconti never compromised his art. He was fanatical about detail, but even more so about the integrity of his vision, which he expected the audience to be able to share.

Source : Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
www.bfi.org

10th August ; Screening of Hiroshima

Konangal will be observing HIROSHIMA DAY
on 10th August 2008 by screening this
historical film on Hiroshima

HIROSHIMA
A Film by
Koreyoshi Kurahara &
Roger Spottiswoode
Run time 185 minutes
English / Japanese with English subtitles
10th August 2008 ; 5 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Hiroshima is an East-West co-production about one of the decisive moments of World War II. In this case, the co-production is between Japan and Canada, as interestingly no Americans (apart from a number of actors) were involved.

As the title suggests, this lengthy made-for-television film concerns the events surrounding the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It is a unique combination of dramatised historic events (with the top political and military figures of the day portrayed by actors), newsreel and army archive footage, and testimonial interviews with the actual people who were involved in many different capacities - from political advisors to soldiers to civilian eye witnesses.

The combination of documentary and dramatization works incredibly well. Beautifully interwoven, these two aspects are never at odds, but feel as a harmonious unity throughout despite being shot by two directors and two crews. One gets a good impression of the characters of the major players, and their feelings about the drastic decision of whether or not to throw this devastating bomb (whose true power is sorely underestimated by all involved - not even the scientists seemed to know of the dreadful effects of radiation).

On the Japanese side, there is a surprising openness towards the doubts that plagued many (including emperor Hirohito) about continuing the war after Germany's defeat and in the face of a full-scale allied invasion. Here too, pros and cons fight and bicker towards a final decision which we know will never come. Interestingly, the emperor himself hardly plays a role of importance. Decisions in his name are taken by a small elite group of military and political figures, while Hirohito, in hiding, has no say in the matter.

Hiroshima manages to be both harrowing and enthralling. Despite being a long haul at over three hours (most tv stations will probably broadcast it in two parts), it never once drags. On the contrary; the further the story advances, the more tense and engaging the film becomes. Like that other, thematically similar, made-for-television powerhouse The Day After (1983 - Nicholas Meyer), Hiroshima far outgrows its small screen roots and proves to be high-calibre, thought-provoking cinema.
(Source: www.midnighteye.com )

Human Rights Film Fest : Thank You all ...

We thank all the cinema lovers and human rights enthusiasts participated in large numbers during the two days human Rights Film Festival.
We express our heartfelt thanks to . Ms. ALIKA KHOSLA, Associate Director of “Breakthrough’ New Delhi - for providing the films and taking time to be with us during this festival. Our thanks to Mr.George Kutty of Bangalore Film Society for providing the support film copies .
A ‘big’ thank you to PRESS for their support and coverage all through these years.
We are greatful to Dr.Thangavelu of Ashwin Hospital for providing their auditorium for our regular use.
More than all it is you , the cinema lovers in Coimbatore who made this occasion an unforgettable one.

Special guest Shri. R. DAMODARAN, Special Public Prosecutor

Post screening discussions - anticlockwise - M/s D.Anandan, Jacob, Chandrakumar and Srinivasan



Festival participants . Center image - Ms.Alika Khosla, Associate Director of “Breakthrough” New Delhi.