BITS Film Festival 2018 Pamphlet

Curated by Parichay Patra and Geetha

Regional Cinema: Kannada

Dweepa (Girish Kasaravalli, 2002, 134 min)

The National Award winning Kannada film Dweepa (2002) by Girish Kasaravalli is set in an imaginary island Sitapura and deals with the theme of dam construction and displacement. The film is endearing in its portrayal of the indomitable spirit of the protagonist Nagi.

18/08/2018

Theatre and Cinema

Life of Riley (Alain Resnais, 2014, 108 min)

Alain Resnais (1922-2014), the French auteur once associated with the Left Bank group, remained preoccupied with theatre, theatrical forms and film-theatre negotiations for long. The film that he made before this, namely You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (2012), was screened in the first edition of BITS film fest in April 2018. Deceptively comic, Life of Riley is Resnais’ last film that went on to win the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 64^th Berlin Film Festival. Here Resnais has made an overwhelming use of painted backdrops and other theatrical conventions to continue with his experimentations with the mise-en-scène.

Regional Cinema: Kannada

Kurmavatara (Girish Kasaravalli, 2011, 133 min)

Yet another National award winning film by Kasaravalli, it revolves around Anand Rao- a near retirement Government employee- as he plays the role of Mahatma Gandhi for a television serial. Based on a short story of the same title by Kum. Veerabhadrappa, the film is an interesting take on how playing the role of Gandhi affects Anand Rao.

Nightshift Section: Italian Giallo

Don’t Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci, 1972, 102 min)

Lucio Fulci’s one of the most important gialli is a remarkable instance of the genre with its representation of the Italian south/Mezzogiorno and the inroads that modernity and urbanization was making into it, and of catholic perversion and resultant violence. Like many other examples of the genre here too we have a series of inexplicable murders committed by the psycho-killer and the innocent bystander who, after getting entangled, ends up playing the amateur sleuth.

 Nightshift Section: Italian Giallo

Tenebrae (Dario Argento, 1982, 101 min)

Arguably Dario Argento’s most well-known giallo after Deep Red (1975), Tenebrae, as Maitland McDonagh argues, is situated in a Rome of near future with its dazzling white concrete that lacks any reference to the baroque or rococo influence, and its gruesome yet ‘fictional’ murders along with the long takes create idiosyncratic images of violence that often evoke memories of visual art.

19/08/2018

Middle East (Israel)

Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (The Band's Visit, Eran Kolirin, 2007, 83 min)

Eran Kolirin's first film tells the story of an Egyptian Band stranded in a remote village in Israel. Humorous, warm, and melancholic at the same time, the film wins the audience over. Minimalistic in design, watching this film is an experience in itself and it is not meant to be confined in words.

Middle East (Iran) 

Khane-ye doust kodjast (Where is the Friend's Home, Abbas Kiarostami, 1987, 83 min)

This simple and profound film by the much-celebrated Iranian filmmaker Kiarostami follows the journey of an eight-year old boy Ahmed as he struggles to locate his friend’s house. Cinematically beautiful and poetic, it has a cinematic purity that can hardly be surpassed.

BITS Film Festival 2018

Curated by Parichay Patra and Geetha B

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Alain Resnais, 2012, 115 min) (inaugural film)

Alain Resnais (1922-2014), the French auteur once associated with the Left Bank group, remained preoccupied with theatre, theatrical forms and film-theatre negotiations for long. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet is his penultimate film that made its way to the Competition in Cannes 2012. At the pretext of experimenting with Eurydice, Jean Anouilh’s version of the Orphic myth, Resnais gathers an ensemble cast from the Parisian stage and screen that includes his veterans such as Lambert Wilson, Anne Consigny, Pierre Arditi, Mathieu Amalric and Sabine Azéma (Resnais’ first wife), along with Michel Piccoli, Hippolyte Girardot and Michel Rubin. They indulge in melancholic performances of the myth that has haunted the screen for years.

Hermia and Helena (Matías Piñeiro, 2017, 87 min)

The young Argentine auteur Matías Piñeiro continues his experiments with the Bard, Hermia and Helena being the latest one after Rosalinda (2011), Viola (2012) and The Princess of France (2014). In his own distinctive style, Piñeiro presents his Shakespearean characters/actors who “rehearse and play the comedy, but at the same time play their parts…they explore what film can do with theatre as a subject and as a source, how film can expand, question and reveal theatre” (Quintin).

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, 125 min)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema most assuredly foils any conscious attempt at paraphrasing or summarizing with its elusiveness; it is as ambiguous as the Thai forest within which his spirits and sub-humans roam. The bipartite structure of Tropical Malady begins with the budding of a homosocial romance between a soldier and a country boy but soon the soldier starts stalking a tiger in the forest, only to be stalked by the tiger-spirit in return. Through the fissures within his narrative, Weerasethakul’s surrealist strategies have a volcanic eruption.

Limonata (Ali Atay, 2015, 110 min)

Limonata is an entertaining road movie. A Turkish comedy film, touching the realms of absurdity at times, is directed by the Turkish actor and filmmaker Ali Atay. Most of the story takes place on the road from Macedonia to Istanbul and back. Film wins due to its warmth, intelligent direction and quirky humour. Limonata was a nominee for Golden Tulip for Best Turkish film of the year and Seyfi Teoman Best First Film Award. 

The Girl who knew Too Much (Mario Bava, 1963, 86 min)

Mario Bava’s 1963 giallo horror is credited as the first of its kind, a trendsetter in the history of Italian cinema that established all the narrative elements of the genre, the innocent bystander getting involved in a series of murders and transforming into an amateur investigator to detect the psychopath killer on a spree. The standard costume for the giallo killer was yet to take shape, a job that Bava left unfinished till the advent of his Blood and Black Lace (1964).

• TEFF 2015: Celebrating Landscapes and Waterscapes http://www.teff.in/ecocinema-conference/ ( 8-10 october 2015).

• We Care Film festival (awareness of disability issues) in collaboration with Brotherhood, New Delhi 
  21 January 2015