IFFK Day-2 Morning

Habana Blues: The Music of Politics


I started today’s festival from where I left off yesterday – that is, with another wonderful film. Habana Blues is a wonderful film that blends international politics with ordinary life in Cuba in a lively musical atmosphere. Watching the film, one would marvel at the title of the film as how effectively those two words capture the essence of the film. At the same time it implies both the pop music culture in Havana and the misery in the lives of ordinary folks. In contrast to other festival films, this one is studded with songs, that too of Jazz and Rap variety.

From there I went to see Rock That Flies by Eric Rocha. It is in fact a documentary on his father, Glaubar Rocha, the legendary director and the chief creator of the Film Nova movement in Brazil (which must be Brazil’s answer to French New Wave). Rocha senior was an iconoclast and a firm enemy of capitalism. His methods of film making were extra-ordinary and he made films from three major continents: Latin America, Europe and Africa. (Perhaps the only one to do that. We know Bunuel made films from several countries. But as far as I know, he had not made any films from Africa.) This documentary is a worthy tribute to Rocha senior. It is an extra-ordinary documentary where unusual methods of story-telling have been adopted. Some of the sequences are quite yawn inspiring. Still, one has to hail the attempt and cannot imagine a better documentary on Glaubar Rocha. In the afternoon, I am going to watch The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

I witnessed some interesting things in the festival today. Let me share one of those. I arrived early at the theatre; so decided to go to the Delegate Cell to get Festival Hand Book. There was a pretty long queue. I planted myself at the end of it. But I could not see anybody coming out with a hand book. So I asked a person who had just come out of the room about the hand book. He told me there were no hand books in store. He in fact came for a delegate pass. What the authorities told him was that the delegate passes had gone out of stock. So instead of a card, they gave him a white rope (or twain), which is used to hang the card around the neck, and told him to wrap the rope around his neck and hide both ends in the pocket. (By the way, this is the normal way people wear the delegate card.) One must salute the innovative thinking of the officials. Nobody seems to be protesting on wearing the card (or not wearing the card) like this. All are happy that at least they got a rope.