United by common feelings

WHAT is Asian cinema? Do films made in Asian nations as far apart as Lebanon and Taiwan have any links at all? Can people, divided by race, colour, language, religion, history, myth and creed, have much in common? At Cinefan, New Delhi (August 26 - September 2), the Asian film quarterly Cinemaya's third annual Asian film festival, this was a subject for thought and discussion.

Even the jury for the festival's competition section reflected diversity. President Sumitra Peries, hoping to resume her interrupted film career after her stint as Sri Lankan Ambassador in France, has over 40 years experience in the field. She had edited husband Lester James Peries' films until the 1970s besides making her own features.

Actor and film-maker Nana Djorjadze, in a cloud of auburn curls, was from remote Georgia, where film-making is a daunting task (``In winter we have only a few hours' electricity''). But that has not stopped her from winning the Golden Camera Award at Cannes and an Oscar nomination.

Pouran Derakhshandeh was the first woman to become a film-maker in Iran, and the first Iranian to make a feature film in Hollywood (``Love Without Frontier'' the closing film of the festival). She has made television documentaries on social issues for 20 years. Her feature, ``Lost Time,'' was banned for some years because its radical protagonist insists she is not a ``child producing factory''. She plans to continue the protest in her next film about a divorced woman wanting to live her life alone on her own terms.

India's actress-star Sharmila Tagore has been a consistent achiever in art as well as middle-of-the-road and mainstream productions. Who can forget her winsome innocence in Satyajit Ray's ``Apur Sansar'' and ``Devi''? Or her enchantment in the blockbuster ``Aradhana''?

Film critic and journalist Philip Cheah, director of the Singapore international film festival, was the sole male representative in this woman-dominated panel.

The jury members believed that without special fora like Cinefan, the Asian film-maker could be swept out by the Hollywood- Bollywood currents. They also stressed that despite its dissimilarities, Asian cinema revealed commonalities in the way Asians feel, think and express themselves through dialogue and body language. While Tagore and Peries pointed out that family values and relationships were ascendant in Asian cinema, Djorjadze added that philosophically, historically and psychologically, Asians were given to inward turning, ``We look inside to find quietness, stillness. The West looks inside to find it is crazy.''

Asian films had audiences across the continent waiting to be tapped. But the mindset had to be created to savour the fare, besides networking a distribution system. Co-productions could promote interaction among the Asian nations.

The lone male member saw ambiguity as the hallmark of Asian cinema. ``Compared to the West, Asia is more grey in its metaphysics, in its response to everyday life,'' said Philip Cheah. ``War and the dysfunction of the family unit are major themes.'' Cheah and guest film-makers from other Asian nations declared that Asian films mirrored the socio-political upheavals caused by long term repression. Having run out of narrative skills, the West has turned its attention to the Asian cinema of today with its storehouse of stories and modes of telling them.

The awards reflected these perspectives. The Cinefan Award 2001 for Best Film went to ``This is My Moon'' (Sri Lanka) ``for its stark depiction of the dehumanising forces of war and its numbing consequences on the lives of the ordinary people.'' Director Asoka Handagama described the film as his response to the bloodshed in his country.

At the awards ceremony, he declared that he was proud to be seated next to Adoor Gopalakrishnan whose films had inspired him to become a film- maker.

Handagama begins with the rape of a Tamil woman by a Sinhalese soldier when she inadvertently falls into his bunker. She follows him when he deserts and returns home, an extra mouth in family and village ravaged by extreme poverty. There is no employment except in the army and death brings compensation which can buy a ``tractor''. As the man says fatalistically, ``When we shoot it is not because of anger, when we don't shoot it is not because of love.''

The strength of the film was in its evocation of terror and desolation in war-torn daily life, its weakness was the studied narrative- visual design which had few surprises. Serious Malayalam cinema has done it all before - in deliberate pace, style, visual patterning, sparse dialogue punctuated with pause and silence.

The Netpac Award went to ``Demons'' (Mario O'Hara, Philippines) for personifying violence through magic realism. The hair raising end stressed that after a point, evil corrupts beyond redemption. Ibrahim Kadir (``A Poet'', Indonesia) and Ellie Suriarty Omar (``Spinning Top'', Malaysia) won awards for Best actor and actress.

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Throwing light on Asia

THE Cinefan festival of Asian films is the natural extension of Cinemaya, the 13-year-old Asian film quarterly, which strives to create an awareness of Asian cinema in the sub-continent.

Aruna Vasudev (editor, Cinemaya; director, Cinefan) explained that the competition section (12 films) was introduced this year to draw greater viewer and media attention to the festival, and thereby to Asian endeavours in moviedom.

This year's choice, besides the Asian Panorama, Iranian package and Indian comedy, brought Eurasian perspectives in the ``West looks at the East'' segment, and in the Focus on Turkey.

Sponsorship by the Government and other corporate sources, besides assistance from several foreign embassies, enabled the committed Cinemaya team to expand Cinefan 2001 (55 films in three venues).

Increasingly, such festivals ``which create audiences for good cinema'' have become significant circuits for the less-dominant streams. But Vasudev added that they were becoming prohibitively expensive to conduct with hiked rates and control by commercial- minded sales agents.

GOWRI RAMNARAYAN

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