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| Poster of South Korean film Poetry and (above) a scene from Iranian film Salaam Cinema screened by Film Society of Bhubaneswar at Jayadev Bhavan auditorium on Friday. Telegraph pictures |
Bhubaneswar, Aug. 23: Film Society of Bhubaneswar screened films from South Korea and Iran at Jayadev Bhavan auditorium on Friday evening.
The first screening of the evening was the South Korean film Poetry (2010) directed by Lee Chang-dong.
The story is about an old lady, Mi-ja, who lives with her teenaged grandson in a small suburban city located along the Han river.
The film explores the complications of life. The old lady takes a ‘poetry’ class at a neighbourhood cultural centre and is challenged to write a poem for the first time in her life.
In her quest for poetic inspiration, she is delightfully surprised with a newfound apprehension and feels like a little girl discovering things for the first time in her life.
However, she faces a different predicament and she comes face-to-face with some gory incidents that are beyond her imagination. She realises perhaps life is not as beautiful as she had thought it was.
Lee Chang-dong was already one of South Korea’s foremost novelists and playwrights when he decided to try his hand at screenwriting and film directing in his early 40s.
His body of films has now earned him worldwide recognition as one of the foremost Asian filmmakers working in world cinema. He received the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes International Film Festival for the film.
“Lee’s film Oasis (2002) which was a sensation at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival, was previously once screened by Film Society of Bhubaneswar,” said Jagat Basa, a member.
The second screening of the evening, Salaam Cinema (1995) by the Iranian filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf, was part of Film Society of Bhubaneswar’s classics revisited section.
Makhmalbaf gives an advertisement in the newspapers and informs that those who are interested in acting could appear for a test and some of them would be chosen to be a part of a movie on the occasion of the 100th year of the birth of the cinema.
However, when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.
What turns out is a riveting piece of cinema, which remains one of the finest films ever made on the nature of cinema itself.