“I am the only composer in the world to have composed a song only in the ascending notes,” said music maestro Ilayaraja with his hallmark self-confidence at the inaugural event of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2015 here.
Audience enthralledIlayaraja, who was presented with the Centenary Award by Union Minister of Finance and Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley, then went on to enthral a somewhat supine audience with a wordless recitation of the Telugu song Ragam rasamiya vedamai.
The maestro earlier asked the government to make music “compulsory” in schools which, he felt, would go a long way in curbing violence.
His reference to campus violence in Ramgopal Varma’s debut film Shiva and his comment on how he chose to bring melancholy into the background music as a violent scene was playing out, hinted that he was clearly depressed with the spell of violence plaguing the country, though he didn’t specifically mention it.
This year’s event is the 46th instalment of the IFFI and the 12th in Goa. The annual cinematic carnival, which had travelled all throughout the country earlier, was permanently shifted to Goa in 2003. The event has since become synonymous with the coastal State, similar to the festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Toronto. Shekhar Kapur, the chief of the five-member jury to select the best film, credited Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, for this. Mr. Kapur, who was in the news this year because of yet another shelved project — Paani — was perhaps narrating from experience when he said there was “nothing more fearful than facing a blank canvas.”
Cinephiles remember Mr. Kapur as much for his innumerable shelved projects as for the memorable films he directed.
He went on to take a dig at his own cinema when he said Mr. India was a film “that should have been forgotten long back.”
Jury membersAs the veteran director introduced the jury members, one name that caught attention was that of Suha Arraf, a Palestinian film-maker who has made Israel her home. The jury also comprises British film-maker Michael Radford, German actress Julia Jentsch and South Korean director Jeon Kyu-hwan.
It was also announced that Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov will be honoured with the lifetime achievement award.
One major gaffe as Indian cinema’s past was being recollected concerned the angry young man figure. As Ayushman Khurana and Aditi Rao Hydari, the presenters, spelt out the “angst against the system played out on cinema,” the screen started showing images from the films of the 80s and the 90s, like the Rajnikanth blockbuster Baasha and the Nana Patekar film Krantiveer .
This was clearly an unintended mistake since the angry young man was clearly conceived and nurtured in the 70s, something that even its creator Javed Akhtar has admitted.
Not much attendanceThe show was under-attended and a little low on enthusiasm because of a boycott by major industry associations such as the Film Federation of India and Federation of Western Indian Cine Employees.
