Bouquet of movies await cinema buffs at international film festival

Boxing Day has turned happy harbinger for City’s avowed cinephiles.

In keeping with Yuletide fever, the magical week has arrived when annual cinema carnival lights up screens with wondrous world of movies. 

It’s a week when City’s film buffs turn bleary-eyed, dissect and debate upon, as they savour some of choicest cinemas Bangalore’s calendar filmi jamboree — Bengaluru International Film Festival (Biffes) brings before them. With five screenings daily, and just seven days to catch upon some of best of films from world over, Bangalore’s cinema conscious citizens will be flitting from one screening venue to another with week’s schedule and festival catalogue as compass to choose films of their choice. 

It’s a week when connoisseurs, practitioners and proponents, and citizens of every hue and habit, will find common cause, converging to catch up, chat on, and celebrate the marvels of moving images. 

Melange of movies

Biffes will see mixed melange of movies, from master auteurs to debutant directors, spotlighting on subjects and concerns, social and political, entertaining and engaging, mesmerising movie lovers and provoking mixed reactions as fellow cineastes compare notes. Biffes, over the years, has ensured Bangalore turns cinema conscious.

In order to make cinema lovers’ task tad easier to choose from over 150 odd films being screened during the week, Deccan Herald provides a possible list, film buffs can pick and make their date with Biffes that much more satisfying. 

Among Indian fare, viewers can catch the Marathi film Astu, by director-duo Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukhtankar, touching and troubling tale of today’s times. Hindi film Dozakh: In Search of Heaven by Zaigham Imam is another beauty whose potent theme of religious tension will leave audiences spell bound. 

If Bengali film Apur Panchali which won director Kaushik Ganguli, Best Director Award at IFFI 2013, Goa, for spotlighting on how life has treated the forgotten child hero of Satyajit Ray’s epochal Pather Panchali, Bengali film Shabdo, another gem by Kaushik Ganguli focuses on foley artist, enamoured by his paranoiac perfection to creating natural sound for films. Kashmiri film — Partav: The Influence, first from that State, is another must watch as also first Banjara film Konchavaram by P Umesh Naik for creditable and honest attempt. 

Guest of Honour

Of world movies, audiences may look for Iranian film Hush! Girls Don’t Scream, by Pouran Derakhshandeh Guest of Honour at Biffes, Palestine film Giraffada by Rani Massalha, Chilean film The Passion of Michelangelo by Esteban Larrian, Japanese film Like Father, Like Son by Hirokazu Koreeda, Latvian film Mother, I Love You by Janis Nords, first Saudi Arabian film Wadjda by Haifaa Al-Mansour, Afghanistan film The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, German film Two Mothers by Anne Zohra Berrached, Hong Kong film A Simple Life by Ann Hui, Polish film Life Feels Good by Maciej Pieprzyca, Danish film This Life by Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis, Israeli film Epilogue by Amir Manor, Cambodian film The Missing Picture by Rithy Panh, among a host of others which includes the opening film Bekas and closing film The Rocket. Of course, you have the homages, LatAm films, Train films, Homages, Retrospectives, Kannada films, et al. “Film, like life, is made of moments; moments in time, held aloft for our perusal, imprinted on our soul... created by light and celluloid, ... savoured both during and after the fact.... replayed over and over.....” as Glen Norton, film philosopher, succinctly sums it. DH News Service