Eight films being screened on the second day for press
As a part of 39th International Film Festival of India - 2008 pre festival screening for the Press and Media, eight films are being screened today on the second day of the screenings. Banada Neralu, Summer 2007, Taare Zameen Par, Oru Pennum Randaanum, Gulabi Talkies and Kanchivaram are being screened in Macquinez Palace I and What on Earth Have I Done Wrong (Qing Fei De Yi Zhi Sheng Cuu Zhi Dao) & The Man Who Loved Yngve in Inox multiplex theatre. The synopses of Indian films are as below.
BANADA NERALU
Amaresh, a smalltime civil contractor under pressure from money lenders to repay debts, decides to try his luck by growing commercial crops in his wife’s village. For that, however, he must cut down old trees growing on the land. He seeks the horticulture department’s advice and negotiates with a sawmill willing to fell the trees.
But when the mill workers come Banavva, the former landowner’s widow, refuses to let them cut the trees, saying she has sold the land but not the trees! This upsets Amaresh who has borrowed from the bank to develop the land.
To make her see reason Amaresh requests a meeting of the village elders. They instruct Banavva to return the money and retain her land. The poor widow fails to do so. To retain the trees she attempts suicide: first she threatens to jump off a high wall, next she jumps into a well. Both times she survives and becomes the laughing stock of the village.
Amaresh is under pressure from the bank as well as the sawmill owner. His rivals in the village have complained to local authorities of encroachment, and he is falling in the eyes of his mother-in-law. So he procures the forest department’s permission to cut the trees.
Banavva now tries to hang herself in public. A stunned Amaresh rescues her but finds that Banavva has lost her voice, and rushes her to the city hospital. During this human interaction he learns about her background and is transformed.
But the sawmill owner needs the trees, so he arrives with police protection to fell them. The village community draws together and succeeds in protecting the trees.
The womenfolk celebrate this in Banavva’s field. While people sing and play, Banavva dies a silent death. Her body is put to rest under a tree planted by her, and Amaresh plants another on her grave.
SUMMER 2007
Summer 2007 explores, with deep humanism, the coming together of India’s cool, happening youth with the Agrarian Crisis that is threatening to spiral out of control.
Five friends from India’s buoyant upper middle class, studying in a capitation fee medical college, are leading an insulated life facilitated by their parent’s economic potency. Their problems of love, sex, girlfriends, exams, and ego spice up their blissful existence. The fact that they are studying to be doctors and will be part of the healthcare scenario, a key element in any nation’s development, is of no consequence to them. They are just flowing with the tide, in a cocooned existence.
Then, a few days of rural medical training in a Vidarbha village caught in extreme poverty and farmer suicides, proves cataclysmic. The friends are suddenly confronted with an India they’ve never really seen. And they’re appalled by what they witness: Predatory money lenders preying on the farmers; Healthcare in a shambles… Living is the most arduous battle for them all. Giving up life is an easier option.
Reluctantly, they are now forced to seek answers to just one question: Why is India’s progress so lopsided? Each friend reacts differently to the situation. One comes to terms with reality, one has a change of heart, one becomes bitter, one falls in love, and one puts his life on the line - for others.
TAARE ZAMEEN PAR
Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate: colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness.
Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class. And so he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, and is packed off to a boarding school to be ‘disciplined’. Things are no different at this new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.
One day Ram Shankar Nikumbh bursts onto the scene. This new Art Teacher infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of ‘how things are done’ by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiasm - all except Ishaan.
Nikumbh soon realises that Ishaan is not happy being at school, and sets out to discover why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself.
ORU PENNUM RANDAANUM/ A Climate For Crime
The 1940s, in the Princely State of Travancore in South India.
The Second World War being fought in Europe had cast its shadow on British India. Daily necessities like food, clothing, kerosene and petrol were scarce. Unemployment grew while hoarding of grains became routine. Set against such times, the four stories in this film relate to crimes committed by the deprived as well as the privileged landed gentry.
The Thief
In school, Kunjunni is nicknamed ‘Son of a Thief.’ One night his father Neelantan arrives home after one of his jail stints. Kunjunni excitedly breaks the news of his father’s return to his friend Kurien who scornfully asserts that in no time Neelantan will go back to jail. A fight ensues between the two boys.
Later Neelantan meets Kurien’s father, Mathai, and enjoins him not to pass on the prejudices of the parents to the children. Mathai takes offence: with help from his son, he prepares a mass petition to the police chief requesting that Neelantan be kept under preventive custody to safeguard the villagers’ property. Neelantan is duly locked up. Kunjunni makes his mother promise that once he’s released, she will persuade his father to reform and take up a decent profession.
Two years pass. One day Kunjunni brings home the news that Kurien’s house has been burgled. Seeing the full meal laid out, and the new clothes bought for him, he realises his father has resumed stealing. He is heartbroken.
The Police
An upright Inspector is posted to the local police station. He finds numerous complaints of corruption pending against the Head Constable and his aide.
The Inspector has special instructions from above to probe the ‘unsolved’ case of a theft in a rich merchant’s shop. It is suspected that Head Constable Pillai has already traced the culprit and shared the loot with him. He and his cunning colleague Mathu are given one week’s time to solve the case or face the consequences.
Mathu suggests they re-arrest the culprit. Pillai wavers because they have already taken their share. The two discuss the dilemma in the local bar. Mathu jumps out of his seat in excitement when he spots a customer in soiled clothes open a paper packet full of currency notes. Before the poor rickshaw puller realises what is happening, the two take away all his cash and frame him as the accused. If he appeals, he will have to engage a lawyer and produce witnesses, a process that will exhaust his savings - so he is told. If he admits to the crime, he will be jailed for ten days at the most. What choice does the poor man have?
Two Men and a Woman
Krishnankutty, a university student, is fascinated by a servant girl in the lodge where he is put up. What starts as a casual affair turns serious with her showing symptoms of pregnancy. Being entirely dependent on the head of his joint family for his education - and under obligation to marry his daughter - Krishnankutty has two options: either terminate the pregnancy or take his life.
A distraught Krishnankutty seeks help from his friend and confidante, a lawyer. In a remote part of an islet, they locate a notorious quack to conduct an abortion. The meeting with the drunken quack stirs feelings of both pity and loathing in the young man.
Eventually it turns out that the girl is not pregnant. Krishnankutty however makes bold to take the most difficult decision of his life.
One Woman, Two Men
The men of the village are attracted like fireflies to Panki, a woman of great beauty and grace. Smitten by her charm Rama Kurup, a man past middle age, forsakes everything to marry her. He guards her jealously. One night his fears are proven right when he finds her with a paramour.
A scuffle ensues and Kurup stabs his younger adversary. He goes into hiding while the paramour recovers in a hospital. A case is registered for attempted murder and a warrant issued for his arrest. After a while a battered and humiliated Kurup returns home on bail. He is overwhelmed as Panki seems to be her old self, tending him with love and care.
As the case is fought in the court of law, Panki is urged by both men to depose in their favour. But she is non-committal. The verdict absolves both of the initial crime but they are sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment for inciting their followers to murder and mayhem. In prison the two men put an end to the enmity that has ruined their lives. On their release they decide to confront Panki together...
GULABI TALKIES
Gulabi, a discarded 50-year-old woman, lives in an island inhabited primarily by fisherfolks. Since her husband Musa has married again, she lives away from him. To escape her loneliness she fans her obsession for films.
Gulabi is well known in Kuduru as an expert midwife. One evening while she is watching a film in a cinema, the village affluent Kalyani’s daughter goes into labour. Kalyani summons Gulabi to conduct the delivery and promises to reward her with a television.
The colour TV turns Gulabi’s hut into the village hub. Village women frequent the hut and begin weaving their dreams, sorrows and desires around the TV. Among them is Netru, whose husband works in Dubai. She suffers the atrocities of her mother-in-law and finds relief from her suppressed life in the TV. Gulabi sows in her the seeds of hope and desire. Television fills the void in Gulabi’s life too. Soon her estranged husband and her foster son Addu resume their relationship with her.
KANCHIVARAM
In the thick of Kanchi’s silk weaving industry, a common man is caught between the society he lives in and his own ideals and individual dreams.
Vengadam surprised one and all when he promised his newborn daughter to drape her in a fine silk sari on her wedding day. According to tradition, a promise made to one’s newborn child on the first day of feeding is a lifelong one: it must be kept, come what may. The skeptics warned Vengadam that he would never be able to fulfill his promise on his weaver’s income. And breaking the promise would spell dire consequences. With full faith in his abilities, Vengadam refused to budge.
If youth brings optimism, it brings resourcefulness, courage and recklessness in equal measure. Aware that his meagre salary could not buy his daughter a silk sari, a determined Vengadam started stealing one solitary thread of silk every day. When going home he would be frisked from head to toe, but the guards never found the thread he hid in his mouth. Every night he would sneak into his cattleshed to weave a strand. As the days and years passed, his diligence paid off and the sari increased in length as his daughter grew into a young lady.
Vengadam’s life changed forever when a communist preacher appeared in his village. The apolitical weaver became a living, breathing communist. His affiliation to the ideology helped him become a leader of the community. He instigated a revolt against the mill owners who ruled over the workers like feudal lords and the mills were shut down. Neither the owners nor the workers were ready for a compromise.
As the strike got prolonged, his daughter’s wedding approached, and Vengadam realised that he could not get any silk from the closed mills. Torn between his vow and his ideology, he started questioning the principles of communism. He realised that preaching is easier than practicing a philosophy.
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SP/RJ/AS
(Release ID :44965)