Women Power At IFFK

By admin on Friday, March 12, 2010 - 15:08

Geetika Sudip sat through the International Film Festival of Kerala, and now she counts the feathers the women there gathered for their collective dainty hat

The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) has acquired considerable clout and prestige over the 12 years of its existence. This year too saw a huge turnout of film lovers flocking to watch international cinema of calibre. But it was also a year in which women packed a mean punch in many ways. Here’s looking at a few:

Winning accolades
The top honour at IFFK, the Suvarna Chakoram was shared by two women, whose widely different films were equally enthralling. Lucia Puenzo’s Argentine film XXY captured the twilight zone between genders, adding to it the turmoil of teenage. The central character is 15-year-old Alex, who is a hermaphrodite. The natural complexities of teenage are compounded as she needs to decide whether she wants to be a boy or a girl. Avoiding conventional approaches, Puenzo tells her story with great sensitivity against a moody seaside backdrop. Puenzo also bagged the Rajata Chakoram for Best Debut Director at the festival. Sharing the Suvarna Chakoram with Puenzo was Iranian director Mania Akbari’s 10 + 4.

Akbari, who is fighting breast cancer, depicts the stages of her illness and treatment through this film. In this sequel to Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten, Akbari (in the lead role) again drives a car and talks to her son, her sister and other people. She presents the reality and observes how others react to the disease (and to her). In a sense, her cancer directs the way the film progresses.  The FIPRESCI award for the Best Film in the Competition category went to Teresa Prata’s Sleepwalking Land. Suffused with elements of magic realism, this film depicted the journey of an old man and a young boy through the war-torn landscape of Mozambique.

Leading the way
For the seventh year running, IFFK was helmed by the enterprising Bina Paul Venugopal. In her role as Artistic Director of the festival, this National Award-winning editor has been the driving force behind IFFK. Her administrative abilities and creative skills extend to all spheres: from the selection of films, deciding the jury, organising screenings, regulating events and so on. A gifted film editor, she has clinched the national award for her work in Mitr-My Friend and Daivanamathil, to name just a couple. Married to accomplished cinematographer Venugopal, she handles her roles as wife and mom with equal aplomb. Under her guidance the festival has gone from strength to strength, be it the number of delegates who attend the festival or the quality of films screened there. But this FTII graduate is all humility as she insists, “It’s all teamwork.”

Naalu Penungal
Kerala’s best filmmaker was back this time with a tale of four women. Based on short stories by Jnanpith award-winning Thakazhi Shivashankara Pillai, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Naalu Penungal brings together an eclectic mix of actors – Padmapriya, Geetu Mohandas, Manju Pillai and Nandita Das. The four stories deal with the romance of a prostitute, the plight of a newly wed farmhand, a childless housewife and a spinster: a cross-section of the erstwhile Travancore state. The subtext of the film is the women’s struggle against patriarchal oppression that pervades Kerala despite many social reforms in the state. The world premiere of  Naalu Pennungal was in the Masters Section of the Toronto Film Festival where reportedly, the audience consisted mostly of women. At IFFK too, it got an overwhelming reception.

Geetika Sudip has a great love for the written word and visual images. She tries to to juggle her various interests which includes traveling, photopgraphy, writing and filmmaking