Feb 21, 2010

28th Feb 2010; Satyajit Ray's APUR SANSAR


Apur Sansar
(The World of Apu)
A film by Satyajit ray
Year : 1959
Bengali with English sub titles
Run time :105 minutes
28th Feb 2010 ; 5.45 pm
Perks Mini Theatre
Perks School , off Trichy Road , Coimbatore
Call : 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com


'Satyajit Ray on
Apur Sansar'
- 7 minutes documentary
will follow the main screening


The World of Apu (Apur Sansar) concludes one of the greatest film series of all time, Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, which chronicles the life of one Bengali boy as he traverses the road from childhood through adolescence to maturity. Ray, a masterfully accomplished director, is at the height of his powers with this film, one of the most equally wrenching, uplifting, and cathartic motion pictures I have experienced. Following 1955's Pather Panchali and 1956's Aparajito, this 1959 feature provides the perfect culmination to an unforgettable saga.

The World of Apu is carefully divided into three acts. In the first, we are introduced to the adult Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee), a struggling writer living in a Calcutta apartment during the 1930s. Apu is alone in the world, having already lost his sister (Pather Panchali) and father and mother (Aparajito). He's three months behind in his rent, so, to meet his landlord's demands, he is forced to sell some of his precious books. Jobs are scarce, and Apu can't find one that suits him. One day, his old school friend, Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), arrives to invite him to a wedding in the village of Khulna. Apu, who doesn't have anything else to do, agrees to come. The trip changes Apu's life.

The second act, which has an almost-playful tone, details Apu and Aparna's married life -- how they initially come together as strangers then grow to love and understand one another. In slightly more than thirty minutes, Ray brings to life an unforced, deeply moving romance. Apu and Aparna's gentle relationship is punctuated by bursts of pathos and comedy, but their union is so effectively crafted that it's easy for the viewer to lose him- or herself in the simple beauty of Ray's world.
Alas, the happiness doesn't last forever. The third, defining act of the film hinges on tragedy and its aftermath. The "tragic love story" is a timeless motion picture staple, but few, if any, express emotional truth with the simple, heartbreaking eloquence of The World of Apu. Although the best stories of this sort (such as Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands) typically have moments when they ring false, this movie is free of such missteps. Ray's considerable skills as a film maker are at their pinnacle, and the result is unforgettable.The acting, as is usually the case in a Ray film, is of the highest caliber. Soumitra Chatterjee, who was to become a "regular" in the director's films, gives a fine, multi-dimensional portrayal; it's easy to believe that he's the same Apu that we got to know in the other two films. The void created by the absence of Karuna Bannerjee, who anchored both Pather Panchali and Aparjito as Apu's mother, is filled by the exquisite Sharmila Tagore, who, like Chatterjee, would appear in future Ray films .

The greatness of the "Apu Trilogy" lies not only in its intimate understanding of the intricacies of human nature, but the artistry with which it expresses those truths. Each of the films is filled with wondrous images, and watching Apu's life unfold is like gazing through a window into a rare and unique world. And, even though the trilogy includes much tragedy, Ray gives birth to hope from each despair, and a measure of joy from every sadness. After all, life is like that, and the "Apu Trilogy" reflects the universality of the human experience.
(Source:Internet)


Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta into an exceptionally talented family who were prominent in Bengali arts and letters. His father died when he was an infant and his mother and her younger brother's family brought him up. After graduating from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1940, he studied art at Rabindranath Tagore's University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. He took up commercial advertising and he also designed covers and illustrated books brought out by Signet Press. One of these books was an edition of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya's novel, Pather Panchali, which was to become his first film. In 1947 Ray established the Calcutta Film Society. During a six month trip to Europe in 1950, he managed to see 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (1948), which greatly inspired him. He returned convinced that it was possible to make realist cinema and with an amateur crew he endeavoured to prove this to the world.

In 1955, after incredible financial hardship (shooting on the film stopped for over a year) his adaptation of Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) was completed. Prior to the 1956 Cannes Festival, Indian Cinema was relatively unknown in the West, just as Japanese cinema had been prior to Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950). However, with Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray suddenly assumed great importance. The film went on to win numerous awards abroad including Best Human Document at Cannes. Pather Panchali's success launched an extraordinary international film career for Ray.

A prolific filmmaker, during his lifetime Ray directed 36 films, comprising of features, documentaries and short stories. These include the renowned Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito [1956] and Apur Sansar [1959]), Jalsaghar (1958), Postmaster (1961), Charulata (1964), Days and Nights in the Forest (1969) and Pikoo (1980) along with a host of his lesser known works which themselves stand up as fine examples of story telling. His films encompass a diversity of moods, techniques, and genres: comedy, satire, fantasy and tragedy. Usually he made films in a realist mode, but he also experimented with surrealism and fantasy.

(From - Senses Of Cinema)

BBC Documentary competition

We reproduce the exact text of E mail received from Mr.Nico Wasserman regarding the BBC short film competition.

We are not involved in this competition and we are passing the information received by us.

Please contact the given mail address .

Dear Sir/ Madam

I am a producer at the BBC and we came across your great blog and would like to tell you about a documentary competition that may be of interest to your readers.

We are asking our audiences world wide to submit short 2 minute documentaries about their lives. The project aims to find original stories with compelling personal narratives from each continent . We are very keen to hear from a diverse range of people and films can be in any language. Films can be shot using any kind of device. We have uploaded to our site some great entries from places such as Georgia, Venezuela and South Africa that were shot on mobile phones.

Our hope is to create a vivid and compelling picture of life in the world today. Up to 50 films will be broadcast by the BBC and we have some great judges selecting the films including Cara Mertes from the Sundance Film Festival and Oscar winning producer Greg Sanderson from BBC Storyville amongst others. In addition, there is HD Sony camera equipment on offer to the director of the best judged film.

We think this is a very exciting project for emerging film makers - the films will be seen by a worldwide audience of over 100 million!

The closing date for the competition is 5 March 2010 so just under 2 weeks left to enter. More information is on our website: www.bbcworldservice.com/myworld. We also have a Twitter page www.twitter.com/bbc_myworld

I hope this is of interest to you - be great to know what you think and whether you can help us circulate this on your blog. Also, it would be great to know if you have suggestions of other people we should contact who may be interested.

Best wishes

Nico Wasserman



Nico Wasserman
AP, MyWorld
T: 0207 557 0187
M: 07980 541 652
E: Nico.wasserman@bbc.co.uk
W: www.bbcworldservice.com/myworld
www.twitter.com/bbc_myworld


Feb 7, 2010

14th Feb 2010; Teshigahara's PITFALL

PITFALL
A film by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Year : 1962
Country: Japan
Run time: 97 min
Japanese with English subtitles
14th Feb 2010; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theatre
Perks School, off Trichy Road, Coimbatore
Call: 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/


A 19 minutes video essay on Pitfall will be
screened after the main screening.


Pitfall is Teshigahara's social critique on the state of the poor man working in a post-war era that questions several meanings in life and sports several characters who each represent a part of the very society that Teshigahara documents.

The director thinks of his film as being a fantasy/documentary, one which studies the way in which the working class are ill treated by the hands of their unsupportive hierarchy and it does indeed work as such.

Teshigahara’s film is mysterious, shocking, eerie, and enticing. The whole picture is visually stunning, exquisitely framed, fluidly shot, and employing some rather innovative effects work. Keeping with the tale’s stage-play roots, in many sequences Teshigahara employs long takes to capture a performance in its entirety. When the scene requires more than one angle, he reframes mid-shot rather than cutting and potentially interrupting the performance’s flow.

Similarly, Teshigahara’s use of superimpositions, reverse photography, and off-kilter shots manages to inspire awe even today. There are many amazing sequences involving ghosts, humans, and the interactions thereof, that feel completely fresh, despite having been rendered cliché in contemporary cinema. Teshigahara’s documentary skills are employed as well in many sequences featuring the protagonist ghost observing union interactions and police interrogations, the camera becoming an impartial observer, thereby facilitating the conveyance of Abe’s very serious criticism of corporate corruption.

PITFALL is a story of two worlds that coexist with no point of intersection but which nonetheless have great impact on one another. In the world of the dead, the deceased are fated to exist eternally as they were in their last moments.

Based on the experimental fiction of postwar novelist Kobo Abe, The Pitfall is a haunting, spare, and elemental, yet surreal and atmospheric portrait on alienation, spiritual bankruptcy, and moral descent. Creating his first feature film, Hiroshi Teshigahara combines the stark realism of his earlier short, documentary works represented by films such as Hokusai, a reverent overview of the works by the seminal Ukiyo-e artist, Katsushika Hokusai; Ikebana, an introductory film on the art, design, and aesthetics of floral composition; and José Torres, a two-part portrait of the humble and mild-mannered Olympic athlete and light heavyweight boxer) with the Kafkaesque psychological nightmare of Abe's allusive modern fiction in order to interweave states of consciousness and subjective realities into a compelling exposition on the nature of existence (an existential theme that is also explored in another feature, Woman in the Dunes.)
(Source : Internet)







Hiroshi Teshigahara

Hiroshi Teshigahara, a celebrated Japanese filmmaker and grand master of the Sogetsu School for flower arrangement. Mr. Teshigahara, who gained international acclaim for his avant-garde films and artwork, sent shock waves through the world of cinema in 1964 with the release of ''Suna no Onna'' (''Woman in the Dunes''), a haunting, poetic and timeless metaphor made in Japan. The film, written by Kobo Abe and based on a novel by him, won a special award at the Cannes International Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for best director and best picture.

Noted for its technical brilliance, originality and power, the film featured a city-bred entomologist who is tricked into living with a widow whose shack rests at the bottom of a deep, inescapable sand pit, where he is forced to shovel sand endlessly. The detainee finds entrapment and escape into his ultimate destiny.

Mr. Teshigahara became interested in Surrealism and the avant-garde as an art student in the 1940's. In 1962 he made his first feature film, ''Otoshiana'' (''Pitfall''), also written by Abe. The director established his own production company and went on to make a series of films, often with Abe. In addition to ''Woman in the Dunes,'' his films included ''Tanin no Kao'' (''The Face of Another'') in 1966 and ''Moetsukita Chizu'' (''The Ruined Map'') in 1968.

In the late 1960's Mr. Teshigahara was the toast of the international film community, appearing at festivals, collecting awards and promoting Japanese film. After releasing ''Natsu no Heitai'' (''Summer Soldiers'') in 1972, Mr. Teshigahara withdrew from feature filmmaking and turned his attention to ceramics and experimental cinema.

After a 17-year hiatus, Mr. Teshigahara returned to films in 1989 with ''Rikyu,'' about the subtle conflict between a petty warlord and a distinguished master of the ancient art of the tea ceremony. It won the award for best artistic contribution at the Montreal World Film Festival. His last film was ''Goh-hime'' (''Basara: The Princess Goh'') in 1992.

He is survived by his wife, Toshiko Kobayashi, a former actress, and two daughters.

(Source:New York Times)