Eighteen filmmakers from the city will show their work in this year’s Mumbai International Film Festival for documentaries, short and animation films. Nandini Ramnath lends a ear over what local filmmakers have to say about our city and the world at large.
Are You Alright Afghanistan?
Soumitra Ranade spent time in Afghanistan as a child. He returns several years later to find his old playground in a mess. The film starts promisingly but outstays its welcome. 58 mins.
The Cabin Man
Ashish Pandey ruminates about a railway official posted at a lonely station.
8 mins.
H2O
The end is nigh unless we shut off our taps and open our minds, warns Nilesh Chandrakant Nevgi.
4 mins 33 secs.
Happy Planet
Animator Dhimant Vyas’s work is already familiar to viewers: he worked on the claymation sequences in the movie Taare Zameen Par. In Happy Planet, Vyas makes a case to save the world while we still have the time.
3 mins 25 secs.
Manjah Rahi
Anil Barve shoots his story of despair and perversity on the streets of Mumbai like film noir. There are no detectives in low hats lurking at street corners in Manjah. Instead, there’s a sadistic and sexually abusive policeman who makes the mistake of bullying a young boy and his mentally challenged sister.
40 mins.
Morality TV and the Loving Jehad
On December 19, 2005, television viewers were greeted to the horrific spectacle of police personnel bashing up men and women in Meerut’s Gandhi Park. Called “Operation Majnu”, the police crackdown on alleged vulgarity was later exposed as a publicity gimmick carried out in collusion with local reporters. Paromita Vohra, whose Where’s Sandra is also being screened at MIFF, goes to Meerut to find out what’s at the heart of Operation Majnu. Vohra expertly weaves several concerns together – the complexity of televison images; the tabloidastion of the news; the warped expectations from love and relationships in a place shackled by tradition; and the steadily increasing communalisation of India’s cities. If it sounds dire, fear not: as Preeti Sagar reminds us, “My heart is beating, keeps on repeating.”
29 mins.
Nokpokliba
Meren Imchen’s entertaining animated short is based on a Naga short story.
8 mins 30 secs.
One Show
Less Nayantara Kotian gets nostalgic about single-screen cinemas in this film about Usha Talkies in Ahmedabad. Kotian ticks all the boxes – toothy and aged help, helpless cinema owners, dedicated projectionists, fanatic movie-goers – thereby proving that the closure of a single-screen cinema is the end of a way of life. 20 mins.
Our Family
Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayshankar travel to Tamil Nadu to profile a family of hijras and Pritham K Chakravarthy, a hijra performance artist. The dramatis personae compensate for the conventional style.
56 mins.
Recycle Mind
Talented actor Nawazuddin plays a man who keeps juggling jobs until he decides to become a doctor.
25 mins.
Shanu Taxi
Life changes – and doesn’t – for a Muslim taxi driver when he gets a mobile phone in Vasant Nath’s sharply observed fictional short.
15 mins.
That Healing Feeling
Karan Boolani’s report on masseurs in Mumbai is so offensive that it could be a spoof of a documentary. The voice-over is dominated by an unidentified doctor who says the most outrageous things about masseurs, migrants, men, women and gay people. In short: Mumbai’s masseurs are from Mathura. They’re male. They’re poor. Some of them are prostitutes.
56 mins.
The Pocket
Watch Vibhu Puri has “Film and Television Institute of India student film” written all over it. It’s shot like a 1970s arthouse film; it has naturalistic acting; it has a yearning for a world that has all but slipped away. Jameel Khan is superb as a publisher who sets his kohl-laden eyes on an aging poet’s verses and the poet’s daughter.
27 mins.
Shane Soares
A man is accused of killing his |
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