River to River - Festival 2020

River to River (RtoR) film festival was started by Selvaggia Velo in Florence (Italy) in 2001. It was the first festival entirely dedicated to Indian films held outside India. For many years, while living in Bologna, which is not far from Florence, I regularly visited this festival. Some years ago, we shifted to Schio, about 350 km to the north of Florence, so participating in this festival became difficult for me. However, the December 2020 edition of RtoR was held online due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. This gave me an opportunity watch some of the festival films. (Below a still from "Berlin to Bombay", one of the films in the festival)

My main interest was in watching documentary and short films in the festival. Thus, I watched only one full-length feature film - Kadakh. This post is to share a few impressions about some of the films which I liked in this festival.

Kadakh

Kadakh was the opening film of the festival, directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a black comedy centred around a dead body in an upper-middle class drawing room in Mumbai, which is full of guests for a Diwali party.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) is the owner of the house while the dead guy is Raghav, husband of his office colleague Chhaya, with whom he is having an affair. Raghav has discovered their affair and comes to talk to Sunil. He is trying to be mature about it, but continues to get too angry to control himself and during one such loss-of-control moments, shoots himself. Soon Sunil's wife (Manasi Multani) comes back home and finds her husband with Raghav's corpse in their drawing room. He confesses his affair but there is no time to deal with the marital infidelity as they know that soon their guests for the Diwali party are going to arrive. So the husband and wife hide the dead body in a box, cover it with tapestry and get ready to welcome the guests.

The guests include Chayya, the wife of the dead man. You can imagine the comic-horror kind of mixed tension which drives this film. The last part of the movie is its most cynical and damning part, with the whole gang of friends (except Chaya, who has left) helping Sunil in getting rid of the dead body. When the film was ending, I almost expected it to show the whole lot going to the chautha (funeral) ceremony of the poor guy and express condolences to the widow.

I do not like the genre of dark comedy, but the film is well made and well-acted. All the actors are good. I especially liked Manasi Multani, who plays Sunil's wife Malti and Palomi Ghosh, who plays Chhaya. I also thought the guy playing Raghav (Chandrachoor Rai) was good in his brief role.

The Newly Weds, short film (5 min.) by Prataya Saha

You can watch this short film on YouTube. The film has a young man (Mahesh Gowda) and his wife (Suvin Valson) and it looks at the way they relate to each other, mediated by technology. When together, they hardly talk to each other and their eyes are constantly on their mobile phones and laptop screens. At night, a laptop stays in the bed between them. However, they expresses their love in the messages they write to each other, in which they open their hearts.

The tiny film presents the role of tech in a young couple's life as a kind of caricature. I felt that it could have been more relatable as a depiction of a long-married couple who does not have much left to say to each other. It felt a bit unrealistic for a young newly married couple, because it seemed to ignore their need for physical touch and sex. Their messages express a yearning, which is inexplicably missing from their real lives.

Berlin to Bombay, documentary film, 51 min. by Marco Hulser

For me, Berlin to Bombay was the most enjoyable film of the festival. It is the story of an Indian origin boy Abu Chaka Khan, raised in Berlin (Germany) and his fascination for the world of Bollywood. Abu works in a restaurant but his dream is to go and act in Bollywood. He does not want to work in German films where he can only play Indian or Pakistani roles - he prefers the idea of Bollywood heroes with their songs and dances.

He makes and sends his videos for auditions to India but when they do not get him any offers, he goes to Mumbai. The film shows him trying to negotiate his way through the barriers surrounding its film world, full of people who are waiting for bakras like him, selling them dreams and taking their money. Abu pays but finds himself playing an extra in a film. After his dreams crash against the hard realities of the Bollywood, Abu comes back to Berlin and to his restaurant.

Though film's storyline is an old theme, Abu has an expressive face and he comes across very well with his ingenuity, hope and dreams.

While the film ended, I was thinking of today's YouTube and TikTok stars. Now, people with dreams of making it in Bollywood, have some alternative pathways to become famous, even if that fame does not last very long. I think that I would like to watch a similar documentary exploring the worlds of the YouTube-TikTok stars.

The GesheMa is Born, Documentary, 56 min., by Malati Rao

Geshe Ma is the title of a learned Buddhist nun who has reached the highest level of religious knowledge. Rao's documentary is a glimpse into the hidden world of Buddhist nuns. I liked it because it showed a world which was unfamiliar to me.

Though ancient Buddhism spoke of nuns, modern Buddhism did not have nuns. It was Dalai Lama who had established the first nuns' order some 40 years ago. He had also proposed allowing the nuns to study religious books. This idea was discussed in the international council of Buddhist leaders from different countries, but some countries were against the changes. Finally in 2012, it was accepted that the nuns could study to become the learned teachers (Geshe).

The film follows a group of nuns in a monastery in Nepal who became the first group of women admitted to the Buddhist theological studies. The film focuses on the story of Namdol Phuntsok, who had earned the top marks in these studies and received the title of Geshe Ma in 2016.

The film moves forward and backward in time, with some interviews and unobtrusive observation of the lives of the Buddhist nuns. They talk about the setting up of the first nunnery. It looks at their celibate lives, their shaving of heads and their determined animation during theological discussions, where a raised leg-movement and clapping of hands in stereotypical gestures, looked like a dance to me.

GesheMa Namdol talks about her childhood and her family's opposition to her idea of becoming a nun, her desire for studying the Buddhist religious texts and how they must argue and debate their ideas and defend them against questions. The film concludes with the group of the nuns holding the coveted yellow head-dresses in their hands, which are a visible sign of their learning, walking in the room full of monks. They all don those yellow head-dresses, signifying a new beginning of the role of the women leadership in Buddhism.

Buddha of the Chadar, 28 Min. by Jean Whitaker

This film can also be watched on internet. It is about a father and son from Ladakh making a long winter journey on the frozen Zanskar River - a route known as the Chadar. They carry a heavy gold-plated statue of Buddha, which they plan to offer to a Buddhist monastery located at the top of the hill near their village.

The film brings out the solitude and difficulties of the long journey on the frozen river surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains. It also shows the on-going construction of a new road by the Indian Border Road Organisation, so that in future, the Zanskar valley will also be connected through a road and it should be possible to complete that same journey in a vehicle.

The film has beautiful photography and makes you reflect on the human urge to choose a tough journey as a part of a spiritual quest.

Silence in the Wind, 13 min. by Gautam Baruah and Ballav Prajnyan

This short film is about a father remembering his son, his desire to see him married and his initial rejection when he discovers that his son is gay. His initial reaction is of rejection. Then he remembers the day when his young son had risked drowning in the river and his desperation. The memory of that desperation helps him to say to his son that he does not understand but he will accept.

It is a beautiful film.

The Ashram Children, 67 min., by Jonathan Ofek

India is seen as the land of spirituality. It has many famous gurus with their ashrams, and followers coming from all over the world to seek their guidance. This film shows a hidden aspect of this spiritual quest - the feelings of the expat children about those Gurus.

The director of this film, Jonathan is from Israel and he feels scarred by his childhood experiences in an ashram in India. He feels that it was a cult which had gripped his parents. His parents, especially his mother, do not take his complaints very seriously - for her, it was not a cult and she was only going to the ashram for some months every year.

She tells him that he could have told her that he did not want to go and she would not have forced him. However, Jonathan feels that saying no was not easy for him, because he had grown up inside that experience from early childhood. The whole issue of obedience to the Guru in the ashram was experienced by him as something absolute, he had learned to not question anything and was afraid to express himself.

During the film, Jonathan goes to look for other expatriate children that he had met and known in the ashram during his childhood. Most of them agree with him that their childhood experiences of the ashram were negative for them. Most of them, now grown-ups, try to hide this part of their past lives and do not talk about it. One of these guys also talks about the hypocrisy of the Guru, who taught the lessons of detachment and spirituality to his followers, but also loved wearing gold, luxury watches, and using costly perfumes.

This film forced me to see how the spirituality-and-guru industry of India can be perceived by young children who are pulled in to this experience by their parents. I had never thought about it before in these terms. For me, many of the ashrams and their jet setting Gurus, who run their spirituality businesses like money-making exercises, are persons who profit from human frailties. At the same time, I believe that some of the non-commercial persons can be great spiritual teachers.

Conclusions

There were some other short and documentary films from the festival which I had watched but they were similar in terms of themes and treatment to others that I had seen earlier, so I am not writing about those.

In the past RtoR festival had been an opportunity for me to meet and talk to persons from the world of Indian films - persons like Onir, Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen and even Amitabh Bachchan. That was no longer possible with an online festival. I hope that in future, after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, River to River festival will continue to offer the possibility of online participation.

Making (Some) Sense of Concept Art

My first encounter with Conceptual Art was in the Kochi Biennale of Art, and it left me a little confused. Since then I have been to some other art biennales and I continue to be surprised by the popularity and apparent little-sense of this art.

Contemporary art, as displayed in the Biennales, has many works related to digital elaboration, photography, sound and video, which leave me perplexed - not because they are not art but because each of them has their own festivals and events, so I am not sure why would art biennales devote so much space to them. However, it is concept art which often leaves me feeling as a kind of idiot who can't get its point. For example, the image below has one of the works from a Kochi Biennale, which left me pulling on my fragile white hairs.

However, I am not the only one who feels confused by such art. For example, the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith in his recent book The Peppermint Tea Chronicles, has one of the characters talking about the Turner Prize (a prestigious British award for contemporary art, which has been often given to works of concept art), which expresses my feelings very eloquently:

Angus was unrepentant. “I have little time for the Turner Prize,” he said. “I have no taste for its pretentiousness. I dislike the way it is awarded to people who cannot paint, draw, nor sculpt.” His eyes widened; he became slightly red, his breathing shallow - all fairly typical reactions provoked by the Turner Prize in those of sound artistic judgment. “You are not an artist if you merely make a video about paint drying or pile a few objets trouvés in a heap. You just aren’t.”Domenica shrugged. “Calm down,” she said. “Installations make us look at the world in a different way. They must have some artistic merit. They challenge us. ...”

Recently I read a book on contemporary art by Will Gompertz, which gave me some understanding about the origins of concept art and why it leaves me cold.

Origins of Concept Art

Will Gompertz in his book "What are you looking at - Strange Story of 15o Years of Modern Art" (2012) explains the origins of Concept Art with a story about Marcel DuChamp, whom he calls the father of "Concept Art" and who had pioneered the concept art movement with his work "The Fountain" in 1917 (which was a urinal he had bought in a shop):

After buying the urinal Duchamp takes it to his studio. He lays the heavy porcelain object on its back and turns it around, so it appears to be upside down. He then signs and dates it in black paint on the left-hand side of its outer rim, with the pseudonym “R. Mutt 1917.” His work is nearly done. There is only one more job remaining: he needs to give his urinal a name. He chooses Fountain. What had been, just a few hours beforehand, a nondescript, ubiquitous urinal has, by dint of Duchamp’s actions, become a work of art.At least it had in Duchamp’s mind. He believed he had invented a new form of sculpture: one where an artist could select any pre-existing mass-produced object with no obvious aesthetic merit, and by freeing it from its functional purpose—in other words making it useless—and by giving it a name and changing the context and angle from which it would normally be seen, turn it into a de facto artwork. He called this new form of art-making a “readymade”: a sculpture that was already made.Marcel Duchamp caused the decisive rupture from tradition and forced a re-evaluation of what could and should be considered art. Before Duchamp’s provocative intervention, art was something man-made, typically of aesthetic, technical and intellectual merit, which had been mounted in a frame and hung on a wall, or presented on a plinth to look splendid. ...

Some Examples of Modern Art

Let me start with my top-10 list of some examples of concept art, which perplex me. I will start with the ones which I felt were very different from the classical canons of art but which I accepted as a kind of art. The first was an installation by Bob Gransma from a Kochi Biennale - in this, the artist had made a gigantic slab of concrete to be placed inside a dug up area. I think that it expressed the ideas of disruption, destruction, and the fragility of life.

The next image has a work of Yuko Mori from a Kochi Biennale. It had metal rings on a metal stand with wires going down. I think that it was accompanied by a sound and video installation. It expressed the influence of mechanised world on the human life and people who spend their lives in factories repeating same gestures the whole day, every day.

The next image is of a work by Hassan Sharif from a Venice Biennale. It had a collection of bent aluminium spoons amidst a jumble of black plastic cords. It made me think of all the waste that we produce in our daily lives. It also reminded me of people hoarding stuff like wires, cords and bags in their cupboards because they might need them one day.

To conclude this part, I have another image from a Kochi Biennale which had a toilet by Dia Mehta Bhupal. It was also about urinals, like Du Champ's famous urinal which had started the Concept Art movement. However, the colours and designs used by the artist in this work changed the space into art and was the one which I liked most in this group.

Borderline Art

Next are 2 examples of concept art, which I felt were more borderline - I am still able to see them as a work of art but I am really not convinced about it. The first image is of a work by Takahiro Iwasaki and has some books arranged on a table, along with some coloured wires coming out of some of them.

The second one is an installation of B. V. Suresh from a Kochi Biennale, which was accompanied by sound and video effects.

The Lazy Artist?

The final 2 examples of Concept Art are the ones which I found most problematic. The first was a work by an Indian artist from the Kochi Biennale - it had the trash from a building construction arranged in the centre of a room.

The second example below was in the Israel pavillion in a Venice Biennale - I won't even try to describe it.

Conclusions

I agree that all the works presented above, can make us reflect and may be, see the world in a different way but I am not always sure if there was some art in them. If the art is just in a concept in the artist's head, then how do we decide who is an artist and who is not? All of us have concepts in our heads, who gets to decide if my concept is artistic? The guy who made the art by sticking a banana on a board? Or is it art, because some guy with more money than brain, bought that banana-board for a million dollars? It somehow reminds me of the story about the king's invisible clothes.

In his book, Gompertz asks "Such works are often entertaining, even thought-provoking, but are they art?" His answer is "Yes. They are. Because that is their intention, their sole purpose, and the grounds upon which we are being asked to judge them. The difference being that they are operating in an area of modern art that is first and foremost about ideas, not so much the creation of a physical object: hence conceptual art. But that doesn’t give artists the right to serve up any old rubbish."

Perhaps I lack certain qualities for proper art appreciation, but I wish that the biennale curators do not dedicate so much space to Concept Art. While we areat it, I would like that the space given to video and digital art installations should also be limited.

The last image of this post (above) is an installation by Kaushik Mukhopadhayay from a Kochi Biennale - he has used old thrown away stuff to make a delightful mechanical installation - it means that art can come out of garbage, but there is a difference between making art from rubbish and serving up rubbish as art.

Let me conclude this post with another quote from Gompertz -

In my opinion the best place to start when it comes to appreciating and enjoying modern and contemporary art is not to decide whether it’s any good or not, but to understand how it evolved from Leonardo’s classicism to today’s pickled sharks and unmade beds. As with most seemingly impenetrable subjects, art is like a game; all you really need to know is the basic rules and regulations for the once baffling to start making some sense.

This last quote from Gompertz does not really convince me - I don't think that art should be about learning the rules of some game. However, if you want to understand some of the most important art movements of late 19th and 20th century, read this Gompertz book - it is one of the best that I have read on this theme.

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