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BUDDHADEB DASGUPTA RECEIVES "GOLDEN ATHENA"
AWARD |
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 Veteran
filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta has been chosen for Greece's coveted
Golden Athena award. It is the grand prize of the Athens International
Film Festival (AIFF), where a retrospective of seven of his films will
be screened at the Sep 20-30 event.
Festival director Orestis Andreadakis
wrote to Dasgupta saying: 'We would truly be honoured if you would
accept our Grand Prize, the Golden Athena, for your excellent
achievement in filmmaking. Previously, the Golden Athena prize for
excellent achievement has been awarded to Kim Ki Duk, Daniel Day Lewis
and Costas Gavras.' The AIFF had always valued Dasgupta's work and had
loved 'The Voyeurs' (Dasgupta's latest film 'Ami, Yasin Arr Amar
Madhubala'). 'We are currently compiling the list of films
constituting this year's programme and we would like to present a
retrospective of your cinematic work, including seven feature films,'
Andreadakis said. He said the retrospective would provide a rare
opportunity to spotlight Dasgupta's work and modern Indian cinema
'which beyond Bollywood musicals is little known in Greece'.
AIFF is the only festival in the world where the grand prize is
awarded by a youth jury consisting of film students aged 18-25,
selected from all over the European Union. The festival runs from Sep
20 to 30.
Talking about his latest film, 'The Voyeurs', which dwells on love and
relationships in the time of web-cams and CCTVs, Dasgupta said:
'Everything has got mechanized. We have become obsessed with security,
but ordinary human values such as love and kindness have lost their
simple meaning. 'Do the web-cams and CCTVs that are constant witnesses
to our lives make us any less vulnerable than we are to terrorists?
Are police and security forces really our protectors? It has a
storyline which is universal now as the characters get sucked into a
vortex of events that may occur in India or Europe, or anywhere,' he
said. 'Kalpurush', which bagged the National Award for best film of
2005, has been screened in many international film fests earlier and
focuses on an ambitious wife. |
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Buddhadeb Dasgupta:
The Other Face of Indian
Cinema
Western viewers can be
forgiven for expecting a sample of the exotic from any Indian
filmmaker; after all, in this part of the world, Indian cinema is
synonymous with saris, bangles and sitars. But Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s
films are a far cry from the glittering Bollywood musical melodramas.
An esteemed poet and writer with a profound understanding of the
visual arts, Dasgupta film’s with a poet’s insight creating vistas of
exquisite beauty and evocative compositions.
Although he is often compared to the great Bengali director Satyajit
Ray, Dasgupta remains a largely idiosyncratic director. His films
usually revolve around pressing social issues, but make no mistake;
Dasgupta doesn’t do cinéma vérité or polemics. He opts instead to
approach his subject matter with lyricism, magic realism, subtle humor
and a rare sense of film economy.
In essence, every Dasgupta film is a mystical, allegorical exploration
of human nature itself. The journey a common leitmotif in his work-
takes place both on a physical and a metaphorical level. His
characters are often tormented by escapist dreams or unattainable
pursuits; some find the way to salvation, others are crushed under the
weight of their own desires. However, Dasgupta remains an essentially
optimistic director, as he always allows a thin ray of hope to shine
even when violence and tragedy seem to prevail.
The following films will be shown during the Festival as part of the
retrospective.
Ghunuram’s humdrum life has
only one highlight: dancing the traditional tiger dance at the annual
village fair. But when a band of traveling performers ...
Lakha is a man trapped in a
quandary: coming from a family of bird catchers, he captures birds
selling them off to the local dealer, but at the same ...
The wild Bengali landscape
becomes the stage for a tragic love triangle. Nemai and Balaram are
old friends, working together in the local railway. They ...
It is July 1969, man walks on
the moon for the first time and a prostitute’s daughter somewhere in
rural India makes a radical decision that will change ...
A government employee who
travels the Indian countryside falls in love with the leading lady of
the educational films he’s showing and dreams of meeting ...
Tired of his prosaic family
life Sumanta seeks solace in memory: suddenly burying the hatchet with
his father, with whom he has been estranged for ...
When a pretty dancer moves
next door, her computer geek neighbors decide to install a CCTV system
in her apartment to watch her activities. What starts ...
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The
Tiger Man - Bagh Bahadur
Shelter
of the Wings - Charachar
The
Wrestlers - Uttara 
A
Tale of a Naughty Girl - Mondo Meyer Upakhyan
Chased
by Dreams - Swapner Din
Memories
in the Mist - Kalpurush
The
Voyeurs - Ami, Yasin Arr Amar Modhubala