REMEMBERING P.N.MENON

(P.N.MENON ANUSMARANAM)
ON
9TH SEPTEMBER 2010
5 PM
AT
NANAPPA ART GALLERY,
KARIKKAMURI CROSS ROAD,
ERNAKULAM-11

Participants:
SRI.MOHAN,SRI.KAMAL, SRI.SREENIVASAN, SRI.T.KRISHNANUNNI, SRI.N.HARIKUMAR, DR.C.S.JAYARAM, SRI.K.M.ROY, SMT.BHARATHI MENON, SRI.T.KALADHARAN

Followed by film screening
KUTTYEDATHI
Written by M.T.VASUDEVAN NAIR
Directed by P.N.MENON

Pantaleón y las visitadoras [Captain Pantoja and the Special Services]

(2002)/Peru | Spain/Spanish/ 137 min

Director: Francisco J. Lombardi

Plot Summary:

The Peruvian army captain Pantaleon Pantoja, a very serious and efficient officer, is chosen by his superiors to set up a special service of 'visitors' to satisfy the sexual needs of the soldiers posted on remote jungle outposts. At first unhappy about this assignment, he nonetheless puts his remarkable organizational skills in action and in a short time has his 'unit' running smoothly. In the home front things get complicated though; his wife dislikes his long hours and the secrecy surrounding his work, and he, despite being a dedicated husband, feels tempted by one of his "subordinates".

1] Cartagena Film Festival: Golden India Catalina Award, 2000: Best Actor, Best Film.

2] Cinema Brazil Grand Prize, 2003: Nominated: Best Foreign Language Film.

3] Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival, 2000: Silver Dolphin Award: Best Actor.

Nominated: Golden Dolphin Award: Best Film.

4] Goya Awards, 2000: Audience Award: Best Latin Film, Best Actor, Best Director.

Golden Kikito Award: Best Editing, Best Film, Best Screenplay.

Kikito Critics Prize: Francisco J. Lombardi.

5] Gramado Film Festival, 2000: Audience Award: Best Latin Film, Best Actor, Best Director.

Golden Kikito Award: Best Editing, Best Film, Best Screenplay.

Kikito Critics Prize: Francisco J. Lombardi.

6] Viña del Mar Film Festival, 2000: Audience Award: Francisco J. Lombardi.

The Dreamers
2003/ 115 min/ France | UK | Italy/ English | French
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci.

Plot Summary:

Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up. Written by KGF Vissers
The tumultuous political landscape of Paris in 1968 serves as the backdrop for a tale about three young cineastes who are drawn together through their passion for film. Matthew, an American exchange student, pursuing his education abroad in Paris, becomes friends with a French brother and sister duo, named Theo and Isabelle, who share a common love of the cinema. While the May 1968 Paris student riots--which eventually shut down most of the French government--are happening around them, the three friends develop a relationship unlike anything Matthew has ever experienced, or will ever encounter again.
Awards:
1] David di Donatello Awards, 2004: Nominated: Best Editing.
2] European Film Awards, 2004: Nominated: Audience Award: Best Actress, Best Director.
3] Golden Trailer Awards, 2004: Nominated: Golden Trailer: Best Foreign Film
4] Goya Awards, 2004: Nominated: Best European Film.
5] Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, 2004: Nominated: Silver Ribbon: Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing.

Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces.

1990/ Arabic

98 min/Tunisia | France | Italy/

Director: Férid Boughedir.

\

Plot Summary

A coming-of-age comedy/drama set in Tunisia. Twelve-year-old Noura is an impressionable boy who must learn to reconcile two conflicting worlds - the loving world of Moslem women and the vastly different, harsher world of men - while also dealing with his own budding sexuality.

Awards:

1] Carthage Film Festival, 1990: Tanit d'Or: Férid Boughedir.

2] César Awards, France, 1991: Nominated: César: Best First Work: Férid Boughedir.

3] Valencia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema, 1990: Golden Palm:
Férid Boughedir.

4] Würzburg International Filmweekend, 1991: Audience Award:
Férid Boughedir.

As Bodas de Deus
[Portuguese] (1999)
150 min/France | Portugal/French | Portuguese
Director:João César Monteiro

A crook named Joao de Deus receives a suitcase stuffed with money from a messenger of God. The messanger disappears and as Joao counts his money he hears something large plunge into the river beside him. He witnesses a young girl drowning and jumps into the river to save her. Will his money be there when he returns?

Plot Summary:
The eccentric Portuguese director Joao_Cesar_Monteiro is also the screenwriter and the main character of this film, which continues his cynical observations about God and religion. Two shadow-like figures meet in an old, icy park when all seems lost. They are Deus and a Messenger from God. The Messenger gives the Crook (which is the temporary state of poor Joao de Deus) a suitcase full of money. Having accomplished his mission, he disappears. While Joao is busy counting his fortune, a heavy object plunges into the nearby lake, disturbing its tranquility. Joao goes to see what is happening and sees a young girl drowning. He plunges into the water to save her and carries the unconscious girl off to a convent. When he returns to the park, the suitcase full of money is still there waiting for him. Providence or sheer luck? With Monteiro, the answer is evident.

Awards:
1] 52nd Cannes Film Festival 1999: Un Certain regard.

Satyricon.

(1969)

128 min./Italy | France/Latin | Italian

Director: Federico Fellini.

Plot Summary:

In first century Rome, two student friends, Encolpio and Ascilto, argue about ownership of the boy Gitone, divide their belongings and split up. The boy, allowed to choose who he goes with, chooses Ascilto. Only a sudden earthquake saves Encolpio from suicide. We follow Encolpio through a series of adventures, where he is eventually reunited with Ascilto, and which culminates in them helping a man kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god from a temple. The god dies, and as punishment Encolpio becomes impotent. We then follow them in search of a cure. The film is loosely based on the book Satyricon by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the "Arbiter of Elegance" in the court of Nero. The book has only survived in fragments, and the film reflects this by being very fragmentary itself, even stopping in mid-sentence.

Awards:

1] Academy Awards, USA, 1971: Nominated:Oscar:Best Director.

2] Golden Globes, USA, 1970: Nominated:Golden Globe Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film

3] Laurel Awards, 1971: 2nd place Golden Laurel: Best Foreign Film.

4] Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, 1970: Silver Ribbon: Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Supporting Actor.

TRIBUTE

WELL KNOWN FILM CRITIC AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER OF COCHIN FILM SOCIETY SRI A.KUTBUDEEN PASSED AWAY ON 27TH MARCH.HE WAS BEDRIDDEN FOR MORE THAN LAST 6 MONTHS DUE TO ACUTE RENAL FAILURE.
WE PAY OUR TRIBUTE TO OUR DEPARTED COMRADE..

21-02-2010 : SUNDAY: 9 AM : SAVITHA THEATRE, ERNAKULAM

"PHIR KABHI"

(35 mm/2009/Hindi/ 120 mins )

Director: V. K. Prakash

Cast: Mithun Chakraborty,Dimple Kapadia,Gulshan Grover,

Rati Agnihotri, Kitu Gidwani

Writer: M. Sindhuraj

Camera: Nataraja Subramaniam (Nutty)

Editor: Mahesh Narayanan

Costumes: Bhanu Athaiyah

Production Design: Nitin Desai

Dialogues:Kamlesh Kunti Singh

Producer: UTV Motion Pictures, Culture Company Pvt. Ltd.

Synopsis:

Retired station master Hari Singh’s wife of 40 years has just died .His son is abroad and his brash teenage granddaughter is growing up in midst of studies, friends and first love.

And then arrives a letter from Ganga.

Ganga was Hari’s first love, he had last met her when they were in school. This letter invited him back to his high school reunion and to Ganga, who is still the same sweet, lyrical girl he knew. She is a painter, unmarried and lives in the same town where their love blossomed, guilt clutches at his heart when he learns about this. He had built a family, while she had built a castle of empty dreams from memories of past.

Hari returns to his home town after attending the reunion but he and Ganga keep a steady stream of letters between them which gets them even closer. These letters are caught by his granddaughter and he is worried that if his daughter-in-law discovers this, her sense of social priorities is bound to cause an upheaval. Ganga’s letters stop coming, a worried Hari with his understanding granddaughter’s help, returns to Ganga’s town and finds that she is battling a disease and her uterus has been removed.

Devastated with Ganga’s state Hari returns home and finds that his furious daughter in law has found out

about Ganga .Hari is cornered and shamed by her rebuke and promises not to be in touch with Ganga no matter what.

Once again Hari is torn between familial duty and that of his love

What happens next forms the rest of the story……..

(THE PROGRAMME FOLLOWED BY AN INTERACTION WITH THE DIRECTOR)

-ADMISSION FREE AND OPEN TO ALL-

COCHIN FILM SOCIETY,

KERALA STATE CHALA CHITRA ACADEMY,
FFSI KERALAM,
I&PRD

JOINTLY ANNOUNCING

"TOURING TALKIES" FILM FESTIVAL
(A CURTAIN RAISER PROGRAMME FOR 14TH IFFK)

AT
E M S MEMORIAL TOWN HALL, ERNAKULAM


ON
2&3, DECEMBER 2009

TIME TABLE

02-012-2009 3.30 PM - THE PHOTOGRAPH
5 PM - DREAMS OF THE DUST
6.30 PM - MY MARLIN AND BRANDO

03-12-2009 3.30 PM - HAFEEZ
5 PM - FAREWELL TO GULZARI
6.30 PM - POST CARDS FROM LENINGRAD

( ADMISSION FREE AND OPEN TO ALL )

Dreams of Dust

Dreams of Dust
2006/86 min/ French/ Burkina Faso, Canada, France
Official Selection 2007 Sundance Film Fesival

Cast and Crew
Starring: Makena Diop as Mocktar
Rasmané Ouedraogo as Thiam
Fatou Tall-Salgues as Coumba
Director of Photography: Crystel Fournier
Editor: Annie Jean
Writer/ Director: Laurent Salgues

From France, Canada and Burkino Faso, French writer-director Laurent Salgues’s Rêves de poussière is a vivid depiction of hard labor, sustained by hopes for a better future, and poverty. Mocktar, a Nigerian farmer, has just lost his youngest daughter. Burdened by guilt for inadequately providing for wife and family, he travels to northeast Burkino Faso to work in the gold mines. An official explains, “The gold rush is over.” His response gets Mocktar hired: “I’m just looking for a job.”
The film opens with an extreme long-shot of sand being blown by wind screen-right across the landscape. A human figure enters the frame and proceeds, by foot, screen-left—in the face of the wind. This is Mocktar symbolically braving life’s misfortunes. Neocolonialist exploitation of African resources and peasants contributes to African poverty. “The gold we risk our lives for,” Mocktar himself notes later on, “is for white people.” At the camp, Mocktar is attracted to Coumba, who has lost family members in a shaft collapse there, and whose young daughter Mocktar helps with his pay, redeeming himself from guilt over his own recent loss. At the last, in an extreme long-shot, he is shown journeying home.
Much of the film is given over to showing, in documentary fashion, the harsh, dangerous labor involved in different facets of the mining. (Mocktar, his first day, suffers a horrible accident.) We also see Mocktar’s after-work interactions with an older miner who takes Mocktar under his wing; but when this gentleman replaces the bullying, uncaring boss, we see the start of his transformation into a facsimile of that boss—black against black at the behest of white interests: an appropriation of available limited power.
Cinematographed by Crystel Fournier, images are hauntingly dreamlike. Wind-swept dust is a recurrent motif.