Waiting for sunshine

The 31st International Film Festival of India is over. Now it is the time of complaints and compliments. More complaints, certainly. We he...

The 31st International Film Festival of India is over. Now it is the time of complaints and compliments. More complaints, certainly. We hear them every year. Does this festival have a character? It is not really regional, it is not spectacularly international, and it is not a celebration of the latest trends in cinema. Then there is that thing about exclusivity. A festival for whom? The industry the Bombay industry of course is not interested.

Rather, the industry is not incorporated, the taste-maker is still the bureaucrat. And the big stars are never sighted in Delhi8217;s Siri Fort. Anyway, the festival is not for commoners, it is for the so-called delegates and guests. Another question: should there be a competition? There is one for the Asian cinema, which for most of us means cinema from India, China and Japan. They make some good movies. But an Indian award has no decisive market value. These complaints are nothing new.

The usual hurrumphers will continue with their just-another-waste attitude.Perhaps it is better to talk about the movies. How international was the 31st festival, in terms of good cinema? Was it a celebration of the best?Not really, in spite of Szabo, Almodovar, Carlos Saura, Majid Majidi, Wim Wenders and Chen Kaige. But prime-time pretence and mediocrity took the best of the festival. True, it was nice of the festival directorate to get a few good films from contemporary masters. Istvan Mephisto Szabo8217;s Sunshine was not specifically a Hungarian. It was a spectacularly epical remembrance of the century that was 8212; the European century of darkness, death and ideology, filmed by an auteur who has not yet abandoned hope.

Szabo the survivor of dead certainties deserves the sunshine of liberation. Like the father and son of Majid Majidi8217;s poignant Rang-e-Khoda The Colour of Paradise deserve liberation after a turbulent soul journey. If Majidi was metaphysically lyrical, Pedro Almodovar was very very Latin American 8212; All About My Mother was a marvel in narration. The love and lossin a mother8217;s life move faster than the street car of desire in Almodovar8217;s mise en scenes. Here too the destination is liberation. Chen Kaige8217;s Farewell My Concubine and Temptress Moon are representative works of China8217;s most gifted filmmaker. Once East Europeans under communism made movies that vindicated Borges: censorship is the mother of metaphor. Chen Kaige is not particularly metaphorical, he goes back to the costume drama of history. Still, there was little drama in Siri Fort.

For, four or five contemporary masterworks don8217;t make a film festival truly international. Some of them, like Saura8217;s Tango and Chen Kaige8217;s Concubine and Moon, came to Delhi too late. Delhi has failed to get the best of the world cinema, and Delhi has succeeded in showcasing quite a few insignificant films, like the pretentiously pompous Which Side Eden bad news for exile8217; as well as post-communist Eastern Europe. Also, an international film festival should not aspire to be archival. Roberto Rossellini is a great name,more suitable for a film institute than a film festival. It may be quite difficult to redefine the festival after thirty years. It has already acquired an undefinable character. The best the festival directorate can do is: get the best of the world cinema.