I recently read a piece by a friend that bemoaned our fraught relationship with our own cinema; I immediately thought of all the usual elements that have brought us notoriety — the melodrama, the song and dance, and of course Bollywood’s miserable attempts at making ‘social films’. Issues from dyslexia to terrorism have all taken massive beatings in the hands of our filmmakers who barely manage to get facts (symptoms?) right and parade their hysteria in the form of films that people love to love because they give us a warm, gooey, we-have-done-our-bit-for-society feeling.

Perhaps this is why Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli [Live] came as something of a shock, something that successfully turned the trajectory of the very texture of popular Bombay cinema. [Read more →]

by Matthew Holtmeier

In a joint invitation between the Department of Social Anthropology, the Centre for Film Studies and the Institute for Iranian Studies, acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf visited the University of St Andrews 24 June 2010.

The event involved a screening of Salam Cinema, followed by a Q&A session and a more intimate reception afterward. During these, Makhmalbaf discussed the practical aspects of filmmaking, and the role of cinema and culture in shaping political events, which is particularly important given his prominence in the Green Movement in Iran.

Salam Cinema, which Makhmalbaf made in 1994, follows the auditions of ordinary Iranian citizens who show up in response to an ad placed in the newspapers announcing open auditions for Makhmalbaf’s latest film. Makhmalbaf, played by himself, teases out the participants’ desire to be involved in cinema by asking why they want be cast in his film – the usual response being a declaration of love for cinema. [Read more →]

From: http://www.kino.com/metropolis/

Film prints that have been lost or damaged are referred to as orphans, and for seven years now, the Film Studies Department at New York University  Tisch School of the Arts, has hosted the Orphan Film Symposium. According to an informative article on the Museum of the Moving Image website, “What once simply identified those film works that have been abandoned (however inadvertently) by their owners, rights-holders, or “parents”—newsreels and ephemera, unreleased and unfinished works, home movies and stag films—now serves as a catchall for any work that exists outside the mainstream of commercial cinema. Indeed, any film whose future is in jeopardy—due to its diminished status in film history or its low priority in the usual operations of the archive—could be classified an orphan.”

It’s a wonderful report of the 7th Orphans Film Symposium. Click here to read the full article.

There is now a Wikipedia page on our journal Wide Screen. It gives the history, policies and the people behind the journal.

It can be accessed here.

The new issue of Wide Screen is now available. Click here to access it.

The popular Hindi film industry is often accused of recycling material, rehashing old stories, copying Hollywood and generally not generating any new innovative material. We can argue over the validity of these claims, but there is something new and wildly interesting that has been brewing in Bollywood for some years now, and that is the manufacturing of stars.

With the internet, social networking and myriad other options, the mapping of stardom has changed over the last few years. Namrata Joshi of Outlook has written about the role of marketing in selling stars and their films. Have a look here.

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethekul’s film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Weerasethekul has previously made films like Syndromes and a Century and Letters to Uncle Boonmee. Other winners include Juliette Binoche for Abbas Kiorastami’s Certified Copy, Javier Bardem for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, Elio Germano for Our Life by Daniele Luchetti. The Best Director prize went to Mathieu Amalric for Tournee.  Click here to access the complete report by New York Times.

Catherine Shoard, the editor of film for The Guardian and Rachel Millward, the director of the Bird’s Eye View festival, entered into a debate on why so few women directors are showcased at the Cannes Film Festival and why they hardly ever win the coveted Palme d’Or. The question at hand is whether the Cannes festival is unfair to women.

Click here to access the conversation between Shoard and Millward published by The Guardian.

Last year the Cannes Film Festival had proposed a mini-retrospective of the work of celebrated Indian director Mrinal Sen, but because the prints of most of his films were in ‘poor condition’, it never came through.

This year, Sen’s film Khandar has been selected as one of the films that will be screened in the Cannes Classics section of the festival. Films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel and Volker Schlondroff are part of this selection. Sen is expected to be present for this screening.

The National Film Archive in Pune was given a directive by the Prime Minister last year to restore each of Sen’s films. The screening at Cannes has reportedly been made possible because of the successful restoration.

Khandar was made in 1983 and starred Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur and Annu Kapur. I had written a retrospective piece on the film on the occasion of Mrinal Sen getting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival in 2008 in New Delhi. Click here to access it.

And while the Indian press seems just thrilled at this recognition India has got at Cannes, not one of them has got the name of the film right. All sites have picked up an agency copy which refers to the film as ‘Kandahar’. They have all retained the English title The Ruins, but no one has managed to put two and two together.

Celebrated Iranian film director, Jafar Panahi who had made films like The White Balloon, The Circle, Offside among others, was placed under arrest by the Iranian authorities in April 2010.  Despite international pressure to release him, and his wife Tahereh Saeedi’s fear for his health, he continues to be in jail, and according to recent reports has been moved to a smaller cell.

It is a case of life imitating art. There is as yet absolutely no clarity over the reasons for this arrest. It began in February  when Panahi was not given permission to leave the country to attend the Berlinale Film Festival. No reason was quoted officially at the time of the arrest. There have been muffled reasons like he was making an ‘anti-regime’ film which spoke about the events following the controversial re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. His wife has denied these claims.

Following growing international pressure, another garbled reason was leaked, claiming that his arrest wasn’t political but he had been “accused of some crimes and arrested with another person following an order by a judge,” (quote from an AFP report). Others have simply stated that he has been arrested because he poses a threat to the country’s security.

The film community from across the world has raised its voice against this unfair arrest. At the moment, support pouring in from Hollywood actors and directors like Martin Scorcese, Ethan and Joel Coen, Robert DeNiro, Michael Moore etc is making the headlines, even though there seems to be no move towards releasing Panahi.

There are also various online petitions doing the rounds. The one endorsed by the family is http://www.petitiononline.com/FJP2310/petition.html