The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), the year-end celluloid bash at Thiruvananthapuram, gets underway tomorrow. This is its 13th edition – unknowingly and unnoticed, like a girl child, the festival has reached its first step of teenage. For a week from tomorrow, the people who throng the Thampannoor area of the city can be divided into two: those whose heads spin at 24 frames per second and those who wonder why the hell these strange people are scrambling for theaters under the hot sun.
I went to the city after a long time to collect the delegate pass. The traffic and the pollution of the city are becoming quite insufferable like Vinayan’s films. But I saw a board that is worthy as a scene in a political satire. There was a big banner of DYFI near Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium, extolling the virtues of freedom. The bearded man on the board was not Carl Marx, as one would expect. But it rather looked like Carl Marx after a weight loss program. Well, it was comrade Saddam Hussein. When I told this to a communist friend, he said Saddham was a great fan of Joseph Stalin, the Kurosawa of Kerala communists. So, it has nothing to do with the appeasement of minorities, as I foolishly thought at first.
Coming back to IFFK, the first show of tomorrow is at 11.30 AM, not at 9 AM, as was the case previously. There are some interesting films. French New Wave veteran Claude Chabrol’s The Girl Cut in Two is one. But there is also Flower in the Pocket, directed by Liew Seng Tat, whom many label as one of the main figures of the so-called Malaysian New Wave. Also, there is a documentary titled Chevolution – about the evolution of Che Guevara’s image as a poster boy of capitalist products. Other notable films going to be screened tomorrow are Music Box, Juju Factory, and Wonderful Town. Also, after the controversy surrounding it during the previous festival, the signature film also should be in the “eagerly awaited” list.
Happy viewing to all.
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