All Film Lovers, Rejoice! Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University Hosts Film Festival From 2nd-25st December

Always a sucker for cultural and arty events, I was certainly excited on reading that Faculty of English at MS University had organized a discussion on German novelist and short-story writer Franz Kafka’s novella ‘Die Verwandlung/Metamorphoses’ at KY Kantak Seminar Room; the notice put up at Faculty of Business Administration didn’t mention an address, and the management staff was completely clueless, so all I could get was ‘KY Kantak Seminar Room at 15:00’and ‘Organized by Faculty of English’ – they were obviously implying “You do the math!”. So I picked up a German friend, equally thrilled to hear an Indian’s perspective on the author’s seminal work, which involves a man’s sudden transformation into a bug but ultimately highlights the author’s near and dear themes of alienation, parent-child conflict, physical and psychological brutality, the anathema of bureaucracy and mystical transformations. He’d read his stories, while I managed to go through a few pages before submitting my body into sleep’s bassinet (I guess you cringed at this point. I’m not great at metaphors, you see, though Kafka is – his novella is available on the internet: Read It).

By 14:55, we’d reached the campus area of Faculty of Arts and I’d parked my Vespa. All the brazen and constant staring from college students (not at me, of course) made my white-skinned companion feel like the bug from Kafka’s story. We quickly paced to… well, since there were no instructions put up, we needed to stop and ask the students and security guards if they knew about the event. The students were predictably clueless about the event as well as the seminar room’s location (can’t blame them completely, though. The campus is quite big) while the security guards informed about every location where events were taking place at that moment, except the godforsaken seminar room’s location. We finally found Department of English after straying to Sri Aurobindo Seminar Room and stepped inside.

We were greeted by wet floors and an isolated corridor. A lecturer walked past us mumbling about a film going on in a nearby room, and my friend and I obviously went “A film?!”. Turns out these guys coolly switched the event at KY Kantak Seminar room to a Hindi film screening, cruelly pouring cold water over all our enthusiasm. What’s worse is that the department had retained the same notice we’d read in our college on its bulletin board, like it was mocking us for being such suckers. Well, when the nation’s biggest leaders do not deliver on their promises, what can we really expect from a relatively insignificant Department of English at MS University? We trudged back to the

parking area like nationalist soldiers wounded not by war, but by its sudden cessation. My friend, called for a project by the Department of Journalism, asked me how to pronounce the word “Makarpura”, where he was to be taken to witness a kushti match at an akhada. He was fascinated how ‘Makarpura’ sounded from his mouth. He went on repeating ‘Makarrrpura, Makharpura, Makkarrphura…’, never got it right.

We were heading back to his home when my eyes caught a tall poster affixed outside Faculty of Fine Arts. The moment I read the names ‘Fellini, Hitchcock, Kieslowski, Mira Nair’ and the words ‘Film Screening’, I halted my Vespa and got down. My friend didn’t have much knowledge of cinema and could only help me pronounce the names right. We checked what was happening inside. Faculty of Fine Arts, though small, looks immaculate compared to the other campuses. The creepers wrapped like decorative lights around the muscular branches of trees, the sprawling old banyan, the wide walkway (and the narrow ones among the grass), the well-positioned streetlights, gave the campus a neat-and-complete appearance conducive to inspiration. If I were studying here, I’d have penned a novella by now.

We passed the main building. We passed the department of art history. We passed the field

of grazing grain; we passed the setting sun… oh wait, that’s Emily Dickinson… We paused before I guess Department of Art History/Aesthetics (it’s at the back of the campus) and asked for details. Turns out Faculty of Fine Arts has been screening films since the 2^nd of December as a part of their film festival. This film festival shall continue till the 25^st of this month, with one film screened every evening at 18:00. After dropping my friend home, I headed straight to my home, freshened up and left for Faculty of Fine Arts at about 18:05. Reaching the venue by 18:25, I hurried to the screening room. There was a book exhibition outside the department; on speaking to the seller, I was informed that he would be opening a bookstore exclusively keeping books on culture and arts. As I was tardy by almost half an hour, I didn’t take his contact details but at least I (and you readers) know there’s a new bookstore opening shortly for all art-lovers now.

Yes, the event took place in a medium-sized screening room on the second floor. It was non-AC but it really didn’t matter for a film-lover like me. They were screening Chungking Express, a 1994 Hong Kong drama film by Wong Kar-Wai. The film has been acclaimed by none other than Quentin Tarantino, who cried on seeing the film, not because it was sad, because it was ‘just so good’. The film is shot in a style and rhythm quite alien from commercial cinema, and legendary critic Roger Ebert, while noting in his review that the film has shades of auteur like Godard and Cassavetes, predicted that the film wouldn’t fare well commercially as the audience ungrounded by film-societies would find it merely confusing. Yes, there were walkouts at this screening, but in my case, it was a ‘walk-in’ for I shifted towards the rows ahead as the audience members began exiting. To me, sitting among the small group of audience silently involved in absorbing the film was a joyous, nourishing experience. I spoke to the organizers, students themselves, and have requested them to forward me the schedule, which I shall upload to the site as soon as I receive it. The biggest consolation to me, after a no-show at Department of English, was that they didn’t unceremoniously cancel the damn thing!