It was a great opportunity and pleasure to work side by side with famous film critics Chris Fugiwara, whose academic contribution to study of cinema has been fabulous, and Barbara Lorey De Lacharriere, who is a much sought after film jury-cum-mentor, during the 13th International Film Festival of Kerala. Spread in nine theatres in Thiruvananthapuram in the middle of December, the festival offered a carefully selected dossier of films from 59 countries in 14 categories, including the competition section that offered a strong slate of 14 films from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Considered as one of the best in the festival-circuit across the globe, IFFK 2008 had the highest number of delegates attending it, the number crossing 8,000 this time, according to Kerala’s seasoned and committed cultural minister MA Baby.

As the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) jury, we were unanimous in choosing Mariana Rondon's inventive and engaging film Postcards from Leningrad as the best film. The main jury, on the other hand, had chosen her for the best director award. It is a gripping cinematic tale dealing with the left-wing guerrilla movement of the 1960s in Venezuela, but told through the minds of the children of the revolutionary parents. The structure of the film is enlivened by an amalgamation of various styles, quite inimitable in using 16 mm film within 35 mm format and split screens, visual collage and animation over live action, to justify children’s view of dreams and reality. Only the second feature film by the young director, it is already bestowed with a few awards in Latin American film competition and nominated to Oscars this year. The film’s principal storyteller, Nina, narrates the story of her family focusing mostly on her young militant mother forced into hiding. Nina’s cousin brother Teo has not seen his parents since he was an infant, but enjoys receiving postcards from his mother, believed to be writing from Leningrad; but actually the letters are written by others to temporarily shelter the child from the reality that his mother was, presumably, killed. Every time a militant is killed, a letter arrives the concerned children. But although the story is told from the child’s eye-view, the narrative jumping forth and back in chronological disorder, the visuals also take liberty to depict armed encounters and love affair as well as treasons within the ranks of the insurgents. The inter-dependence of content and form in this film is quite unique.

We were ecstatic to choose Anjali Menon’s first-time effort Manjadikuru (Lucky Red Seeds) as the best Malayalam film for its poignant tale of an extended family caught in the crisis of greed and social prejudice, revealed through the relations between various characters and from the emotional detachment of four children. Obviously, this is another film that manages to be emotionally powerful without making a crude appeal to the viewer’s emotions, as the narrative cruises along the experiences of the children who got together in a sprawling ancestral home in rural Kerala of mid-1970s. The grandfather of the protagonist, a leftist ideologue, is no more and a 16-day-long funeral rites commences as the focus of the family members fall into the property will made by the deceased. Apparently, it depicts two worlds inhabited by children and the adults, of material and spiritual, of hedonism and innocence, both often come to friction, in between which a servant girl is caught, who is neither an insider nor an outsider. The story ultimately stands out as a soulful commentary on social taboos. The director of this film also bagged the Hassankutty award for the best debutant Indian director judged by a different jury.

There were two other significant competition entries, one being Huseyin Karabey’s My Marlon and Brando, which won Rajat Chakram (the Silver Crow Pheasant) for the best debut director dealing with some weird experiences of a young theatre actress from Istanbul. She is in love with a Kurdish theatre artiste whom she met earlier. Defying all odds she embarks on a journey to meet her love believed to be somewhere in the war-torn northern Iraq. There are images of deserted landscapes, security checks by alert military, tense and dumbstruck people in roadside restaurants which bring forth the persisting effects of war and at the same time expose the lovelorn woman’s solitude. The sound metaphors play a consistent part in the film — the telephone conversations, the only feeble communication between the two lovers, become more difficult towards the end leaving the young lady face to face with an uncertain future. The riveting voice of a Kurdish singer increases the sense of melancholic longing. The film did not show the war, but it stood out as an authentic tale of wartime agony and helplessness. This film also won the NETPAC (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema) award for best Asian film.

On the other hand, Enrique Rivero’s Parque Via was named by the festival jury as the best film giving away Suvarna Chakram (the Golden Crow Pheasant and a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh) which had earlier won Golden Leopard award in the prestigious Locarno Film Festival. It is a strange tale of an aged single man dealt with subdued histrionics in Mexican backdrop. The man has been living and taking care of a large but vacant luxury house equipped with theatre hall and big garden. The elderly owner, a decent lady, arranges to sell the house giving him sufficient money to lead the rest of his life. But always fearful of the outside world, images of which very often have an effect on him through his obsession of watching TV news, the man commits a virtual crime just with an intention to live within the prison cell — to instill a formal stamp on his self-imposed solitude. A low-key psychodrama, the film has an inimitable style leaving the viewers with the gaps to fly in imagination.

There were not only the awarded films to draw attention in the competition section alone, let alone other dazzling creations showcased in the non-competitive sections as well. They included Girish Kasaravalli's masterly Gulabi Talkies on sharp communal divide influenced by economic compulsion, Amor Hakkar’s absurdist human drama The Yellow House dwelling on the situation in a young soldier’s family after his sudden death, Laurent Salgues’ impressive blend of docu and drama in a desert gold mine Dreams of Dust, Uberto Pasolini’s moving comedy thrill Machan about immigrants in the west, etc to name only a few.

Among the others, the opening film of the festival, Laila’s Birthday was quite unforgettable. This is a Rashid Masharawi film with a strong visual verbose on contemporary Palestinian life. Projecting a single day in the life of Abu Laila, who once used to be a judge, but now because of financial crunch on the government forced to become a taxi driver, the film takes off when he goes to buy a cake and a gift on the day of his daughter’s seventh birthday. However, he is slowly driven crazy by his surroundings — a series of unpleasant incidents not peculiar to everyday life of an ordinary citizen in the West Bank city of Ramallah. However, the film does not take side bluntly as there are criticism of inhuman Israeli attack as well as a bureaucratic Palestinian authority: an Israeli missile almost takes Abu’s life as he comes on the way of an approaching protest march against ongoing siege of Gaza, while the ministry of justice is too indifferent to help him get a position of honour. Once he is even seen grabbing a microphone from a police van to throw verbal abuses on an Israeli helicopter flying overhead. The reality and absurdity of the situation coupled with imagination of the filmmaker are combined so well that the archetypal — generally attached to black humour in such films — does not seem to be existing anywhere. This unique film has rightfully won accolades and prizes in Cannes, Paris, Cairo and other reputed film festivals.

It is another point to note that though this festival is recognized by FIAPF (the International Federation of Film Producers Association), it had only one film from the northeastern states of India this year. It was Yarwng (Roots) in Kokborok language, directed by Joseph Pulinthanath. To my immense delight, I found the film aesthetically satisfying to many viewers. While exposing the effects of construction of a dam on the people of a submerged land, it depends heavily on the subtle images of cultural ethos gradually coming under threat of getting extinct. Although it may be disappointing that the dam spilling so much havoc in its vicinity is not shown (the obvious reason can be traced to the security aspect of the region), the film has the marks of skill and restraint in the handling of the characters and in the formation of drama.

A film festival of global standard as this one should bring forth succour to the present scenerio of Malayalam cinema which, like all regional cinemas of India, is trying hard to come to terms with the visual culture of the new age. The Government of Kerala is putting on consistent efforts to lift the state film industry from its present juncture, reeling under cultural interventions as part of globalization. It is still producing 50 to 60 celluloid creations a year which is much less than it used to produce before. But one thing that needs proper attention is that quality matters more than quantity against the new world realities. In this regard, the success of IFFK is raising the spirit of the industry to new high that needs to be emulated by other film industries in the country.

Manoj Barpujari