a city/film festival

sheharnama  - a city/film festival curated by surabhi and mukul held in our neck of the woods this time- thankfully. and some incredible films. 

‘night hawks’ for me was one of the highlights where on the edges of darkness, in the gold light of street lights, or the swerving headlights of cars, or the blue flickering light of night shelters, we watch the stories of those who wake while we sleep- distributing blankets to the homeless, waiting in like for tatkal tickets, or clearing the highways of accidents. 

another one- ‘this bit of that india’ sns sastry’s films division subversion- Purportedly a film to look at india as a destination for further studies for foreigners but actually a wild fever dream of ambition, sex, love, science, spirituality.. in other words about india as a destination for further studies for foreigners. this was part of the fd package mukul had curated in which the other films were plain propaganda designed to convince us to not shit on the road (stinking story), not support the railway strike (the voice of the people)- that actually was so shrill and sharp it ends up parodying itself (probably on purpose) and to always be on time (dilly dallying)- which left us with the immortal insult - ‘dilly dallying shilly shallying nincompoop’. more fd - ‘the burning sun’ in which the smug MHB architect spouts banalities and reveals his own prejudices as the poor suffer in the sun without a roof or water. the propaganda piece that turns on itself- revealing a heart where you expected none.

more highlights - ‘cemetery state’ in an abandoned cemetery in kinshasa where entrepreneurs make business out of selling graves in the overgrown landscape. who is buried where is never quite clear. during the day they wait lazing on the gravestones for someone to to buried. meanwhile death rituals are expressions of anger and resentment of the young against the old as the parents are blamed for the sons death…. 
and then there was ‘wasted’ which opened the festival: spinning from the detritus of words that a friend has left behind as his legacy in his dust covered notebooks, to the garbage and filth on manikarnika ghat, to the recycling yards in jaipur for paper and metal in mayapuri, delhi to the excess of ideas controlled and recycled in tifr- a strange creature this film- perhaps not strange enough. burdened by its linearity and narrativity, the film is easy to use arty. still well worth the time if only for some of the incredible images- the plastic bag on the ghats caught in the wind, the recycling yards of mayapuri..

mira nair’s classic ‘india cabaret’ in the world of bar dancers in 1980s bombay. rekha is the star.. she lives in abandon as a bar dancer..and gets invited to yamrajs room when she dies. the city is the seedy side of town where migrant women dance for disinterested men. power is theirs in spite of the city- they have claimed it. and roam free in the evenings on the beach. meanwhile the sati savitri wife of the fat gujarati businessman patron slaves at home and cooks and cleans for her family. 

the ‘labour section’ had three films that i loved - ‘i sing the body electric’ - as student film where the making of steel rods is a dance of fire; ‘presence’ when stories of labour on the bangalore development projects are subsumed by ghost stories and the cit his haunted by disappearances and reappearances; and of course amudhan’s ‘shit’ whose precise argument is unsentimental and more effective therefore. 

another film whose analytical cleanliness i was taken in by was ‘kya hua is sheher ko’ deepa dhanraj’s close reading through interviews with the actors in a spate of religious violence in Hyderabad in the 1980s. even handed the film makes no villains or heroes- no community is a victim or the perpetrator. the violence of partition and the sikh riots of 1984 mark the inter-race family of safina oberoi. the film ‘my mother india’ sees the story through the eyes of patricia oberoi- australian married to a sikh trying to find a home in this strange country. speaking of which another fd film that we saw the next day ‘our indira’ makes her mother, daughter, sister, lover in ‘triumph of the will’ montages of parades and speeches. 

i am not quite sure about why ‘please vote for me’ was part of a city film festival- but regardless the corruption of democracy is seen in an election held for class monitor at a chinese school in wuhan between 3 8 years old. one is the power broker, the other has the gift o the gab and the girl is the victim. very entertaining- but i forgot about it when it was over. anti-democracy propaganda should be this entertaining.