Prasthanam film was screened exclusively for RFS students and glad to

have a creative discussion with the Director of the film, Deva Katta.

It was a really useful & good interactive session for upcoming young film

makers, where they can adapt some practical situations and industry

practices well.

[View with PicLens]

Madhu Chadda (an alumnus of IIT, Kanpur & a Corporate Consultant ): I am enjoying every moment of being at RFS. It is a dream come true for me! – Something for which I have been searching for the past 10 years in Hyderabad. The best of classrooms, the best of equipment, world class library – and the most important – aren’t we lucky to have highly knowledgeable and dedicated teachers who have real life experience in filmmaking – something so rare in this field? Hyderabad has a gem to be proud of.

Srinath Mudhelli (an alumnus of SPA JNTU, Hyderabad & a practising Architect): As a practicing architect I assumed that filmmaking should be easy given my creative background but RFS has been an eye-opening experience and it has become such a fascinating journey that every day I spend here results in a new learning experience moving me step by step towards what professional filmmaking is all about. RFS is where your creative ideas have a good chance to materialize your dreams.

Rajasekhar Gaddam (an alumnus of University of Skovde, Sweden & a Software Engineer):While working in USA, I had planned to enrol in the New York Film Academy but now I feel very glad that I took the right step by becoming a student of RFS. Anyone who joins this professional school will return as a better writer, a better filmmaker, and dare I say a better person! Thank you RFS & my faculty for this rewarding experience!

Amelie is a whimsical tale of love, friendship, isolation and yearning. This film stars Audrey Tautou in the title role as a young woman who works as a waiter in a small Paris Caf. Amelie grows up as a lonesome kid into a young woman who longs for love and care. As a child his father falsely identifies her as a child with a heart trouble and declares unsuitable for school. Adding to this Amelie loses her mother as a kid. As a young woman she finds it difficult to come out of her introvertive character.

Her life falls into a routine of adulthood until one day she discovers a rusty box with the childhood treasures of a one-time young boy from the 50s. With the discovery of the box Amelie sets out to find out the person, in the process of tracking the owner of the childhood treasure she finds the objective of her life: To make people happy and thus begins her voyage.

Amelie sets out on a journey of life with intelligent and inventive plans to straighten the lives of people around her. This film like most of the films has a parallel story, or sub plot in which Amelie plays a love game of hide and seek with a strange young man whose hobby is to collect the unwanted photos from automated photo machines and to form a collage of unsuccessful facial expressions.

Direction: This is a director’s film realised with the utmost perfection. It is a rare and widely successful French film in the sense that we cannot find such overflowing goodness and beauty in most French films. In the hands of any other director this film would have turned out to be one of those family films’ or feel good films’. But the vision of the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet helped this film achieve a greater success all over the world.

The way Jean-Pierre Jeunet handled the character introduction and character build up should be commended for the innovative cinematic devices he used. At times the ideas might seem a bit silly but they worked perfectly for this film. But this film might not interest viewers of serious cinema and also might find repeated audience.

Even though the director succeeded in making this film beautifully green, but some body not so fond of the colour green would hate this film. The whole film is painted with saturated greens (Thanks to the Digital post production).At times the green does appear to be too much of it but as a whole Amelie is a good film to watch.

Analysis: when I was watching this film, two things were constantly in my mind one is a Telugu film (Chakram by Krishna Vamsi) and the other is a novel (Vennello aadapilla by Yandamoori). To my surprise Amelie was like a mish mash of the film and the novel.

The film Chakram is very much similar to the theme of Amelie because in both the films the protagonists embark on a journey of self discovery by trying to solve the problems of others. But in Amelie what inspires her to be a do gooder is to find answer for her own problems, but in Chakram the protagonist discovers that he has an incurable disease and before his death he wants to help as many people as possible.

When we compare the characters of Chakram and Amelie there is a big lesson to be learnt in terms of character development. In Chakram every other character, except the protagonist seems to be in a big trouble and the way Krishna Vamsi (The director of Chakram) portrays the characters is rather silly, obvious and explicit. He chose kids, youngsters, house wives, husbands in groups and tried to portray the problems of the society in general rather than the personal problems of the characters. The film failed miserably because of his explicit categorisation of the characters and generalisation of their problems and even worse he tried to provide collective solution for the problems of the group.

These characters when compared to Amelie, even though they appear out of a fairy tale, have characters of their own. That’s the essential secret of creating good and believable characters: Characters with a character.

The novel, Vennello Aadapilla is similar to Amelie or Amelie is similar to the novel Vennello Aadapilla, because the sub plot of the film (in search of her soul mate) closely resembles the plot of the novel. In the novel a girl plays a cat and mouse game with a chess player and all through the novel she leaves clues for him to find out who she is. But the novel has a slightly sad ending but Amelie ends exactly at the time when she meets her soul mate.

To be honest many of the scenes reminded of scenes from many Telugu films and I was surprised by the way these scenes are handled so differently by the director. It is not to say that this film was hugely inspired by Telugu films, but to say that the feel good nature of this film is very close to the soul of most Indian films (that always deal with the goodness of the protagonist and his or her ways of helping others in trouble).

–Venkat Siddareddy

Introduction

Agnieszka is puzzled about the whereabouts of this one time national hero of the fifties. How can this man disappear with out a trace? This is the question that urges Agnieszka to delve deep in to the life of Birkut. As the film progresses, the truth about Birkut is presented to us through the discerning eyes of Agnieszka, in the form of interviews with his former wife, friends, enemies and others who knew Birkut.

What follows is a series of interviews, outtakes, censored footage and it is through these multi layers of information, the true portrait of Birkut emerges: the disturbing story of an innocent brick layer who becomes a pawn in the game of the communist era of Poland and the story of the fate of human life as sculpted by the media, decided by the politicians.

As a story, this film is not only portrays the life of Birkut but also the struggles of Agnieszka as a film maker during the communist regime of Poland.

Analysis: One thing that we can notice when watching “Man of marble” is that the non liner narrative structure of the film is very similar to “Citizen Kane”. Like in “Citizen Kane”, where we come to know of the life of Charles Foster Kane through the objective eyes of Thompson, in this film too, the truth about Birkuts’ life and his short lived stardom is presented to us through different layers of information from the probing eyes of Agnieszka.

The biggest difference between “Citizen Kane” and “Man of Marble” is that in the former film, it is difficult for the viewer to empathise with Thompson and his struggle to uncover the facts about Charles Kane Foster, where as in “Man of Marble” the character of Agnieszka is as important to the story as the character of Birkut. In “Citizen Kane” the element of the story (Charles Kane Foster) is the most important thing but not the story teller. In “Man of Marble” the storyteller is as important as the story itself.

Wajda, one of the greatest film makers of the world has dealt with this story, about revolt against submission, with the utmost sincerity and left no scope for any sentimentalism. On one side of the coin is the character of Birkut, the symbol of innocent people who gave themselves to Stalinism during 50s.The other side of the coin is the character of Agnieszka, who is presented to us with the symbolic struggle of himself, as a filmmaker and an artist, devoid of freedom of expression during late 70’s. Through these parallel stories Wajda explores the importance of media in making or breaking of a revolution.

Acting wise the film boast two great performances by Jerzy Radziwilowicz, in a dual role as Mateusz Birkut and Maciej Tomczyk (son of Birkut), and Krystyna Janda in the role of Agnieszka.

Technically this film boasts a complex and well woven plot and the screenplay is perfect to the core. Music by Andrzej Korzynski lends a haunting and nostalgic quality to the movie. Editing, cinematography and art direction are perfect and add to the documentary effect of the film.

“Man of Marble” is certainly one of the milestones in the history of Polish cinema and Poland itself. Its one of those few films which transcends the limits. In the times when film is considered as a mode of mass entertainment, films like these will define a new purpose and meaning to art.

According to Wajda, this story was based on a news article in which A brick-layer who had come to the employment office was rejected a job because they were in no need of brick-layers but foundry workers. However, he was recognised by a clerk as a well known “labour leader” and an ex-star of the previous political season. This triggered the thought in Wajda to make a story of a hero from the past and he was looking for a contemporary subject for his film. So he thought of an agent through whom he would be able to tell the story from the perspective of his times. Among the many talented students of Lodz Film School was Agnieszka Holland, the director of “Europa, Europa”. And that is how he got the idea of a young student of film school, would try to uncover the mystery of the bricklayer’s life. A few weeks later the script was ready but it’s only after fourteen years of struggle Wajda was able to make this film.

Conclusion: For those people, who are interested in neither Polish struggle nor the importance of an artist in the struggle for independence, this film is still worth watching for many other reasons. This film is a detective film in which we search for the historical truth and a thriller that keeps you glued all to the seat all through its 150 minutes. You can watch and enjoy this film as a pure fiction even with out relating it to Poland or its struggle. For me this is one of the greatest and important films.

Personally this film offered me so much than entertainment. It’s a visual document about life in Poland during the communist regime. For me “Man of Marble” is not just a film, but it is truth at 24 frames per second, a document of Polish history and one of the greatest film about a film about a film. The characters in this film might be fictional but Wajda made them so real and a part of the history, it’s as if the fictional characters have walked in to the pages of history and made a place for themselves permanently.

–Venkat Siddareddy

Introduction:

Story: “Man of Iron” (Czlowiek z Zelaza) is the story of Maciej Tomczyk, son of Mateusz Birkut – the protagonist of Wajda’s earlier film “Man of Marble”. In “Man of Marble” we only catch a glimpse of Tomczyk and it is in this film his character gains importance as the hero of the new era- “The the man who started the Gdansk Shipyard strike”. Winkel, an alcoholic television reporter, is chosen by the Party leaders as the man responsible for digging up the lives of the strikers of Gdansk shipyard, especailly Tomczyk.

Winkel’s task is to uncover the facts about the life of Tomczyk and to prepare a script that presents Tomczyk in bad light, there by, dragging Tomczyk through mud. It is through the eyes of this televiosn reporter we get to know about Tomczyk. Winkel meets many people including Agnieszka, who is now married to Tomczyk and is a political prisoner. As he starts uncovering the facts, we are presented with multi-layers of information about the relationship between the Tomczyk and Birkut and how the son comes to terms with his father. More so, we are presented with the build up of Tomczyk’s charcter from a normal shipyard worker to a “Man of Iron” forged by experience. It is through the interviews of Winkel we find the answers to the questions left unanswered in the film “Man of Marble”.

As the story progresses Winkel is torn between his conscience and his desire to survive during the communist regime.The information he gathers draws him closer to the solidarity movement and at a point he starts feeling sympathatic towards the shipyard strikers. As a story, this film is not only portrays the life of Tomczyk but also explores deeper in to the life of Birkut. This is also the story of Winkel who is caught in the midst of propagandistic communist regime who understands that the situation can be changed in Poland and in the end instead of finding any accusing evidence against Tomczyk he himself is repoliticized.

Analysis: “Man of Iron” is not actually, in strict terms, a sequel to “Man of marble”. These films are two independent films about two different eras dealing with two different people. But like in the Godfather series, “Man of Iron” successfully expands on the story of its predecessor while exploring the many of the same issues like role of media, the relationship between the labour leaders and the Party. In “Man of Iron” Wajda successfully dealt with the role of media in times of a revolution. He also explored the difficulties faced by media to cover a true story. Wajda, like many other film makers of the ‘movement’ had a considerable experience in documentary. This is clearly shown in this films which draws on realist-documentary tradition. In this film he blends reality with fiction with utmost ease and it is very difficult view this film as a piece of fiction. The footage from the solidarity movement strikes is successfully woven in to the dramatic story. At the same time, there was a strong element of self-reflexivity in this film – many of the characters represented professions such as journalists, filmmakers, actors, and the film concentrates on their professional activities, rather than on their private lives.

Acting wise the film boasts great performances by Jerzy Radziwilowicz, in a dual role as Mateusz Birkut and Maciej Tomczyk (son of Birkut), Krystyna Janda in the role of Agnieszka and Marian Opania in the role of Winkel.
Technically this film boasts a complex and well woven plot and the screenplay is perfect to the core. Music by Andrzej Korzynski lends a haunting and nostalgic quality to the movie. Editing, cinematography and art direction are perfect and add to the documentary effect of the film.

“Man of Iron” is certainly one of the milestones in the history of Polish cinema and Poland itself. Its one of those few films which transcends the limits. In the times when film is considered as a mode of mass entertainment, films like these will define a new purpose and meaning to art.

Conclusion: For those people, who are interested in neither Polish struggle nor the importance of an artist in the struggle for independence, this film is still worth watching for many other reasons. This film gives an insight in to the Polish freedom struggle and the solidarity movement. It also captures the essence of the struggle of the Polish people to achieve not only independence but also unity. Personally this film offered me so much than entertainment. It’s a visual document about life in Poland during the communist regime. For me “Man of Iron” is not just a film, but it is truth at 24 frames per second, a document of Polish history and one of the greatest film about a film about a film. The characters in this film might be fictional but Wajda made them so real and a part of the history, it’s as if the fictional characters have walked in to the pages of history and made a place for themselves permanently. Finally, both the films, “Man of Iron” and “Man of Marble” deals with the growing problem of using the media for constructing and/or deconstructing reality which presents us to the dangers of believing in the truth that doesn’t exist.

–Venkat SIddareddy