The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Two tales told tellingly

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Friday, Nov 20, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Two tales told tellingly

Staff Reporter

Both are tragic stories with a reality that is difficult to digest

— Photos: Mohd. Yousuf

Abracadabra!: Child jury member G. Ramya Sree who is also a magician, at the film festival on Thursday.

HYDERABAD: Poignancy was the predominant emotion on the penultimate day of the International Children’s Film Festival which had its last public screenings on Thursday. Two celluloid sagas, ‘Two Men’s Classroom’(China) and ‘Child and the Angel’(Iran) held the viewers captive be it sitting, squatting, standing, and leaning from corner to corner in the packed halls for 90 minutes. Ashen faces emerging later vouched for the hearts that bled and the conscience that was shaken.

The first movie ‘Two Men’s Classroom’, tells about a child Ding Baojin, whose life becomes lonely and miserable after he is diagnosed as HIV-positive. Losing both the parents to AIDS and unable to comprehend the reason behind his exclusion, the child goes through traumatic and solitary life understood and empathised only by two men, village elder Zhao and the commune chief. Initially evasive, Zhao later takes it upon himself to help the child with his education and entertainment. The classroom, initially begun exclusively for Baojin to convince the higher-ups about his getting education despite his health status, turns into an exquisite learning experience for the child after Zhao starts helping him. The movie ends by moving Baojin to a city school for HIV-infected students and reducing the audience to tears. Director Dong Ling shines through every frame that exposes viewers to the pathos of the situation, while keeping the protagonist relatively immune from it. Hu Hanwen excels with the screenplay.

It is unfortunate that cinematography, which was one among the many assets for the film ‘Child and the Angel’, has no award in the festival. Otherwise, the eye of the camera that scripted nerve-wracking moments for the viewers would not have missed the jury’s scanning vision.

Tight plot

The movie is tightly woven around a teenager Fereshteh’s search for her kid-brother in the war-ridden streets of Iran. The climax for the camera wizardry becomes the finale for the film, when the girl kneels down facing Mecca hearing the muezzin call from the mosque and the camera zooms-out behind her to show her brother’s corpse to the viewers, albeit without her knowledge. The director has been more than successful in opening a window to war for the audience, with brilliance in sound effects and Mise-en-Scene. The film was screened a second time in the festival in the ‘general’ category on Thursday.

Other films screened on Thursday include ‘A Witch in the Family’(Sweden), F.C.Murmeli(Switzerland), and Pink Nanuq (Switzerland).

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