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Berlin readies for Indian cinematic talent

It is most exciting to be back at the Berlin International Film Festival that opens today. It is so cold, your brains get frozen and take a while to kick in.

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A variety of Indian films will be screened at the Berlin film festival from February 7 to 17

BERLIN: It is most exciting to be back at the Berlin International Film Festival that opens today. It is so cold, your brains get frozen and take a while to kick in. That’s okay, because the cinema will warm your heart. The 58th Berlin festival that runs from February 7-17, opens with Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, on the Rolling Stones. Scorsese arrives on Thursday night with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood.

As usual, there is a good selection of films from India at the Berlinale — mainstream, arthouse, documentaries and shorts. There’s Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om in the Berlinale Special, with star-producer Shah Rukh in attendance (Farah Khan who’s expecting babies any day, says, “I’m sorry I can’t come, I’m having my own premiere!”). Her splendidly effervescent homage to Bollywood marks Bollywood’s self-assurance, with its ability to laugh at itself.

There’s Ameer Sulthan’s outstanding Paruthiveeran (Tamil), a doomed intercaste love story set in Madurai. It features Karthi and Priyamani, in what must be one of the fiercest portrayals of a woman in love seen in Indian cinema. It is tragic that few Indians have heard of this brilliant director beyond South India, even as he stands poised for international glory. Christoph Terhechte, director of the International Forum of New Cinema, Berlin, chose the film in August, whereas the deadline for receiving entries is November.

The International Forum of New Cinema has been honouring mainstream Indian cinema, alongside arthouse, documentaries and shorts, since 2000. This is largely thanks to Dorothee Wenner, their India programmer, who is also director of the Berlinale Talent Campus (BTC). Shah Rukh Khan will also participate in a BTC session called ‘Love International’ on cinematic love in different cultures.The powerful documentary A Jihad for Love, directed by Parvez Sharma, opens the Panorama Documentary section. It is an amazing film on how homosexuals struggle to find spaces for themselves in Islamic cultures worldwide. The film recently won the TriContinental Film Festival Award during its India tour.

In the Berlinale Shorts, are two FTII films directed by its alumni — Three of Us by Umesh Kulkarni and Udedh Bun by Siddharth Sinha. Three of Us is about the staggering dignity of a family coping with a spastic son, while Udedh Bun (Bhojpuri) is about a teenager drawn to a married woman. In the Forum Expanded section, Shai Heredia, founder of the Experimental film festival, presents a history of Indian experimental films.

(Meenakshi Shedde, who won the National Award for Best Film Critic, is on the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Jury of the Berlin Film Festival)

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