It’s time to hit the road, literally. The road less travelled, more so, as American poet Robert Frost would say. With cinema taking to road to spotlight on social concerns and seek answers to pricky posers, it’s only in fitness of things, cinephiles too hit the filmi highway on a celluloid sojourn with Bangalore Film Society this weekend.
Presenting a curated threesome of classic road movies, BFS, as part of its On the Road package is bringing three celebrated works that trek the less trodden trail as they strive to spotlight on essential truth that dog our everyday lives.
The outing begins with renowned German auteur Wim Wenders’ critically acclaimed Cannes Palme Best Film Winner Paris, Texas. This unusual road movie, famous for influencing U2’s seminal Joshua Tree album, spotlights on an amnesiac wanderer lost in his own private hell trying to piece his life together once again. A lyrical meditation on loss and longing, the contemplative and compelling film is about a man, presumed dead for four years, who reappears from the desert on the Mexico border, world-weary, and tracks his brother who has been bringing up Hunter, his seven-year-old son, his ex-wife Jane abandoned several years before.
Winner of Venice’s Golden Lion, The Return, debutant directorial essay by Russian film-maker Andrei Zvyagintsev revolves around two pre-teen boys shocked by their father’s return home after 12 long years. Exploring the fear and courage that results when children suddenly face unknown horrors of the adult world, the film follows two brothers taken a road trip by their father and as they proceed the trip turns into claustrophobic battle of wills between the father and sons. It takes mysterious note when the father’s real identity and true nature of so called fishing trip come under suspicion.
Drawing curtains on travelogue films is prodigious Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf’s Blackboards. Chronicling the plight of Iranian Kurdistanis caught amidst violent strife and brutal terrain where survival is a way of life, the film revolves around band of itinerant teachers wandering in search of pupils with blackboards on backs. Three strands of stories ensue, around the blackboards, which serve as shelter from elements and gunfire and surveillance planes. Each teacher attempts contact with representatives of the region, such as teenagers smuggling stolen goods, and elderly Iranians trying to make their way home. The poignant and powerful narrative reveals there is more to learn from life than three the Rs. Screenings Fri to Sun, at Ashirvad, 30, St Mark’s Road, 6.30 pm. For details call: 2549 2774/ 2549 3705. Admission for members. For membership arrive early.
