The Cinema Travellers is a 96-minute film on Maharashtra’s tent cinemas
Saibal ChatterjeeThe focus of Indians attending the 69th Cannes Film Festival (May 11 to 22) will be on Directors’ Fortnight, a parallel section that has reinvigorated itself in the recent years under artistic director Edouard Waintrop. After the critical and commercial debacle of Bombay Velvet, Anurag Kashyap returns to the quinzaine with a film that is far more in keeping with the spirit of his kind of cinema — Raman Raghav 2.0, a neo-noir thriller starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal. Kashyap was in Directors’ Fortnight in 2012 with the two-part Gangs of Wasseypur and in 2013 with Ugly. Lead actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui believes that Raman Raghav 2.0, about a real-life serial killer who shook Bombay in the mid-1960s, could be Kashyap’s best film to date. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Raman Raghav 2.0 is among a bunch of keenly anticipated films by iconic Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (Endless Poetry), his maverick compatriot Pablo Larrain (Neruda), and veteran American writer-director Paul Schrader (Dog Eat Dog), starring Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe. If Raman Raghav 2.0 does indeed mark a return to form for Kashyap, it would only add to the robustness of the selection. Directors’ Fortnight promises to be one of the more happening sections at the 69th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. It kicks off on May 12 with Marco Bellocchio’s Sweet Dreams, which was widely tipped to be in the official selection but has settled for a sidebar slot. Among other films in the parallel section are Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange documentary, Risk; and 26-year-old Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat’s debut feature, Wolf and Sheep, which represents a major breakthrough for cinema from the war-torn country. Wolf and Sheep is the first arthouse film made by an Afghan woman. India may have drawn a blank this year in the Competition line-up and Un certain regard, where the country had two films (Masaan and Chauthi Koot) in 2015, but it does have a couple of titles elsewhere in the official programme. In Cannes Classics, Mumbai-based researcher Shirley Abraham and photographer Amit Madheshiya’s The Cinema Travellers, a 96-minute film continued from p1 on Maharashtra’s tent cinemas, will be part of a nine-film package of documentaries exploring different aspects of the history of the medium. That apart, Gudh (Nest), a 28-minute film by Saurav Rai, a student of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), has made it to the Cinefondation competition for film schools. Among the restored prints to be screened in Cannes Classics is Pakistani writer-director Aaejay Kardar’s critically acclaimed 1959 film Jago Hua Savera (The Day Shall Dawn). Kardar, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 75, was a first cousin of Indian filmmaker Abdur Rashid Kardar. Jago Hua Savera, the result of a unique subcontinental collaboration, won a gold medal at the Moscow Film Festival and was Pakistan’s nomination for the best foreign language film Oscar in 1959, the year Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar, the third part of the famed Apu trilogy, represented India at the Academy Awards. Adapted from a novel by Bengali litterateur Manik Bandopadhyay by Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Jago Hua Savera was filmed in and around Dhaka in what was then East Pakistan. Its plot revolved around impoverished fishermen struggling to survive against all odds. The cast of Jago Hua Savera was led by Indian actress Tripti Mitra and Bangladeshi actor Khan Ata-ur-Rahman “Anis”. Calcutta’s Timir Baran composed music for the film. The film was shot by Oscar-winning German-born British cinematographer Walter Lassally, who worked frequently with British director Tony Richardson, Greek filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis and James Ivory. Kabul-based writer and director Shahrbanoo Sadat figures in Directors’ Fortnight with the Danish-produced feature film Wolf and Sheep. Wolf and Sheep is set in the rural community in which the filmmaker grew up. It is woven around a story that blends realism and magic and alludes to the myth of the Kashmir wolf, a fearsome creature that walks on two legs and, underneath its fur, is a tall, green and enchanting fairy. Although she filmed in Tajikistan, Shahrbanoo has largely cast young actors drawn from an Afghan village. In Semaine de la critique (Critics Week), a Singaporean entry, K Rajagopal’s A Yellow Bird, a Tamil-Mandarin-English film, is among seven films competing for prizes. It is about an Indian-origin man who returns after serving a jail sentence for possessing contraband goods. The man’s mother, played by Seema Biswas, refuses to forgive him, so he goes looking for his wife and daughter even as he finds solace in the company of a Chinese prostitute. The Atelier, also a part of Cinefondation, has an Indian project — Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Memories and My Mother — among a total of 15 participants in a section that facilitates co-production partnerships. The Bengali-language Memories and My Mother is proposed to be shot in Kolkata this year. The 69th Cannes Film Festival opens on May 11 with an out-of-competition screening of Woody Allen’s Café Society. Over the next 10 days, a formidable array of world cinema masters, including Cannes favourites like Pedro Almodovar (Julieta), Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake), Jim Jarmusch (Paterson), Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper), Nicolas Winding Refn (Neon Demon) and the Dardenne brothers (The Unknown Girl), will premiere their new films on the Croisette. Could a film enthusiast ask for more? Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/
