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F ilm directors often make amazing debut feature films. These debut films can be awesome if they are based on the director’s original scripts rather than an adapted one. Kleber Mendonca Filho’s debut feature film Neighboring Sounds as a director stands out as he has observed and reflected on the history of Brazil and created a tale that mirrors the race conflicts and the closely related economic and social disparity that has existed in recent decades of that wonderful, naturally well-endowed nation’s history. Beyond the interesting tale that director Filho wrote for his debut as a feature filmmaker, he evidently decided to build his tale aided by the importance of sounds in a film that most viewers neglect to notice. It is no coincidence that he chose to title the film as Neighboring Sounds . If a viewer approaches the film casually, the story of the film will be more overpowering than the diegetic sounds captured on the film’s soundtrack. Filho divides his film into three chapters (i...

“Exhausted by hunger, he ate in secret. He thought he was stealing food; but that was better than stealing from strangers”    -- Narrator of a TV program on dogs, viewed by Oleg in the film 4 T he film 4 was made in 2004 and won 11 major film awards across Europe, the Americas and Asia. Khrzhanovskiy’s   debut film 4 is no ordinary feature film. Four stray dogs on a Moscow street at night open the film. Four persons (3 customers and a bartender) accidentally meet at a bar late night. The three drinkers (Marina, a female prostitute; Vladimir, a male piano tuner/musician; and Oleg, a male wholesale-meat supplier) construct their alternate fictional professions as they consume alcohol and attempt connecting with each other.  Bar scene: (left to right) Vladimir, Marina and Oleg A s the film progresses, we realize Marina is one of 4 sisters. Marina (played by actress Marina Vovchenko) meets up with two of her other sisters (possibly played by her real life sisters, if ...

The poster captures the essence of the film-- the child is the fulcrum of the tale, with the mother almost absent in the frame F ilm directors and screenplay writers Semih Kaplanoglu and Nuri Bilge Ceylan are the leading lights of Turkish cinema today. Their contributions have understandably resulted in Turkish films being considered among the very best in the world in recent decades. Unfortunately, Kaplanoglu’s previous film Grain made in 2017 has been totally neglected by most cineastes, even though the film won the top honor at the 2017 Tokyo film festival and was made in English on a subject that ought to interest a larger educated film-going global public. It possibly antagonized the powerful lobby of private sector involved with agricultural genetic engineering that effectively curtailed the film’s distribution and publicity worldwide, similar to the case of the Cannes-award winning European film Little Joe (2019). Grain was a departure for Kaplanoglu, not just for venturing i...

Zoltan Fabri, 1917-94 (Courtesy: MUBI) Transcript of the interview published in the daily newspaper  The Telegraph , (Kolkata, India) on 15 August 1982  Zoltan Fabri is not an unknown name in India. His films have been widely shown in screenings in India, courtesy NFDC, and he holds the distinction of winning two awards at the Delhi International Film Festival of India (IFFI). In 1979, Hungarians won the Golden Peacock for the Best Film and in 1981 his film Balint Fabian meets God was awarded the Silver Peacock for the Best Actor. Fabri is one of three great Hungarian filmmakers—Miklos Jancso and Istvan Szabo completing the trio. Jugu Abraham, who interviewed him in Hungary, found him to be ‘a lovely old man’ with impeccable manners and forthright views. The interview:  Q. In India, we see a lot of your films but we hardly know anything of the person behind the camera. I would like to ask you something of your personal life. Your films have shown the protagonists playing ...

T wo films made in 2019 mark the resurgence of Brazilian cinema: Dornelles’ and Filho’s joint effort Bacurau (a Cannes film festival winner) and debutant Maya   Da-Rin’s The Fever (a Chicago international film festival winner).   The following citation for the Chicago win is a good encapsulation of the merits of the second film,  The Fever: " "The Silver Hugo for Best Director goes to Maya Da-Rin for her debut fiction feature The Fever. The film drifts between dream and reality, portraying with both tenderness and precision the world of an indigenous father and daughter in the north of Brazil. It takes us into the family and their hearts, but never forgets the importance of the political context ."   Citation for the award from the Chicago International film Festival Justino (Regis Myrupu), a denizen of the Amazon rainforest, chooses to work as a security guard in Manaus, where instead of trees, he is surrounded by steel containers shipping goods  D irector...

F ilm director Jean Luc Godard   had said “ In the temple of cinema, there are images, light and reality. Sergei Parajanov was the master of that temple .”   Parajanov, the late master filmmaker from Russia, underscored the importance of bright colours and realistic sound, while Pedro Costa’s   Vitalina Varela goes a step further, accentuating darkness, dark skin, and shadows with muted indirect lighting in a “colour” film, aided with natural sound. When you do see bright images in Vitalina Varela, as at the end of the film, it is not just real bright light and colours, it presents a metaphoric change in the film’s narrative structure. The award-winning actress plays herself in the film about herself V italina Varela is distinctly different from the Oscar nominees of 2019 or well known commercial films with renowned actors. Vitalina Varela is an unusual film with a title that has the name of its lead actress. The film narrates the real story of its lead actress, a C...