15th Kolkata Film Festival Starts

The 15th Kolkata Film Festival started today with the opening film, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I didn't go to see it as it is available on DVD and easily accessible. It is a part of an interesting series of films though - films by contemporary directors on World War II. All these films are from 2008 and 2009 and promise the 'outside view' on the war.

The film I am looking forward to most in the festival is India's Oscar nominated (for Foreign film category), Harishchandrachi Factory which is on the making of India's first film, Raja Harishchandra by Dadasaheb Phalke.

I plan to see contemporary cinema at the festival, mostly films from the last 3 years which are not easily accessible.

I will also try and watch the Indian Select films, notable among which will be the bengali film selections.

I am targeting viewing 20-35 films over the next 7 days. Much fun beckons. :)

Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo

Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo is a 1974 Bengali film by the acclaimed director Ritwik Ghatak. It is an excellent movie on the political situation in Bangladesh, Bengal and India on a whole to an extent at the time. Bangladesh had just become independent in 1971 and the movie was screened for the first time in 1974 - it has a female character who is called 'Bangladesh's soul'. Ghatak (named Nilakantha) plays the central character in the movie of a drunkard intellectual whose wife has no option but to leave him. Nilakantha goes in a journey to reach his wife.

During the journey, Nilakantha has experiences meeting new people and expressing his ideologies and thoughts on the world at large. He meets naxalites, Bengal's youth itself, with whom he has an intriguing conversation. Nilakantha disapproves of the youth's ideology, says that it is dying every where in the world and that it has no future. The youth doesn't take to Nilakantha's argument and terms him a decadent old drunkard.

The whole movie is a joyful tapestry of images. We see brilliant cultural dances and a cultural dancer muse on the decaying form of the art for instance. Ghatak, as the protagonist, is brilliant in his acting of an alcoholic man who has no one to listen to his ideologies any more and no one to turn to as his wife has left his side. He says every thing is burning, the universe is burning several times in the movie press on his view in short.

Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo gets a solid 8/10.