A film festival affords an opportunity to not just watch the best in the medium, but also a peek at contemporary concerns in countries across the world, says N. Vidyashankar, deputy artistic director of the 6th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes), which will be inaugurated on Thursday. “Trends in contemporary cinema reflect the status of the world in terms of relationships between individuals, within the family and the community at large,” he says.
Two themesMr. Vidyashankar says that the 160 films that will be screened at BIFFes broadly present two streams in terms of thematic choices: one from the northern and economically developed countries and the other from the developing world, including India.
“Cinemas from the developed world are largely individual-centric and depict a serious crisis in sustaining relationships,” he says. As examples, he cited The past by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi who works from France and Blue is the Warmest Colour by French director Abdellatif Kechiche.
“Individual sexual orientations have also become a strong thematic preoccupation like in the French film Young and Beautiful by Francois Ozon or Vic+Flo saw a Bear from French Canada,” he added.
In contrast, Asian cinemas have community-oriented humanist perspectives, he says. “Whether it is the Chinese film A simple life or the Iranian film Hushh... Girls Don’t Scream , the message about the primacy of dignity of life and social ethics is loud and clear,” he added.
There are clear indications of “anger manifesting as protest and, in some case, violent responses to the social inequalities perpetrated in these developing societies, like in the Indian film Fandry (Marathi),” he says. Films from Latin America and the Far East, particularly Korea and Philippines, “border on crude and, sometimes, graphic violence, as exemplified in the Mexican film Heli or Kim Ki Duk’s Pieta , shown in the previous edition of BIFFes.”
He says that there are always exceptions to any generalisation. He cites Like Father Like Son from Japan and Canadian film Another House , which have strong social themes, as examples. “The Indian film Astu (Marathi), directed by the famous duo Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukhtankar, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Canadian film thematically,” he says.
There are some aesthetically-interesting films under Chitrabharati — Indian cinema competition, says Mr. Vidyashankar. “Watch out for Astu (Marathi), Rupakatha Noy (Bengali), Partav (Kashmiri) and Dozakh (Hindi),” he says. Kannada films Munsif and Konchavaram (centred around the Banjara community) also make for interesting watching, he adds.
