KOLKATA EXTREME | DOWN AND DIRTY IN KOLKATA

Cosmic Sex

[Archivio]

Si parla troppo poco di cinema indipendente indiano. Vi ripropongo un testo del 2012 dedicato ai cineasti più trasgressivi della scena bengali. Kolkata Extreme | Down and dirty in Kolkata, Nandini Ramnath, Mint, 12 ottobre 2012:

'There wasn’t an empty seat at the premiere of Amitabh Chakraborty’s Bengali movie Cosmic Sex at the Osian’s Cinefan film festival in Delhi in August. Delegates crammed into the 1,865-seater Auditorium 1 at the Siri Fort complex, seduced by the promise of uncensored sexual intercourse in an Indian film (they weren’t disappointed). The presence of lead actor Rii, easily one of the most uninhibited women in Indian cinema, further electrified the crowd. The diminutive beauty, who hands out lessons in desire and sexual fulfilment to a truth-seeking young man, gamely took on questions after the screening about whether she was “as erotic as her character" and what she thought of Sigmund Freud. A few questions were about the movie’s exploration of the idea of achieving spiritual equilibrium through sex. But people mostly wanted to take a closer look at the actor who is the face of an exciting and promising strain of independent film-making. 

It’s experimental, transgressive, idiosyncratic and phantasmagorical and it is emerging out of the most relaxed among the metropolises - Kolkata. The West Bengal capital has a long-established tradition of radical and independent-spirited film-makers, from Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray to Subrata Sen and Suman Mukhopadhyay. So it is only natural that the city is producing several fascinating experiments in documentaries and features. (...)

Cosmic Sex includes ideas previously explored by 53-year-old Chakraborty in his 2006 documentary Bishar Blues, about Bengal’s Muslim fakir tradition. A young man named Kripa encounters a prostitute, a eunuch and, most crucially, a female ascetic named Sadhana on his journey of sexual self-discovery. Kripa’s experiences unfold as a reverie amid a mythic landscape that is identifiably the Bengal of wandering ascetics and miracle workers. “Cults like the fakirs and the Bauls feel that sexual energy is the most powerful force that flows outwards all the time, because of which there are manifestations of happiness, unhappiness and death," Chakraborty says at his home in Kolkata. “The only way to get out of this is to reverse the sexual energy. You have to go back to the unchanging energy source." Cosmic Sex is only Chakraborty’s second movie in 23 years after his experimental debut Kaal Abhirati. (...)

Bishar Blues

Q’s musical Tasher Desh (The Land of Cards). (...) Based on Rabindranath Tagore’s operatic critique of social rigidity, which was inspired by Lewis Carroll and written in 1933, Q’s fantasy adventure, about a prince who strains at his royal leash, will be premiered at the International Rome Film Festival in November and will be released in India in 2013. Q says Tasher Desh has been in the making ever since he decided to become a film-maker. “Tasher Desh is an immensely popular production that is usually treated as a kids’ play," he says. “In the neighbourhood in which I grew up, the guy who could sing would get the central character, the prince. I was the prince for the neighbourhood, but then I got demoted when the play was performed at school. I was horribly disappointed and vowed that this would be avenged."

A trailer reveals that like in Gandu, Q is jettisoning conventional storytelling modes in favour of an audio-visual head rush through a theatrical acting style, hand-held, highly mobile camerawork and rapid-fire editing. The film has been shot in West Bengal and Sri Lanka. (...) “I didn’t care for the story - it is an experience, with its songs and its exotica," Q says. “I believe in the present moment, not in stories. Tasher Desh is structured like a fairy tale, it’s metaphysical and metaphorical." Tasher Desh has been produced by Q’s outfit Overdose, Kolkata-based recording studio Dream Digital, Belgian company Entre Chien Et Loup, the National Film Development Corporation and Anurag Kashyap Films. The movie brings Q a few steps out of the Kolkata underground and into the mainstream - sort of. “I don’t think Tasher Desh will bring us into a mainstream that means palatable and marketable," Q says. “I am trying to counter the fact that we don’t have channels of distribution for alternate content."

Gandu, made in 2010, was never meant to be released. The experiment in extreme cinema that more people have heard of than seen was a break-out for Q and a breakaway from the realism and restraint usually found in commercial film-making. The mostly black and white movie (...) follows an angst-ridden young man’s journey towards self-fulfilment through highly stylized camerawork, choppy editing and interludes of profane Bengali rap. The protagonist’s claustrophobia, stemming from his sterile surroundings and his sense of emasculation, literally explodes in a no-holds-barred colour sequence of sexual intercourse, which has earned the film eternal notoriety.

Tasher Desh

Q is an agent provocateur with a plan. He has been assiduously working towards creating an alternative system of finance and distribution with Overdose (its business cards promise “explosive Indian content"). He collaborates with a tightly knit group of like-minded souls, some of whom he has grown up with, in the production of “cheap and dirty pictures about sexual, social or political extreme content that otherwise can’t be made", on budgets of ₹ 25-30 lakh [1 lakh = 100.000], that will subsidize each other.

“Since a production house can’t operate on one production, our strategy is to go for two kinds of cinema," he says. “We can make films like Tasher Desh, which is nothing like Gandu but carries the same spirit. If that works out, we have a killer set-up - we can make cheap, extreme films that are not bound by distribution in India. (...) We can recoup the money internationally as well as keep up the fight of pushing the boundaries of viewership." The label Bangla Black has been set up expressly to launch regular attacks on the system. “These are all gambles, high-velocity risks, but they are not uncalculated," Q says. (...)

His partner in cinema and in life [is] Rii, officially Rituparna Sen. (...) When she met Q in 2003, she had spent two years modelling and acting in television. She thought his debut feature Tepantorer Mathe would give her a foothold in the movies. “I thought the film would make me a star, but I was heartbroken when I found it was not going to come out," she says. The two started seeing each other, and Rii got introduced to the film-makers who would turn out to be the leading lights of Kolkata Candid: Shyamal Karmakar, who edited Tepantorer Mathe, and Amitabh Chakraborty, who was making Bishar Blues. “I love films that are challenging and borderline and dangerous," Rii says. “I will do anything for these three film-makers - they are crazy and difficult, but I love their work. Lust is not their prime focus."

Karmakar, an editor who trained at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, is one of Q’s major inspirations. Karmakar’s documentary I Am the Very Beautiful, made in 2006, is a genre-defying exploration of the film-maker’s desire for a bar singer named Ranu Gayen. Karmakar makes no bones about his attraction to Gayen, who is attached to his friend. He asks her to sleep with him and films her semi-naked. Gayen is no shrinking violet either, and as director and subject come dangerously close, the documentary explores the nature of voyeurism and the difficulty of maintaining a pretence of objectivity or distance. Karmakar is in thrall of female sexuality, and unlike many other film-makers, he doesn’t pretend otherwise.

“My idea of sexuality was ruptured in Pune," says 48-year-old Karmakar at his office at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute in Kolkata, where he heads the editing department. “I fell in love with women with different moralities and attitudes to morality." Some film-makers explore dreams, some nightmares, while others confront their sexual fantasies, he says. “I want to tell the truth," Karmakar says. “I am very scared to tell my stories, but telling them is important. There are very few places to screen your films in Kolkata," he observes. “But it helps to be under the radar. The less I am seen by people, the better for me."

Q

Perhaps there is no better place than Kolkata to unleash the private into the public. “If you look at what’s happening in Bengali cinema, it’s been brewing for over a decade and a half," says Moinak Biswas, professor at Jadavpur University’s film studies department. “Things have come to a head - there is an all-time record of production in Bengali cinema. Soon, most of these films will find it difficult to get a release." A film like Gandu came as “a slap on the face" of a wave of domestic dramas that were “stifling and didn’t show anything happening beyond well-furnished middle-class homes", Biswas says. “What was unconvincing and disturbing about Gandu was a very male and adolescent expression. I think Amitabh is much more contemplative - whatever one’s disagreements with his film, he has pushed it beyond explicitness and sensationalism into a zone of contemplation."

Kolkata’s advantage is that it isn’t yet facing the pressures of being a centre of global capital, like Mumbai or Delhi. It is in that sweet place between its radical past and possibility-filled present. “This city makes space for us to be here," Q says. “The film-makers here are not contaminated." Kolkata lets an actor like Rii coexist with the poppets and retiring beauties of the mainstream film industry - even though, she says, people still don’t know how to slot her. “My life is so abnormal," she points out. “I live with my boyfriend who is named Q and directs me in films for which he asks me to suck another man’s cock. They are completely head-fucked".'

Vedi anche Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma 2012

WELCOME TO BOLLYWOOD: A DEVDAS FOR EVERY GENERATION

Il numero di maggio 2022 della rivista digitale australiana Senses of Cinema include uno speciale dedicato al cinema popolare hindi, Welcome to Bollywood, con la seguente motivazione: 'This dossier is an attempt to complicate and diversify the monolithic concept of ‘Bollywood’, to break it out of its critical ghetto in Western film criticism and challenge the Eurocentrism of film studies that fails to recognise Bollywood as an artistic phenomenon'. Gli articoli sono decisamente interessanti. In testi diversi, riporto degli estratti, ma vi consiglio di leggere le versioni integrali. 

A DEVDAS FOR EVERY GENERATION, Jaymini Mistry:

'Devdas is an epic semi-autobiographical Bengali novella written by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The novel was written in 1901, though was not published until 1917 due to Chattopadhyay’s embarrassment over his story. He published several novels such as (...) Parineeta, (...) but Devdas remains his most popular novel. (...) Throughout the history of Indian cinema, directors have always gravitated to the story, starting with the 1928 silent version by Naresh Mitra. (...) P.C. Barua adapted three variants of the novel between 1935 and 1937 in Bengali, Hindi and Assemese and it has been adapted in many different languages. This article will focus on three Hindi adaptations of Devdas, analysing the directorial styles of Bimal Roy, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and Anurag Kashyap. Each section will deconstruct each director’s interpretation of Devdas and how each film adapts to modernity and places itself within Bollywood cinema. 

Devdas (1955) Bimal Roy

Bimal Roy was an Indian film director and producer. (...) Roy continued his career adapting the works of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, starting with Parineeta in 1953, Biraj Bahu in 1954, and Devdas in 1955. Bimal Roy must have had a particular bond with the story of Devdas as he had previously worked as a cameraman on P.C. Barua’s adaptation of Devdas (1935). Roy’s adaptation of the novel was not an instant box office hit, but the film was well received by critics. The screenplay was written by Nabendu Ghosh and dialogue was written by Rajinder Singh Bedi, taking the source material as gospel, and only adding a few changes to the original dialogue. The film stars the critically acclaimed Bollywood star, Dilip Kumar (Devdas), Suchitra Sen (Parvati/Paro) in her first Hindi film, and South Indian actress, Vyjayanthimala (Chandramukhi). (...) Devdas (1955) is considered one of the best-directed Bollywood films of the 20th century.

Adaptation

Set in rural Bengal in the early 1900s and filmed in black and white. (...) Roy is the only director to date who has chosen to explore Devdas’ and Paro’s childhood friendship in great length. (...) In the original text, Paro and Chandramukhi never meet, though, most film adaptations subtly play with the idea that they have to cross paths. Roy’s version suggests this prospect through a sensitive and powerful approach. Despite their loyalty towards Devdas, both are women who have been polarised by social class and caste and Roy draws attention to their inner strengths as women in common. Bimal Roy retains the essence of the novel’s characters while also adapting the narrative to suit post-independence domestic impediments. (...) More importantly, Bimal Roy gives empathy to a character that is fundamentally unlikeable. Devdas is a deeply flawed, tragic character - he is an antihero, a coward. The subtle performance given by Dilip Kumar emphasises this and humanises Devdas, delivering a realistic portrayal of a man drowning his grief in alcoholism. (...) The lifelong attachment Devdas and Paro have with each other is richly grounded in Bimal Roy’s adaptation of the novel. Roy’s version is the closest adaptation to the source material, using simple camera techniques to convey the complexities of love, passion, and grief. The cinematography is simple, using shadows and minimal lighting to highlight the doomed passion between the three characters. Through simple camera techniques, Roy manages to retain the essence of the story in the simplest of forms and upholds the Bengali culture and societal pressures enforced in the novel.

Devdas (2002) Sanjay Leela Bhansali (...)

Devdas (...) became the highest grossing Bollywood film of 2002. In an interview with Times of India, Bhansali stated that he wanted his version to be “bigger, better and more spectacular than any classical movie made in Indian cinema.” The film was the most expensive film made in India at the time. The screenplay was written by the director himself and Prakash Ranjit Kapadia. The cast consists of Bollywood superstars, Shah Rukh Khan (Devdas), Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Parvati/Paro) and Madhuri Dixit (Chandramukhi). Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hindi reworking of Chattopadhyay’s novel is epic and grandiose, incorporating lavish set designs, costumes, and breath-taking dance sequences. 

Adaptation (...)

Bhansali indulges the viewer with dreamy, sensual scenes between Paro and Devdas. The lighting accentuates both of their figures, glowing with passion and love. (...) Shah Rukh Khan’s portrayal of Devdas treads a thin line of being an angry man and a coward, though, he is nonchalant and retains an element of defiance. (...) In post-modern fashion, Bhansali communicates his characters’ feelings through intricate choreography and song. (...) Despite Chandramukhi’s fondness for Devdas, she is independent, mature, and sophisticated. She does not give-up her profession for him, rather she takes pride in it. (...) Bhansali gives more agency to his female characters, bringing them together and bounding them in the space of female desire and devotion. (...) Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s adaptation of Devdas is a glamourous, mythical affair. He aims for the sublime, attempting to capture emotions through song and dance. The film is a feast for the eyes and Bhansali uses the crux of the story to master his visual style and craft, but the compassion and the simplicity of the original text is often lost in the melodrama and several subplots. 

Dev. D (2009) Anurag Kashyap (...)

Dev. D is a modern adaptation of Devdas that completely steers away from the previous adaptations that were set in the 1900s and places the characters in contemporary India. The adaptation explores the difficulty of modern youth, westernisation, metropolitan lifestyles and urban consumption. The film stars Abhay Deol (Dev/Devdas) and introduces audiences to Mahie Gill (Parminder/Paro) and Kalki Koechlin (Leni/Chanda/Chrandramukhi). (...)

Adaptation

Anurag Kashyap’s version of the Devdas story is divided into four parts: ‘Childhood’, ‘Paro’, ‘Chanda’ and ‘Dev’. The chapters allow for broader interpretations of the three main characters, fleshing them out and giving them all a developed narrative arc. (...) Paro (...) [is] an independent, modern woman in India. (...) Paro is shown to be something of a femme fatale in the eyes of Dev. He returns to Punjab with a narcissistic attitude and a sense of entitlement over Paro. When he overhears someone talking about Paro’s sexual activity, his masculine ego is bruised and rejects Paro’s sexual advances towards him, calling her a ‘slut’. Kashyap overtly points out the double standards of being sexually liberated as a woman versus a man. Consequently, Dev’s loss of Paro is due to his own insecurities as opposed to societal class structures that bounded the character of Devdas before. Kashyap offers a refreshing interpretation of Chandramukhi’s character, providing a backstory of how she becomes Chanda. (...) The final chapter focuses on the angst and existentialism of Devdas from the original text, though Kashyap demonstrates this in a dark and experimental manner. (...) Kashyap uses rotating shots and a blue hue to highlight Dev’s intoxicated state. Dev tries to spy on Paro from afar, further emphasising his ego and sense of masculine superiority. He wants to see Paro unhappy in her marriage to satisfy his ego. Paro meets Dev at the hostel and is disgusted by the way he is living. She states that she made the right decision getting married as Dev does not truly love her. Dev liked the idealised version of Paro rather than her true self. (...) Kashyap gives Dev a redemptive ending where he accepts his mistakes and moves on with his life. (...) The ending is more realist and suits the younger audience Kashyap is catering to. Overall, Dev. D is an ambitious reworking of the Devdas tale, placing the world and the characters in a contemporary setting. Kashyap reflects on modern-day anxieties and equality between men and women in India. He develops the characters of Paro and Chanda, allowing them agency. His adaptation is (...) using classic literature to re-evaluate and mock the archetypal characters in the novel and previous adaptations as well as catering to a younger audience.

To conclude, Devdas is a tale well-known within Indian cinema that has been remade and recreated into different styles and aesthetics. Bimal Roy’s 1955 black and white adaptation brings the individual tragedy of each main character to the foreground, remaining faithful to Chattopadhyay’s original text. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 version brought glamour and melodrama to Indian and western audiences, while Anurag Kashyap offers a new perspective on the themes of Devdas, placing its characters in contemporary India and exploring patriarchy, sexuality, and individuality'.

Vedi anche Welcome to Bollywood: Critica internazionale e Nazionalismo. Il testo raccoglie i link a tutti gli articoli della serie.

AMITABH BACHCHAN INTERPRETERÀ TAGORE?

Per la celebrazione del 150esimo anniversario della nascita del premio Nobel Rabindranath Tagore, non si contano gli omaggi in numerosi Paesi del mondo, e non passa giorno che non venga pubblicato un nuovo articolo dedicato al celebre autore. Ieri Prashant Singh scriveva quanto segue sulle colonne di Hindustan Times:

'Il regista argentino Pablo César - attualmente all'International Film Festival of India per la proiezione di Orillas - vorrebbe raccontare sul grande schermo l'incontro fra Tagore e la scrittrice argentina Victoria Ocampo, e vorrebbe scritturare Amitabh Bachchan per il ruolo di Tagore. La sceneggiatura è già pronta e i finanziamenti stanno arrivando. Il titolo provvisorio dovrebbe essere Thinking of him, le ultime parole che Victoria scrisse nel telegramma che inviò alla famiglia di Tagore dopo la morte del premio Nobel. La pellicola dovrebbe essere girata parzialmente in India, adottando anche la lingua bengali. L'Argentina è l'unico Paese latinoamericano nel quale Tagore sostò per un certo periodo. L'incontro con Victoria si riflesse nella produzione di entrambi. Pare che la famosa canzone Ogo Bideshini sia ispirata a Victoria'.

Una curiosità: Silvina Ocampo, scrittrice e sorella di Victoria, sposò lo scrittore argentino Adolfo Bioy Casares, autore del fascinoso L'invenzione di Morel.

Aggiornamento del 13 dicembre 2021: nel 2018 César ha realizzato Pensando en él. Il ruolo di Tagore è stato affidato a Victor Banerjee. Nel cast anche Raima Sen.

Rabindranath Tagore e Victoria Ocampo

ABU DHABI FILM FESTIVAL 2011

Saif Ali Khan - Abu Dhabi, 2011

La quinta edizione dell'Abu Dhabi Film Festival si svolgerà dal 13 al 22 ottobre 2011. Vi segnalo di seguito i titoli indiani in cartellone: Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (2011, punjabi) di Gurvinder Singh, Charulata (1964, bengali) di Satyajit Ray.

Saif Ali Khan - Abu Dhabi, 2011

ANURAG KASHYAP PRODURRÀ IL NUOVO FILM DI Q

Da sinistra: Q e Rii Sen in Love in India

Tasher Desh è un'opera teatrale musicale di Tagore, vagamente ispirata ad Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. Anurag Kashyap ha confermato di volerne coprodurre una versione cinematografica, in collaborazione con Q (alias Qaushik Mukherjee), uno dei registi più interessanti della scena culturale bengali indipendente contemporanea. Le riprese dovrebbero iniziare in autunno. La compagna di Q, l'attrice e ballerina Rii Sen, sarà nel cast. Quanto alla colonna sonora, Q intende fondere le canzoni di Tagore con sonorità jazz ed elettroniche, abbandonando dunque le atmosfere punk-rock e rap di Gandu, il suo precedente lavoro. Kashyap ha dichiarato in proposito: 'Non è tanto la reinterpretazione di Tasher Desh operata da Q ad affascinarmi, quanto Q stesso, nonché l'approccio musicale con cui ha affrontato la sceneggiatura. È come se Tagore incontrasse The Rocky Horror Picture Show'. (Fonte: The Times of India)

Gandu

Q ha diretto Gandu (2010), una delle pellicole più trasgressive del cinema indiano, presentata con clamore in diversi festival internazionali, fra cui la Berlinale 2011. Gandu era stato realizzato con un budget limitatissimo: tutti i partecipanti al progetto avevano prestato una collaborazione gratuita. Attualmente, Gandu sta lottando con la censura indiana per ottenere il via libera alla distribuzione nelle sale del Paese. Vi ricordo che la produzione d'autore bengali è unanimemente considerata la più sperimentale e occidentalizzata del cinema indiano. Fra l'altro i cineasti bengali classici si sono sempre ispirati al Neorealismo italiano.

Aggiornamento del 9 novembre 2012: Tasher Desh è in concorso al Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma 2012 (clicca qui).

FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL FILM DI ROMA 2010

Il 28 ottobre prenderà il via la quinta edizione del Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma. Abbiamo il piacere di segnalarvi:

Per la Sezione Selezione Ufficiale, Film in Concorso

- Gangor, regia di Italo Spinelli, con Priyanka Bose, Adil Hussain (Ishqiya), Tillotama Shome (Monsoon Wedding) e Samrat Chakrabarti (New York).

Produzione italo-indiana, girato in Bengali, il film è tratto dal racconto Dietro il Corsetto, pubblicato in Italia nella raccolta La Trilogia del Seno, Ed. Altri Mondi, della scrittrice bengalese Mahasweta Devi.

Durante un reportage sulle donne della Purulia, Bengala occidentale, Gangor viene fotografata a seno nudo mentre allatta il figlio. Lo scatto finisce sui giornali e solleva un grande scandalo che porterà a conseguenze drammatiche per la vita di Gangor.

“Un ritratto delle contraddizioni dell’India contemporanea, dove anche l’emancipazione può rivelarsi fatale in una società ancora permeata da millenarie tradizioni maschiliste” (Italo Spinelli a Il Velino).

Gangor sarà proiettato il 31 ottobre alle 17:00, Auditorium Sala Santa Cecilia. In replica il primo novembre alle 15:00, Salacinema Lotto, e il 2 novembre alle 20:00 al Metropolitan.

Una clip di Gangor.

Per la Sezione Eventi Speciali

- Incontro con Shah Rukh Khan

Previsto domenica 31 ottobre alle 19:30 presso l'Auditorium Sala Petrassi, a cui seguirà la proiezione di My Name is Khan.

Cogliamo l'occasione per congratularci con lo staff del Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma per aver inserito nel programma un film di sicuro interesse come Gangor e un evento di così grande prestigio come l'incontro con il Baadshah di Bollywood.

Desideriamo inoltre ringraziare tutti per la professionalità e la cordiale disponibilità. In particolare: Gaia Morrione, responsabile del Focus, Matteo Pompili, coordinatore della sezione Eventi Speciali, e Alessandra Fontemaggi, responsabile Ufficio Cinema e referente Extra.

Un grazie speciale a Piera Detassis, direttore artistico del Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma.

PER MAGGIORI INFORMAZIONI E PER L'ACQUISTO DEI BIGLIETTI E' POSSIBILE VISITARE IL SITO UFFICIALE DEL FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL FILM DI ROMA

Aggiornamento del 22.10.10: il sito di NDTV pubblica oggi un articolo relativo alla presenta di Shah Rukh Khan al prossimo Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma. La star approfitterebbe di tre giorni di pausa dalle riprese di Don 2 per concedersi una piccola parentesi romana con la moglie, i due figli e l'amico Karan Johar, regista di My Name is Khan, in vista del suo quarantacinquesimo compleanno che si celebrerà il 2 novembre a Berlino. L'articolo integrale.