Phoenix Market City and Palladium Mall in Chennai hosted Asian Cine Experience from 3-7 October 2018 during which critically-acclaimed films from countries like Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, and India were screened. The film festival was organised as part of the September Fest—a month-long festival aimed at showcasing and highlighting different elements of Asian popular culture including Japanese culture of Anime and Manga, Korean beauty trends, eSports competition, and Asian cinema to the people of Chennai.
A first-of-its-kind festival hosted in Chennai, September Fest witnessed huge footfall and was particularly popular amongst the youth. September Fest culminated with Asian Cine Experience which featured a screenwriter’s workshop by noted Bollywood screenwriter Anjum Rajabali, an acting masterclass by Whistling Woods faculty Arvind Pandey, a panel discussion featuring the likes of Tamil filmmaker Rajiv Menon and Japanese filmmaker Yosuke Fujita, an exhibition of unseen photographs of superstar Rajinikanth, a flash mob performance by the Loyola Dream Team, and a film quiz, among other attractions.
The Iranian filmmaker Mehdi Rahmani whose film Boarding Pass had its Red Carpet Premiere at the Asian Cine Experience was thrilled to present his movie to the people of Chennai. “I was thrilled to learn about my film’s selection from my distributor. I am really happy to see the response that Boarding Pass has received here. Festivals are always a great place to assess one’s progress as a filmmaker and so I am really glad especially since I have only just started working on my next film and so I hope to take the confidence forward,” told Rahmani. Boarding Pass revolves around a young woman who swallows small packets of narcotics in order to smuggle them out of Iran in the hope of raising money to fight the custody battle with her ex-husband over their young son. However, her inexperience leads to drastic medical complications that threaten her life. Sharing his thoughts on the growing popularity of Asian cinema the world over, Mehdi said, “I think we are witnessing a very exciting phase for Asian cinema with the world showing a keen interest in films from India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Iran, particularly. Today the people in Europe, as well as the US, want to watch Asian films, for Hollywood these days has primarily limited itself to making superhero films, driven by CGI and VFX. The human drama and the emotions that the people in the West are missing in their films are there in abundance in Asian films.”
Moderating the panel discussion, Anjum Rajabali referred back to a debate wherein the legendary lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar had emphatically said that the only purpose of cinema is to entertain. In response, Rajiv Menon commented, “People often wonder if political cinema can be entertainment. Now, nowhere in India has the political action been as dramatic as it has been in Chennai. Yet the message in these films is firstly used as drama and then it is used as social drama wherein the protagonist struggles against social forces. So the ideology and the message get communicated even when the film is out and out commercial.” He added further, “People love to cry as much as they like to smile. At the end of the day, it is the question of how one can explore these ideas in the writing process. But there is always this fear of a film not doing well if the subject is too dark or serious. So that seems to become a marketing problem that tends to affect the writing process.” Japanese filmmaker Yosuke Fujita whose film Fuku-chan of FukuFuku Flats screened at the festival talked about the power of comedy to convey serious things. “My movies don’t necessarily aim at changing the society. But I do like to comment on what I see around me. Comedy is born in the toughest of the times. The loneliness and sadness in somebody is best shown through humour. Films of Charlie Chaplin are perhaps the best example of this. People tend to imbibe an idea better when it’s presented as a comedy. Consciously speaking, the purpose of my cinema is to give people hope,” revealed Fujita.
Delighted by the response that the first ever September Fest has received, the organisers are motivated to make it an annual feature. Mallika Nair, AGM-Operations, Phoenix Market City Mall, Chennai, said, “Basically September Fest started off as an idea for AnimeCom but then we thought of making it into a full-fledged festival for the people of Chennai. So we started exploring other cultural activities that we can offer from an Asian perspective. That’s how the September Fest evolved into a month-long extravaganza with AnimeCon, K-BeautyCon, Phoenix Gaming Expo, and Asian Cine Experience.” She further added, “For the fest, we have had a crowd pull that we have never witnessed before and so it has been very encouraging. The last week of the fest we had specifically reserved for cinema. Asian cinema has such a wide appeal and so we thought we should explore that. While Cinedarbaar helped us curate the foreign films, Whistling Woods helped organise the workshops and the panel discussion.”
Supriya Suri, artistic director of Cinedarbaar opined, “While people are quite familiar with Hollywood and the American films that we have, and, of course, the Europeans are always doing their own festivals, we thought there was a space to do a festival completely dedicated to Asian cinema. The idea was to have contemporary films that haven’t been screened here before. I really feel that Asian cinema has a lot to offer and the good response that we have got has only confirmed our belief.” Sumer Gill, an acting graduate from Whistling Woods who helped coordinate the workshops and panel discussion for the film festival revealed, “It has been a result of three months of rigorous planning and I am really glad that we have managed to execute it well. Ms Mallika and team were always quite open to ideas which allowed us to put the best show possible together, enabling us to showcase cinema and film education to the people of Chennai. The response to the workshops and panel discussion has been quite positive. I can’t say that it has been a perfect first year as there is always a scope for improvement but it has definitely been a good first year that has set the foundations for the upcoming editions.”
The five-day-long Asian Cine Experience not only brought some amazing films to Chennai but through its acting and screenwriting workshops, the festival also succeeded in educating the youngsters about the nuances of filmmaking. One hopes that the positive response received by Asian Cine Experience would encourage the organisers to bring more cinema-driven initiatives to Chennai.