I'd attended the Asian Film Festival for the first time last year. Its the first and only real film fest I've attended so far, so I was super excited about attending this year as well. The movies shown last year were not exactly good (I'm sure there are better films being made in Asia), but the whole experience was fun - running between two theaters (2 venues), laughing at the really dumb films, being taken aback by some unexpectedly good ones(rare, this) and so on. This year was no different, if anything, the quality of the selected films deteriorated further, with some gems here and there. Here's an account of the Day 1 :
The fest opened at Plaza with Aha!(Dir:Enamul Karim Nirjhar), a Bangladeshi film that went on and on for what seemed to be over 3 hours.
Plot (What, Where?!): A man is preparing to sell his ancestral home. Enter his physically abused daughter and grandson (both having rhyming names- Ruba and Buba?!) from the States, Ruba's subsequent friendship with her neighbour - 'kissi kissi' Kislu (no comments) - a friendship which started out with her staring out of her window at the underpants he put out to dry, his 'all (and very bright) colours of the rainbow' underpants, and I mean rainbow quite literally - one colour for each day of the week. Throw in a very irritating, cricket obsessed servant with flies perpetually buzzing around him, and who, btw, is also an ex-convict; some highly uninteresting relatives and a party for the grandson's circumcision, and voila! - you have a not so very encouraging start to the festival. Aha! is also Bangladesh's official entry to the Oscars (There's hysterical laughter in my head) and that does not bode well for that nation's Oscar hopes this year or the next 10 - that is how long the jury will be mad at them for having the gall to send in this one
The fest opened at Plaza with Aha!(Dir:Enamul Karim Nirjhar), a Bangladeshi film that went on and on for what seemed to be over 3 hours.
Plot (What, Where?!): A man is preparing to sell his ancestral home. Enter his physically abused daughter and grandson (both having rhyming names- Ruba and Buba?!) from the States, Ruba's subsequent friendship with her neighbour - 'kissi kissi' Kislu (no comments) - a friendship which started out with her staring out of her window at the underpants he put out to dry, his 'all (and very bright) colours of the rainbow' underpants, and I mean rainbow quite literally - one colour for each day of the week. Throw in a very irritating, cricket obsessed servant with flies perpetually buzzing around him, and who, btw, is also an ex-convict; some highly uninteresting relatives and a party for the grandson's circumcision, and voila! - you have a not so very encouraging start to the festival. Aha! is also Bangladesh's official entry to the Oscars (There's hysterical laughter in my head) and that does not bode well for that nation's Oscar hopes this year or the next 10 - that is how long the jury will be mad at them for having the gall to send in this one
The next one was Ma (Dir:Manju Borah), from Assam, a musical, with the leads bursting into song every other minute - the Assamese apparently have songs for all occasions: love and other similar emotions; sowing, harvesting, rains, summer, fishing, motherhood, walking ... you get the hint. The film also vaguely flitted over the border dispute between Nagaland and Assam. Most others found this one bad as well, but my friends and I found this one quite bearable, after the traumatic experience of Aha!
After such a wonderful start to the festival, we decided that we didn't have the courage for anymore movies that day and ran away to college as fast as we could!
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