Journalism of Courage
A debut Bengali film on a small town boys coming-of-age looks at the sexual politics of adolescence.
These are strange times for the Bengali film industry. Not only has it lost Rituparno Ghosh,the master filmmaker behind Kolkatas middle-of-road sensible cinema,it has also found an enfant terrible in Q,whose films (Gandu and Tasher Desh) challenge the moral universe his audiences inhabit. Remakes spawned by southern hits,which usually run to packed houses,are getting slicker and smarter. And if all these werent enough,there are films that address the changing cultural milieu of the Bengali society.
Even in such a diverse landscape,it is difficult to find a place for Indranil Roychowdhurys directorial debut Phoring,which has been selected in the Indian panaroma section of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) this year. Set in a sleepy town in north Bengal,Phoring is about a young boys journey from adolescence to maturity. What differentiates it from other coming-of-age Bengali films,like Ritwik Ghataks Bari Theke Paliye or Satyajit Rays Aporajito,is the fact that its 13-year-old protagonist is seen as a sexual being. Its subversive without being forceful,seeped in nostalgia but quite unsentimental.
Roychowdhury,42,who is better known as Kobi in Bengali film circles,admits that exploring child sexuality is a tricky subject,but thats the most natural thing in the world. An adolescent is an intensely sexual being. Thats what he is constantly confronted with. Phoring is not a childrens film. It is a film about a journey and the sexual politics in the film is a motif to understand society, he says. This refusal to sugarcoat a childs experiences during adolescence has earned the film quite a few captivating moments. As a result,you see the lead character having matter-of-fact conversations with god about his nightfall problems,his grouses against his parents or even about the pretty schoolteacher he ogles at. Phoring,the protagonist,needs to address his sexuality to evolve. We tend to hide these things under the carpet and sometimes,they fester into something malevolent. Men,and to some extent,women too,see sex as this unnatural thing that can be used as a weapon, says Kobi. The protagonist,14-year-old Akash Adhikari,says he was not aware of the significance of certain scenes one that shows Phoring pleasuring himself,for instance while he was shooting. I just blindly followed instructions. Now that I think about it,I feel a little embarrassed, he says. Kobi says he never gave Adhikari,then a 12-year-old,the script in its entirety. I did not want to make him conscious, he says.
A student of Film and Television Institute of India,Kobi has worked extensively in Bengali television,having produced and directed over 100 television commercials. His 2006 short film Tapan Babu has also been remade in Malayalam. Even then,he points out that there are no real takers for my kind of filmmaking. The first thing a producer wants to know is who is starring in my film. I never have an answer to that, he says.
Phorings poignancy lies in its honest confessional tone. Of course,a lot of the film is autobiographical. When we were writing the film,we recounted a thousand anecdotes, says Kobi. The film has been made on a budget of Rs 60 lakh,meagre even by Tollywood standards. It had a good run the week it released,but was inexplicably taken off most theatres in its second week. Subsequently,it found a show at Nandan,the government-owned theatre complex.
The film is also a tribute to small-town India. It reflects the hopelessness and drudgery of the small town where Phoring lives. But there is also beauty weaved into all this stillness,a strange,disturbing emotion that is almost akin to nostalgia,but more. I was born in Contai,on the outskirts of Kolkata. I know the feeling of hopelessness in these places where nothing ever happens. I wanted to give a background story to its residents,who escape these places to make it to cities like Mumbai,Delhi and Bangalore, says Kobi.
