While a festival named Cinema of the Apocalypse might bring to mind dystopian worlds with the odd zombie thrown in, this festival organised in collaboration with Bangalore Film Society, “portrays characters struggling to survive in a hostile environment, where all they have is each other and the only thing they possess in common is the will to keep on living, no matter the cost”.
The festival got under way with Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011, Turkey), directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes that year.
Two policemen, a driver, a doctor and a murder suspect, are crammed in a car. Behind two more cars follow with a prosecutor, sergeants, another suspect, diggers and a man to type reports.
They are looking for a body. A suspect has confessed to a murder but he claims that he cannot remember where he buried the body as he was drunk. He only knows it was near a “round” tree. Though initially the men are in good humour, as the night wears on and every location fails to yield any results, the men begin to reveal more of their thoughts and their lives.
There is the prosecutor who talks about his friend’s wife who announced the date of her death and seemingly died on that very day, the police chief who wants a prescription to buy medicines for his son, the doctor who is divorced and says he has no children and the driver who does not want to go to his wife’s village.
At 157 minutes, this is a long film. But, the characters’ inner lives (particularly of the prosecutor and the main murder suspect) are revealed slowly. Each character has his own agenda and his own point of view which comes through while they are trying to do their jobs and be done with it.
Few of Us (1996, Lithuania, France), directed by Šarūnas Bartas, was screened on June 27. In it, a young woman is taken by helicopter and then by an army vehicle to where the Tolofar tribe lives in the Sayan Mountains. The landscape is bleak and the people seem beaten down except for one scene where a group of people sing.
The film moves at a languid pace; it’s almost just a collection of interminable shots. The camera lingers on the woman’s face as she pensively looks out of the helicopter, an elderly man smokes a cigarette, an elderly woman breathes in and out as she sleeps.
There is no dialogue in the film (there are perhaps four instances of someone speaking). Instead each sound acquires prominence. From the whirring of the helicopter blades and a dog barking to a match being lit and a rifle shot ringing in the air.
On June 28, it was The Seventh Continent (1989, Austria) directed by Michael Haneke.
Damnation (1988, Hungary), a black-and-white film directed by Béla Tarr will be screened on June 29. The last film to be screened will be Japón (2002, Mexico, Netherlands), directed by Carlos Reygadas.
Entry is free on first come, first served basis. The screenings start at 5 pm at NGMA, # 49, Manikyavelu Mansion, Palace Road. Call 22342338
