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'I would say this is my best film'

Ranvir Nayyar

Amol Palekar's Kairee is the sole Indian film in the competition category at the 21st edition of the Festival des 3 Continents that is currently underway in Nantes, France.

Kairee, which has been produced by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is up against eight other films from seven countries. These include two films each from Japan and Argentina and a film each from Iran, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Kairee is the story of a 10-year-old girl who is brought to her aunt's place after she is orphaned. Uprooted from a refined and loving household, she struggles to cope with a very hostile environment as her aunt's husband is a drunken brute. The film revolves around how the two -- aunt and niece -- face the world together.

The film is based on a short story by famous Marathi writer, G A Kulkarni. It has been scripted by the Palekar couple -- Amol and Chitra -- who are currently in Nantes, for the festival. "Even at the cost of sounding immodest, I will say that this is my best film. We have worked very hard on it and I am optimistic about my chances at the festival,'' beams a confident Palekar.

He says he got specially encouraged due to the tremendous response that his film has received here in Nantes. "I saw a very old woman who came in a bit late for the screening of the film yesterday. As the house was full, she just stood in a corner and began watching the film. And I thought, she would stay for a while and then go away as she would get tired. However,when the film ended, the woman was still there. Rooted and watching. This was a tremendous encouragement for me," says Palekar.

Besides Kairee, nearly a dozen other Indian films are being screened at Nantes. These include Mani Kaul's Naukar Ki Kameez and Murali Nair's Marana Simhasanam. And there are 10 films featuring Sharmila Tagore which form her retrospective. It remains the highlight of this edition of the festival in which Indian films have always played a crucial role.

"In fact, we got the idea of starting this festival in the late '70s when we saw that even a great director like Satyajit Ray's films were not being screened properly at the Cannes film festival. Cannes was simply full of European and American cinema and we decided to organise a festival which will give proper exposure to brilliant filmmakers from other parts of the world, specially India," recounts Alain Jalladeau, who along with his brother Philippe, began the Festival des 3 Continents in 1979 in this northwestern city.

Jalladeau says Indian films have often hogged the limelight in Nantes. "We organised a retrospective of South Indian films in 1980 and then two years later, we had a double retrospective of Ritwik Ghatak and Guru Dutt. That was the first time a tribute to these two directors was paid here in Europe," he adds.

In 1984, the film-goers in Nantes were treated to a retrospective of Raj Kapoor films and there have been several other similar retrospectives here. Filmmakers like Girish Karnad, Amol Palekar and Adoor Gopalakrishnan are almost regular visitors to Nantes.

However, Jalladeau says he is concerned about the overall quality of Indian films nowadays. "Most Indian directors seem to be in a tremendous hurry to churn out films. You need to spend time on script, sound, visuals, editing, post-production. The sound track in many Indian films is very bad. Most directors don't see that they can be a very powerful medium through their films. Basically, I think you need a very good producer who can tell the director that he may going wrong somewhere or that he needs to tune up this part of the film or that. This critical element seems to be missing in today's Indian cinema," says Jalladeau.

EARLIER FEATURES:

'This is real appreciation'
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'Amol Palekar-Hrishikesh Mukherjee were equal to Manmohan Desai-Amitabh'