Cinephilia

Colour of patriarchy

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Hellaro is a celebration of colour and cause. It’s enjoyable if you can ignore the shortcomings.

The film’s most celebrated part — its meticulously choreographed dance sequences — is also the most problematic one.

ATIKH RASHID

FOLKTALES provide good fodder for cinema. The tales have an inherent strength which has helped them survive for centuries. They also do not have a claimant author clinging to the content and commanding ownership. In the Indian context, where filmmakers have to ensure that the film includes certain ‘must-haves’, which will enable it a commercial life, the folktales also provide a flexibility in adaptation that would otherwise be difficult to secure in case of a celebrated work of literature.

Hellaro, directed by Abhishek Shah, which has brought laurels for Gujarati cinema by winning the industry’s first ever Golden Lotus at National Film Awards, is a folktale adaptation which tries to tick all the right boxes. This is something that has helped the film’s first-time director secure rave reviews, two national awards as well as a special mention at the recently concluded International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

Hellaro, which in Gujarati means ‘a strong gust of wind’, takes its plot from a popular folktale from a small and forgotten region of Gujarat — the sandy and solitary Prathand in the desert of Kutch, close to the frontier with Pakistan — and turns into a cinematic feast with vibrant visuals and overtly melodramatic ebbs and flows. In the process, however, the folktale that the film draws its story from is retained only in its
bare frame.

The plot follows a group of upper-caste women, who are living in an extremely patriarchal and suppressive system, and are barred from doing garba — the Gujarati folk dance — owing to a superstition that it would anger the village deity, who ironically is female. As the women suffer this injustice silently, enters a young, semi-educated and rebellious girl Manjari (played by Shraddha Dangar) after she is married into the village. During the daily ritual of fetching water from a far-off pond, the women discover a wayward, low-caste drummer (convincingly played by Jayesh More) who agrees to play for them at Manjari’s request. Although reluctant initially, the women join the dance and this becomes their secret routine during the daily trip to fetch water. As the crime is discovered and punishment is suffered, the women manage to retain their right to garba, not because of a change of heart on the part of men but as it’s discovered in the climax of the film that as women dance the goddess ‘blesses’ the village with rains.

The plot of the folktale, Vrajvani No Dholi (Vrajvani’s Drummer), is considerably different. Here, a handsome but ‘low-caste’ drummer walks into a village and starts beating his drum in the square. The sound is so enchanting and irresistible that women drop their chores, gather around the drummer and start dancing. The men find nothing wrong in this until a jealous priest turns one of the men against the dholi, pointing to his caste. The man kills the drummer, and as the beats stop, the women smack their heads with their bangles and kill themselves as if to atone the sin.

The film plays down the caste aspect of the story and reduces it to a sub-plot. Instead writer-director Shah invents the theme of women’s rebellion against patriarchy and suppression as the rallying point of the film. For this purpose it has to introduce the ban on garba, although, in the folktale, there’s no embargo on the dancing of women. This new plot works fine too — the changes can be ascribed to Shah being, confessedly, a ‘feminist’. But the apparent success of the screenplay, the bland characterisation dampens all the fun that the plot holds promise for. Bhaglo is a man with sympathy for women’s cause because of his regular trips to the city. Like most men in the village, Manjari’s husband is an incorrigible misogynist, who believes in violating his wife than loving her.

Such characterisation and overt melodrama takes the film closer to the aesthetics of the one strand of the Indian art-house cinema of ’70s and ’80s. One is reminded of Ketan Mehta’s Mircha Masala (1987) which, although doesn’t specify its setting, is based in the same desert of Kutch. In fact, the setting, structure and sartorial choices of its inhabitants, the ritual of fetching water from a far-off water body, hints that it’s the same cinematic village that
we have seen in Mehta’s film.

The film’s most celebrated part — its meticulously choreographed dance sequences — is also the most problematic one. The sequences designed by the celebrated Gujarati choreographers Arsh and Sameer Tanna, who have previously worked for Bollywood blockbusters Ram Leela (2013) and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) — reduce the women’s brief interlude from the repression into a spectacle for the viewer. The group wears colourful chania-cholis and does synchronised dancing. It is done in a way that it is agreeable to the camera, to the extent that the vessels dropped by women in the sand arrange themselves in symmetric form at the edge of the frame. It makes one wonder if the women are dancing for their freedom from patriarchy or to the enslavement of the camera.

That said, the praise and recognition that the film has received is likely to reinvigorate the Gujarati film industry. What has been achieved by the team, in a respectable but small budget of Rs 2.5 crore, is no small feat. Hellaro is a celebration of colour and cause, and it’s an enjoyable film if you are ready to ignore its many shortcomings.

Film Heritage and History, Long Reads

Why has IFFI failed to make a name for itself despite being the oldest film festival in Asia?

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Although it has been around for 67 years, the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) lacks an identity of its own. In the late 1970s, efforts were made to distinguish IFFI on the world map by establishing it as a forum for the cinema of the developing world, but the plan was soon abandoned.

ATIKH RASHID

Every year about 2000 film festivals are held across the globe. Also, every year, scores of new ones come onto the scene and same number, or more, disappear into oblivion. Considering this, marking 67 years of existence and celebrating 50 editions is not a mean feat for any film festival. Therefore, it is a cause of pride for India that the state-funded International Film Festival of India (IFFI) successfully held its golden jubilee edition in Goa which concluded on Thursday.

But this shouldn’t be a cause of contentment. Is it not bothersome that IFFI, born in 1952 when it was the first such event anywhere in the East, doesn’t hold a place of prestige on the global film festival map? In fact, within Asia it is not counted among the most important festivals, despite being the eldest in the room, and much younger festivals – such as Busan International Film Festival which started in 1996 – acquiring greater importance in the international circuit.

In recent decades, state patronage has not been an issue. The Union Government and State Government of Goa (since it was moved there in 2004) have been putting in big money into the annual event. For the last 4-5 years, as much as Rs 20 crore is being spent on each edition by the two governments. The prize money given to winners at IFFI is also big – much higher than those given at several most prestigious film festivals in the world. Despite all this, IFFI is failing to click globally.

The reason for this failing, it appears, could be that IFFI has failed to create an identity for itself which will help it stand apart from the rest. In the highly competitive world of film festivals, IFFI doesn’t hold a promise to provide to the foreign filmmakers, international press and cinephiles, something that they will find nowhere else.

Perhaps, this is the reason that apart from invited (and paid for) foreign guests, the international community has turned its back on the event. In recent years, there have been no efforts to work on this identity lacuna. The focus, instead, has been on pomp and show that has started to put-off even the local film lovers.

Efforts to give IFFI a third world identity

It’s not the case that the organisers of IFFI were always blissfully unaware of its ‘identity’ lacuna. In fact, in the late 1970s when IFFI was still holding its early editions, the then festival director took steps to help IFFI develop a distinct personality. IFFI walked on that path for a couple of years but strayed soon with changes in priorities of the parent ministry.

Raghunath Raina, a bureaucrat belonging to Indian Information Service (IIS), became the Director of Film Festivals (DFF) in August 1978 and took upon himself to create a place of prominence for IFFI on the global festival map. His belief was that IFFI will gain importance on the world stage only if it offered something unavailable elsewhere.

Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.

To achieve this goal, he planned to turn IFFI into a prominent forum for ‘third world’ cinema which would attract films and filmmakers from developing nations from across the world. As per him, if IFFI could hold such a promise, it would attract international delegates and the press by providing an opportunity to them to “keep abreast with trends in the cinemas of the people constituting 2/3rd of the world population”. He did make the efforts in that direction during 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the festivals held between 1979 and 1981 when he headed the DFF.

National Film Archive of India. Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.
“My concern was not only to organise a successful and interesting festival but also to imbue it with a distinctive character of its own,” Raina wrote in an essay ‘IFFI-An Introspective Study’ included in the book ’70 Years of Indian Cinema’ published in 1984. “There had often been talk of a third world bias (between 1979-81) but this was largely an expression of intent. I clearly saw that if the festival became a forum for the third world cinema, it would acquire a personality and importance of its own. As such, it would also fit in with the country’s role as a founder-member of the non-aligned movement and as a leading protagonist, of the aspirations of the developing nations,” he wrote.

As part of his plan, in 7th edition of IFFI held in 1979, he invited Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene to head the international jury – a first for an African filmmaker at IFFI and a deliberate attempt was made to include a record number of third world films in both competitive and documentary film sections. Also, a symposium on ‘Cinema of the Developing Countries’ was held during the festival where African filmmakers criticised India’s policy of exporting films to fellow developing countries without importing any from them. India, they alleged, thus was following a policy of cultural imperialism much like the USA.

Raina continued his attempt in this direction in the 1980 festival (Filmotsav) held in Bangalore and 1981 when it returned to Delhi as a competitive festival. In fact, he had proposed that the international competition at IFFI should be reserved only for films from developing countries. The government’s hesitance to do this shelved this plan. Soon after the government at the centre changed, and the responsibility of organising the next edition of IFFI was handed over to National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

In the essay mentioned above, Raina laments that his aim of giving a special identity to the IFFI remained unrealised and the festival has suffered subsequently due to this.

“Many elements of the Nehru dream have withered away; others remain only in form. The Indian (film) festival is one of them. It will continue to be so unless it is given an identity and is organised by people with a commitment to the film promotion and a passion for cinema,” wrote Raina.

IFFI is losing its patrons

Data obtained by The Indian Express from Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), which looks after the logistical part of the festival organisation, shows that IFFI hasn’t only failed to attract international crowd, but it has been losing even its local patrons in recent years.

As per the data pertaining to delegate registrations for IFFI between 2007 and 2018, the number of delegates coming for IFFI went up from 2007 to 2014 but has since seen a sharp decline until the recent edition where, perhaps due to the hype of 50th edition, the numbers have somewhat improved.

International Film Festival of India Golden jubilee edition of International Film Festival of India concluded in Goa on Thursday. Credit: International Film Festival of India.
IFFI’s 2007 edition had attracted 3,713 delegates -including those from Goa and outside – which increased with every passing year and reached 10,054 in 2014, highest in recent past. However, in 2015 only 6196 delegates attended the event and the number came further down in 2016 to 5261 and slid further to 5020 in 2017. In 2018, the number improved marginally to 5214. Although officials number for the 2019 edition – which concluded on Thursday – are not yet available, the organisers said that around 6300 paid delegate passes and 1000 free student passes were distributed. The number is considerably lower than the 2014 count of 10,054.

Officials with Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), the Goa Government unit responsible for organising the festival along with DFF, are hoping that this number would go up with their efforts to add more venues and experiments with online ticketing. “With more convenience, the delegate count will increase in future editions,” said Subhash Phal Dessai, Vice Chairman, ESG.

Can appointing a ‘Creative Director’ help IFFI?

Raina, a bureaucrat himself, had blamed the lack of a ‘sustained vision’ and IFFI’s bureaucratic setup or the festival’s failure to develop a personality.

“…The absence of a sustained vision on the part of the authorities and the vagaries of a system that grants hegemony to transient, generalist bureaucrats over people with a commitment to and expertise in film promotion, never gave the IFFI a chance to develop a distinctive personality of its own,” he wrote.

Rain’s comment remains true even after 35 years. In its present organisational setup, the Festival Director is a bureaucrat who occupies the post of Director of Film Festivals (DFF) for a maximum period of three years. He/She may or may not have any background in cinema before he occupies this post. And more often than not, even if he gains some expertise on the subject– in case he’s genuinely invested in the festival’s future – he’s out of there. The steering committee of the festival, which has a mix of bureaucrats, filmmakers and politicians, is appointed afresh every year and hence can’t think beyond the upcoming edition. A look at the names of filmmakers on the committee makes it apparent that, in a majority of cases, their political views seem to have played a key role in the appointment process rather than their potential to contribute to the event and its future.

There has been a long-standing demand that IFFI should get a ‘Creative Director’, someone who would have real expertise in film festival organising, cinema and who could provide a sustained vision to the festival by holding the position for a longer duration. However, there has been no progress on that front. In fact, the issue was discussed this year too at the first meeting of the steering committee held by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The minutes of the meeting, obtained by Express using Right To Information, show that the suggestion was turned down after a member pointed out that “DFF is competent enough to look into creative aspects and the idea of a Creative Director may not be necessary.”

It appears that the beneficiaries of the present setup do not want it to change although it is costing the festival dearly.

Film Heritage and History

Shape of silence

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Playing live music for silent films may not be new, but what marks UK-based pianist and film academician Jonny Best apart is his spontaneity.

ATIKH RASHID

It’s Friday night in Goa and the Kala Academy auditorium, where the 50th edition of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is being held, is full to its 950-seat capacity. In the audience is one seated closest to the stage. That’s Jonny Best. He is there to make the Russian film Battleship Potemkin (1925) audible. Best, a pianist and scholar of silent films from the UK, will play live music as an accompaniment to the film. He insists that he’s not a film composer but a “improviser”.

The festival this year has a special section in which silent films are screened with live music. These include Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929).

“In contrast to music composition, live music for silent film is all about spontaneity. A film composer can revise his work and reach for perfection but an improviser has to respond to the moment. The beauty of playing live is that it is always imperfect and non-repeatable. If you make a mistake, you have to forgive yourself and move on,” says Best.

Best began performing improvised piano accompaniments for silent films in 2014, taking part in the masterclasses at the silent film festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, northern Italy, in 2015. A year later he founded the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, where live-scored silent films were screened in cinemas, theatres and village halls across the historic county in northern England.

Armed with a PhD from University of Huddersfield Music Department, Best is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Musical Association.

Jonny Best, Jonny Best musician, silent films, best silent films, entertainment news Jonny Best
He doesn’t necessarily research about the film or plan his music. His homework is restricted to preparing a mental image of the plot and the order of events. Sometimes, he watches the complicated scenes in the film and makes mental notes. “If I plan the music, then the performance becomes me trying to remember what I had planned. My best performances have come from being in the present, just like the audience,” he says.

Among the three films for which Best played at IFFI, each one was handled differently. For Battleship, his notes build up the angst as the ship workers are unfairly treated in the first half, while in the second half the piano strings evoke the spirit of a revolution as they rise in mutiny. In Blackmail, on the other hand, Best tried to build an air of suspicion to go with the milieu of the thriller.

Playing live music with silent films is not a trend or new. In fact, silent films were often accompanied by live orchestra in the early days. In fact, many films have live music written for them. In India too, cinema palaces screened short films and features accompanied by a string band in the first decade of 20th century. “It’s true that everything I do imposes a certain reading of the film upon the audience. I think there’s a responsibility that’s involved in the job and one has to play the music with tremendous respect for the film. I’m, in a way, the audiences’ representative, offering shape to the film,” he says.

Long Reads

When india’s first film festival was suspected to be a ‘communist ploy’

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Held in 1952, when cold war anxieties were on a high, the film festival prompted the American government to send a delegation headed by Hollywood director Frank Capra to “uncover” the conspiracy and hinder its success. 

Hollywood director Frank Capra with Hindi film star Dev Anand in Mumbai during first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held in 1952.

ATIKH RASHID

AN international film festival was still a novelty when India decided to hold one in 1952. In fact, the first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held in January-February 1952 in four (now metro) cities was the first such event held anywhere in Asia. There were only eight international film festivals in the world at that time and all of them were in Europe, including the oldest in Venice.

So, when India, then a recently decolonised “third-world” country, announced its plans to host an international film festival, it led to varied reactions from within and outside the country. Among these, and most curious of them all, was the American response.

Apparently, the US authorities suspected the festival was a “communist shenanigan of some kind” and sent a delegation to “uncover” the conspiracy and hinder its success. Those were the initial years of the Cold War and both the USSR and the US were trying to influence the non-aligned countries in their favour to nullify any political or cultural influence exerted by their rival superpower. According to film historian Amrit Gangar, both the superpowers had an eye on newly independent India and IFFI 1952 provided a useful platform to somehow influence the India’s global-political stance. He says, “Only a few months prior to IFFI, an Indian film delegation was in the USSR where it had received a grand reception in the presence of the well-known Russian filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin. Soon after IFFI ended, Indian film personalities like Nargis and Raj Kapoor were invited to the US where President (Harry S.) Truman met them at the White House.” Significantly, among the 12 visiting delegations, Russia’s was the largest, with 13 members, headed by then deputy minister of cinematography N Semenov.

The responsibility to head the American delegation fell upon celebrated Hollywood director Frank Capra, known for films such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and It Happened One Night (1934). Capra biography The Name Above the Title (1971) gives us details of this “assignment” came to him and how he successfully completed it.

In December 1951, Capra writes, he received a call from an officer of the US state department informing him that the US ambassador in New Delhi needed Capra’s services and wanted him to travel to India for a few weeks.

“Frank, listen. Chester Bowles, our ambassador to India, is worried. He thinks he smells a rat in the International Film Festival of the motion pictures that Indians are holding in a week. Bowles thinks the festival is a communist shenanigan of some kind, but he doesn’t know what. Here’s where you come in,” Capra quotes the official as saying, adding that the ambassador had specifically asked for Capra as he wanted a “freewheeling guy” to take care of American interest on his own. “I want Capra. His name is big here (in India), and I have heard he is quick on his feet in an alley fight,” Bowles had apparently told the officer.

At this time, Capra was in the midst of a personal challenge as well. Only a few weeks ago, the US army had denied his security clearance to participate in a top-secret conference pertaining to warfare technologies, after finding some “derogatory information” on him. This essentially meant that the American establishment was questioning his loyalty to the country. This deeply hurt Capra, who got busy in trying to clear his name. When the proposal for the India tour came up, he proposed that he would only go to India if his name is cleared. His wish was met, and he embarked on the journey. He was to head the delegation, with Harry Stone of the Motion Picture Association of America and Floyd E Brooker, the audiovisual expert as members. All three were briefed by the US state department officials with instructions to Capra: “Just play it by ear, Frank, and report to Ambassador Bowles.”

Frank Capra (seated, first row, second from left) with Jawaharlal Nehru at the Delhi inauguration of IFFI 1952 at National Physical Laboratory


As Capra records, for several days after his arrival in Bombay, he groped in the dark about what he was expected to do and what “the communist conspiracy” was. Since Ambassador Bowles was on a trip to Nepal, Capra couldn’t discuss “the matter” with him to get clarity. When Capra approached other US officials based in India, he found that they were as clueless: “When you find out, tell us.”

On his fifth day in India, Capra met Baburao Patel, the boisterous and boastful editor of filmindia magazine, who said something about the festival which gave Capra a “hint of what was bugging Bowles”. Patel reportedly told him that IFFI was a plot by communists in the Indian film industry to open doors to Russian films which were being kept out of the country by censors as these films were “too political and inflammatory”. “So local film Reds hatched the festival idea to ensure showing of dozens of Russian and Chinese films” in four cities as an appeal to the people of India to “breach India’s film barrier using the festival as a Trojan horse”, Capra wrote in the diary, published in the autobiography.

What Capra did not know was that Patel himself was an anti-communist worried about an imminent “communist takeover” of India. “A blind man can see that our country is going to have a Red future unless the democratic forces and institutions in the country take active and aggressive steps,” Patel wrote in an editorial published in the April 1952 edition of filmindia. Patel was also mighty displeased with the idea of the festival. Throughout filmindia’s coverage of it, he called it “International Fools’ Festival”.

Having thus received a “confirmation” from Patel, Capra gave an ultimatum to the festival organisers that in case of any “pro-commie” speech at the festival, he will “leave, taking along all the American films and holding a press conference to explain (reasons) of my leaving”. Throughout his Bombay and Madras stay, he tried making speeches asking the filmmakers to guard themselves against “totalitarian system”.

He complained about the Russians to Indira Gandhi knowing fully well that “it would get to the Prime Minister”. Capra would meet Nehru when the latter inaugurated IFFI’s Delhi edition. “Charming, simple man. Could be the most important man alive today,” Capra noted in his diary.

Capra and other foreign delegates paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Raj Ghat during first IFFI’s Delhi leg. They are accompanied by Gandhi’s grandchildren including Gopalkrishna Gandhi (extreme right) who as then 7.

This anxiety about the communist ploy, sometimes, took hilarious turns.

On one instance, when the guests were to visit Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial at Raj Ghat, the flower wreath that Capra and his colleagues had ordered turned out very thin. Capra was convinced that “the Reds had bought them all up”. According to his version, the American delegation then devised a plan to “outsmart” communists by taking along two of Gandhi’s grandchildren (through Capra’s recent acquaintance with Devdas Gandhi). The plan worked — the event got great publicity. That day he noted in his diary: “This should kill the Reds”.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, one of the “grandchildren” who visited Raj Ghat with Capra, was seven then. “It seems incredible that anyone could be as naive as to think, say and do what Mr Capra sets down. It all seems like something out of Alice In Wonderland,” Gandhi told The Indian Express.

Capra though, wrote in his autobiography, when Ambassador Bowles returned, he was “pleased with his report”.

This article appeared in the print edition with the headline ‘A Plot to Unravel’ on November 17 2019. I can be accessed here.

 

Reportage

All hat, no cattle: Goa promise to build IFFI Village before 50th edition still on paper

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Over the last few years, the state’s successive chief ministers have been promising to ready ‘IFFI Village’ before November 2019 when the 50th edition of the festival is scheduled. Information obtained by The Indian Express using RTI shows that there has been little progress on ground.

ATIKH RASHID

FIVE years after it announced a plan to build a permanent complex to host the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and with the event’s golden jubilee just a few weeks away, the Goa government is yet to award a contract for the Rs 1,100-crore ‘IFFI Village’ project, according to information received by The Indian Express in response to an RTI query.

Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), the state government body which is a co-organiser of IFFI and has recently been entrusted with the IFFI Village project after another government body (EDC Limited) failed to make significant progress, has said it can start work on the project only after IFFI is over.

Over the last few years, the state’s successive chief ministers have been promising to ready ‘IFFI Village’ before November 2019 when the 50th edition of the festival is scheduled.

While organisers have said they are expecting over 10,000 delegates for IFFI’s golden jubilee edition, it’s not clear where they will be accommodated as the existing infrastructure has a capacity of 2500. Also, the availability of the biggest venue, Kala Academy, has come under a cloud due to structural issues. The state government is now looking at the possibility of hiring single-screen theatres near the venue.

The 50 acre plot allotted for the project in March 2016 has seen no work since.
IFFI Village, a convention centre planned to be built on DBFOT basis (Design, Build, Finance, Operate, Transfer), was touted to end the trouble delegates go through due to inadequate seating capacity.

The 50 acre plot allotted for the project in March 2016 has seen no work since

IFFI, the oldest film festival in Asia, started in 1952. Until 2003, it was hosted by different cities every year. It finally found a home in Goa after the festival was organised there in 2004. Goa was made IFFI’s permanent host in 2014 and as per an MoU signed between I&B Ministry and the state government, one of the key responsibilities of Goa government was to “develop and construct a permanent festival venue having a seating capacity for around 12,000 delegates/invitees and other support facilities for organizing opening and closing functions including film screenings”.

Soon after a permanent venue was announced, the Goa government said potential locations for ‘a new convention centre to host IFFI’ have been identified. On March 31, 2016, the state cabinet allotted a 50-acre plot in Dona Paula. In September 2017, then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar appointed EDC Limited, a state government undertaking, as a special purpose vehicle for the project and set IFFI 2019 as the deadline.

Documents inspected show there has been little progress since.

The request for proposal for the project was prepared only in December 2018 and presented before the ‘Empowered Committee’ headed by then CM Parrikar. A tender inviting bids was floated on January 28, 2019, only to realise that there was a legal glitch in the contract as the state’s Additional Solicitor General Atmaram Nadkarni pointed out that in the current format, the government may end up losing ownership of the land to the prospective concessionaire. This led to issuance of several corrigenda — six till July 2019 — with the last one pegging the bid opening date at October 28, weeks before the 50th IFFI.

In September, the Empowered Committee under current CM Pramod Sawant decided to take away the project from EDC Limited and hand it over to ESG, the government body set up for organising IFFI in coordination with Directorate of Film Festivals, Government of India. This led to EDC withdrawing the request for proposal.

As per the request for proposal, the project is to be undertaken in two parts — the first comprising mandatory deliverables such as theatres to screen films, multi-level car parking and other facilities. The second includes setting up commercial buildings such as hotels. While the first part is expected to require an investment of Rs 350 crore, the second is estimated to cost Rs 750 crore.

The project plan includes a total of 11 auditoria in the ‘IFFI village’ with a total capacity of 8600 seats which will comprise of one large multipurpose hall of 6000 square meter area with a capacity to host 5000 persons, a multiplex with six multipurpose auditoria having a total 1500 seats, one large cinema theatre with 1000 seats, another theatre with 500 seats, two more with 250 seats each and a virtual reality (VR) cinema hall with a capacity to host 100 persons.

At present, IFFI infrastructure in Goa has a cumulative seating capacity of just 2,539 seats at three venues namely Kala Academy, Inox Multiplex and Maquinez Palace. With an average of over 5000 delegates registering every year to attend the biggest film festival in India, this often causes a lot of trouble, disappointments and ruckus during the event as delegates have to wait in long queues to get into the threatres. Kiran Ballikar, Managing Director of EDC Limited said, “It has been decided by the empowered committee to hand over the project to ESG. They will take the project ahead.”

Subhash Phal Dessai, BJP MLA and Vice-Chairman of Entertainment of Society of Goa (ESG) which is responsible for logistical side of IFFI, said that the delay has been caused due to EDC’s lack of experience in handling such projects.

“The state government asked EDC to implement the project as ESG was seen as a cultural organisation with no expertise to implement such a big project of over Rs 1000 crore. However, EDC is a financial institution and also doesn’t have the relevant experience to implement such a project which is essentially a construction project. They don’t have a team of engineers. This lack of competence and interest in the project on part of EDC has delayed it,” said Phal Dessai.

He said that the ESG is presently busy in oganising the 50th IFFI and any work on ‘IFFI village’ project will only be done after the festival is over.

When asked about the plans to deal with problems that organisers may face due to delay in completion of ‘IFFI village project’ and additional footfall of delegates and invitees that 50th IFFI is expected to attract, Phal Dessai said that ESG is planning to increase auditoriums to accommodate more delegates.

“We are in touch with three additional theatres and if the need arises we may use them as well during IFFI 2019. Of these, two are close to the existing venue and one is slightly far. We will make a decision regarding engaging these for IFFI in future meetings of the steering committee. Although there are some structural issues with Kala Academy, the Chief Minister has reviewed the situation and we will ensure that it’s safe enough to host IFFI screenings,” said Phal Dessai.

Reportage

STATE Govt claims panchayats planted 1.7 cr trees in Pune Division, no evidence for 87% per cent plantation

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Field visits conducted by The Indian Express in 20 villages in Sangli, Satara and Kolhapur Districts, showed that that most Gram Panchayats had “distributed” the saplings they were asked to plant. Many couldn’t show the locations of planted saplings.

A resident of Bramhanal village shows a wilted sapling that he said died as the village was submerged in water for days.

ATIKH RASHID

While the state government is claiming to have not only achieved but exceeded the target of planting 33 crore trees in the state as part of the three-month-long ‘Green Maharashtra’ drive — which ended on September 30 —a substantial part of the evidence to support this claim is missing from the state Forest department’s portal. Information shows that gram panchayats — which as per government claims planted 8.64 crore saplings — have not uploaded geographical tags and pictures to support the plantation numbers. In Pune Division alone, Gram Panchayats have not uploaded geo-tags and photographs for as much as 87 per cent of purported tree plantations.

The state forest department had created a special portal to monitor the tree plantation across the state by over 59 agencies. It was made mandatory for every agency to geographically tag the plantation sites and take pictures of the site and the saplings before and during the plantation, to ensure that the plantation has indeed been carried out.

According to the government website, 34.54 crore trees have been so far planted in the state with geographic tagging and the target has been surpassed with a 104.68 per cent plantation.

The Indian Express examined the tree plantation data uploaded on the Forest department’s portal for five districts of Pune division and found that while it has been claimed that gram panchayats in five districts — Pune, Sangli, Satara, Kolhapur and Solapur — have planted a total of 1.7 crore saplings, the panchayats did not provide any evidence for the plantation of as many as 1.49 crore trees (87.65 per cent) that they purportedly planted. The sites of these plantations have not been geographically tagged and pictures depicting preparations for the drive (such as photos of dug pits) or those taken during the plantation drive have not been uploaded, raising questions if these trees were indeed planted.

As per the data, in Pune District, the government claims that Gram Panchayats planted 42,33,227 trees. No evidence (geo-tagging, pictures) has been provided for 26,65,687 trees. In Solapur, the government says it planted 29,39,747 trees, but no evidence is uploaded for 27,79,747 trees. In Sangli, where the Gram Panchayat plantation claim is 22,18,170, no geotagging has been done for plantation sites where a total of 18,68,039 trees have purportedly been planted. In Kolhapur, where the Gram Panchayat is said to have planted 32,93,590 trees, the portal has been updated with no evidence for as many as 32,78,135 trees. In Satara, the government claim is 43,24,488 plantation via Gram Panchayats but evidence for only 550 sapling plantation has been uploaded with no geo-tags or pictures for rest 43,24,938 trees.

When reached for comment, Maheep Gupta, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and co-ordinator for plantation drive by Gram Panchayats, told the reporter to speak to Chief Conservator of Forest (Pune) Vivek Khandekar.

Khandekar said the anomaly could only be explained by the gram panchayats concerned or zilla parishad officials of the districts in question.

“We merely provided a platform for various agencies to upload the data and the pictures, geo-tags. If they did not upload the pictures and geo-tagged the plantation sites, only the gram panchayat officials or Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of zilla parishad concerned can provide an explanation. All I can talk about is the trees planted by forest department in Pune circle,” said Khandekar.

The Indian Express spoke to gram panchayat officials in about 20 villages in Pune, Sangli and Kolhapur and asked them about the drive and reasons for failure to upload the pictures and geograhpical tags on the portal.

According to them, the target given to each gram panchayat this year (average target per panchayat was 3,200) for tree plantation was “too high” and due to lack of funds for the drive, officials chose to “distribute” most of the saplings among farmers and school children asking them to plant them at home or farm. They said that planting 3,200 trees would have required about “Rs 70, 000 to Rs 1 lakh” for hiring machines to dig the pits and pay wages to labourers for planting the saplings. “The Forest department has made no arrangements for grants towards this expense. It has to be borne by the gram panchayat. Most of the gram panchayats have very little revenue and can’t spare the money for this scheme,” said a gram panchayat office bearer at Palus taluka in Sangli district.

“We had planted about 50 trees in the primary school premise. Rest were given away to farmers and school children,” said a gram panchayat official at Kanwad village in Shirol taluka of Kolhapur district.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Forest department official said that gram panchayats were not supposed to “distribute” the saplings but to plant them. “We have several other schemes and departments that are involved in distribution and sale of saplings. This scheme is about planting the saplings and to ensure that they survive,” said the official.

Kolhapur, Sangli among top performers in Pune division


Though Kolhapur, Sangli districts were in news for devastating floods in August, but according to data provided by the government on the portal, they were among the top three districts in Pune revenue division (along with Satara) to have achieved 100 per cent tree plantation target.

According to the portal, Kolhapur planted 1.13 crore trees between July and September 2019 (100.47 per cent of its target), Sangli planted 75.23 lakh (104.06 per cent) and Satara planted 1.26 crore trees (101.65 per cent) during the same period.

Forest department officials said that since the plantation drive started on July 1, it was possible that the plantation was done before the floods wreaked havoc in the districts in the first week of August.

Residents of several villages in Shirol taluka of Kolhapur and Palus in Sangli — where the floods caused worst devastation — said that even the “50 or 100” saplings that were planted in their villages before the floods by gram panchayats were either washed away or wilted afterwards as they were submerged in water for several weeks.

At Bramhanal in Palus taluka where 17 people had died during floods after a boat carrying rescued villagers had capsized, local residents said that 50-odd trees that the gram panchayat had planted have either disappeared or wilted after floods.

“The water was 15 to 20 feet high. All the houses were submerged. The saplings that were planted by the gram panchayat and were not washed away, have wilted,” said Arvind Chougule, a resident of Bramhanal.

Film Heritage and History

Films Division runs out of space, decades of films stored in corridors

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Film Division officials requested Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI) to accept these reels for preservation. But NFAI expressed its inability to do so because of space shortage at its own facilities.

Film reels ‘stored’ in the corridors of sixth floor of Films Division building on Peddar Road, Mumbai.

ATIKH RASHID

AS MANY as 11,000 film cans containing celluloid negatives of documentaries made by Films Division (FD) over the last several decades are being stored without any environment control in the corridors of its office in Mumbai. Reason: Lack of space, say officials.

FD officials requested Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI) to accept these reels for preservation. But NFAI expressed its inability to do so because of space shortage at its own facilities.

According to information obtained under the RTI Act, the FD has sent 19,787 film cans to the NFAI in 21 tranches between September 1996 and December 2015 — but the NFAI can’t accept any more at the moment as the two vaults it has earmarked for FD films are full.

Until three years ago, these FD reels were stored in air-conditioned rooms on the ninth floor of its Phase I building on Peddar Road in Mumbai. But in 2016, it had to vacate the space after the Union I&B Ministry decided to house the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in that space. The CBFC was earlier functioning from Walkeshwar.

The film cans were then shifted to the corridors of the sixth and seventh floors of the building, while 6,896 reels were sent to NFAI for safekeeping in three tranches. But 11,000 reels continue to be stored “temporarily” in the corridors.

In a communication dated November 14, 2018, the then FD Director-General Prashant Pathrabe sought the “urgent attention” of NFAI Director Prakash Magdum for preserving the “very valuable archival material”.

“…Still about 11000 cans of negatives are remaining in the film library in this office. It’s to state that these films are lying without air-conditioning and humidity control as Films Division does not have any proper storage facility. It’s important to mention that these negatives are very valuable and
require proper preservation in specific conditions (of temperature and humidity),” Pathrabe wrote.

FD Director-General Smita Vats Sharma, who took charge recently, could not be contacted for comment as she is on tour abroad. Responding on her behalf, Anil Kumar N, officer-in-charge for distribution at Films Division, said: “Films Division gives utmost priority to the preservation and upkeep of its filmic material. All the valuable picture negatives are preserved in NFAI vaults. The remaining materials are being segregated and shifted to a place with air-conditioning and humidity control in the Phase II building of FD till film vaults are made available by NFAI.”

K L Senapati, Director (Administration), FD, said: “After the ninth floor was vacated for CBFC three years ago, these cans have been kept in their current place. We have contacted NFAI to take them but they too are helpless due to shortage of space.”

According to Senapati, “most of this material has been digitised”. However, experts say celluloid holds immense archival value even after digitisation.


Santosh Ajmera, officer on special duty at NFAI who heads the National Film Heritage Mission, says the NFAI plans to construct new state-of-the-art storage facilities at a three-acre plot near its Kothrud premises that was recently acquired from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

Once the work is completed, there would be enough space available to safeguard not only Films Division material but also material from different sources and film labs,” said Ajmera.

The films contain original sound and picture negatives of documentary films made by Flms Division over the years.


NFAI officials say they are now planning to hire private facilities to store reels received from other agencies — a proposal has been sent to I&B Ministry.

Responding to an RTI query on the documentaries in the cans stored in the corridors, FD officials said they were in the process of compiling a digital list.

Subsequently, The Indian Express received the names of 50 documentaries whose “master positives” are stored in the corridors, including “I am 20” (1967), directed by S N S Sastry and produced by FD’s then chief producer Jean Bhownagary.

The documentary, which was recently posted on YouTube by FD, contains interviews of several young men and women who were born in 1947 about India as a nation, its present and future.

The list also includes “Mandu: The City of Joy (1957)” about the ancient capital of the Malwa kingdom in western MP; “The Grand Old Man of 19th Century” (1967) on the life and works of Jagannath Shankar Seth in building Mumbai as a modern city; and, “Akbar (1967)”, which won the national award for Best Educational and Motivational Film that year.

Cinephilia

Love is a Taboo

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A short film by the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), And What is the Summer Saying, was selected for the recently concluded Berlin International Film Festival. The students talk about the non-fiction form and the possibilities it offers.

ATIKH RASHID

TALKING of love has never been easy in India. It’s more difficult for women. As one travels away from urban centres, to smaller towns and villages, it almost becomes a taboo. A short film made by the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) captures the expression of love and longing in a remote village that must only be conveyed in whispers. The 23-minute film, And What is the Summer Saying, which was screened at Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) that concluded last week, is set in a tiny village nestled in the Sahaydris where humans and forest co-exist as amicable neighbours.

The film, which calls itself a documentary, is far from true to its generic convention. It comes close to the tradition of experimental filmmakers such as Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), and London-based Ben Rivers’ Two Years at Sea (2011) and What Means Something (2016) — films that trade the borders of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking.

This is the third film made by the team, comprising Mayank Khurana as cinematographer, Shreyank Nanjappa as sound designer and Ghanshyam Shimpi as editor, helmed by Payal Kapadia as director. Their last project Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film to be screened at Cannes last year.

The audio emerges as a primary storytelling device in the short film, with the soundtrack giving sound and words the space to create meaning.


According to Kapadia, non-fiction filmmaking is an open form which concedes a lot of space for experimentation. “You can use a lot of devises because it is not necessarily narrative filmmaking. We look at documentary in narrow terms but its only difference from fiction is the approach. While making this film I was like a scavenger, looking for many stories and finally selected a few that made sense to me, and created a sense of a whole,” she said.

eam members from left (Shreyank Nanjappa, Payal Kapadia) during the shoot. 

In the film, a honey-gatherer who depends on the jungle, to earn his living, enjoys an intimate relation with the jungle and those who inhabit it. The wilderness that engulfs the village in the night is captured in quiet, still visuals which let the soundscape of the film do most of the talking. The audio emerges as primary storytelling device with each layer serving a purpose. The whispers carrying sentiments of tenderness stand out.

Nanjappa, the sound designer, says the aim was to make the audience feel the wilderness. “Although dialogues and words can give information, they might not always help in conveying feelings.We meticulously designed the soundtrack giving sound and words the space to create meaning and unfold its effects on the viewer.”

There’s no piece to camera, a prominent feature of the documentary form, with exclusive reliance on voice recorded during intimate, informal chats. The fact that the crew was mostly male, didn’t help in making the women open up about matters of love when on camera.

“Considering the circumstances and the time that I had at my disposal, I remained an outsider. Even with the way the film is framed, there is always a distance. At one point in the film, one of the women weave a song with my name in it, telling me to dance. As if, I as a filmmaker too, am being led somewhere down a rabbit hole,” says Kapadia.

The director and some of the crew members have returned from Berlin where the film was screened multiple times, among other films in the ‘Berlinale Short’ that dealt with issues of gender and sexuality. “We had quite an interesting response. But I think most people outside are not completely able to fathom the extent of the issues here. For a woman here, to even openly say ‘I love you’ is so difficult. I cannot claim that the film was able to make people understand the issue but it definitely opened up an interesting dialogue,” says Kapadia.

The team is now working on their next film, which will be their final project at FTII that deals with the “impossibility of love”. The film tells the story of two scientists, who are trying to investigate the effects of climate change in the Western Ghats, and a woman who remembers her love affair when she was a teen.

Cinephilia

I like the high of filmmaking: Gajendra Ahire

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Marathi filmmaker Gajendra Ahire, winner of many national and state film awards, has made 44 films so far. He talks about his beginnings, what drives him to make films at breakneck speed and his latest film Pimpal.

ATIKH RASHID

In an article written on him in 2011, the author compares director Gajendra Ahire to American director Roger Corman and controversial Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu in terms of their filmmaking speed. The only Indian name that comes to mind is of Priyadarshan, who has made over 90 films in three decades. Apart from this aspect, there are no similarities between the international directors or Ahire’s Indian counterpart.

While the majority of Priyadarshan’s work can be classified as “comic potboilers”, Ahire’s films are grim, probing and often offer a heartbreaking take on social realities in contemporary society. His characters — always fully developed and well-crafted – pose questions that are not only uncomfortable but often brushed under the carpet.

For Ahire (48), the question — “Why do you make so many films?” – is an easy one to answer. “Because that’s the only thing I do. I like the high that filmmaking gives you. I’m not doing anything else. I am not sitting in a bar sipping booze. I’m not involved in any other business. All I’m doing is writing films and making them. Fortunately, I have people around me who are helping me make them.”

He takes a pause as if he has made his point, only to add, “To tell you the truth, making a film doesn’t give you fulfillment. You always feel that something was left out. That feeling of anxiety, sense of incompletion leads you to another film. This chain doesn’t stop. It makes you work in a loop; that’s why I’m doing movie after movie.”

In early 1990s, when he was 21, living in Mumbai with his family and a graduate in Marathi literature, he left his home to escape the pressures of finding a job and settling down. “There was no point living there and continuously fighting with them,” he says. He then lived on the streets for several years guided by the protagonist of Arun Sadhu’s novel Shodhyatra, who also leaves his home to find the meaning of life.

During these two-three years, spent on the street — going places, doing odd jobs as a daily wager such as a cleaner, he came face to face with life and its realities. The people that he met and admired during this period and the situations which he lived and observed, often inspire the characters and plot lines of his films.

It was at the age of 23 that he wrote his first play for commercial theater. It was successful and opened doors for him for more plays, television serials. “You can’t replace vivid life experiences with observations or reading or imagination. It wont work if you say, ‘Let me go out and see what’s happening on the streets’. You would have to go through the process of life which gives you experiences that accumulate within you like honey drops. They will eventually come out in your work,” he says.

Despite being 44-films-old, Ahire feels that finding a producer for his next film is “as easy and as difficult” as it was for his first film, Not Only Mrs Raut. “It’s only your work that will help you get a producer. Although Mrs Raut didn’t get a release, people came forward to produce my next film because they saw the potential. It’s same even now. Anumati (2013) gave me Postcard (2014) which helped me get a producer for The Silence (2016), which then helped me get a producer for Pimpal (2017),” said Ahire.

Talking about Pimpal, his latest offering which won the Sant Tukaram Best Marathi Film Award at the recent Pune International Film Festival, Ahire reveals that the story, about the loneliness of a 70-year-old widower in Pune, whose kids are living in the US, came from his son, Chintamani. “He told me this story some years ago. I was surprised that a 17-year-old was talking about the psychological state of a 70-year-old man. The film is about the roots of an individual and how he struggles to cope with the fast-changing world. It’s also about happiness which, in these days, has become virtual. This happiness has no colour, smell or shape,” he says.

Cinephilia

‘An artist is not a toy in the audience’s hand’, says filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni

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Kulkarni, the maker of contemporary Marathi classics Valu (2008), Deool (2010) & Vihir (2009) on exploring the non-fiction genre and his latest documentary, titled Kumbh, which chronicles the biggest gathering of humans.

Marathi film maker Umesh Kulkarni at his residence. Express photo by Arul Horizon, 17/05/2018, Pune

ATIKH RASHID

SINCE his very first feature film, Valu (The Wild Bull, 2008), filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni found his own audience base across Maharashtra and beyond, which only grew with his subsequent films — Vihir (2009), Deool (2011), which he directed, and Masala (2012), Pune 52 (2013) which he produced. But it’s been a long break for Kulkarni since his last release as director Highway (2015), which did not do too well in cinemas.

So where’s this filmmaker who turned the tide for Marathi films in the late 2000s, which were facing both aesthetic and commercial challenges, with Valu? Apparently, Kulkarni (42) is immersed in exploring new possibilities that have opened up in the non-fiction genre. He has spent the last two years making a documentary on the Kumbh Mela and is in the process of making another on the Wada culture in old Pune. At the same time, Kulkarni has also launched a documentary film club with the help from artist Raju Sutar and National Film Archive of India (NFAI), with an aim to showcase best works from Indian non-fiction filmmaking tradition to the general public.

Still from Kularni’s student project Girni which he made while studying at Film and Television Institute of India.

“In 2009, I had made a documentary for FTII called Three of us. It was shown at several international festivals including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IFDA), which the biggest festival of documentary films in the world. While visiting the festival to present my film, the exposure to non-fiction form opened an entire new world to me. It was there that I realised that feature films and documentaries are not two separate, distinct forms with fixed boundaries. The way films are being made internationally, the boundaries between these two genres are getting merged and filmmakers are trying to explore the area that lies in between,” says Kulkarni, adding that some of the documentaries that he watched at the festival influenced him and left a lasting impact.

Back home, he observed that while India had a certain tradition of non-fiction filmmaking, there were no avenues for these films, with filmmakers struggling with the release and screenings of the films. “In many countries, there are festivals dedicated to non-fiction films, in some places there are television channels exclusively for documentaries. In India, although we had filmmakers like Mani Kaul, Shyam Benegal and others making documentaries and the Films Division funding a great number of them, there was very little exposure to the common public,” says Kulkarni. The film club, he adds, has recently screened Kamal Swaroop’s Pushkar Puran (2017), the first-ever retrospective of Amit Dutta in India, as well as non-fiction work by Mani Kaul.

Meanwhile, Kulkarni also started working on his own non-fiction projects. Kumbh, which he finished recently, was shot over several years chronicling the biggest gathering of humans. The film was selected at IDFA, New York Indian Film Festival and Kerala International Film Festival (KIFF).

“Kumbh is not a conventional documentary, as it tries to explore the space in the margins of fiction and non-fiction. I am at present also working on another documentary on a wada in old Pune where my grandma used to live. I have spent many days of my childhood there. Now, all the families that used to live there have shifted to their own apartments. I’m trying to explore the texture of life that the wada offered to its residents and how it has changed,” says Kulkarni, adding that he has decided to make a documentary or short film between every two feature films.

While he’s following his changing interests, doesn’t he feel that it may take away his fan base which may rather like him to stick to his flair — comical realism with a social message. “As an artist, I feel that I have to keep trying to find newer ways of expression. An artist can’t be a toy in the hands of the audience. If I continue to do what I have been doing, then I become too predictable and it gets boring. Also, we should give an opportunity to a different art form to get established. It may take some time as had happened in other cases such as Impressionism in painting or short story in literature. People resist, ridicule at first but later they accept if the movement has its merits,” says Kulkarni.