Inter-SAARC Film Fest - 2:

Aesthetically exciting 'gems' from filmdom

By Kalekeerthi EDWIN ARIYADASA

"From the beginning, film has owed part of its fascination to ambiguous overlaps between documentary and fiction.

Just after the war, Roberto Rossellini came to prominence as a film-maker through combinations of this kind.

It's a sublime symbiosis of fable and non-fiction that poetically interrelates humans and animals, city and village, society and culture".

Jonathan Rosenbaum

In the recent scenario of Sri Lanka's cinematic transactions, SAARC has emphatically proved an ascendant "Star". Currently our cultural dialogue has begun to be dominated vividly by proliferating discussions relating to films from the SAARC region.

SAARC film events, have turned out to be frequent occurrences.

A highly profitable and decidedly wholesome yield of the SAARC cinematic initiatives, is the progressive revelation of the living and pulsating mass-soul of the far-flung lands of the SAARC zone.

Last year, Colombo was the venue of the first SAARC Film Festival. In its slip-stream, SAARC introduced a monthly SAARC film series, presenting films from SAARC countries, in alphabetical order.

At mid-stream in the monthly screenings, SAARC has inaugurated the SAARC Film Festival 2012.

Reflecting the real essence of film-culture, the present SAARC Film festival accommodates both formats fiction and documentary.

The SAARC Film Festival 2012, presenting films in fiction and documentary categories from five SAARC countries (Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) is, in effect, a cordial invitation to film-lovers to join in an aesthetically exciting treasure hunt.

Some of the cinematic "treasures" are so impactful, that they will slink surreptitiously past your alert critical defences, and will get firmly embedded in the inner recesses of your soul.

One such intriguingly rare cinematic gem, is the film titled Byari, that was screened along with the inauguration ceremony.

Mega stars

To begin with, this film does not feature mega-stars.

It is not epic or spectacular in concept and presentation. Characters do not assume heroic, larger-than-life proportions. In its language medium, it is neither Hindi nor Tamil - the speech-forms that sway masses in their millions. It is in a dialect. Location-wise, it is not vastly and widely scoped either.

But, it stuns film-goers by its telling synthesis between fable and reality fiction and documentary, the authentic and the imaginative.

Byari touches the sensitive nerve of essential humanity - exploring both the elegiac and the lyrical facets, implicit in the human condition.

Childhood

Director K.P. Suveeran, introduces his product to the viewer, to the accompaniment of a chant, familiar to children playing the ubiquitous childhood game of hide-and-seek.

An unruly, mischievous child, chases a coy teenage girl, over rough terrain jotted with ungainly rocks and boulders.

This sets the tone, as the signature theme of the story, that narrates the tale of adults, who tread the thorny path of life, in a perpetual hide-and-seek.

Nadeera - the central character - the girl-woman-is the focal point, on which all forces of culture, religious dictates, emotional urges and conflicting loyalties, endlessly (as well as relentlessly) converge.

The exceptional documentary skills of director Suveeran are on creative display. When he traces the details of the girl transforming into woman, to wife, to mother and then to an adamant feminine.

Discipline

The restrained discipline and the stark objectivity, director Suveeran maintains, when chronicling seemingly inhuman aspects of entrenched tradition elevate his film Byari, to the lofty heights of a human fable.

What impresses me immensely is the astonishing finale the director works out.

The two juvenile figures of childhood hide-and-seek game are now locked up as adults in a secure bed-room.

Nadeera has to play hide-and-seek with religious dicta.

While the hell-fire in the form of heavy thunder and storm assaults the world outside their room. aggressive from her childhood Nawas - is cowed and scared.

What will be the end-result of this hide-and-seek.

Byari, is a low-key epic. It brings about a lyric amalgamation of all elements that go to form ordinary men and women of mere flesh and blood. The cultural and human helplessness they have to cope with in their effort to lead an ordinary life, is effectively universalised by the unfussy cinematic work.

Adjuncts

The SAARC Film Festival has other commendable adjuncts to it.

A high-level workshop is part of the program. Awards are presented ceremonially.Our own film traditions can benefit from these SAARC film efforts.

Sri Lankan film dialogue has reached a lacklustre. I may modify and say "somewhat lacklustre" stage.We too could infuse some vigour and liveliness to the indigenous efforts of film-making and initiating an acceptable film-culture.