BHUBANESWAR: Nearly 29 years after it was made, veteran Odia actor and filmmaker Bijaya Jena’s Hindi feature film ‘Abhaas’ (Prologue), shot at Talcher Palace in 1997, is set for another international screening, this time in France.
The film, directed by Bijaya Jena, popularly known as Dolly Jena, will be screened at the Centre culturel René-Char in Digne-les-Bains, Provence, in collaboration with Les Rencontres Cinéma de Digne on November 10. The screening is significant as it brings an Indian independent film, made without mainstream stars, to a French cinema venue nearly three decades after its production.
The cinema club in Digne-les-Bains is among the oldest in France and has hosted icons from the world of cinema, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Michel Legrand, Bertrand Tavernier and Michael Haneke. French filmmaker and novelist Marguerite Duras was also closely associated with the venue and premiered some of her films there.
The town has historical literary connections as well. French explorer and writer Alexandra David-Néel spent the later years of her life there after travelling extensively across the Indian subcontinent, while Victor Hugo’s celebrated novel Les Misérables opens in Digne.
Earlier, ‘Abhaas’ was screened at the Greek Film Archive in Athens on October 20. Recalling the response to the screening, Jena said filmmakers drew comparisons between her work and the cinema of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu and Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos.
An actress trained at the FTII, Jena is also the only woman filmmaker from Odisha to have won a National Film Award for directing a feature film in the last 70 years.
