[Reader-list] mumbai film festival

[Shammi Nanda]

Saw the screening of 'My Mother India' by Safina
Uberoi  at  the film festival in Mumbai. I found its
concerns genuine and honest but it’s sad that majority
of film makers in India are not interested in
exploring the form. It's a slightly more creative
‘activist genre’ film which has its origin in cinema
verite. This form itslef is not so great even form the
times of Jean Rouch, over and above that it has been
vulgarised by television, be it National Geographic or
Doordarhan and the activist genre of film making.
Watching the films at the festival I was reminded of
something that Susan Sontag has written about cinema.
“Cinema's 100 years seem to have the shape of a life
cycle: an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of
glories and the onset in the last decade of an
ignominious, irreversible decline. It's not that you
can't look forward anymore to new films that you can
admire. But such films not only have to be exceptions
-- that's true of great achievements in any art. They
have to be actual violations of the norms and
practices that now govern movie making everywhere in
the capitalist and would-be capitalist world -- which
is to say, everywhere”.

Also saw ‘Swaraj’ by Anwar Jamal and Sehjo Singh,
after seeing so many posters of it all around the
venue I had felt some great film is coming from the
“cottage industry of film making” (as said by the
director). I think if Balaji Telefilms were asked to
make this film they would have done a better job!! To
be honest I Couldn’t sit through for more than half an
hour. It looked like a ‘Delhi Doordarshan Ki
Prastuti’. In case any one has found it great it would
be nice to hear their views. Its sad that films like
this are being shown all over the world as Indian
Cinema.
Shammi


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