Pune International Film Festival - 2009

Its over, and just like all times its leaves me gloomy as the days of sensibilities are over and now no more do I have the luxury of returning to the celluloid and soaking a wealth of information, emotion and forms of depiction. I have been a regular at the PIFF since I came to Pune in 2004 attending by now over hundred movies, some so moving the memory still remains and some so weird I am still trying to defragment the meaning after so many years.

There have been times when I have stood spellbound in the hall well after the projector has stopped twittering and there have been those occasions when I have left in a hurry purely to avoid the felling of nausea. The Pune International Film Festival, organised every year in the month of January, has brought to me a better understanding of the world. Indian films, and by that I mean the Hindi film industry, with its dance around the tree or dance in the cloud or dance in the valley of flowers, hero saves the day, beats up all the bad guys, rosy flavoured all happy ending and they lived happily ever after, is purely a walk in the paradise and definitely a make believe world. While cinema like that has its place purely for entertainment value, I have always felt that cinema that does not say anything comes from a person who does not wish to say anything or has nothing to say at all. Love is an emotion in Hindi films that has been so vastly abused that it has become overrated. It has lost all its meaning amidst the beautiful locales and enchanted forests. Expressions have become borrowed and that too from formulaic successful mainstream films.

Amidst all this comes PIFF to bring in fresh modes of expression, fresher dramas and above all stories that are complete in terms of human expression and human behaviour, not merely a slice of a human being. These stories look complete in many respects and depict the way a human being behaves rather how a super-hero reacts. There has been the real life depiction of the Italian mafia father who commits suicide after knowing his son is a cop and is disappointed at the way his father had abandoned him when he was a kid. The chemistry between the cop and felon is so palpable that you almost feel like reaching out and caressing the teary eyed cop when he first confronts his father (Salty Air).

There has been the depiction of the rebellious 37 year old protagonist and 21 year girl in a Turkish community in Germany who decide to marry each other to get away from the repressive and tradition rich family of the girl to merely live out as roommates, who continue to experiment and explore with the world around them with drugs, alcohol, sex, tattoos and body piercing (all forms of expressing their angst at the primarily dogmatic society), until the world comes crashing down on one night of drunken, jealousy driven murder of one of the lovers of the girl. Driven away from the stigma of the stories in the newspapers the girl goes away to Turkey and the guy gets imprisoned. Turkey again is no easy dwelling for Sibet who gets frustrated with the tied down life only to end up on the streets of Turkey, raped and beaten nearly to death. You cry and feel like burning up the world when you see how this world treats people who just wish to live their own life without following traditions. Cahit comes to Turkey after his release from the jail to find Sibet happily married with a kid and gives up all hope of finding his one true love to go to his ancestral village to settle down (Head On).

There is the depiction of Gulnabi in a village in Karnataka, which has not known any kind of communal tension until a Hindu village damsel decides to run away with a Muslim. Gulnabi (Gulabi as she is known throughout the village) owns a television set and runs a theatre called Gulabi talkies to which everyone flocks for watching movies. After the eloping incidence, Gulabi who was not directly involved in the incidence has to leave the village along with other Muslims leaving the Television set behind for the village to enjoy (Gulabi Talkies).

There is the graphic novel animated screen adaptation of Persopolis, showing a girl growing up in the oppressive regime of Iran only to be taken over by a more oppressive revolutionaries who frown upon the idea of a woman not wearing a headsarf and her burqua and how she find the true meaning of her roots when she goes to Europe to study. Its her trails and tribulations but mainly of an advancing economy suddenly stopped in its track by archaic concepts of a state, where expression of oneself has no place amidst laws of modesty and proper behaviour. Where a girl running on the road is asked to stop and walk slowly as the movement of her hips is considered immodest and distraction for the men around her (Persopolis).

There is the beautiful love story, which brings to screen the torrid love affair that begins with a one night stand between a French woman and a Japanese man in post WW2 Hiroshima and how all adversities (purely of their emotions and their past) do not stand in their way of finally uniting and deciding to stay together (Hiroshima, My love).

I will miss what I did not get to see,
I will savour what my eyes could feast,
And I will wait till next January.