'Chinese Whispers' India's entry in Cannes official selections

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Cannes, France, May 25 (UNI) India's sole entry in the official selections of Cannes, 2007, has been Raka Dutta's short-film, ''Chinese Whispers'', which had been included in the Cinefondation section.

Raka Dutta is a student of the Satyajit Ray Film Institute in Kolkata, and was present in Cannes for the screening of her film which took place today.

Cinefondation is a relatively new section, created by the Cannes Festival in 1999 to give an encouragement to student-films. Between 15-20 short and medium-length films are selected each year for entry into this section, out of more than 1000 student films from all over the world. Apart from reflecting the diversity and dynamism of young cinematic creation, it also "proclaims the trends of the cinema of tomorrow", as per the Festival authorities.

This year, 16 films were selected for competing for the Cinefondation awards, which are given to the best 3 among them. A separate 5-member jury, headed by Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke , is judging these entries, which were screened over the last three days.

The awards would be announced within the next 24 hours.

Raka Dutta, in her talk with UNI at Cannes, confided that getting thus far, through a tough preliminary selection, was itself a matter of joy and satisfaction for her. Incidentally, she is the second student from the Ray Institute to have made this selection in the recent years. That not only speaks well of the talent that is being nurtured in that film-school, but would encourage its students in the subsequent courses to also try and emulate her achievement.

Dutta's film is named after a popular game where to a row of children, a sentence is whispered in the ear of the first child and he is asked to pass it on to the next one, and so on. By the time it reaches the last child in the row, both the construction and the meaning of the sentence tend to get changed. ''So it is in life where the things which, at one stage, might be important to a person, lose their intensity and meaning down the years,'' Dutta stated.

The half-hour film has been shot by Dutta entirely in Kolkata, and is a comment on the city-life and the alienation that it breeds.

The treatment of the subject is both fresh and modern. Commenting on the subject, Dutta told UNI : ''I had got inspired by the evening screenings of movies from different parts of the world at the Ray Institute, and my attending film-festivals opened my eyes further to the outside world.'' ''Chinese Whispers'' has already been to Lisbon Film Festival, and its inclusion at Cannes would open further doors to it and its young director. There is a healthy buzz about it in Cinefondation, which should stand Dutta in good stead.

Even though Raka Dutta's film is the only one credited to India, there is another film in the same section which has an Indian base.

Titled ''Aditi Singh'', it is the work of a young French film-student, Michel Kummer, who has been to India and is hooked on Mumbai and its life-style (particularly, travelling by the ''locals''). It dwells on a personal relationship expressed through letters - a girl writng to her male boss to find out his feelings towards her. Also about city life, the treatment here is different from that of Raka Dutta. As Kummer stated, in his approach he sought to combine the French and Indian sensibilities, but had made his 45-minute film in Hindi so as to retain the local flavour.

Elsewhere, in a ceremony held yesterday for the international Press which comes to Cannes each year, Gilles Jacob, President of the Festival, honoured 30 journalists who had been covering the fest for the longest period of time. From India, the pressperson so honoured was Gautaman Bhaskaran of Chennai. Each of them was given a special 60th Anniversary medallion, which shows the red-carpeted steps leading into the Palais movie-hall. This incidentally is the logo which appears before the screening of every movie in the Festival.

In his speech, Jacob lauded the contribution of the Media in the success of the Cannes Festival year after year. He humorously referred to the way the Press covers the events: which films should or should not have made the official selections, its own take on the films in Competition, and how the Jury in not trying to get influenced by the media, sometimes goes to the other extreme. Jacob, nevertheless, admitted that ''it's one of the spices of Festival life!'' UNI

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