S Viswanath

“ Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there, still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen .” – Federico Fellini

Dust up your blazers, berets, winter clothes what have you. With biting nip in the air, sending chill deep down to your spine and bones, you shall surely need these ensemble of body warmers as you sojourn and sally forth across the City with one singular mission in mind.

To reach the one address that will be your destination for the next eight days – City’s Lulu Mall that houses the Cinepolis – which will be the epicentre of action for all eclectic cinema watchers and avowed cine goers as it turns into Cinema Paradiso hosting the 17th Edition of annual celebrated cinema carnival – Bengaluru International Film Festival aka BIFFes.

Promising a veritable choicest smorgasbord of contemporary cinemas that have lit up the screens worldwide, winning accolades and awards, having done and dusted their film circuits run through the year that has gone by. These are now set to engage and enwrap cinephiles who has been patiently awaiting their arrival in the Cultural Capital of Bengaluru.

In keeping with its tagline The World in Bengaluru the BIFFes is bringing a bountiful bouquet of nearly 100 contemporary global cinemas, aside of the regular local (Indian & Kannada) and other curated features, in its much anticipated sections – Contemporary World Cinema, the Asian Competition, Critics’ Week, Country Focus, Contemporary Filmmaker in Focus, and the like.

What makes the 17th Edition of BIFFes that much more special and significant is it boasts of nearly 40 plus features by women filmmakers – many debutants and others seasoned auteurs of the craft – in keeping with the festival’s annual stated festival theme to provide specificity and significance to the annual cinema jamboree. This time around the theme being Is She means A Woman, Enough! The thematic text being taken from noted Kannada poet G S Shivarudrappa’s celebrated poem Stree Endare Ashte Saake?

Given that film festivals across lately specifically work towards gender parity and equal representation towards woman, it is only in the fitness of things that this year’s festival is working on this aspect with the tagline Woman: Shared Sensibilities, A Collective for Equality like Toronto International Film Festival’s trailblazing eponymous Share Her Journey which began in 2017 as a five-year campaign committed to addressing gender parity and championing women in front of and behind the camera, through the year and more specifically during the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

Share Her Journey which, according to TIFF, has since evolved into a “permanent initiative”, successfully “supporting creators at every stage of their professional journey with the global movement dedicated to building frameworks, empowering creators, and forging paths for women to succeed as storytellers who help shape our cultural landscape.”

Of course, given that at a film festival, during its week plus run, wherein 100s of cinemas, from as many countries, flood the screens, with their multifarious themes and multitudinous narratives, holding a mirror to the socio-political situation within the country and the emerging milieu on the global stage, it becomes an onerous task to choose the just that right handful of films to watch. Say, in this case 32 films (8 days x 4 screenings/day) scenario.

But then, as with the films, their core concerns and mainline subjects they deal with, and the way the individual filmmaker has dealt with visual text at hand, so too every individual cinephiles idea of cinema and appreciation and engagement with the cinema is as varied and diverse as suits her / his filmi a la carte menu and picky palate.

In an effort to make the cineastes task, sitting on the fringes of indecision caught between confluence of choices, a bit easier, I have made it cautiously bold to offer a choice of cinemas that one could explore at the film festival. My offerings though are limited to international cinemas that I have watched and believe are an enriching ones to experience, having visited a slew of international film festivals during the year gone by, are being listed out here for movie buffs to explore and experience and find whether they too appreciate these films.

The titles of films and their directors have been listed since the festival catalogue will provide in detail what the film is all about and how well appreciated it or they have been at the global cinema coliseum earning them rich rewards from critics and juries who have found them superlative.

The films that one could explore are It Was Just An Accident by Iran’s Jafar Panahi, Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, Mascha Schilinski’s German flick Sound Of Falling, Iraq’s The President’s Cake by Hasan Hadi, My Father’s Shadow by Nigeria’s Akinola Davies Jr., the Chilean film The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo by Diego Cespedes, the Colombian fare A Poet by Simon Mesa Soto, Jim Jarmusch, the American filmmaker’s Father Mother Sister Brother, Ondrewj Provasnik’s Czechoslovakian film Broken Voices, the Iranian film Bidad by Soheli Beiraghi, The Blue Trail by Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro, the Croatian docu feature Fiume o Mortel by Ignor Bezinovic, Macedonia’s D J Ahmet by Gerogi M Unkovski, South Korea’s No Other Choice by Park Chan-Wook, Father by Slovakia’s Tereza Nvotova.

Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linklater, Ratchjapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Thai fare A Useful Ghost, the Spanish drama Calle Malaga by Maryam Touzani, Canadian-Hungarian filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron, the German historical war drama Amrum by Fatih Akin, Caravan by Czechoslovakia’s Zuzana Kirchnerova, Brendan Canty’s Christy, Puerto Rico filmmaker Iván Dariel Ortiz’s De Tal Palo, the director duo Arnaud Dufeys & Charolotte Devillers’ Belgium film We Believe You, Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s Franz on renowned Jewish-Czech author-writer Franz Kafka, Slovenia’s Little Trouble Girls by Urška Djukić, Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’s Spanish film Forastera, Romania’s Catane by Ioana Mischie, Hana Jusic’s Croatian flick God Will Not Help, Anna Cazenave Cambet’s French film Love Me Tender, the Portuguese epic Magellan by Lav Diaz, Sleepless City by Spain’s Guillermo Galoe, among others.

Of course, the choice is entirely yours my film folks. This is just a scroll of titles that you could possibly explore depending upon your own tastes and preferences and engagement with films as a true blue committed cine goer.

Well then, I hope you have gotten your delegate passes, the festival bag and catalogue, not to forget the handy daily screening schedule nicely tucked under your arms and you are well clothed to beat not only the City’s chilly weather but also the AC auditoriums of Cinepolis.

One only hopes the change of BIFFes Ground Zero from the Orion Mall to Lulu Mall is for the better and makes the film festival attendance that much more welcome and worth the wait providing for a wholesome, enjoyable times at the cinemas.

Have a happy “ Goodwill Hunting ” for cinemas that make up your day and eight days at the cinemas as the 17th Edition of BIFFes rolls out before you. Here’s toasting to a good time at the cinemas – Viva la Cinema! Enjoy. Adios Amigos! Be seeing you at the hustle and bustle of Cinepolis @ 3rd Floor Lulu Mall nestled at Gopalapura, Rajajinagar.

As Portuguese filmmaker Lav Diaz so succinctly sums it up “ cinema is the greatest mirror of humanity’s struggle. You see this alternative world, but you’re part of it. Everybody is part of it. This is our world.” Indeed.

And as David Puttnam puts it “ at its best, cinema does retain a remarkable ability to speak to people of every age, from every background, and in ways that almost any other art form in popular culture struggles to compete with, ” it would be assuring if BIFFes lives up to this expectation and successfully satiates the picky palates of the very many cinephiles that would be congregating as they celebrate yet another year of superlative cinemas that have dazzled the movie marquees of the world.

S VISWANATH is a veteran film critic who officiates as JURY at several National & International Film Festivals.