Held from January 15-22nd in Vision Cinemas complex with screening in other venues, the Bangalore International Film Festival was a treat to film-goers. Catering to official participants and numerous other professionals who attended as guests, the program featured distinctive artistic styles from countries such as Poland, Germany, Turkey, SriLanka, Korea, Sweden, Italy, US etc to showcase the diversity of independent cinema. I Absolutely loved the movies. It made for an interesting experience to observe elements of script, performance and production into a satisfying totality.
A most welcome film synopsis manual, about the small budget films that use minimal sets or special effects and few professional actors, distributed by BIFFES served as superb background material.
Among the films I saw, Goodbye Lenin, The Match Factory Girl and The Man Who Quit Smoking were ranked high. Both concept and execution of the films were superb. The Man Who Quit Smoking is such an Incredibly funny movie. (Grynet Molvig is soo hot!!!). Then there was the amazing Joyeux Noel(English title - Merry Christmas ). The film, based on a true story, is at its poignant best when the male tenor and his girlfriend spending Christmas on the front sing from the German trenches as they are joined in by the Scottish bagpipes and lit- up Christmas trees emerge and circle the trenches. The soldiers begin to poke their heads up slowly, tentatively, and eventually lay down their arms and join in to listen to the singing and the bagpipes of the Scots and then to celebrate mass. And in the following morning which is Christmas Day, they play soccer, exchange precious bits of chocolate, bottles of wine, whisky, etc and photographs of wives and girlfriends. The dead are given a decent burial. As the day draws to a close and hostilities begin they momentarily shelter each other in their trenches.
Even "Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, L" was fabulous. A story of immigrant musicians from Rome who are brought together for an orchestral performance. The band apparently is still making music. Check them out here .
Some of the films such as Sophie Scholl , Spring Summer Fall Winter and Coast Guard (both by Ki-Duk Kim) played really well for Indian audiences going by its reception. Among films from India were first class productions such as Gulabi Talkies by Girish Kasaravalli on par with the best I saw from other countries.
All in all, a week spent well.
What a "classroom" experience the opeth concert turned out to be.
