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| A montage of film stills shown at this year’s film festival |
Speech, seminar and cinema. Passion, love and cinema. Food, drink and cinema. The festival mantra.
Show timings going awry, speeches by dignitaries going on forever, cellular gadgets ringing ever so often, no subtitles, untimely cuts ? it?s all been happening at Nandan these days.
Cigarettes in manicured hands. Kurosawa-Renoir biographies peeping from the understated mirror-work sling bag. Guitar, mouth organ and Dylan. Chicken a la kiev to ruti-alur dam, buttered popcorn to good ol? bhel. The film festival saw it all, as did Rajrupa Ghosh.
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| Crowds galore at Nandan |
Nandan and Sisir Mancha being out of bounds for the ordinary cine lover in Buddha-country, one could only just take a peek. The fountains had never sprayed higher or the lights shined brighter or the trees swayed greener. Amid fancy decorations and fairy lights, the delegate, card-tag round his neck, was the undisputed king. He did it all ? from a good French accent to a goofy intellectual charade, sipping Georgia tea to tracking German trails on screen. The rest of the milling crowd checked schedules, clutched water bottles and peeled the odd orange while making a poor man?s beeline towards Rabindra Sadan.
Trust the crowd to make anything work. What with Rs 40 and Rs 60 tickets at Sadan, the film fan was all focussed on making the outing worth the wait, taking casual leave from work and giving bhaat-maachh for lunch the miss. From ?Dekh, dekh Raima Sen? to ?Arre, ekhaney shaheb maneyi celebrity (Any foreigner here is a celebrity)?, excitement and wonder never cease. Tollywood had descended on the Nandan premises with a vengeance, as if determined to keep up with the rest of the world and be gushed at by the soap-watching city.
Mattresses, newspapers, picnic lunches, paper plates and napkins. The film-lover had it all planned. Between standing in line for one movie after another, the food-session was taken care of like clockwork. Pouring out of the greenroom entrance at Rabindra Sadan, he would dash for the open green near the glasshouse. Out would come the mattress and packed brunch of boiled eggs and toast. Fun would be the munch as the wife could be trusted to pack up in a jiffy before rushing for the next show.
A puja after Durga Puja. A book fair before the Book Fair. For religious visitors to the festival, the dress code had to be sufficiently suitable for cine-piety. The charmer in the sweet Bengali girl was played to the hilt with huge bindis, flowers in the hair, dhakai or taant sari and dark, smoky kajal. Any wood, dokra or shell accessory invariably helped enhance the intellectual?s score, while the hip, neo-thinker pulled out all stops to give the casual, never-could-care-less look. What with an Om or two, Yinyang or Tantric do, the frayed jeans, the ?thinking? T-shirt or ethnic kurta, it was film-powered fashion time.
The festival unleashed a new breed of lovers on the heart of Calcutta?s cultural HQs. Usually there would be this ?hand-holding? couple from Uttarpara who come every Saturday for a few moments of privacy away from any prying para eye. They, along with their ?peanut-devouring? counterpart from Naihati, were displaced by gangs of merry youngsters whose love is for the reel cause. This Szabo-mouthing, sandwich-munching crowd, replete with caps, hats, anklets and piercings had a run of the show, holding grave discussions on anything from Iranian film techniques to Icelandic camera pans, from Finnish story lines to Phillipino mise-en-scene.
When the heart wants to have fun, excuses manufacture themselves. The babu revelled in his season in front of the screen, setting his sights for a break beyond the world of Ray and Ritwik. Bosses were left with sudden illnesses at office, while lectures tended to be lonely in college classrooms. Kohl-lined eyes scanned the screen for meaning during unintelligible subtitle-less films; newly pierced eyebrows never stopped to hurt as nicotine-streaked lips pursed in serious understanding of the serio-comedy genre in post socialist Germany. ?Ah man?. it?s chilled easy?the key to good cinema lies in having the will to understand it.?
As introductory speeches got longer, crowds got chirpier, hands got together and clapped. A ritual that worked well as organisers took these as signs of warning and served up a festival movie, pronto! An incoming call here and a message there, albeit with Rabindrasangeet or blues ringtones always managed to get past the careful whisking at the gates. But what was inescapable was the collective grunt of disapproval ? ?ghaar dhorey ber korey din, dada (throw him out by the scruff of his neck)?. From great scenes to good music, powerful on-screen performances to post-film enchantments, appreciation flowed free and plenty from the audience, ever-ready to acknowledge the slightest bit of ?bhalo chhobi?.
And in the end, it is this spirit that mattered. Good cinema, adda, and food for thought.
Reason enough to forget during the festival the daily routine of ?bathing, eating or going to work?. Reason enough to prepone bhaiphonta appointments to watch six movies at a stretch. Reason enough to laugh and cry during a riveting three-hour-long movie, and never getting to know its name, but not minding nonetheless. Reason enough to work the mind and ease the heart. Reason enough to feel good and take it home.
If it?s not reason, it must be madness. Either way, cinema rules.
