With all major film festivals taking place online for almost a year, it has become increasingly easy for non-Europeans to attend the finest ones without breaking the bank. We can skip the parts where we face the intimidating visa officers, and make expensive travel arrangements. Gone are the days when we scratched our heads trying to work out the complex event schedules, not to mention commuting for hours between venues and waiting in line for eternity to maybe find a seat at the theatre. Online, we can now fast forward to the actual screenings and the talks are generously available to stream long after the festival ends.
As always, the festival calendar this year began with the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. Only this time, IFFR is taking place in two parts: February 1-7 when the films in competition are screened and awarded online, and June 2-6 when the festival will celebrate its 50-year anniversary with a special program. Berlinale is also going by this format; virtual events in March and summer special in June. However, other big guns like Cannes and Locarno are set to hold physical festivals in May and August respectively, as per the usual festival calendar.
At the 50th IFFR, South Asian films took home some of the top prizes. Tamil film, “Pebbles,” won the top prize- the Tiger Award, and “Sunsets, Everyday,” by Pakistani director Bashir Mahmood, won the Ammodo Tiger Short Award.
“Pebbles”
A long draught brings out the worst in some people in the dry, barren village of Arittapatti in Southern India, where men lie around all day enjoying leisure while women catch mice to roast and strain muddy water to drink, spending long gruelling hours performing menial chores for sustenance.
A very angry, rugged man in this agricultural community journeys to his in-laws' house to fetch his wife, whom he had sent away in a fit of rage. His son, a little boy who barely speaks, tags along with him begrudgingly. When the mother refuses to return with the drunkard, the son tears apart the little cash they had for the bus ride home, a silent protest against a man he dares not to argue with. Thus, starts a long journey of the father and son, walking through the nondescript sandy lands. On the way, the boy puts a pebble in his mouth to salivate to rid himself of hunger.
Without saying much and giving away very little insight into what made this father so discontent with life, the film does a remarkable job of conveying the enduring effects of poverty and a taxing landscape. Such a story without pretensions is hard to come by even though a good number of indie film-makers in this region bank on similar issues to pique the interest of festival programmers. Vinothraj's film stands out with the authenticity of an insider's lens that is impossible to mimic with research and technical finesse.
“Sunsets, Everyday”
Commissioned by In Between Art, “Sunsets, Everyday” sublimely portrays the brutality of domestic abuse that leaves little to no visual footprint. A lot of the screen time of this 15min film is dedicated to household decorative items of porcelain, seemingly of no relation to the issue the filmmaker is dealing with. But this choice of juxtaposition makes the audience think and upon closer observation, one may make a connection as one pleases. Bashir Mahmood's background as a sculptor could have prompted this intriguing artistic choice. Maybe it represents the brittle nature of human relationships that inflict and endure such abuse, but we can't be certain whether that was the director's intension.
The act of abuse was filmed in fragments, out of focus, escaping the frame at times. The sound zoomed in on other elements in the surrounding, like the roaring of a ceiling fan or the fluttering of pages of the screenplay, instead of the muffled screams of agony of the performers. Shots of bruises, often hardly visible, yielded a forensic gaze into a crime so easily concealed.
Mahmood is a hands-off director to the extent that he wasn't even in the country during the shooting. He instructed his Lahore crew remotely, an audacious pandemic adjustment that could open doors further for global collaborations. He opted to use behind the scenes footage instead of the actual scripted shots, another experimental choice that added character to this film.
Dynamic Film Curation
There is this common notion that East is always represented as a mystical, primitive region and Muslims are forever “the other” at European festivals. But the wind is slowly shifting and it showed in the way IFFR was curated. The topics and their treatments in films from Asia and the East in general were as diverse as they come.
In the Vietnamese documentary short, “The Eternal Springtime,” a mother and son sit inside a cave, naked, in a journey of self-discovery that pushes the envelope of experimental storytelling. However, some films were about superstitions, perpetuating our reputation for having unfounded beliefs, like Thailand's “Lemongrass Girl” where a virgin must plant lemongrass upside down to ward off rain.
From the better off parts of Asia, Hong Kong had a film, “Drifting,” about its homeless population while Taiwan's “Dead and Beautiful” was a vampire drama about rich brats pulling elaborate pranks on each other to escape boredom. Another film from this 17th richest nation in the world, “The Women's Revenge,” tackled a similar topic as “Sunsets, Everyday,” but in a narrative style that is poles apart. The 16min film re-enacts scenes from Taiwanese black movies of the 80s about “sexploitation” where women go out on a violent rampage. The visuals, particularly the costumes and choreography, resemble Tai-pop music videos. However, the issue of women liberation was not restricted to countries in the East. US film, “Mayday,” also deal with this subject with equal spite.
Among the Muslim-majority countries, Lebanese film essay, “Agate Mousse,” dealt with death and rebirth through the vignette frames of a pretentious photographer while Tunisian film noir, “Black Medusa,” was about a mum femme fatale who picks up men to murder them. From Kosovo, “Looking for Venera” shed light on how young women have to fight for their independence while everyone around them tries to muffle their voices so they remain marriageable, bearing an eerie resemblance to South Asian societies.
Most films at IFFR are not constrained in their storytelling for being from a certain country. So, film-makers from this side of the globe who want their films to enter such festivals, can cease to wallow in their misfortunes, and utilize this newfound opportunity to experience the top festivals online for a small accreditation fee. By observing these curations, we can finally stop guessing and see for ourselves where we fit in and how we can push the envelope. Because if we don't, we would be the ones reinforcing the hitherto erroneous notion of the East always lagging behind when it comes to embracing change.
IFFR is currently screening "25 Encounters" from April 7- May 5.