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Such was the passion for his movies. Shemaroo World Cinema, in collaboration with Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy, had organised the three-day festival at the Suchitra Film Society Auditorium recently.
The festival was inaugurated by Nagabharana, Chairman, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, and presided over by film-maker Sheshadri; Hiren Gada, Director, Shemaroo Entertainment; and N Vidyashankar from the Suchitra Film Society. The event was held to celebrate the birth anniversary of the Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa.
On the occasion, Nagabharana said, “Akira Kurosawa was an extremely talented film-maker, he has guided me through his excellent works. The speciality of Akira’s works is that they have the ability to give meaning and characterisation to the content and this is what I like most about him.”
The basic objective behind the festival was to ignite the passion for Kurosawa’s movies. Hiren Gada said, “Kurosawa is like a big banyan tree in the film world. The more I say about him, the less you know.” The film festival was an effort to expand the film community and to lay the foundation stone for preserving film art and culture.
Sheshadri described Kurosawa as the headmaster. “He is simply good and his films speak for him.” On the occasion, a set of DVDs of Kurosawa’s films were released by the dignitaries.
Vidyashankar said, “Remembering Kurosawa in his birth centenary year is not just a perfunctory duty but an intellectual and cultural obligation. He was the man who, through his films, brought into recognition new civilisational contexts of the East and used the medium to raise philosophical questions about the values of the visual perception itself through path-breaking films.”
After the inauguration, Kurosawa’s Rashomon was screened. Rashomon is a Japanese crime drama. The film depicts the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her husband through the widely-differing accounts of four witnesses. Madadayo and Ran were also screened at the film festival.