The Rebirth of Children's Film Society, India

It was in the 20th century that Children's Film Society, India (CFSI) last released a film in the theatres. The millennium has changed, and so have the kids and the business of cinema.

CFSI, sadly, seemed to have lost touch. Some of the best children's films of the new millennium -- 'Taare Zameen Par', 'Makdee', 'Chillar Party' and 'I Am Kalam' -- first came to CFSI, but were surprisingly rejected.

CFSI is all set to break the jinx in 2011 with its film 'Gattu' garnering lavish praise, both from kids and adults, at its premiere in The Golden Elephant 17th International Children's Film Festival India (ICFFI) now on in Hyderabad. It was the opening film at the festival, and for once in a long time in CFSI's history, it was in step with the times.

"Most children's films are didactic and boring. I wanted to make a fun film where the message was not overbearing but more like a natural progression," director Rajan Khosa told IANS.

In a small town, kids and adults are equally obsessed with kite-flying. The airspace is dominated by a black kite called Kali with mysterious origins. A street kid Gattu dreams of defeating Kali but fails. He sees that the local school has a roof which will give him a vantage point.

He joins the school with this intention in mind but has to pretend to be interested in studying. The only problem -- he is illiterate.

"The general impression in the minds of people is that street kids are dumb. Actually they are far smarter than we give them credit for," says Khosa.

"We worked a lot on the script and the film is promising. Its hooting reception from kids pleasantly surprised us. We are looking to tie up with an established distributor to ensure that the film gets its fair chance," Nandita Das, chairperson CFSI, told IANS.

In a short, restored film that was shown at the opening ceremony of the festival, Jawaharlal Nehru is seen interacting with kids and telling them why children's cinema needs focus. He is seen talking about children's cinema that is good, intelligent and in step with the times. And this, he tells kids in this film shot in 1956, was the precise reason CFSI was set up.

Indeed in its heydays, the best filmmakers in the country made films for CFSI and the best actors acted in them. But over half a century into its existence, the largest children's content maker and rights holder in India (over 250 films in 15 different languages) and one of the five largest in the world, CFSI stands accused of having lost touch.

But Nandita Das does not want to talk about the past. "I am trying to put systems in place so that they go beyond the individual because the chairperson and CEO changes. There has to be systemic changes that last longer," she says.

The ICFFI this year has had its fiascoes. But no one can deny that the number, variety and scope of films with 13 theatres and 154 films from 38 countries, made this the largest children's film festival ever in the country and one of the largest in the world. And all of these have been possible because a lot of young blood has been pumped into the organization and the festival by Nandita.

But for how long will this change last? CFSI has traditionally performed as good or as best as its chairperson. The last time it did really well was during the tenure of Jaya Bachchan who brought strictness and discipline into the organisation.

In this respect, a key time for CFSI would be August 2012 -- when Nandita's tenure ends.

(This feature was written for the newswire service, IANS. )

The Help – Poignant, Gutsy, Topical and Important

Director: Tate Taylor
Actors: Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The history of the world is the history of the billions of brutalities perpetrated on millions of people. The modern home of democracy and the land of many champions of liberty, USA, is also one of the world’s most brutal, obvious from their treatment of colored people.

‘The Help’ takes on the premise of the way colored people were treated in the 60s to weave a poignant story of love, courage and justice.

A young writer (Emma Stone) in the land of racial segregation in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s, secretly interviews colored women working as house maids in white people’s houses. In an extremely racist environment where it is outlawed to even talk of justice for the colored, they threaten the unquiet and unjust peace of their small town, while risking their own lives.

If you are a sensitive person, get ready to weep buckets as writer Kathryn Stockett (novel) and scriptwriter and director Tate Taylor present and peel off not the big injustices that the colored community faced, but small, insignificant humiliations they lived through daily, for centuries.

There are many films that have tackled racial injustice most notably ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Mississippi Burning’. But most of these films have focused on physical violence that moves communities. ‘The Help’ is about the structural violence that gives one group of people the sick right to perpetually dominate another, to keep them under their boots.

In accurately projecting the structural violence that one race perpetrates on another, the film shoots itself up amidst the pantheons of world’s greatest films ever made on the subject.

It speaks out to people suffering injustice, to stand up and take their destinies in their own hands, to not accept their misfortune but to find courage to fight it. There are no preachy statements, no lecture against racism. Instead, in the true spirit of cinema it shows it and lets you, the viewer, decide for yourself.

Besides an almost perfect screenplay and direction, what gives the film its concentrated strength, is the near perfect casting. You have some Oscar worthy performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Bryce Dallas Howard. While the first two tug at your heart as oppressed housemaids, it is Bryce’s portrayal of a heartless woman that gives visual representation to a racial hatred that has lasted centuries.

Melodrama is usually, and justly, criticized in cinema. But melodrama effectively played, can help a film soar beyond the obvious. The refined melodrama of ‘The Help’ becomes a lesson to filmmakers globally who desperately try to trigger the tear ducts of their viewers. Indeed, melodrama has never looked better in cinema before.

This, Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, was rejected by 60 literary agents but after finally being published in 2009, has so far sold five million copies and has been published in 35 countries. The movie has so far raked in over $200 million. This talks oodles about the power of a good story told well and people’s sense of justice that is triggered by this beautiful story.

Today as racism raises its ugly head in different shapes and guises; the film becomes a topical and poignant statement against it.

In a scene from the film, a maid asks a young girl to always remember and repeat “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.” This indeed is the message of ‘The Help’ to everyone who is facing oppression anywhere in the world.

This review has been written for the wire service, IANS. 

IIT Dropout Makes Slick Kung Fu Film For A Mere $2,000

In dream town Mumbai, full of struggling filmmakers waiting for that one chance, Kenny stands out. Instead of waiting, he learnt and gave himself a chance making a film that is perhaps India’s best Kung Fu comedy film. What will shock you, is that he has made the film for a paltry Rs. 95,000 (USD2,000).

Meet 29 year old Delhi IIT dropout Kenny Deori Basumatary, writer of the novel ‘Chocolate Guitar Momos’ that is fast rising in the Indian bestsellers list and screenwriter, actor and director of the aptly titled  film ‘Local Kung Fu’.

Kenny is still doing the final post production of the film but he showed IANS a rough cut.

The martial arts in this shoe-string budget film is surprisingly and unbelievably good. It literally has the looks of a film usually 100 times the budget (check out trailer below to believe it for yourself). 

Two men stare menacingly at each other before rushing in, flying through the air and landing each other a kick that throws them scrambling on the ground. Such well executed fight scenes are part of any average Chinese Kung-fu film, or high budget Hollywood flicks. But think of India, and you’ll draw a blank.

“India does not really have real martial arts films, we only have stunt films. There’s a difference. A true martial arts film will look and feel real, like those of Jackie Chan,” says Kenny before adding, “And what this needs is not necessarily big budgets, but good martial artists.”

Martial art films are the hardest to shoot. A 90 minute film ideally requires 15-20 minutes of action. To decently shoot a minute of action takes over a day. To make an hour and a half long action film for 95,000, thus seems impossible.

Kenny tells of his journey. “After a successful but abandoned screen writing apprentice program sponsored by a Mumbai corporate, I decided not to wait any longer for someone else to give me my lucky break. Since I had shot videos previously, I started toying with the idea of a low budget film,” Kenny, who will next be seen acting in Dibakar Banerjee’s ‘Shanghai’ says.  

He heard about the Canon 550D still camera, which was like, he says, “the younger brother of Canon 7D on which Anurag Kashyap was shooting a feature film. I already had locally available talent – my uncle’s Kung Fu students.”

Kenny’s maternal uncle, back in his home state of Assam, is a Kung Fu instructor. For ‘Local Kung Fu’ he used the students from his school who were also his friends since they had learned martial arts together.

Everyone you see in the film, even the deadly looking martial arts fighter seemingly straight out of a Jackie Chan film, were friends and family. “I worked everything out to the last detail on paper and night after night we’d choreograph and practice our action scenes,” Kenny says. It took him over 100 shooting days to make the film. Of the 95,000 budget, Rs. 60,000 went on the camera and lens while the rest went for travel, food and a token payments for the actors.

There have been other super low budget Indian films like the psychological thriller “The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project” made for Rs. 40,000. Yet, an action film requires time, effort, coordination and bigger budget. Hence to see such a good martial arts film that is also funny and made on a shoe-string budget by a debutante seems like an impossible miracle. A look at the trailer available on YouTube will give you a glimpse of how well this impossibility has become real.

Just like his modest film, Kenny is a modest man. “I did what I set out to achieve. I try not to have high hopes, but the very positive reactions of the few people who have seen ‘Local Kung Fu’ has been encouraging,” he says. He hopes to show the film to production houses and see whether a deal can be worked out. If not, he says he’ll put the films for free viewing on YouTube, on Torrents for free download etc. “It didn’t cost me much money, but I don’t underestimate its long-term value either,” he says.

Super low budget but good films like ‘Local Kung Fu’, begs to ask the question: is another cinematic revolution in the making in India, of low budget but well made films where talented people won’t have to wait for that one elusive Bollywood chance? Or is Kenny’s film a rare exception. We’ll know in due course of time.

Dolphin Tale – A Fun, Family Entertainer

Director: Charles Martin Smith

Actors: Nathan Gamble, Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr.

Rating: 4 out of 5

On land it’s the dog and over water it’s dolphin that is a man’s best friend. Grateful humans have cinematically paid tributes to both. Though there are less films about dolphins, those that do exist have been beautiful tributes to an enduring friendship. Joining this elite list is ‘Dolphin Tale’, a rare family film that is both enjoyable for everyone as it is intelligent and metaphoric.

Sawyer, a reserved kid rescues a dolphin and slowly opens up in her presence. The dolphin, named Winters, loses her tail-fin. Sawyer and a doctor desperately try to find her a prosthetic fin even as Sawyer’s inspiration, his cousin, returns from war a depressed and withdrawn paraplegic.

‘Dolphin Tale’ is in the true tradition of a family entertainer. It is predictable but filled with good natured and politically correct yet laugh-along humour, some subtle jibes at the brutality of man, and a heart that beats for love, humanity, inclusion of the disabled and against war. It’s a rare instance of a film which a five year old will enjoy as much as a 50 year old.

All the actors in the film do a commendable job in maintaining the seriousness and fun of a simple story. Yet, it is the non-verbal creatures that become its true star. The actually paraplegic dolphin Winter, on whose real life story the film is based, is obviously the star. But her sidekick, a psychotic pelican provides oodles of laughter and almost steals the thunder from under Winter’s fin.

‘Dolphin Tale’ is also in the best tradition of films about animals where the animal becomes a metaphor for something else. Remember ‘Chillar Party’ where a street dog becomes an emblem for every disenfranchised being in the world. Here, Winter becomes both a victim of human’s intended and unintended violence on nature, while her missing fin becomes a metaphor for our missing humanity. If we can do this to our dear friend, the dolphins, what hope does anything else in nature have?

In thus trying to help her out, humans, even if for a few moments, rescue themselves from their own brutality.

The film also makes subtle statements against our prejudice of those not like us. No one wants a handicapped dolphin. Though it is not said, but it is the same feeling that depresses a young man who has been crippled by war. Just like the dolphin it was not his fault that his self-righteous country sent him to fight a war he did not start or want. But it is indeed the nation’s and humanity’s fault if he were not to be included back.

Sadly, if you look around, especially in India, we don’t have an inclusive society. And those that are disabled by some accident at birth or after it, are unwelcome. Just like Winters and like in the film ‘300’, this cruel society would rather remove the disabled from their dream of a perfect society, than include them even when the Einstein of our generation, Dr. Stephen Hawkins, is a ‘disabled’ man who can’t even talk on his own.

In Winter, the film thus asks the question, who is actually disabled, those physically and mentally disabled or the rest of us who can’t look past this to truly consider their ability, just like Winter’s. The answer isn’t easy. Thankfully, ‘Dolphin Tale, that underplays its melodramatic elements, is. 

This review has been written for the news-wire service IANS.

The Rum Diary – Resistance Is The Message

Director: Bruce Robinson

Actors: Johnny Depp, Giovanni Ribisi, Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart

Rating: 4 out of 5

In one of the pithiest scenes of ‘Rum Diary’ a lobster tells our protagonist, “humans are the only specie on the planet who claim a god, but act as if they don’t have one.”  This comment summarizes the film and humanity that has turned the world into a ‘land of multiple outrage’.

An out of work American journalist Paul (Johnny Depp) goes to Puerto Rico only to find that country an island of greed where a few Americans do their best to stanch-and-grab its resources while poverty and injustice infest the island.

Rum Diary is a quirky and witty film, filled with crazy characters with insane idiosyncrasies. But beyond the external veneer of humour and wit, lies a commentary about a world gone horribly wrong and each of our places in it.

All of us have either directly faced injustice or are aware of it omnipresence. While most of us close our eyes to this reality, some fight it. But it is a resistance that is seemingly futile since the enemy is extremely powerful and seemingly indestructible. And like Paul we realize that we cannot often win even when we try. If we know we’ll lose, why fight?

The answer is that in a world of mass cruelty and violence like ours, resistance in itself is the victory we seek. In not catering to popular American fetish of celebrating victory and happy endings, the film does a great service. Because in reality, you don’t always win. You cannot. You lose. And that is the message – even if you lose, you have to resist.

Like the films of Costa Gavres, its message is ‘resistance’. One must fight even in the face of tremendous adversity when losing is imminent. That it is enough to simply discover a ‘voice made of ink and rage’ like Paul does.

For the average viewer not concerned with metaphors, the latent wit and humour will give them a satisfactory watch, though the seemingly ‘pale’ ending is bound to put many off. However, the delectable acting of the ensemble cast headed by Johnny Depp will give them enough to bide their time.

For the more discerning viewer, this is a film made in heaven with a jazzy and witty exterior that manages to possess a soul. It manages to make a telling statement on society. The guts of the director to unflinchingly drops names like ‘Union Carbide’ (that caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984) is laudatory. Sometimes the truth is better than political correctness.

The film is extremely allegorical. Paul tries to affect change as a journalist but fails, only to find his voice as a writer. This seems to suggest that journalism has failed to be the watch dog of our society and that it is now up to literature to take up that mantle to fight injustice.

In another moment in the film, the writer says that there is no American Dream and that it is merely a “piss puddle of greed spreading throughout the world.” If you consider that in their 235 years of independence, America has been involved wars with some country or another for over 200 years, you realize what that statement, and the film, means. 

This review has been written for the news-wire service IANS. 

In Time – A Topical, Timely Thriller

Director: Andrew Niccol

Actors: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy

Rating: 4 out of 5

In a Hollywood that is famous for buying out talent, Andrew Niccol is among a few surviving auteurs. His films delve into the themes of justice, personal choice over spoon-fed reality and of genetic and technological interference in human life. With ‘In Time’ he adds a very timely, topical thriller, albeit one that does not end as good as it builds up.

In the near future, humans have been genetically modified so that they stop ageing at the age of 25. After 25, an internal clock starts in them and time becomes the only currency. A person could practically live forever if he someone earns time. Or so the society is made to believe till Will Sallas (Justin Timberlake), a blue collared worker from the ghetto, who is accused of stealing a century from another man, discovers a bigger conspiracy.

Andrew Niccol has always made films on the obsessions of humanity. In ‘The Truman Show’ that he wrote, he tackles reality TV. ‘Lord of War’ is about the human fetish for war while his science fiction masterpiece ‘Gattaca’ is about genetic predetermination and the resulting prejudice.

'Live Forever Or Die Trying', the tagline of the film, in our world translates to 'Get Rich Or Die Trying'

‘In Time’ is inspired by ‘Gattaca’. Like in Gattaca, humanity has been genetically modified resulting in the creation of the most perfectly tradable commodity – time and thus our very own life. In the film, he breaks the last known cliché that rooted for equality; that no matter how rich or poor one was, everyone was equal in one respect – we all eventually die. He asks the question, what if someday we figure out how not to die? What would humans do? Would it lead to equality, or merely replace one unequal social structure with another?

Yet, though set in a dystopian futuristic ghetto, this is a story of our times. Time becomes a metaphor for the unequal distribution of wealth in our own present. ‘For a few to be immortal, many must die’, a line from the film, can be replaced with: for a few to be insanely rich, many must be made poor. When we look around, that is exactly the state of our world today that is governed by a ‘Darwinian Capitalism’ as Niccol points out.

There is a structure, a system that has been built that causes great inequity and misery in the world for most while a few flourish. The rich do their best to preserve this system, since they depend on it. The poor, have no option, but to occasional rise in revolt, like the French and Russian revolutions of the past and ‘Arab Spring’ and ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movements now.

The film thus builds a wonderful parable for our insanely unjust world. And a good writer that Niccol is, the film is peppered with witty and incisive writing.

However, unlike his other tighter films, there is an element of inconsistency and lengthiness about this film. It builds up extremely well but misses out on a more forceful ending that his other films manage. Though it could have been a much darker satire of our times, much like the novel 1984, Niccol also seems to have tempered down the tone. Perhaps Hollywood does that to the best autuers.

Yet, this won’t bother audiences much, as he builds a compelling tale which is very real, despite its science fiction elements. ‘In Time’ is a very timely and very welcome film from this master


This review has been written for the news-wire service IANS.