THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: This Sunday, Banner Film Society brings before the city folks some of the very best films of the parallel film movement in the country.Parallel cinema in India, as an alternative to mainstream commercial cinema, was known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times. The movement had its genesis around the same time as the French New Wave Cinema and Japanese New Wave. The movement was initially led by Bengali cinema and then spread to other parts of the country.The film festival takes off with the Aparna Sen classic ‘36 Chowringhee Lane’. The film revolves around the central character Violet Stoneham. In post-independent India a teacher, Violet Stoneham (Jennifer Kendal), lives a quiet and uneventful life at ‘36 Chowringhee Lane’ in Calcutta.The second film, ‘Aakrosh’ by Govind Nihalani, is reportedly based on a true incident reported on page 7 of a local newspaper. The film was a scathing satire on the corruption in the judicial system and the victimisation of the underprivileged by the able and the powerful. Here, the victim is shown so traumatised by excessive oppression and violation of his humanity, that he does not utter a single word almost for the length of the film and only bears a stunned look, though later he uses the same violence as a tool to express his own sense of violation and rage.Goutham Ghosh’s ‘Paar’ is a film on exploitation in rural Bihar, in which a landlord’s (Utpal Dutt) men wreck a village and kill the benevolent schoolmaster (Anil Chatterjee) who was a progressive force. The labourer Naurangia (Naseeruddin Shah) breaks with the tradition of passive resistance and retaliates by killing the landlord’s brother. Naurangia and his wife Rama (Shabana Azmi) become fugitives from justice. After many efforts to find sustenance elsewhere, the two decide to return home. To earn the fare, they agree to drive a herd of pigs through the river, causing the pregnant Rama to believe she has lost her baby. They have to swim across a wide, swiftly flowing river, in which they nearly drown before reaching safety. At the end of the film, Naurangia puts his ear to Rama’s belly and listens to the heartbeats of his unborn child.The film festival concludes with the 1974 film ‘27 Down’ directed by Awtar Krishna Kaul.
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