The two-day Tareque Masud Festival ended yesterday at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy with the screening and DVD launch of Fera, a 38-minute documentary on Tareque Masud made by Proshoon Rahmaan and produced by the Tareque Masud Memorial Trust.
The Tareque Masud Memorial Trust organised the festival to inspire the creative young minds by showing his works. The organisers said although Tareque died untimely, his work was still boosting the potential of young filmmakers.
The last day also featured the awards giving ceremony of the Tareque Masud Short Film Competition.
The festival began on December 6, to mark the 57th birth anniversary of the prolific filmmaker. On the first day, a book titled Cholochitra Lekha: Scripts & Songs by Tareque Masud was launched. Tareque’s book is divided into three segments: documentary, feature and short films; and his seventeen most acknowledged songs.
About the book, Catherine, his wife, said: “This book is about the creative process - about how a screenplay is turned into a movie. His screenplays and songs would surely benefit the institutional study of film in the country.”
Moreover, the first day programme featured a premiere show of the digitally remastered version of Tareque Masud’s first film Adam Surot.
Based on noted artist SM Sultan’s life, Adam Surot, subtitled The Inner Strength, was cinematographed by Mishuk Munir, who was also killed in that road crash that took away Tareque.
Catherine, also executive director of the film, said the artist himself was the first audience of Adam Surot. They showed him the film at his Narail home two decades ago.
The new 47-minute remastered version is an intimate portrait of Sultan and the transition period of his style, said Khushi Kabir, one of the distinguished guests on the closing day.
Adam Surot starts with a scenic portrayal of Chitra River that has always immensely influenced Sultan’s work. It highlights how the life and philosophy of Sultan were reflected in his creations.
A confirmed bachelor, Sultan lived in a house in Narail, his hometown, and showed children how to paint. With the talent that he had, he could have lived a life of extreme grandeur and acclaim in a developed country; but instead, he chose the life of solidarity in his small hometown because he was in love with the peasants of Bangladesh.
In the interview in the documentary, Sultan talks about how the peasants became the subjects of his paintings. “My painting is about peasants and they are for the commoners. In every painting, their muscles grow more powerful, depicting their bravado.”
The programme also presented an half an hour interview, that was shown before the screening of the documentary, where Tareque talks about the making of Adam Surot in 1981. He mentioned writer Ahmed Chhafa’s writing inspired him to make a film on Sultan. But Sultan never wanted to be the focus of the film – that was his condition. The artist wanted the peasants – the subjects of his paintings – to be the subject of the film as well.
Travelling with Sultan, Tareque was inspired by his philosophy. The director learnt to see the graam Bangla – the countryside – through Sultan’s eyes. Tareque said it was the artist’s ideologies that made him give up the shortcuts and take the difficult but proven way to become a filmmaker.
In the interview, Tareque also said Adam Surot was his first effort at making a film and also to uphold Sultan’s philosophy. But it was his next film Matir Moina – subtitled The Clay Bird – actually reflected the experiences that he had gained from making Adam Surot and also the time he had spent with Sultan.
The DVD of the digitally remastered Adam Surot will be released next year.