The darkened theatre; a soft, comfortable seat; controlled temperature and thousands of shadowy images moving across the screen...” — Edmund Burke Feldman US art critic and educator.
Indeed, the week that passed by was just like that. Thanks to the sumptuous showpiece spectacle that Biffes — Bengalooru International Film Festival — brought to Beantown. Biffes provided quintessential platform to understand, assimilate and appreciate cinema as an artistic medium.
Bengalooru, if not blighted by extraneous events of 2002, would have been permanent homeground to host International Film Festival of India, annual calendar cinema jamborie, where movies of global marquee light up silver screens, celebrating marvels of master ouvres. But then, that was not to be. Suchitra, pursuing its laudable goals of spreading aesthetic cinema culture and inculcating better appreciation among diaspora, took upon itself the task of hosting IFF, and the just signed off Biffes proved what a sterling show it was.
Biffes, over the week unspooled bevy of over 150 captivating and choicest creative celluloid creations. Virtually each and every cinematic essays were sparklers in their own right. Be it evergreen classics of Mizoguchi Kenji’s quintet retros, the vivre (living together) ensemble sextet from France, fiery fivesome from Hungary, erogenous six from Julio Medem.
That Biffes impacted and injected interest in those that it intended, specially impressionable young GenX, who thronged the theatres in great numbers, zestfully participating in seminars and discussions was ample testimony that Biffes has come of age in just its second sally itself. As memorable German film The Lives of Others rung the curtains down, some celluloid gems that will eternally be etched vividly in one’s mind’s eye are: festival showpiece Gyorgy Palfi’s hypnotic Hukkle. Pen-Ek Ratabaryabg’s pulsating Ploy, Samon Salour’s perceptive A few kilos of dates for a funeral, Sven Taddicken’s gusty Emma’s Bliss, Stefano Odoardi’s ruminative The White Ballad, Norway Jens Lien’s superlative Bothersome Man, Miroslav Aleksic’s haunting Heart’s Affair, Stephene Brize’s poignant Not Here to be Loved, Istvan Gaal’s The Falcons, besides Biffes’ opener Golam Rabbany Biplob’s On the Wings of Dreams.
