What disappointed me the most about PIFF 2009, more than the occasional sub-title glitches during the screenings, was the catalogue. NFAI (I know) and FTII (I presume) have wonderful libraries with lots of literature about movies. Whether the catalogue had been put together using assignments to students or not, it shouldn’t have used the content on Wikipedia so liberally, especially not without acknowledging it. Whether or not Indian film-makers largely continue to ignore acknowledging their “influences” and “inspirations”, it is imperative that the students be taught the significance of acknowledgments and originality.
I had a few shallow thoughts during the film festival like the ease with which European actors strip, and the applause we deliver for every half-decent foreign movie, but I will spare you of further details. Not out of concern for you but because eleven months is a long time to recall thoughts from.
I watched seventeen movies in six days of PIFF 2009. On two of those days I watched five each. It was not easy. Neither on my mind nor on my eyes. I wish I watched more. The trouble with watching those many movies in such a short span of time is remembering. Had I been more disciplined in collecting, noting and analyzing my thoughts about each of the movies — not just in my notebook but also on this blog — I perhaps would have been able to remember and appreciate more.
I hope to watch more and write more during and after PIFF 2010.
Rounding up the PIFF 2009… I already wrote about Divorzio all’italiana, Katyn, Die Fälscher, Portret podwójny, Fame Chimica, Meurtrières, Drifting Clouds, Three Monkeys, and Emotional Arithmetic. There are eight others that I didn’t write about:
Saimir can be categorized with Fame Chimica, and rated above it. It deals with themes like poverty, unemployment, illegal immigration and human trafficking, as seen through the eyes of a teen during his transformation into an adult.
Persepolis, some may have heard of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels and the Academy Award nomination. It is eye-opening about the Iranian Revolution and to me more precious than Ratatouille which stole the award that year.
Hiroshima Mon Amour. I regret not writing about this movie the most and now I cannot without watching it again. A groundbreaking work from the initial days of the French New Wave, it treats the theme of memory like no other, evoking in its viewers the elusive and delusive nature of memories. Unfortunately, most viewers during PIFF 2009 walked out of the theatre within the first thirty minutes.
La Zona is one of the few thematically rich edge-of-the-seat thrillers that I watched in the recent past. Set inside a wealthy gated community in Mexico, it explores the depths of humanity and bestiality while introducing us to the contemporary Mexican society.
Stavisky doesn’t live up to the expectations of the admirers of Alain Resnais (fresh from watching Hiroshima Mon Amour). As a stand-alone historical account of a true political scandal, there is little to complain about except the runtime.
Cafe Setareh uses a clever screenplay to narrate the not-so-delightful stories of three delightful Iranian women. It was one of the movies that I hadn’t planned to watch and am immensely glad that I watched it.
In Carne E Ossa or Il Tuo Disprezzo reminded me mostly of Mike Nichols’ Closer, by the way the members of a nuclear family treat each other with shocking cruelty, increasingly to win the impression of an outsider.
Les Témoins is set in Paris during the first outbreak of AIDS, portraying among other things the fluidity of sexuality that I suspect only the French are capable of.
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Yes, watch more of them and write more about them. I will see if I can catch some of them in future!
[...] movies she acted in have been banned in her country. Peiman Ma’adi, who played Peiman, wrote Cafe Setareh. Taraneh Alidoosti, who as Elly asks Ahmad to translate the quote from German to Iranian, speaks [...]