CONTENTS - OCTOBER 2003

15th        Talk - The Buried City: Noon Meem Rashed and Modern Urdu Poetry
16th        Talk - Her Mother's Son: Ghatak, Kinship and History
23rd, 24th    Workshop - The Urban Adventure and the New Melodrama in the 1950s

Film at Sarai: Film and History
10th    To Be Or Not To Be, Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
17th    Komal Gandhar, Directed by Ritwik Ghatak
24th    The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
31st    Farewell My Concubine (1993), Directed by Chen Kaige
       
Sarai @ Next Five Minutes 4, Amsterdam
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Dear Friends,

This month we have a number of seminars and workshops lined up including a
return to the Language Seminar Series with reflections on a modern Urdu poet.
Also, do remember that the deadline for submission of proposals for the
Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Fellowships is approaching. For details
please log onto our website. 

I. TALK @ SARAI
THE LANGUAGE SEMINAR
Wednesday, October 15, 2003, 3:30 pm
The Buried City: Noon Meem Rashid and Modern Urdu Poetry
by A Sean Pue, Department of Comparative Literature & Society, Columbia
University

MEDIA PUBLICS AND PRACTICES SEMINAR
Thursday, October 16, 2003, 3:30 pm
Her Mother's Son: Ghatak, Kinship and History
by Moinak Biswas, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University


II. WORKSHOP @ SARAI
October 23, 2003, 3pm & October 24, 2003, 11am
The Urban Adventure and the New Melodrama in the 1950s.
by Moinak Biswas, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University

One of the most creative moments of the contact between cinema and a
consciousness of the city in India can be located in the early years of the
1950s. The new popular that emerged around the middle of that decade was
fashioned by this contact in a significant way. The new melodrama established
close liaison with global modes of bourgeois melodrama. It showed marked
differences with the Studio Social of the two previous decades - in thematic
structures, in codes of cinematography, performance, speech and mise-en-scene,
and in narrative style. The story of the citizen's career, the new content
and rhetoric of love - is embedded in an urban adventure in many of these
films.

Moinak Biswas will look at some of these ideas, with the help of extensive
clips from Hindi and Bengali cinema of the 1950s. 

To register for the workshop please email me at dak at sarai.net by October 17,
2003.

III. FILM @ SARAI: FILM AND HISTORY SERIES
Staging History
Curated by Ravi S Vasudevan

The transactions between cinema and theatre provide a rich terrain for
inquiring into the relationship between constructions of the real and the
performative. The dynamic of what happens on and off stage, in the
relationship between the biographical and performative identities of
individuals and groups, and in the contrary and overlapping dimensions of
cinematic and theatrical space generates an intricate and layered cognitive
and perceptual field. Continuing the Sarai focus on film and history, this
month we will be looking at how this theatre/cinema dialectic has provided
resources to investigate, indeed to stage, history.

The performative becomes a protean entry point for the historical context. In
Ritwik Ghatak's 'Komal Gandhar' (1961), the landscape of a riven Bengal after
Partition is accessed through the dynamics of theatrical groups. Their
lineage dates back to the Indian Peoples Theatre Assocation of the 1940s, and
their present, mirroring that of the country, is one of bitter division.
Staged here are the intellectual and political formats for which the theatre
is a crucial vehicle. A careful delineation of cinematic space and theatrical
space inaugurates the film, but theatricality also flows into off stage
character stances. Debate itself acquires a texture, a space,
and, a sense of energies depleted and drained.

Where theatre here is foregrounded as politics, and with a sense of historical
transience, other instances suggest the way the social and theatrical
intersect in the rigours of everyday life. Hierarchies of theatrical status,
problems of economic insecurity, the duress of training - underlining
performance itself as a form of labour -  run through 'The Story of the Last
Chrysanthemum' (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1939) and 'Farewell My Concubine'
(Chen Kaige, China, 1993). In these films, despite their subject matter being
stylized forms of archaic lineage, theatre is not a rarified cultural form
but is actively integrated to the social.

Mizoguchi's remarkable film looks to the Meiji period for his story about a
kabuki performer who breaks free from institutional patronage to fulfil his
romantic ties to a subaltern woman. Deploying his famed long take and depth
of field shooting style, Mizoguchi draws out the punishing grind of
marginalized theatre in outlying regions, and draws out the pathos of how
this social terrain is finally sublimated into the reassertions of social
hierarchy. The protagonist finally achieves recognition, and is reintegrated
into the upper levels of the Kabuki profession. But this is at a cost: his
moment of triumph is caught in a swathe of theatrical banners atop boats
which float down the river, while his self-sacrificing mistress lies quietly
dying in a nearby tenament. Japanese society as a system of ritual spectacle
surges up at the climax, suppressing the anonymous stuggles of the myriad
small people who compose it. Mizoguchi's association with left wing `tendency
cinema' of the 1920s, and again in post war Japan, may frame this as a
gesture against the alienating ornamental politics of the aggressive Japanese
militarism of these years.

In Chen Kaige's 'Farewell My Concubine', two young actors undergo brutal
training in the Peking opera, and the division between actor and character
breaks down in the persona of Dieyi, who incarnates the role of the concubine
of the title. Sublimation into a character defined by suffering and romantic
unfulfilment appears to also offer the actor the possibilities of escape from
the traumas inscribed in his body as an actor; failed romance is reiterated
in his doomed attraction for his fellow actor. The film weaves these
travails, and its emphasis on theatre and performance into the wider
political context. A succession of oppressive forms, from the warlord regimes
of the twenties, through to the cultural revolution of the 60s, determine
the existensial circumstances, and significance, of the performers'
complicated being. While critics have argued that 'Farewell My Concubine' is
marred by a homophobic view on its central character, there may be the
intimations here of something more complicated: where immersion in
performance provides both a narrative structure and character
positioning that comments on and diverges from the interwoven histories of
politics and sexuality.

A lighter note is struck in a comedic contrast to our previous focus on the
work of Leni Reifenstahl. In the German emigre, Ernst Lubitsch, Hollywood
imported a fabricator of  the light fantastic. For Lubitsch, there is always
the frisson of romantic escapade and scurrilous possibility in unseen
activities behind closed doors, in surreptitious glances and offhand remarks.
He deploys his arsenal to delightful effect in 'To Be or Not To Be', his film
about a Polish theatrical troupe in the days following the Nazi invasion of
Poland. Like Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator', Lubitsch's film excited moral
suspicion as to whether such a grave phenomenon could be treated as comedy,
even if to subject fascism to ridicule. However, there is no doubt that
Lubitsch contrives an inventive confection here. Actors masquerade as Nazi
subalterns, officers, and finally, and inevitably, take on the persona of the
Fuhrer himself. The unlikely hero of this whirligig comedy is the rather
pompous, self-regarding director of the Polish theatre, firmly of the belief
that he essays a wonderful Hamlet. Others hold a different opinion: 'he is
doing to Shakespeare what Hitler is doing to the Poles!!'

October 10, 2003, 4:30 pm
To Be Or Not To Be (1942), 99 minutes
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch's 'To Be or Not to Be' is a black comedy about a Polish theater
company - led by Joseph and Maria Tura (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard) - that
turns to espionage after being shut down by the invading Nazis.

The film begins in Poland, 1939, where Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), a
tremendously vain Polish actor, and his wife, Maria (Carole Lombard), are
starring in an anti-Nazi stage play that subsequently is censored and
replaced with a production of 'Hamlet'. Maria has taken a fancy to a young
Polish fighter pilot, Sobinski (Robert Stack), who is called to duty when
Germany invades Poland. In England, he and his fellow pilots in the Polish
squadron of the RAF bid farewell to their much-loved mentor, Prof. Siletsky
(Stanley Ridges), who confides to them that he is on a secret mission to
Warsaw. Sobinski, however, begins to suspect that Siletsky is a spy and flies
to Warsaw to stop him from keeping an appointment with Nazi colonel Ehrhardt
(Sig Rumann) - an appointment that will destroy the Warsaw underground.
There, Sobinski enlists the aid and special talents of the Tura's theater
group to save and protect the Resistance.

A satire built around a rather complex spy plot 'To Be or Not to Be' lampoons
the Nazis and paints the Poles as brave patriots fighting for their land, for
whom Hamlet's question "To be or not to be" takes on national implications.
Released in 1942, in the midst of America's involvement in WWII, the film
drew a great deal of criticism from people who felt that Lubitsch, a German
(though he left long before Hitler's rise), was somehow making fun of the
Poles.

October 17, 2003, 4:30 pm
Komal Gandhar (1961), 133 minutes
Directed by Ritwik Ghatak

Ghatak's personal favorite and his most celebratory film, 'Komal Gandhar'
looks at the Marxist-influenced Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) of
which he was a member. It is a story of romantic love, focusing on two
individuals belonging to rival touring theatre companies in Bengal who come
together for a joint production.

''Nature plays a critical role in expressing the director's ideas in  'Komal
Gandhar'.... The cleaving of the two Bengals - East and West - and by
extension the partition of the Indian subcontinent are the major concerns of
the story. The divide within the Left; the contradictory pulls inherent in
the Movement are also treated obliquely and with sly humour. The growing love
between Bhrigu (Abaneesh Bandhopadhyay) and Anushuya (Supriya Choudhary) is
brought to life through the juxtaposition of the landscapes they appear in,
and enhanced by the music which uplifts their conversations and gives them
the authenticity of art. Their conversations then, like the other exchanges
of dialogue in the film, assume real importance only when seen in the context
of the total visual-aural design. Dialogue, for all the information that it
carries, plays 'counter-point' to the 'melodic role' assigned to the image
and the 'harmonic' one to music and incidental sound.'' Partha Chatterjee 

October 24, 2003, 4:30 pm
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), 115 minutes
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

The Japanese critic Tadao Sato defined the shinpa tragedy, a staple of
Japanese dramaturgy, as "the grand display of the ego or will of a woman who
endures her fate in tears." An example of the genre, this film stars Kakuko
Mori as Otoku, the lowly wet-nurse of a powerful family of kabuki actors. One
of the members of the family, Kikunosuke Onoue (Shotaro Hanyagi), comes to
realize that his acting is praised only because of his influential
connections, while other actors complain of his incompetence behind his back.
When Otoku and the despondent actor begin to see each other, his father
forbids the relationship, due to her low status, but Kikunosuke is willing to
accept banishment from his family. Realizing that her new husband is talented
but undisciplined, Otoku suggests that the couple leave Tokyo, so that
Kikunosuke can continue to train in the kabuki tradition far from the reach
of his family's influence.

Apart from the highly charged and adroitly edited Kabuki sequences, the film
is mainly constructed in extremely long takes, and an intricate rhyme
structure between the two time periods is developed by matching camera angles
in the same locations. The film also has a complexity of characterization
that's shown with sublime economy.

October 31, 2003, 4:30 pm
Farewell My Concubine (1993), 157 minutes
Directed by Chen Kaige

In Chen Kaige's adaptation of the Lilian Lee novel, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie
Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang) grow up enduring the harsh training
of the Peking Opera Academy. As the two boys mature, they develop
complementary talents: Dieyi, with his fine delicate features, assumes the
female roles while the burlier Xiaolou plays masculine warlords. Their
dramatic identities become real for Dieyi when he falls in love with Xiaolou;
the resolutely heterosexual Xiaolou, however, marries a courtesan, Juxian
(Gong Li), creating a dangerous, jealousy-filled romantic triangle.

Kaige's passionate, exquisitely shot film captures the vast historical scope
of a changing world and the mesmerizing pageantry of the opera while also
providing the intimate and touching details of a tender, heartrending love
story. 'Farewell My Concubine' spans fifty-three years, presenting the lives
of two men against the historical backdrop of a country in upheaval. The film
is neatly divided into eight chapters, including a 1977 prologue and epilogue
that bookend the story. Each section represents a different era in Chinese
history and the lives of the characters. The historical background from the
time of the Warlords through the Cultural Revolution, including the Japanese
invasion of 1937 and the Communist takeover, is integral to the plot.


IV. SARAI @ NEXT FIVE MINUTES 4, AMSTERDAM
September 11-14, 2003

Next 5 Minutes (N5M) is a festival that brings together art, campaigns,
experiments in media technology, and transcultural politics. It is held once
every three to four years. Readers will remember that Sarai also hosted one
of the N5M4 Tactical Media Labs in November 2002.
(http://www.sarai.net/events/tml/tml.htm)

Next Five Minutes 4 (N5M4), International Festival of Tactical Media was held
on  September 11-14, 2003, at Amsterdam (www.next5minutes.org). Monica
Narula, Mrityunjay Chatterjee, Ashish Mahajan and Shveta Sarda from the
Cybermohalla Project put up an installation and presented ideas and
reflections from Cybermohalla around issues of feminism and tactical media.
The installation was a multi-media work with sound, texts, photographs,
animations and a sound and text film created at the Cybermohalla labs. The
Cybermohalla Book Box was also released here.
(http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/book02/booklets.htm)

Cheers,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net