When the curtain goes up for the week-long 17th FILCA International Festival in Thiruvananthapuram on November 24, the 43 films that will be screened include an inviting spread from across the globe. The highlight of this year’s selection is the package for Indian Cinema, which has been selected by Premendra Mazumdar, film critic, curator and film society activist. The films are in Bangla, Rajbanshi (a dialect with a rapidly declining number of speakers), Assamese, Manipuri and Kannada. With four of the five films from the North-Eastern part of the country, the selection holds promise of opening up various facets of the region through the works of filmmakers Bobby Sharma Baruah, Reema Borah, Deep Choudhury and Haobam Paban Kumar. At a simplistic level the themes of the films may seem region-specific. Far from it. Each film, Bokul, Sonar Baran Pakhi, Alifa, and Lady of the Lake (Loktak Lairambee) dwells on human dilemmas that are universal and contemporary too. Marginalisation, alienation, violence perpetrated by the state on its people, encroaching on livelihoods, and containing the woman are issues that find a space here. The fifth film Rowdy Women of Kiragooru by Kannada filmmaker Suman Kittur takes on caste-gender equations as it plays out in the little hamlet. Tribute to masters There is a retrospective of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films (see box). If in Kieslowski we have a Pole who made films outside his country, FILCA pays tribute to the master filmmaker from the land, who stood his ground and made films in Poland — Andrzej Wajda, with the screening of Katyn (2007). It’s about the massacre where the perpetrators of the crime were not the Nazis but the Soviets, quite contrary to what was normal in those war years. In the Homage section, the films Swaroopam by K.R. Mohanan and Kanamarayathu by I.V. Sasi bring for us two differing takes on the social landscape they based their films on. If the former’s body of films was sparse, subtle, slow, reticent, and inward looking, the other falls under the category of prolific, raw, and visceral, and for these very reasons their works have carved a space in public memory. The complement of seven films Die Akte General, Freisatt, Head full of Honey, Hin Und Weg, Über-Ich und Du, Four Kings, and Rico, Oskar and the Mysterious Stone in the Country Focus comes with the support of the Goethe Zentrum. While not in any way creating a hierarchy among the films to be screened, two documentaries that add flavour to festival are Chettikulangara Kettukazcha by Madhu Eravankara and Raja Ravi Varma by Venu Nair both of which should appeal to both cinaestes and newbie alike. A good mix of the old and the new is what best describes the choice of Malayalam films – Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s latest Pinneyum, Ottayaal Paatha by Satish and Santhosh Babusenan, Kaviyude Osiyathu by Vineeth Anil, and Sooryakantha by M. Surendran. Auteur Adoor Gopalakrishnan will inaugurate the festival at 5.30 pm on November 24. The inaugural films are The Impossible, directed by J.A. Bayona, and Lady of the Lake, by Pawan Kumar Haobam. The screenings are at University Students’ Centre, PMG Junction Kieslowski’s genius The Kieslowski retrospective features the anthology Dekalog. Each of the 10 shorts has an identity and stands on its own, and for that reason does not call for a sequenced viewing. There are elements that bind the films together sometimes in the theme or mood, or about relationships, and in some it may have all the three features integrated. Double life of Veronique and Three Colours: Blue are the other films that complete the retro.

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