It is about the changing moods of the individual as the seasons shift in life. And of the conflicts within, as commitments clash with the spontaneous impulses brought to the surface by the change of seasons.
Aparna Sen’s new film ‘The Japanese Wife,’ shown in the competition section of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Sunday, is about an Indian school teacher in a lonely village striking a pen-friendship with a Japanese girl and the relationship growing in intimacy over a period of time and the two ultimately deciding to become man and wife. For them it is still long distance love as a young widow and her son come into the school teacher’s life, changing the rhythm of his existence.
The screenings in the competition section during the day also included ‘Animal Town’ from South Korea directed by Jeon Kyu-hwan. This film is about the insensitivity of city life, where giving hurt and getting hurt is an order of routine. But beneath that inanimate order of routine are suppressed emotions that will explode at the touch of a spark. The drama erupts as two characters come into a wild boar sighting.
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On the sidelines of the screenings, the day witnessed an interaction between German filmmaker Werner Herzog and film lovers. Mr. Herzog, who was honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award by the IFFK on the inaugural day of the festival, said he felt growing up in post-war Germany had perhaps helped build the foundation of the artist in him.
For children it was wonderful to grow up in a nation of bombed out cities. “There were no fathers around to tell them how they should behave and what they should do. I vividly remember how hungry we were.” But that was not a problem, though mothers might have felt it a deep problem.
He spoke of the genius of Klaus Kinski, the actor who was “pretty much dangerously out of control, verging on paranoia all the time,” the excitement and uncertainty of working with such great artistes, “the urgency of the story” that he had always experienced once into a theme…and sequences and characters not visualised at the time of script writing flowing into the film during the process of shooting. For him a film was something that emerged from the void of a thought, a concept that took form from the formless, with the script and happenings during the shooting merging to give it shape.
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Fifty films were screened at the 10 festival theatres during the day under various categories such as world cinema, retrospectives, competition section etc.