I-View Film 2010 - A Festival with a Conscience

By: E. Nina Rothe

Most may think that what goes on behind the scenes of an international film festival set in NYC is super glamour, mixed with high octane celebrities and mingled with brilliant red carpet galas. Make no mistake, it is! But if the event is Engendered’s I-View Film Festival – a South Asian ten-day long showcase of films dealing with themes of human rights, gender and sexuality – it can also be a puzzle of accommodations for the filmmakers, car pickups gone wrong at the airport and personalities clashing over diet, leisure time and respect. If that sounds exhausting, it is, even if one’s role is as far removed as “Programming Committee Member” which is my official title in the festival program.

Of course, the festival has also proven to be a magical time of discovery, a chance to reconnect with faraway friends in town from India, Canada and Pakistan, as well as providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be elbow to elbow with some of the most talented filmmakers and actors in Indian cinema. Oh, and last but not least, watching some of the most instructive, important and beautiful films made in South Asia today is definitely nice work if you can get it and always high on my list of fun.

I-View Film 2010 kicked off on Saturday, September 18th at Asia Society, with a press conference that felt like the who’s who of South Asian talent. Shakespeare re-inventor into Hindi Vishal Bhardwaj – literally the “Bhard of India” – and his screenwriter, and now Ishqiya filmmaker, Abhishek Chaubey shared the stage with Godmother legendary director Vinay Shukla, who in turn sat just feet away from Pakistani advertising icon and politician Javed Jabbar. Groundbreaking filmmaker Onir, Pakistani fashion designer Nomi Ansari, Rock On! lovable actor Purab Kohli, Pankh director Sudipto Chattopadhyay and Without Shepherds producer Cary McClelland rounded out the discussion. In the audience, media outlets from Newsweek to NY Magazine to elan, listened on. Bhardwaj shared his thoughts on participating in a festival about gender and sexuality with a comment about how, ”women are the stronger sex: men are born in their lap, cry on their shoulder and die in their arms.” All one has to do is check out the female roles in Maqbool, Kaminey and Omkara to know Bhardwaj lives, writes and directs by this principle.

If walking among legends wasn’t enough to set a film lover’s heart aflutter, the fascinating film talk of the press conference was then followed by a screening of the award winning documentary Bhutto, which brought tears to my eyes, and shed light on a political legacy in a narrative manner that made everyone yearn to meet the filmmakers behind the project, unfortunately not present at I-View… Whether or not one agreed with Benazir Bhutto’s political policies, or appreciated the self-confidence (cockiness even) displayed by her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the undeniable truth remains that democracy is indeed, ”the greatest revenge” as the film’s tagline states. Bhutto was followed by the interesting (Women of) Without Shepherds, excerpts from a work in progress which promises to debunk some of the stereotypes the West has when it comes to Pakistan.

Onir’s highly anticipated World Premiere of I AM, a quartet of stories which present human rights issues prevalent in India – applicable to the world at large – but hardly ever talked about in films made in South Asia, was the opening night gala presentation for I-View. Each audience member walked away with a favorite – whether it be: Afia, Megha, Abhimanyu or Omar – but the one that has stuck with me, both in mind and heart, is Afia. The story of a woman who bypasses the ordinary paths to achieve her dream, Afia is a love story for and about the modern woman. It helped of course that the film starred the superbly talented Nandita Das and super-hunk Purab Kohli, who turned out to be the sweetheart of the festival. Kohli confessed to me, during a fascinating taxi ride together, that he initially did not understand the true importance of Afia’s subject, “As an urban male, born and raised in Bombay, I never thought of what women must go through when it comes to having kids,” he candidly said, then continued, “it wasn’t until I saw the finished film with my Mom that I realized its importance.”

While most missed the Industry Panel on New Directions for South Asian Cinema on Monday afternoon, due to programming changes and switched venues, that was the one time when being a festival insider truly paid off. Not only did I get to the Tribeca Screening Room on time but had a few light bulb moments hearing Mira Nair speak passionately about her upcoming project – the film version of Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist – and Javed Jabbar praises her worldly cinematic vision which, in his words includes, “looking to India’s neighboring countries, such as Pakistan, for her films.” The issues of the required Third World Recipe – poverty, squalor, hardship and grit – which is what most festival directors want to see in projects from South Asia, was also discussed at length, while Love Sex aur Dhokha filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee called Bollywood, “the elephant in the room anytime people talk about Indian films”. Jabbar then lightened the mood by adding, “today in Pakistan, the Taliban is our main entertainment… You must have heard of them?” He also shocked everyone by pointing out that the most raunchy, sexy films made in Pakistan today are Pashto, produced right under the nose of the Taliban, a statement that sent ripples of giggles throughout the panel and room.

There are quite a few films in the festival that are now personal favorites and among them Bhutto, I AM, Unveiled Views – a documentary about what life is really like for women in the Islamic world – Just Another Love Story, starring Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh in a super performance, and Maqbool, Vishal Bhardwaj’s interpretation of the Shakespeare classic Macbeth, set in the Muslim underworld of Bombay. As a funny aside, on the opening night red carpet for I AM, I was asked to block the notoriously fastidious Bhardwaj, who was trying to elude the endless interviews to get himself a cup of chai. Not exactly what I signed on for, but thank goodness the man has a sense of humor. And although he continued to call me by my first name after that, he did make it extra difficult for me to secure an interview, perhaps payback for my earlier tackle to prevent his escape.

Finally, a few questions remain for a part-time programmer… Will everyone walk away from this festival experience satisfied? I doubt it. Will the filmmakers and their audience have gotten what they needed out of the festival? Impossible. But for one woman utterly in love with world cinema this was as close to magical as she could get, while still awake. That woman is, of course, me.