Picture Courtesy - Kiff.in
‘[People] live in [the carnival], and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people.’
~ Mikhail Bakhtin (Introduction, Rabelais and His World )
The observer who prowls through otherwise indifferent streets often finds himself turning into an active participant at a carnival. The listener or the spectator who continually seeks out narrators, speakers and performers, needs but only the slightest provocation to engage in an interactive experience. Any text (written, spoken or performed) which hints at and opens up a dialogic context is bound to attract a sizeable number of these observers. This is not to say that the more popular – so to speak, consumerist – thrills of the notions of ‘adventure’ or ‘entertainment’ as understood in today’s context, almost completely programmed by the State, can be conveniently ignored as being insignificant just because one does not associate the thinking, observant mind with them. Indeed, since the second half of the twentieth century, festivals of all species (music festivals, literary festivals, film festivals, etc.) have been soaring in number in places where there is a tradition of culture or an excess of capital, or both. It would be downright stupid to be oblivious to the ritual staging of ‘international’ state-sponsored festivals. In a country like ours where the tradition of philanthropy in arts is restricted largely to classical music programmes and art galleries, we are used to helplessly witnessing a considerable part of these festivals lean towards political cult forms.
British historian Eric Hobsbawm compares the globalization of festivals to ‘football championships’. Festivals have emerged as ‘a firm component of the economically ever more important complex of the entertainment industry, and particularly of cultural tourism, which is rapidly expanding… Nothing is easier than long journeys. There is plenty of money around, compared with the first fifty years of the Salzburg Festival, and there is also a cultural audience swollen by the enormous expansion of higher education.’ We can say that the ever-growing ‘entertainment industry’, while choosing to collaborate with the spirit of the carnivalesque through state-sponsored festivals, tries to impose politically motivated conditions on the carnival-space. Mikhail Bakhtin speaks of an opposition between the theatre – or cinema – and the carnival, between ‘performances with footlights’ and ‘performances without footlights’, yet one cannot rule out the possibility of an overlap. Eminent cultural scholar and essayist Sibaji Bandyopadhyay points out that while metaphorically speaking, the artificially lit-up stage may impose its conditions on the carnival-space, the opposite too can happen. Once the ‘contamination’ is complete and the ‘street’ extends itself into the ‘stage’/festival-space/film-screening, ‘what gets configured is a confusing ‘over-lap’. The unboundedness vital to the carnivalesque may then leave its imprint on performances done with footlights…the theatrical props may get so animated as to invite active creative participation from the audience.’ This is true of seminars, panel discussions, debates and lectures which form part of film festivals. This writer might have been tempted to add that it is true even of press conferences at film festivals, if not for the extremely sad predilection of journalists and reporters nowadays for banal gossip, ‘untold stories’ and what Walter Benjamin calls the ‘true substance’ of journalism – idle chatter. Benjamin quotes Karl Kraus to shed light on the journalist’s predicament: “Penury can turn every man into a journalist, but not every woman into a prostitute.” As a cineaste who was assigned certain journalistic duties during the 30th edition of KIFF, this writer can safely add the following to Kraus’ formulation: the idea of being happily occupied in journalistic duties can only compete with the idea of being ‘happily married’.
There seems to be an almost primitive urge which makes the observer as well as the consumer of ‘mass entertainment’ (even unconsciously) seek out the extra-political dialogic context (representative of the carnivalesque) at a ‘festival’-space. The shared feeling of oneness with the sheer unpredictability of the carnival-space is compounded by the idea that it ‘embraces all the people’ and turns observers into participants. At the 30th Kolkata International Film Festival, therefore, the careful observer (despite his journalistic duties) came across all kinds of people drawn in by their hopes of witnessing a consummation of festivity and dialogue. Standing just outside a long queue for Paolo Sorrentino’s film ‘Parthenope’ for instance was Noé Lefebvre (who was with his friend François), a French social worker working in Kolkata for an NGO named Life Project 4 Youth, who had never been to a major film festival before. “I think, I’m just a curious person,” he says with an infectious smile when asked what it was that brought him to this festival. Apparently, he had taken time out of his busy work hours to attend a ‘famous’ film festival and see what kinds of films attracts such huge crowds. It turned out be a good time to take some time out of my ‘busy’ work hours at the festival. The conversation lasted a few minutes and I caught with him a few days later. For someone not accustomed with world cinema, a film like ‘Parthenope’ might come across as difficult and pleasing at the same time. However, having grown up in a sexually liberated society near Paris, Noé’s response was quite unfiltered, free of pretensions and/or confused ramblings. The film, which has dealt with perceptions of hedonism, ageism, physical beauty, the female form and feminism (albeit from the male perspective), struck him as being ‘quite disturbing and bleak’ in its portrayal of a woman who is ‘pretty and very smart’ but to whom most people (including her brother) get attracted because of her ‘physical beauty and not her intelligence’. He has no qualms in admitting that the film ‘shocked’ him to an extent, while observing that it is ‘a judgment on physical beauty’. “I am open to all kinds of cinema – mainstream cinema, artistic cinema, documentaries,” he says. As an afterthought he adds, “I liked the film. It is bleak but very artistic, with long takes, long shots, calm sequences with no music, almost no sound…”
For someone who has not watched many films, who takes some time to recollect the name Jean Luc-Godard and whose favourite movie is ‘Life is Beautiful’ by Roberto Benigni, it comes as a surprise when Noé says, “the great thing about art and especially cinema is that it can open the minds of a people, a community, a social group or even a country.” The film ‘Parthenope’ problematizes the hetero-normative sexual desire without getting into conclusions. It does have ‘disturbing’ sub-plots but according to Noé, this kind of cinema should not be suppressed or removed. “Many great filmmakers have used the medium of cinema to express their thoughts on sexuality, desire, sexual rights, sexual exploitation and discrimination based on sexual orientation,” he says. “I think cinema can open up newer avenues of dialogue and encourage people to talk about these things freely. Just think of the number of people who came to see the film – it was astounding! I also feel that a film is not a social entity; it is what the auteur wants to say and express irrespective of (and sometimes subverting) perceptions endorsed by society and the State.” And this is where the auteur runs into trouble in more conservative societies like ours or to a greater degree, in countries like Iran. If the May 1968 student protests in France heralded sexual liberation movements throughout the world and also had an undeniable impact on world (most notably European) cinema, the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom Movement’ in Iran (2022) coincided with Jafar Panahi’s incarceration after his show of solidarity for Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. This movement has influenced artists of almost all disciplines to come out in support of women in Iran who refuse to be coerced into wearing the hijab. The State will not tell us what to wear, how to wear, what to see, what to create, what to say and what not to say— this is not as easy to shout out in Iran as it still is in India (we hope). Essayist/translator Sujata Panthi Sarkar, a film-lover with a keen interest in Iranian and Japanese cinema, saw ‘The Witness’ at the 30th KIFF, inspired by this movement. The film directed by Naderv Saeivar has been written by Jafar Panahi who also acted as its artistic consultant. It was screened in the competition section of KIFF. Mrs. Sujata, during a conversation with this writer, expressed deep admiration for the film and a sense of bafflement as to how it won absolutely no prize. The two other films she liked at the festival were ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ (Iranian film by Mohammad Rasoulof) and ‘The Shameless’ (by Konstantin Bojanov), both of which made headlines at the Cannes Film Festival 2024.
Is it mere coincidence that all the films mentioned here have women protagonists? Perhaps not. However, just because it is so, does not imply that art and non-mainstream cinema is on the right path. For the women protagonists in all of these films are victims of a dominant male gaze. It might reflect the times we live in but the ‘range of discourse’ has already been reduced. This is of course, true of the film festival as well, which ultimately, somehow, carried on smoothly despite an air of dissent blowing across the city.
It is possible that the consumer as well as the thinking observer (reader/listener/spectator) was lured into festivity based on the promise of a discursive, dialogic premise. The observer will tell you that a ‘festival’ without dialogue is akin to ‘form without emotion’ (Sartre), content without context, or sexual intercourse dictated by perversion and ego as opposed to love. Despite countless attempts to misuse the word ‘carnival’ in recent times, its original connotation has somehow survived the decadence of overall mass culture. For how is it possible that even the regular urban consumer of mass entertainment rejects other state-sponsored ‘carnivals’ and instead seeks out the carnivalesque at a film festival? However it remains ironic that the people expect the Kolkata International Film Festival which is sponsored by the government to give space to the carnivalesque, to the extra-politically political. We would do well to remember the events that led to the curtailing of the Cannes Film Festival of 1968. Factories were being shut down after the sudents’ protests, so were buses, metros, and it was being announced every hour that the Cannes Film Festival ‘continues’. Jean-Luc Godard was blunt and concise in his bitter remark: “We’re talking solidarity with students and workers and you’re talking about dolly shots and close-ups. You assh***s!”
In some little corner of our hearts, we may have done well to even expect such circumstances here, even without the presence of a Godard or a Ghatak. It is only befitting of the irony that no film of Kumar Shahani was shown to KIFF audiences (thanks also to NFDC).
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