Reviews | IAWRT | Day 1 | Part 2

The following pieces are reviews and others small tidbits about the films I saw during the 15th IAWRT (The International Association of Women in Radio & Television) Asian Women’s Film Festival, held from 5th – 7th March, 2019 in New Delhi. The following are the reviews of the films I saw on the second half of Day 1.

It is a beautiful festival, if small, showcasing films from women filmmakers across the world.

I have tried to remain as detailed and factually correct about the films I managed to see as much as my limited memory allows nearly after a week of the screening, and I have tried to include details and related links of the films wherever possible. Plot summaries, character names etc have been taken from various internet sources. Mild spoilers are inevitable in the way I wish to talk about these films.

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Section | Re-Imagining Red

Red Dress | Salome Sagaradze | Georgia | 10 min

Film available here at vimeo.

While it is well crafted and well intended, there is something little off, little distant or little incomplete about it. Maybe it is in the manner in which the mother has a turn around about her offspring’s sexual disposition, who wants wear her pretty red dress. Maybe it is the drastic change in her stance over the course of a single day, or just a very movie-ish, a very ‘complete’ sort of conclusion of events in a life full of chaos.

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Algerim | Malika Mukhamedzhan | Kazakistan | 18 min

Truth be told, I am quite amazed at the kind of images the filmmaker has been able to put up on the screen, despite it being a student film.

An old man works as a railroad employee far away in the Kazakh steppe. He appears to be happy when he is asleep and dreaming. He often sees a wavering image of a beautiful girl in a red dress, which appears to be at a distant, like a mirage in a desert.

I am not particularly certain of the linearity of the events, but there appears to be a cyclic nature to fulfilment of his dreams. A car lands up in an accident near to his house, but there appear to be flies at the headlight of the car, distorting the sense of time. The man starts taking care of the girl in the car, who appears to be similar to the one in the dreams.

The film creates a sense of stillness and calm, with panoramas of a train driving across a curving track, only to reveal the little, wrinkled protagonist of our film working besides it. I too, try to imagine, what he thinks about when he is not at work – work which occupies only a small part of his day.

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Red Dress. No Straps | Maryam Mohajer | UK | 9 min | Animation

What a beautifully animated film! The hand painted, visible brush stroke style (with no borders) lends the film a voice that seems untainted and primal – it doesn’t reflect the cleanliness of the commercial animation our eyes are accustomed to, and the colours are jarringly contrasting and the drawings appear fuzzed. Thus when the child narrates her story, it seems as if the visuals have emanated from her own hand.

It’s Tehran in 1985, during the Iran-Iraq war, when ‘Death to America’ chants from the morning school assembly, while ‘The voice of America’ plays on TV.

Marmar, the child, our protagonist, is waiting for her granny to finish a dress same as the on worn by the pop-star on the screen – bright red. no straps.

The hand painted, visible brush stroke style (with no borders) lends the film a voice that seems untainted and primal – it doesn’t reflect the cleanliness of the commercial animation our eyes are accustomed to, and the colours are jarringly contrasting and the drawings appear fuzzed. Thus when the child narrates her story, it seems as if the visuals emanates from her own hand.

This form and this voice, feels essential to the final scene of the film, when it hits you on the spot, even if one wasn’t expecting for things to go down perfectly well.

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Red Chimera | Jen Frisch-Wang | USA | 7 min | Experimental

Chrissy, a teenage Asian girl, is told by a black cat that her body is going to age 60 years overnight. She wakes up to find herself being quite old.

Red Chimera

The film reminded me of Jennifer Garner’s 13 going in 30, a mainstream, pretty fun film on similar lines. Though in 13 going on 30, the girl wishes in a moment of frustration to live the life of a grown up, only to discover this wasn’t what she had expected; here, in Red Chimera, old age seems to have been thrusted upon her.

What subsequently happens is similar – a revision of life choices, and a view on life that differs based upon the experiences during the years and lessons on decision making. There are moments of visual imagination here, but the result often gets marred by the skill set and budgetary constraints required to pull off those particular flourishes.

The old and the young, come together to paint, each represented by a different colour, and deliver message of hope, patience and reconsidering popular life choices (Is Stanford really worth it?), in a film filled with touches of wit but a lot of borrowed images.

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Section | Inversion

Nazareth Cinema Lady | Nurit Jacobs Yinon | Israel | 54 min | Israel | Non-fiction

Here is someone whose current state of life I wish to know about. I don’t want the film to end. But a small thought remains alive at the back of the mind, that there would be little I could do about the situations she is in, and she, in whatever state of affairs is, remains in control of her own narrative, accepting of whatever life throws at her.

Nazareth Cinema Lady, tells the story of Safaa Dabour, a religious Muslim from Nazareth, who established the first and only Arab cinematheque in Israel. She is a lady who owns her own horse, in a land where ladies don’t ride one.

She is a lady who owns her own horse, in a land where ladies don’t ride one. I think that tells a lot about her, something which I can’t put to words.

Yurit’s film follows Safaa through various years of her life, the life of a ‘romantic’ of cinema, through numerous tragedies and hardships (she lost her husband and father quite early, and she chooses a life of showing films as her career, the first person in her land to do so), a real life ‘Cinema Paradiso’ manifestation.

Safaa, whether she knows it or not, is a life of cinema, larger than life in her way of living and her will to stick by her intentions. She is a Muslim in Nazareth, an Israeli in the eyes of Arab countries, and an Arab in the eyes of the Israelis, ‘a sandwich of identities’ she says herself. She would bring in films from across the border as if smuggling drugs, (Egyptian hits, films from Iran and Gulf, whose Arab distributors have refused to send films to Israel, and the regular Hollywood affair), to develop a film culture in her land where none exists.

It’s the portrait of a devout person (as well as the mark of a perceptive filmmaker who stuck around with Safaa for some duration) – dedicated to both her religion and her career as a theatre manager. When during a cultural festival in the building premises (hoping for a significant film-going crowd), alcohol is served at the theatre entrance, she is visibly upset and tries to get push away from it. Watching films for her, unlike her community, remains as matter of fact of life as anything. It’s a service in the service of society, one that is also a perfectly sincere way of spending leisurely time in the evening. She doesn’t agree to the notion of films being inherently corrosive to morals or faith, and thus is upset even at the idea of association of films with alcohol in the event.

An Israeli in the eyes of Arab countries, and an Arab in the eyes of the Israelis, ‘a sandwich of identities’ she says herself; Safaa would bring in films from across the border, as if smuggling drugs.

The film makes certain jumps in the narrative in later half, when the theater business starts getting into trouble, as corrupt authorities, societal pressure and an increasing debt makes life hard for her. It isn’t clear what exactly are the particulars leading to the situations at hand, or what official authorities are causing the troubles, but we get broad idea about what would eventually happen.

Despite the abrupt leaps, the film reaches a note of desperation and a poignant end. After a harrowing turn of events with the theater projector, Safaa is left with only mementos of the film culture she wished to establish. Maybe this didn’t work out for her, but based on what I saw in ‘Nazareth Cinema Lady‘, I am pretty certain she isn’t one to remain seated.

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A Hard Day In The Empire | Sezen Kayhan
Turkey | 20 min | Short fiction

Trailer. Easily the most (traditionally) fun film I saw in the day.

Cansu, the only female crew member, works as a prop assistant on the set of an Ottoman period soap opera.

This was easily the most entertaining (read laugh-out-loud) film of the day; and I wonder at the kind of restrained in the comedy writing present here. Cansu, by virtue of being the only representative of the art department and the only women on the set, is repeatedly pestered with the most inconsequential of tasks; everyone else on the set, particularly the director appears to hold their own decision-making in higher regard. Only Cansu and the audience (which consisted of a lot of filmmakers themselves in this case) seem aware of the injustices.

There is a fun sequence in the film when the characters who are supposed to be dead in the scene are moving within the shot. The director takes a fleeting offence at them, but gets pissed off at the arrangement of a distant jug in the frame.

Everyone on the set appears to hold their own decision-making in the highest regard. Only Cansu and the audience seem aware of the injustices.

I assumed similar sequences would grace the film further, and the comedy of errors would escalate to increasingly bizarre proportions. I was thinking they would play out in a manner wherever the inherent injustices towards Cansu, the instances of mansplaining and the brashness of the director would reach comic, explicitly identifiable proportions, where they will be particularly highlighted to the audience – maybe the acting would go really haywire and the director would still let it pass, but would still keep pointing out the misalignment of oranges in the tray. But the restraint of the writer/director never lets the idea of an ‘issue’ take the limelight; the audience is completely aware of it and by not milking the individual instances to the extreme, the film feels much more frustrating and much more real, set in the real empire of men.

Challenging conditions, various caprices and endless requests bring her to an irreversible moment.

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