You can either love it or loathe it — 3-D technology is ruling over world cinema, despite purists insisting that there’s nothing quite like spankingly luminous visuals. Expectedly, then, the three brightest spots at the ongoing 42nd Goa International Film Festival of India happen to be in voguish 3-D.
Of the three must-savour films, German master director Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams ventures into the timeless Chauvet caves of southern France, where the walls have the earliest pictorial recreations known to humankind. This documentary is the first to be granted permission to film in the caves, albeit with a tiny crew of technicians for a limited number of hours a day.
Herzog wasn’t sure about shooting in 3-D, was coerced to by his producer, and at the end of the shoot said that though he was extremely satisfied with the results, he would never use the medium ever again which he sees as a “commercial gimmick.”
With the documentary, Pina, Wim Wenders, also a director of German origin, salutes the life and art of the innovative dancer Pina Bausch. A visually wondrous documentary, it was one of the best catches at the recent MAMI film festival in Mumbai.
The third 3-D attraction at the Goa festival — director Takashi Miike’s Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai — is a swords-and-toga spectacle, full of sound and fury, detailing the vendetta wreaked by a poverty-stricken samurai over his feudal overlord.
Clearly, the inclusion of such techno-souped movies will buoy the status of the Iffi which is no longer the only jumbo international film festival on the nation’s calendar.
Fiercely competitive film events in Mumbai, Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram have become the yearly options. Believed to cost between `10 to `12 crores this year, the festival in Goa has been organised with the support of the Central and state governments.
And it is not only nostalgia which prompts the festival junkie to long for its original venue in New Delhi: the onset of the winter was an additional input to the world cinema on display.
In addition, the selection of films was far more discerning.
This year, shockingly, a retrospective has been organised of the films of director Philip Noyce, including Dead Calm and Clear and Present Danger, conventional action flicks which have been seen on the theatrical circuit. Comprehensive retrospectives of Claude Chabrol or Mani Kaul, who passed away this year, would have been far more appropriate.
Instead Chabrol is being given a token nod with one film, while Kaul will be represented by two from his extensive oeuvre. M.F. Husain will be remembered en passant with a screening of Through the Eyes of a Painter. Curiously, neither MAMI nor the Goa fest have been able to access either Gaja Gamini or Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities.
On the upside, the screening of Australian director Paul Cox’s documentary feature The Bengali Detective, is more than likely to be packed to the rafters. Cox, who has been a frequent visitor to Indian film fests, has documented the whacky life of a Kolkata detective who has a weakness for songs-dances-and-sleazy investigations.
Reportedly, it will soon be adapted into a feature film directed by Stephen Frears (who directed Queen).
The knee-jerk response to the announcement has been that Shah Rukh Khan or Aamir Khan will be approached for the role of Rajeshji.
For the opening night, IFFI did secure a dollop of Bollywood with the presence of Shah Rukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit.
How many of the glamorous B-town personalities will partake of the event, doesn’t really remain to be seen.
Once the inaugural ceremony is over, they leave by the next available flight. Aah, c’est la festival.