KUROSAWA CENTENARY -4th April 2010 -Throne Of Blood

KUROSAWA

CENTENARY

SCREENING

****************

Throne of Blood

A film by Akira Kurosawa

Year: 1957

Country: Japan

Runtime:110 minutes

Japanese with English sub titles

4th April 2010 ; 5.45 pm

Perks Mini Theatre

Perks School, Off Trichy road.

http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

Call: 94430 39630

To mark the 100th birthday of Kurosawa, his all time classic ‘Throne of Blood’

with a documentary on Kurosawa’s life and art will be screened on 4th April 2010 by Konangal.

Akira Kurosawa's remarkable 1957 restaging of Macbeth in samurai and expressionist terms is unquestionably one of his finest works—charged with energy, imagination, and, in keeping with the subject, sheer horror. Incidentally, this was reputed to have been T.S. Eliot's favorite film.

In a time of feuding houses, Washizu, a general to the Lord of Spider's Web Castle, turns what promised to be a crushing military defeat into a decisive victory. While on his way to receive praise from the Lord, Washizu gets lost in a fog and encounters a forest spirit who tells him he will quickly rise the ranks until he himself is Lord of the Castle.

In terms of narrative, "Throne of Blood" stays close to the original, focusing on the overreaching ambition of samurai warrior Washizu (Mifune). Visually, though, "Throne of Blood" spectacularly transforms the source play - turning it into a terrifying journey through darkness, evil, and despair.

The elaborate costumes and sparse, striking sets are simply superb, giving the film a look that balances cinematic stylization and historical authenticity.

Toshiro Mifune is exquisitely brash and extravagantly mad as the ambitious Washizu; Isuzu Yamada is coldly brilliant and manipulative as his wife, for whom Kurosawa imagines a stillborn pregnancy. The final sequences showing Washizu's last stand, cackling insanely and getting his terrified subjects to cackle as well, before they all turn on him, is gripping.

Despite having none of Shakespeare's language at his disposal, Kurosawa brings off the remarkable trick of projecting the spirit of the poetry out onto the landscape and into the faces of his principals. An authentic classic.

Akira Kurosawa

1910 -2010

Akira Kurosawa was the youngest of seven children, born in Tokyo on 23 March 1910. A talented painter, he enrolled in an art school that emphasized Western styles. Around this time he also joined an artists' group with a great enthusiasm for nineteenth-century Russian literature, with Dostoevsky a particular favourite. Another influence was Heigo, one of his brothers, who loved film and worked as a benshi, a film narrator/commentator for foreign silent films. His suicide deeply affected the director's sensibilities.In 1930 he responded to a newspaper advertisement for assistant directors at a film studio and began assisting Kajiro Yamamoto, who liked the fact he knew 'a lot about things other than movies'. Within five years he was writing scripts and directing whole sequences for Yamamoto films. In 1943 he made his debut as a director with Judo Saga (Sanshiro Sugata), with a magnificent martial-arts sequence.

His early films were produced during the Second World War, so had to comply to themes prescribed by official state propaganda policy. It was Drunken Angel which was Kurosawa's first personally expressive work, made in 1948 and featuring Toshiro Mifune who became Kurosawa's favourite leading man.

For those who discover Kurosawa, they will find a master technician and stylist, with a deep humanism and compassion for his characters and an awe of the enormity of nature. He awakened the West to Japanese cinema with Rashomon, which won the top prize in the Venice Film Festival of 1951, and also a special Oscar for best foreign film. A golden period followed, with the West enthralled by his work. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo etc.

Following Red Beard (Akahige) in 1965 he entered a frustrating period of aborted projects and forced inactivity and when in 1970 his first film in five years (Dodeska-den) failed at the box office, he attempted suicide. Directing a Soviet-Japanese production, Dersu Uzala helped him to recover and took four years to make. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1975 and a gold medal at the Moscow Film Festival.

A true auteur, he supervised the editing of nearly all his films and wrote or collaborated on the scripts of most. His memoirs were published in 1982, titled Something like an Autobiography. In 1989 he won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. Kurosawa died in 1998.

21st March 2010; Wim Wender's PARIS TEXAS

Paris Texas

A film by Wim Wenders

Year: 1984

Country:USA

Run time: 147 min

English with English subtitles

21st March 2010; 5.45 pm

Perks Mini Theatre

Perks School, Off Trichy Road, Coimbatore

Call : 94430 39630

http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

The man comes walking out of the desert like a Biblical figure, a penitent who has renounced the world. He wears jeans and a baseball cap, the universal costume of America, but the scraggly beard, the deep eye sockets and the tireless lope of his walk tell a story of wandering in the wilderness. What is he looking for? Does he remember?

This is a defiantly individual film, about loss and loneliness and eccentricity. We haven't met the characters before in a dozen other films. The characters in this movie come out of the imagination of Sam Shepard, the playwright of rage and alienation, and Wim Wenders, a West German director who often makes "road movies," in which lost men look for answers in the vastness of great American cities.

The lost man is played this time by Harry Dean Stanton, the most forlorn and angry of all great American character actors. We never do find out what personal cataclysm led to his walk in the desert, but as his memory begins to return, we learn how much he has lost. He was married, once, and had a little boy.

"Paris, Texas" is more concerned with exploring emotions than with telling a story. This isn't a movie about missing persons, but about missing feelings. The images in the film show people framed by the vast, impersonal forms of modern architecture; the cities seem as empty as the desert did in the opening sequence.

It's indeed a beautiful film, one that will surely convince doubters that Muller is one of the cinema's best cameramen. He gives the story a surface polish that hints of Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keefe Americana paintings. Some images are positively breathtaking.

This is Wenders's fourth film shot at least partly in America (the others were "Alice in the Cities," "The American Friend," and "Hammett"). It also bears traces of "Kings of the Road," his German road movie in which two men meet by chance and travel for a time together, united by their mutual inability to love and understand women. But it is better than those movies -- it's his best work so far -- because it links the unforgettable images to a spare, perfectly heard American idiom.

~ Source: Internet

Wim Wenders

Born in Dusseldorf just after the end of World War II, German film director Wim Wenders grew up with an insatiable appetite for movies. After studying medicine and philosophy in his native country, Wenders took up art study in and then returned to his homeland to attend Munich's Academy of Film and Television. Wenders began his career writing film criticism before directing a few short subjects of his own; in 1970 he and several other young filmmakers formed a production-distribution firm, Filmverlag Der Autoren. Summer in the City (1970) was Wenders' first feature film, but it was his 1973 adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter that first brought him attention outside Germany.

Wenders began his "road movie" cycle, inspired by such American pictures as Easy Rider (1970) and Two Lane Blacktop (1971). Three films in this genre followed in quick succession: Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976).

For his first English-language picture, The American Friend (1977), Wenders cast three of his American movie idols: actor Dennis Hopper (director/star of Easy Rider) and "cult" directors Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) and Samuel Fuller (The Steel Helmet). Wenders would later co-direct a film with Ray, Lightning Over Water (1980). Wenders' American-financed films Hammett (1980) and Paris, Texas (1983) were remarkable in their evocation of time and place.

Wenders' return to German filmmaking was rewarded in 1987 with the release of Der Himmel über Berlin, or Wings of Desire. The story of an angel who wants to become human after finding earthly love met with an enthusiastic international response, culminating in a slew of honors for Wenders (including a 1987 Cannes Best Director award, a 1988 European Film Academy award for Best Director, and a host of awards from the New York Film Critics Circle) and an eventual American remake, the 1998 City of Angels.

In the 1990s, Wenders' love of on-the-road location filming was again manifested in such films as Until the End of the World (1991) and Faraway So Close (1993. In 1995, Wenders made a road movie of a different sort with Par-Dela Les Nuages / Beyond the Clouds, which he co-directed with legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. A documentary about Cuban music, the film was the result of a successful collaboration between Wenders and musician Ry Cooder, who had previously supplied the score for the director's Paris, Texas.

~ Source: Internet

28th Feb 2010; Satyajit Ray's APUR SANSAR

Apur Sansar
(The World of Apu)
A film by Satyajit ray
Year : 1959
Bengali with English sub titles
Run time :105 minutes
28th Feb 2010 ; 5.45 pm
Perks Mini Theatre
Perks School , off Trichy Road , Coimbatore
Call : 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com

'Satyajit Ray on Apur Sansar'
- 7 minutes documentary
will follow the main screening

The World of Apu (Apur Sansar) concludes one of the greatest film series of all time, Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, which chronicles the life of one Bengali boy as he traverses the road from childhood through adolescence to maturity. Ray, a masterfully accomplished director, is at the height of his powers with this film, one of the most equally wrenching, uplifting, and cathartic motion pictures I have experienced. Following 1955's Pather Panchali and 1956's Aparajito, this 1959 feature provides the perfect culmination to an unforgettable saga.

The World of Apu is carefully divided into three acts. In the first, we are introduced to the adult Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee), a struggling writer living in a Calcutta apartment during the 1930s. Apu is alone in the world, having already lost his sister (Pather Panchali) and father and mother (Aparajito). He's three months behind in his rent, so, to meet his landlord's demands, he is forced to sell some of his precious books. Jobs are scarce, and Apu can't find one that suits him. One day, his old school friend, Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), arrives to invite him to a wedding in the village of Khulna. Apu, who doesn't have anything else to do, agrees to come. The trip changes Apu's life.

The second act, which has an almost-playful tone, details Apu and Aparna's married life -- how they initially come together as strangers then grow to love and understand one another. In slightly more than thirty minutes, Ray brings to life an unforced, deeply moving romance. Apu and Aparna's gentle relationship is punctuated by bursts of pathos and comedy, but their union is so effectively crafted that it's easy for the viewer to lose him- or herself in the simple beauty of Ray's world.

Alas, the happiness doesn't last forever. The third, defining act of the film hinges on tragedy and its aftermath. The "tragic love story" is a timeless motion picture staple, but few, if any, express emotional truth with the simple, heartbreaking eloquence of The World of Apu. Although the best stories of this sort (such as Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands) typically have moments when they ring false, this movie is free of such missteps. Ray's considerable skills as a film maker are at their pinnacle, and the result is unforgettable.The acting, as is usually the case in a Ray film, is of the highest caliber. Soumitra Chatterjee, who was to become a "regular" in the director's films, gives a fine, multi-dimensional portrayal; it's easy to believe that he's the same Apu that we got to know in the other two films. The void created by the absence of Karuna Bannerjee, who anchored both Pather Panchali and Aparjito as Apu's mother, is filled by the exquisite Sharmila Tagore, who, like Chatterjee, would appear in future Ray films .

The greatness of the "Apu Trilogy" lies not only in its intimate understanding of the intricacies of human nature, but the artistry with which it expresses those truths. Each of the films is filled with wondrous images, and watching Apu's life unfold is like gazing through a window into a rare and unique world. And, even though the trilogy includes much tragedy, Ray gives birth to hope from each despair, and a measure of joy from every sadness. After all, life is like that, and the "Apu Trilogy" reflects the universality of the human experience.
(Source:Internet)

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.

(From - Senses Of Cinema)

BBC Documentary competition

We reproduce the exact text of E mail received from Mr.Nico Wasserman regarding the BBC short film competition.

We are not involved in this competition and we are passing the information received by us.

Please contact the given mail address .

Dear Sir/ Madam

I am a producer at the BBC and we came across your great blog and would like to tell you about a documentary competition that may be of interest to your readers.

We are asking our audiences world wide to submit short 2 minute documentaries about their lives. The project aims to find original stories with compelling personal narratives from each continent . We are very keen to hear from a diverse range of people and films can be in any language. Films can be shot using any kind of device. We have uploaded to our site some great entries from places such as Georgia, Venezuela and South Africa that were shot on mobile phones.

Our hope is to create a vivid and compelling picture of life in the world today. Up to 50 films will be broadcast by the BBC and we have some great judges selecting the films including Cara Mertes from the Sundance Film Festival and Oscar winning producer Greg Sanderson from BBC Storyville amongst others. In addition, there is HD Sony camera equipment on offer to the director of the best judged film.

We think this is a very exciting project for emerging film makers - the films will be seen by a worldwide audience of over 100 million!

The closing date for the competition is 5 March 2010 so just under 2 weeks left to enter. More information is on our website: www.bbcworldservice.com/myworld. We also have a Twitter page www.twitter.com/bbc_myworld

I hope this is of interest to you - be great to know what you think and whether you can help us circulate this on your blog. Also, it would be great to know if you have suggestions of other people we should contact who may be interested.

Best wishes

Nico Wasserman

Nico Wasserman
AP, MyWorld
T: 0207 557 0187
M: 07980 541 652
E: Nico.wasserman@bbc.co.uk
W: www.bbcworldservice.com/myworld
www.twitter.com/bbc_myworld

14th Feb 2010; Teshigahara's PITFALL

PITFALL
A film by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Year : 1962
Country: Japan
Run time: 97 min
Japanese with English subtitles
14th Feb 2010; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theatre
Perks School, off Trichy Road, Coimbatore
Call: 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

A 19 minutes video essay on Pitfall will be
screened after the main screening.

Pitfall is Teshigahara's social critique on the state of the poor man working in a post-war era that questions several meanings in life and sports several characters who each represent a part of the very society that Teshigahara documents.

The director thinks of his film as being a fantasy/documentary, one which studies the way in which the working class are ill treated by the hands of their unsupportive hierarchy and it does indeed work as such.

Teshigahara’s film is mysterious, shocking, eerie, and enticing. The whole picture is visually stunning, exquisitely framed, fluidly shot, and employing some rather innovative effects work. Keeping with the tale’s stage-play roots, in many sequences Teshigahara employs long takes to capture a performance in its entirety. When the scene requires more than one angle, he reframes mid-shot rather than cutting and potentially interrupting the performance’s flow.

Similarly, Teshigahara’s use of superimpositions, reverse photography, and off-kilter shots manages to inspire awe even today. There are many amazing sequences involving ghosts, humans, and the interactions thereof, that feel completely fresh, despite having been rendered cliché in contemporary cinema. Teshigahara’s documentary skills are employed as well in many sequences featuring the protagonist ghost observing union interactions and police interrogations, the camera becoming an impartial observer, thereby facilitating the conveyance of Abe’s very serious criticism of corporate corruption.

PITFALL is a story of two worlds that coexist with no point of intersection but which nonetheless have great impact on one another. In the world of the dead, the deceased are fated to exist eternally as they were in their last moments.

Based on the experimental fiction of postwar novelist Kobo Abe, The Pitfall is a haunting, spare, and elemental, yet surreal and atmospheric portrait on alienation, spiritual bankruptcy, and moral descent. Creating his first feature film, Hiroshi Teshigahara combines the stark realism of his earlier short, documentary works represented by films such as Hokusai, a reverent overview of the works by the seminal Ukiyo-e artist, Katsushika Hokusai; Ikebana, an introductory film on the art, design, and aesthetics of floral composition; and José Torres, a two-part portrait of the humble and mild-mannered Olympic athlete and light heavyweight boxer) with the Kafkaesque psychological nightmare of Abe's allusive modern fiction in order to interweave states of consciousness and subjective realities into a compelling exposition on the nature of existence (an existential theme that is also explored in another feature, Woman in the Dunes.)
(Source : Internet)

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Hiroshi Teshigahara, a celebrated Japanese filmmaker and grand master of the Sogetsu School for flower arrangement. Mr. Teshigahara, who gained international acclaim for his avant-garde films and artwork, sent shock waves through the world of cinema in 1964 with the release of ''Suna no Onna'' (''Woman in the Dunes''), a haunting, poetic and timeless metaphor made in Japan. The film, written by Kobo Abe and based on a novel by him, won a special award at the Cannes International Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for best director and best picture.

Noted for its technical brilliance, originality and power, the film featured a city-bred entomologist who is tricked into living with a widow whose shack rests at the bottom of a deep, inescapable sand pit, where he is forced to shovel sand endlessly. The detainee finds entrapment and escape into his ultimate destiny.

Mr. Teshigahara became interested in Surrealism and the avant-garde as an art student in the 1940's. In 1962 he made his first feature film, ''Otoshiana'' (''Pitfall''), also written by Abe. The director established his own production company and went on to make a series of films, often with Abe. In addition to ''Woman in the Dunes,'' his films included ''Tanin no Kao'' (''The Face of Another'') in 1966 and ''Moetsukita Chizu'' (''The Ruined Map'') in 1968.

In the late 1960's Mr. Teshigahara was the toast of the international film community, appearing at festivals, collecting awards and promoting Japanese film. After releasing ''Natsu no Heitai'' (''Summer Soldiers'') in 1972, Mr. Teshigahara withdrew from feature filmmaking and turned his attention to ceramics and experimental cinema.

After a 17-year hiatus, Mr. Teshigahara returned to films in 1989 with ''Rikyu,'' about the subtle conflict between a petty warlord and a distinguished master of the ancient art of the tea ceremony. It won the award for best artistic contribution at the Montreal World Film Festival. His last film was ''Goh-hime'' (''Basara: The Princess Goh'') in 1992.

He is survived by his wife, Toshiko Kobayashi, a former actress, and two daughters.

(Source:New York Times)

24th Jan 2010; Hitchcock's ROPE

ROPE
A film by Alfred Hitchcock
Country:USA
Year ; 1948
Run time :80 minutes
English with English subtitles
24th January 2010; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater
Perks School , opp Boat House,
Trichy Road, Coimbatore
Call: 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

Opening with a 30 minutes documentary film on Alfred Hitchcock receiving American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award with talks by the Master, James Stewart and Ingrid Bergman.

Rope is a complex and dazzlingly unique picture. Subversively based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case. More macabre writing you aren't likely to find, and a more interesting way to tell the tale you won't likely see. Based on a British play, Hitch opted to shoot the film as if we were indeed watching a stage performance -- seemingly in one long take from beginning to end.

Self-proclaimed “superior beings” Phillip and Brandon (Farley Granger and John Dall respectively) throw a party for their friend’s father, aunt, girlfriend, and former schoolmaster, during which they serve a cold chicken supper. The cast revolve around the two men, blissfully unaware of the horror of the situation they're in.

Venerable actor Sir Cedricke Hardwicke plays the victim’s stuffy father, and the former schoolmaster Rupert Cadell – in a part that is more James than Jimmy – is Mr. Stewart himself, in the first of four brilliant performances for Hitchcock. With the tension established from the opening frame , showing the strangled face of young David and his subsequent concealment in an Italian chest, the suspense of the movie becomes, “will somebody lift up the lid and peek inside?”

The audience is suddenly in that ethical quandary familiar to Hitchcock: extremely hopeful that the body is never discovered and the smarmy killers can get away with their perfect crime. In "Rope," Hitchcock is less concerned with the characters and their moral dilemmas than with how they look, sound and move, and with the overall spectacle of how a perfect crime goes wrong.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

He was known to his audiences as the 'Master of Suspense' and what Hitchcock mastered was not only the art of making films but also the task of taming his own raging imagination. Director of such works as Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and The 39 steps, Hitchcock told his stories through intelligent plots witty dialogue and a spoonful of mystery and murder. In doing so, he inspired a new generation of filmmakers and revolutionized the thriller genre, making him a legend around the world. His brilliance was sometimes too bright: He was hated as well as loved, oversimplified as well as over analyzed. Hitchcock was eccentric, demanding, inventive, impassioned and he had a great sense of British humor.

He was born Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, his father was a green grocer called William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914), his mother was Emma Jane Whelan (1863 - 1942) and he had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (Born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock(born 1892). He grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family. He attended St Ignatius college and a school for engineering and navigation. In 1914, when Hitchcock was 15 years old, his father died.

It was around 1920 when Hitchcock joined the film industry, he started off drawing the sets (Since he was a very skilled artist) and he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only when the director for "Always tell your wife" fell ill and Hitchcock had to complete the film, that he started off in the directing part of the film world, then Alma Reville and Hitchcock began to talk to each other.

Hitchcock had his first shot of being the director of a film in 1923 when he was to direct the film "The Number 13", though the production was stopped. Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed a film called "The Pleasure Garden" in 1925, a British/German production, which was very popular. In 1926, Hitchcock made his first notable film, "The Lodger". In the same year on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child called Patricia Hitchcock (born 7th July 1928).

His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as "The Lady Vanishes" (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of them which also made him famous in the USA. David O. Selznick, an American producer at the time, got in touch with Hitchcock and the Hitchcock family moved to the USA to direct an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1940).

It was when Saboteur (1942) was made, that films companies began to call his films after him; such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.

During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk.

He retired soon after making Family Plot (1976). He started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called "The Short Night" then later David Freeman who completed the script. Though due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made. Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death.

In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep

1st Jan 2010; The Song of Sparrows

KONANGAL OUTREACH SCREENING


The Song of Sparrows
A film by Majid Majidi
Year : 2008
Country : Iran
Runtime: 96 min
Persian with English subtitles
1st Jan 2010 6 pm
Aruna Thirumana Mandapam
(Next to P&T Quarters bus stop)
N S R Road, Saibaba Colony, Coimbatore.

This screening is supported by
Hollywood DVD Shoppee
N S R Road Saibaba Colony Coimbatore

"The Song of Sparrows" is a fitting name for the new film from Iranian writer-director Majid Majidi. Sparrows are, after all, the most ordinary of birds: small, brown, common. The overlooked and the ordinary is exactly the terrain Majidi loves to walk, and we see again in this film his deep affection for his country's common folk -- with their meager resources, menial jobs and yet surprisingly fulfilled lives.

That is not to say he is content to merely let the camera linger too long or too lovingly, though the cinematography by Tooraj Mansouri is beautiful, from sweeping rural vistas to the choking streets of Tehran and always the faces, etched with grime and life, eyes that pool with hurt, frustration, acceptance..

In "The Song of Sparrows," which he co-wrote with Mehran Kashani, Majidi goes down that road again. Here we have Karim (Reza Naji), who works long days on an ostrich farm, caring for the birds and collecting the huge, delicate eggs. But things, which are never easy for this impoverished family man, are about to get more difficult.

Karim’s leathery face makes it difficult to determine his exact age. He could be anywhere from 35 to 55. And it’s highly likely that he’s barely educated, since he’s not so good at making change. Majidi definitely hasn’t created a saint. With bloated pride, Karim doesn’t always do right by his family, violently lashing out when his children infringe on his role as bread winner.

Majidi also enjoys toying with his characters, forever putting them in situations that send their internal moral compasses spinning, letting good and bad choices alike play out long enough for us to see the consequences.
The film abounds in metaphors. Even the son dreams of striking it rich through selling gold—gold fish, that is, and not coincidentally a symbol for prosperity in Iran and elsewhere. But the story is so well told that the symbolism supports rather than sustains the plot. What better metaphor for tenacity than an ornery, ungainly but oddly beautiful ostrich.

Majid Majidi

Majid Majidi was born in Teheran in 1959 from an Iranian middle class family. He grew up in Teheran and at the age of 14 he started acting in amateur theater groups. He then studied at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Teheran.

After the Islamic revolution in 1978, his interest in cinema brought him to act in various films, notably "Boycott" (1985) from Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

His debut as a director and screenwriter is marked by "Baduk" (1992), his first feature film that was presented at the Quinzaine of Cannes and won several awards nationwide. Since then, he has written and directed several films that won worldwide recognitions, notably "Children of Heaven" (1997) that won the "Best Picture" at Montreal International Film Festival and nominated for best foreign film at the Oscar Academy Awards.

His film "The Color of Paradise" (1999) has also won the "Best Picture" award at Montreal International Film Festival. In the USA, it has been selected as one of the best 10 films of year 2000 by Time Magazine and selected by the Critics Picks of the New York Times among the 10 best films of 2000. This film has set a box office record for an Iranian film in the U.S.A. His last film "Baran" has won seven major awards at the Teheran International film Festival in February 2001 and the "Best Picture" award at the 25th Montreal International Film Festival in 2001. After "Baran" he has made five more films till date.
(Source: Internet)

திரைப்படத்தின் உன்னதக் கலைஞன்: மசாகி கோபயாஷி -2

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