A bunch of four films, handpicked by Oscar award-winning sound director Resul Pookutty, can be enjoyed at Lenin Balavadi coming Sunday as part of the Banner Film Festival.
The show begins with Robert Bresson’s ‘Pickpocket.’ The 1959 movie starring Martin LaSalle in the lead revolves around Michel and his tryst with pickpocketing. Michel, who has been caught for stealing money during a horse race, is released for lack of strong evidence. He later lands with a small group of pickpockets and learns the tricks of the trade. The film proceeds from his life thereafter.
The statements of social outrage, reflected in the third world films of the 1960s, reflect in the Chilean drama film ‘The Jackal of Nahueltoro’, which is based on a real-life incident, where an alcoholic peasant kills a woman and her five children, and is sentenced to death. The film, of 90 minutes’ duration, is directed by Miguel Littin.
The viewers are invited to a dreamlike, outrageous and artistic imagery combo, the characteristic features of Federico Fellini movies, in ‘City of Women.’ It is a 135-minute journey of Snaporaz, enacted by Marcello Mastroianni, through male and female spaces towards a confrontation with his own attitude towards women and his wife. A wait till the climax would reveal the real twist in the tale.
The Japanese film, ‘Death by Hanging’ (1968) is hailed for its innovative Brechtian techniques and complex treatments of guilt and consciousness, justice and the persecution of ethnic Koreans in Japan. The Nagisa Oshima-directed movie has a documentary-like opening. A man, known as ‘R’, survives hanging in a death chamber, but loses his memory. The film moves into a highly theatricalised film-within-a-film structure, when the officials arrive at a decision to persuade ‘R’ to accept his guilt by reminding him of his crimes.
The films will be screened at 9.30 am, 11.30 am, 2 pm and 4.30 pm. The festival is organised by Banner Film Society.