The second film of the evening is the extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi (A One and a Two...), directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang. Yi Yi is Edward Yang's celebration of cultural identity and family interaction. The film swiftly follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through every-day quandaries. NJ is morose; his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank, his business partners make bad decisions against his advice, and he reconnects with his first love 30 years after he dropped her. His teenage daughter Ting-Ting watches emotions roil in their neighbour’s flat and is experiencing the first stirrings of love. His son Yang-Yang, eight, laconic like his dad, pursues truth with the help of a camera. "Why is the world so different from what we think it is?" asks Ting-Ting. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is now generally regarded as one of the undisputed masterworks of the of the new century. Edward Yang’s Yi Yi at FSB was screened in 2006 and 2012. Edward Yang passed away in 2007 at the age of 59.

Edward Yang’s follow-up to A Confucian Confusion is another dizzying comedy set in a globalized Taipei, but with a darker, more caustic edge. Amid a rapidly changing cityscape, the lives of a disparate group of swindlers, hustlers, gangsters, and expats collide. By turns brutal, shocking, tender, and bitingly funny, Mahjong is a dazzling vision of a multicultural Taipei where nearly every relationship has a price and newfound prosperity comes at the expense of the human soul.

The film is set in the world of Young Taipei Professionals, who are rich and famous, their lives intertwined between business and love, art & commerce - the lines are blurred. the film plays out in couple of days - navigating interpersonal conflicts. Set in the 1990s, we see a hustle - Taiwan Style, a new world emerging in a traditional society. A Confucian Confusion is an incisive reflection on the role of traditional values in a materialistic, amoral society.

"The situation in all of Asia is terrible now. It’s not an economic problem, it’s not a financial problem, it’s not a political problem, it’s a serious cultural problem. A Confucian Confusion is the first and so far only attempt at self reflection: at examining what is wrong with trying to head into the 21st century with a 4th century BC ideology.” Edward Yang’s first cinematic foray into comedy may have been a surprising stylistic departure, but in its richly novelistic vision of urban discontent, it is quintessential.

A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson’s unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this simple story becomes a moving parable about purity and transcendence.

The second film of the evening brings to you, The Past by one of the major contemporary Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.
The film follows the family life of Ahmad, following a separation of four years from his French wife Marie. Ahmad returns to Paris from Tehran to finalise a divorce from Marie. During his stay, Ahmad discovers the strained relationship of Marie and her daughter. Ahmad’s effort to build bridges leads to complications. The family drama is structured like a tight thriller. Farhadi’s About Elly and A Separation was screened earlier at Film Society.
The film won the best actress award at 2013 Cannes. Farhadi’s films have received international acclaim and he has won two oscars in the international film category.

The second film of the evening brings to you, “The Great Beauty” by one of the major contemporary Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. The film follows the life of 65 year old journalist Jep Gambardella. On his 65th birthday, he takes stock of his life, turning the lens onto his friends and himself, and looking past the gorgeous roman night life - he encounters the beauty of Rome, it’s landscape, the architectural marvels that speak across time. The performance of Toni Servillo is to savour in this tale of Felliniesque inspiration.
The film won the Oscar for the Foreign Film Category in 2014, the Golden Globe, at Talinn - it won the Grand Jury and best film awards.

The second film of the evening brings to you, One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression.

The second screening of the evening belongs to our contemporary section and presents Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018), the film is set in the early 1970s, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. He bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. He recruits a seasoned colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), into the undercover investigation. The film offers a true-life examination of race relations in 1970s America that is just as relevant in today's tumultuous world.
Lee has been an independent voice in the American film making scene, critical of the Hollywood brand of film making. His career has spanned over four decades and 25 films, he was awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2015, his film BlackkKlansman won the Oscar for screenplay in 2019 and the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival in 2018. He has been teaching Film at New York University for over three decades. "Malcolm X" and “Do the right thing” were screened earlier at the film society.

The second film of the evening is Endless Poetry by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Endless Poetry tells the story of the director’s years spent as an aspiring poet in Chile in the 1940's. Against the wishes of his authoritarian father, the 20 year old Jodorowsky leaves home to pursue his dream of becoming a poet and is introduced into the bohemian and artistic inner circle of Santiago. Endless Poetry is an ode to the quest for beauty and inner truth, as a universal force capable of changing one's life forever told through Jodorowsky's cinematic language.
Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929) is a Chilean born French film maker known for his surrealist films.

The second film of the evening is The Club by Chilean director Pablo Larrain. The film is a story of disgraced priests, four middle-aged priests live together in a house of penitence in a remote Chilean coastal town. Their quiet, anonymous existence, is overseen by a methodical guardian angel, Sister Monica, until a fifth sinner turns up and unleashes demons from the past.
The film is a denunciation of the Catholic Church. The sins of an earlier time come to the fore and demonstrates the role of the Church during the authoritarian regime unleashed by Pinochet.
Larrain’s “Neruda” was screened earlier at FSB. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015. Pablo Larrain is a major voice emerging out of Chile, his films have been recognised in major festivals across the world.

The second screening is of the movie Neruda, directed by Pablo Larrain. Chile, 1948: Senator Pablo Neruda, diplomat and future Nobel Prize-winning poet, accuses the government of betraying the Communist Party and is swiftly impeached. Pursued by the police, Neruda and his artist wife are forced into hiding and an intimate game of cat and mouse begins.
Pablo Larrain is a major voice emerging out of Chile, his films have been recognised in major festivals across the world. This film was part of Cannes and Toronto film festival selection, it was nominated for Oscars under foreign film category from Chile.

The second screening is of the movie Let the Sunshine In, directed by French director Let the Sunshine In. Two luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love. In a richly layered performance, Binoche plays Isabelle, a successful painter in Paris whose apparent independence belies what she desires most: real romantic fulfilment. Let the Sunshine In finds bleak humour in a cutting truth: we are all, no matter our age, fools for love.
Claire Denis (b. 1948) is a Paris-based filmmaker and one of the major artistic voices of contemporary French cinema.

The second screening is of the movie Pina, directed by German director Wim Wenders. A long-planned film collaboration between the director and the choreographer Pina Bausch was in preproduction when she died in 2009. Two years later, Wenders decided to go ahead with the project, reconceiving it as an homage to his late friend – Pina Bausch. The result, is a remarkable visual experience and a vivid representation of Bausch’s art, enacted by a group of staggeringly talented dancers from her company, the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.
Wim Wender's Salt of the Earth(2014), Buena Vista Social Club(1999), Tokyo-Ga(1985) were screened earlier at FSB.

The second screening is of the movie Mr. Turner, directed by UK-based director Mike Leigh. Spanning the last 25 years of Britain’s most revered painter JMW Turner (1775-1851), is a rich portrait of the artist whose personal life was as turbulent as the canvases he painted. Timothy Spall (playing Mr. Turner) won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his performance.
Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies(1996), All or Nothing(2002) and Naked(1993) were screened earlier at FSB.

The second screening is of the movie The Wild Pear Tree, directed by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Spanning the last 25 years of Britain’s most revered painter JMW Turner (1775-1851), is a rich portrait of the artist whose personal life was as turbulent as the canvases he painted. Timothy Spall (playing Mr. Turner) won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his performance.
Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies(1996), All or Nothing(2002) and Naked(1993) were screened earlier at FSB.

The second film of the evening is The Assassin, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, made in 2015.
9th century China.
10-year-old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised - a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China.
After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings. A slave to the orders of her mistress, Nie Yinniang must choose: sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins.
Flowers of shanghai (1998), The boys from fengkuei (1983), the green green grass of home (1982) and Three times (2005), were earlier screened at the Film society screenings. The Assassin was awarded the best director at Cannes, this was the last film of Hou Hsiao Hsien before he retired.

The second film of the evening is Three Times, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, made in 2005.
Three Times features two of Asia’s biggest stars, Shu Qi and Chang Chen. They play different characters in three episodes set in different years and different eras, 1966, 1911 and 2005. The central theme is love and emotion: in this film Hou Hsiao-Hsien is commenting on different expressions of love in different times.

The second film of the evening is The Green, Green Grass of Home, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, made in 1982. A substitute teacher moves to a remote village, he falls in love with a school teacher at the local school.
Considered as one of the greatest living film directors in Asia. Hou Hsiao Hsien’s films were screened and awarded across major festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) of the world and has been awarded the Lifetime achievement award (Golden Horse) in 2020. Over a career spanning four decades, he has made 21 feature films. We screened “Flowers of Shanghai” and "Boys from Fengkuei” earlier.

The second film of the evening is The Boys from Fengkuei, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, made in 1983. Three young men leave their fishing village for the city in search of a livelihood. The harsh realities hit home, as their journey becomes a process of growing up.
This film established the career of Hou Hsiao-Hsien as a leading figure of Taiwan cinema, this work travelled across the world and is considered one of the director’s major works. Considered as one of the greatest living film directors in Asia, directing more than 20 films in his career. We screened “Flowers of Shanghai” last month. Over a career spanning four decades, he made 21 feature films. His films were screened and awarded across major festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) of the world.

The second film of the evening is Shoplifters, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, made in 2018. From visionary director Kore-eda Hirokazu comes, a critically acclaimed portrait of a makeshift family in Japan. After a shoplifting spree, Osamu and his son rescue a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo, reluctantly agrees to shelter her. Although the family is poor, they live happily together until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance they have created, revealing long- buried secrets.
The film won the palme d’or at Cannes and the Cesar Awards, it was nominated to the Academy awards under the foreign film category.

The second film of the evening is Drive my Car, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, made in 2021. Kafuku is a stage actor, his wife passes away suddenly, leaving behind a secret. Two years later, Kafuku meets Misaki, a reserved young woman, assigned to him as a chauffeur on a work trip to Hiroshima. As they spend time together on the road trip, the mystery of Kafuku’s dead wife comes to the fore, we see him confronting the memory of his wife. The film is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami.
The film won the best screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival, won the Academy award for international film and BAFTA award for the best film in non-english language category.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (b. 1978) , graduated with a degree in Aesthetics(2003) and film in 2008. He came into international limelight with Happy Hour (2015) which received a special mention for screenplay at the Locarno International Film Festival. His film Asako I & II (2018) was selected at Cannes.

The second film of the evening is Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Celine Sciamma, made in 2020. The film is set in 1770s France. It revolves around the relationship of Marianne (a painter), Heloise and their housemaid. Marianne is hired by a countess to paint her daughter Heloise – a wedding portrait. During the assignment, the relationship between Marriane, Heloise and the housemaid brings out the contradictions of the period, the pulls and pushes of life colours their relationship.
The film won the best screenplay award and the Queer Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Celine Sciamma (b. 1978) , studied French literature at Nanterre and later at La Femis film school. She is been making films since 2007.
“In all my films, it’s always the same,” she says. “It’s always about a few days out of the world, where we can meet each lover, love each other. Also it’s always about female characters because they can be themselves only in a private place where they can share their loneliness, their dreams, their attitudes, their ideas.”

The second film of the evening is A Fantastic Woman, directed by Sebastian Lelio, made in 2017. Marina Vidal’s life is thrown into turmoil following the sudden death of her partner, Orlando. She is suspected by the police and her partner’s relatives. Tensions rise between her & Orlando’s relatives. She is thrown out of their shared home and restricted from attending his funeral. Pushed to the wall, on the verge of losing everything, Marina finds the strength to fight back.
A fantastic woman won the Academy award in the foreign film category 2018 and screenplay award at Berlin. Sebastian Lelio (b. 1974) in Argentina, moved to Chile at the age of two, lives in Berlin. His work Gloria (2013) brought him to international prominence.

The second film of the evening is il buco, directed by Michelangelo Frammartino, made in 1999. Cavers explore Europe’s deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss is reached for the first time. The Cavers’ venture is unnoticed by the locals but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino plateau whose solitary life begins to interweave with the group’s journey. The film is a follow up to Le Quattro Volte (2011), it was screened earlier at the Film Society.
Il Buco won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The second film of the evening is Ugetsu by Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi by the 1950s was an elder statesman of Japanese cinema revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. The film is an exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant. Mizoguchi achieves with his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.
The film was awarded the Silver Lion award at the Venice film festival in 1953.

The second film of the evening is Kwaidan, by Masaki Kobayashi, will be screened in the original three-hour cut. After more than a decade of political dramas and socially minded period pieces, Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colourful surreal sets and luminous cinematography, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn’s collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously crafted.

It was the most expensive film made in Japanese cinema, the film was recognised with the Special Jury Prize at Cannes film festival in 1965.

The second film of the evening is the farsi film, Chess of the Wind by Mohammad Reza Aslani, made in 1976. The film never had a theatrical release in Iran nor international distribution. The film was lost for many decades and has been recently discovered by Aslani’s children, restored and screened across major festivals starting 2020, it is one of the important works of Iran’s pre 1979 period. The film is set in 1920s Iran, follows the misfortunes of a paraplegic heiress. She is surrounded by predatory men – stepfather, her nephews, local commissar – all seeking to usurp her inheritance. She’s aided in her struggle against these men by her maid, an erotic tension between the heiress and the maid add complexity to the narrative. Mohammad Reza Aslani born in 1943, is a renowned poet, film maker based in Tehran.

The second film of the evening is the mandarin film, Not one Less by Zhang Yimou, made in 1999. The film is set in rural China, a young girl of thirteen, is ordered to be a substitute teacher in the village school. She has to keep the class intact for a month or she loses her pay. One of the students migrates to the city to find work enabling his family to pay off their debts. The young teacher follows the boy, the search begins and takes her to the city where her travails bear fruit due to the kind intervention of local TV station’s boss.
The film won the best picture at Venice Film Festival in 1999. The film was screened earlier at FSB.

The second film of the evening will be Devils on the Doorstep by Jiang Wen released in year 2000. Jiang Wen (b.1963) takes a fresh look at Japanese occupation of China during the end of 2nd world war in Devils on the Doorstep. The film is set in a small village, the story of a peasant who under gun point has to shelter two prisoners. One is a Japanese soldier who wants to be killed and the other is his Chinese interpreter who wants to live. The peasant struggles to keep the prisoners hidden from the Japanese forces, while deciding to execute them - days turns into months. The film leads to a very powerful climax. The film went on to win the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2000, banned in China, continued to have a vibrant underground life circulating through DVDs.

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments.

Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to In the Mood for Love combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure and avant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his role as writer Chow Mo-Wan, whose numerous failed relationships with women who drift in and out of his life (and the one who goes in and out of room 2046, down the hall from his apartment) inspire the delirious futuristic love story he pens.

The second film of the evening will be Carmen directed by Carlos Saura. Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy comprised of Blood Wedding (Bodas de sangre, 1981), Carmen (1983) and El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician, 1986).Flamenco originated in 18th-century southern Spain, the product of the melting-pot coexistence of different cultures, including (as the voiceover of Saura’s 1995 documentary Flamenco explains) “Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castilian ballads, Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms and Iranian and Romany melodies.”For Saura, flamenco’s capacity to absorb many different influences is where its power really lies, because unlike traditional folk music, which tends to remain more or less the same over time, flamenco is constantly renewing itself. For instance, cult flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía, who features in the trilogy, has added many influences from jazz and Latin rhythms to his music. And in Saura’s 2010 documentary Flamenco, the relatively recent rise of this art in Spain is credited mainly to the influence of younger artists.
It is also largely owing to this generational renewal of Flamenco that Saura was able to make his trilogy with internationally recognised flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades, the riveting male protagonist of all three films. Carmen is filmed in a studio where rehearsals are taking place, only this time the reality of the creative process and the rehearsals become entangled with the fictional story of Carmen as manifested in both the novella and the opera. The latter is, in fragmented form, part of the film’s soundtrack, as live flamenco is played in the studio. The film’s artistic elements – opera, flamenco music and dance, literature and film – all feed off one another to create a narrative choreography that seamlessly moves between dance, music and fiction, creating something greater and more intense than even its original sources.The film was a tremendous international success, receiving a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1984 (ceded to Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander) and another for the Golden Globe. It won two awards at Cannes and a BAFTA the following year.
Carlos Saura passed away on 10th February this year,in Madrid, at the age of 91. Mr. Saura’s most recent film, “Las Paredes Hablan,” a documentary about art, was released a week before his death.

The second film of the evening will be Mountains May Depart, made in the year 2015 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The screening completes the focus on Jia Zhang-Ke’s works started in November. The film is an epic drama depicting the life of one family over several decades under China’s march towards capitalism. Structured in three parts (set in 1999, 2014 and Australia in 2025), the film follows the life of Shen Tao (played by Jia’s regular collaborator Zhao Tao) and her family over 26 years. This work of Jia is a study of Capitalist forces and globalisation on Chinese society and family life.
Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today.

Lee Chang-Dong directed his first film in his forties, born in 1954, he was a successful novelist and scriptwriter before making films. His body of work has made him one of the foremost Asian filmmakers working in World Cinema. His film Oasis (2002) won multiple prizes at Venice Film Festival, Poetry (2010) won the screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival, Secret Sunshine (2007) won the best actress award at Cannes for the actor Jeon. The film Oasis was screened earlier at FSB.

The second film of the evening will be A Touch of Sin, made in the year 2013 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The film is inspired by real life events in modern day China. It tells the stories of four individuals, living in different provinces, drawn to acts of violence. A miner, enraged by corruption in his village; a migrant worker discovers the hidden benefits of owning a firearm; a sauna worker is pushed to the limits by a client; and a factory worker drifting through the factories and nightclubs of Dongguan. The film explores the role of everyday violence in Chinese life. It won the best screenplay award at the Cannes film Festival in 2013.

Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today. His films Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life (2006) were screened at FSB earlier.

The second film of the evening will be 24 City, made in the year 2008 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The film is about the generations of people who worked in a state factory at Chengdu, which is just about to be demolished; it is a docu-fiction hybrid, an essay in contemporary history and an experiment in cine-portraiture, vividly shot on high-definition video. The result is a deeply serious and sombre film, trying to find a way of telling the stories of people affected by the gigantic political and economic changes sweeping the nation – 21st Century China. The focus on Jia Zhang-Ke would continue in the screening of Touch of Sin(2013) and Mountains May Depart (2015) during December 2022.

Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today. His films Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life(2006) were screened at FSB earlier.

The second film is Wadjda, directed by Haifaa Al- Mansour. Young Wadjda dreams of owning a green bicycle. She wants to race a boy from the neighborhood, but the law prohibits girls from riding bikes. Just as she is losing hope, she hears about a cash prize for a Quran recitation competition at her school. Wadjda decides to earn the cash to fulfil her dream.

The second film to be screened is Buena Vista Social Club, directed by Wim Wenders. From the streets of Havana, Cuba, this documentary captures a forgotten generation of brightest musical talents. The veteran vocalists and instrumentalists collaborated with American guitarist Ry Cooder to form the Buena Vista Social Club, playing a jazz inflected mix of cha-cha, mambo, bolero, and other traditional Latin American styles, and recording an album released in 1997, winning a grammy making them an international phenomenon. In the wake of this success, director Wim Wenders filmed the ensemble’s members – including Ibrahim Ferrer and piano virtuoso Ruben Gonzalez – in a series of interviews and live performances. The film is an ode to a neglected corner of Cuban pre-revolutionary heritage.

The second film, Jalsaghar directed by Satyajit Ray, is based on a short story “Jalsaghar” by Tarasankar Banerji, it evokes the crumbling world of a down and out feudal aristocrat (played by Chabbi Biswas) and his rapidly disintegrating way of life. His greatest joy is the music room in his massive house that has hosted lavish converts in the past – now it is a shadow of its former self. The film depicts the clash between modernity and tradition, it showcases India’s most popular musicians of the day – Ustad Vilayat Khan did the music of the film – on screen performances by Begum Akhtar, Roshan Kumari, Ustad Waheed Khan, Salamat Ali Khan, Bismillah Khan and company. Music lovers will find many moments in the film to savour among the enveloping brooding drama.
‘In the process of writing the screenplay’, remarked Ray later, ‘it became a fairly serious study of feudalism and also the music became very high-classical stuff’.

The second film of the evening will be Bhuvan Shome, made in the year 1969 by Mrinal Sen, the film revolves around Bhuvan Shome (Utpal Dutt), a ruthless Bengali bureaucrat working in the Indian Railways. Greatly feared by his subordinates, the middle-aged widower has spent his life trying to be righteous and has zero tolerance for the corrupt or the incompetent. As the narrator informs, he once even went to the extent of firing his own son. He is highly respected by everyone around him but being a martinet he is forced to live in abject solitude. One day, bored by his monotonous office routine, he decides to go on a bird hunting trip to Saurashtra, a region located on the Arabian Sea coast of Gujarat. Doomed to live in solitude, Bhuvan Shome, trapped in an alien land, quickly realizes that he has inadvertently pushed himself a bit too far out of his comfort zone. The rest of the movie takes us on unfolds as a journey of self-realization for Bhuvan Shome, who gradually learns to appreciate the importance of human company.

The second film of the evening will be The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, made in the year 1972, by Luis Bunuel co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière, is stranger and more sensual than ever. The action revolves around some half-a-dozen well-to-do metropolitan sophisticates who are forever attempting to meet up for dinner parties and elegant soirees only to find the event ruined by an absent host, or some mysterious misunderstanding, or bizarre turn of events, and then one will awake to find it all to be a dream, yet the distinction between dream and waking does not become any clearer.

The second film of the evening will be The Diary of a Chambermaid, made in the year 1967, by Luis Bunuel is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era. The screenings will be followed by an interview with Jean Claude-Carriere (Screenplay of The Diary of a Chambermaid) .

The second film of the evening will be La Promesse, made in the year 1996, La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually coming to understand the implications of his father’s making a living through the exploitation of undocumented workers. Filmed in the Dardennes’ industrial hometown of Seraing, Belgium, La promesse is a brilliantly economical and observant tale of a boy’s troubled moral awakening.

The second film of the evening will be Through the Olive Trees, made in the year 1994, the final film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy, Abbas Kiarostami takes meta­narrative to masterful heights in the final installment of The Koker Trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of And Life Goes On, this film traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle. An ineffably lovely, gentle human comedy steeped in the folkways of Iranian village life, Through the Olive Trees peels away layer after layer of artifice as it investigates the elusive, alchemical relationship between cinema and reality.

The second film of the evening will be And Life Goes on, made in the year 1992, the second film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy, In the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake in Iran that left fifty thousand dead, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Koker, where his camera surveys not only devastation but also the teeming life in its wake. Blending fiction and reality into a playful, poignant road movie, And Life Goes On follows a film director who, along with his son, makes the trek to the region in hopes of finding out if the young boys who acted in Where Is the Friend’s House? are among the survivors, and discovers a resilient community pressing on in the face of tragedy. Finding beauty in the bleakest of circumstances, Kiarostami crafts a quietly majestic ode to the best of the human spirit.
The screenings will be followed by a short documentary by Jamshed Akrami which delves into the art and practice of Abbas Kiarostami.

The second film of the evening will be Where is the Friend's House?, made in the year 1987, the first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, Where Is the Friend’s House? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.

The second screening will be a documentary by French Filmmaker Chris Marker's AK - a film about Akira Kurosawa, as he worked on the making of Ran. There will be a small talk on the 'Art of the Samurai' by Jean Charbonnier.

The second film of the evening is “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” made in the year 2011, directed by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The film is a rigorous tale of a night and a day in a murder investigation. Police, prosecutors, a doctor and the murderers themselves try to locate a buried body through one long night in the Anatolian steppes. Many long-buried thoughts and fears are also disinterred in the minds of the investigators as they go about their thankless task. With extraordinary photography from Gokhan Tiryaki, the film slowly insinuates itself as a drama of subtlety and complexity. The Film won the Grand Prix prize at 2011 Cannes Film Festival
Screening followed by Interview: i) Interview with director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (24 mins)

The second film of the evening is “A band of Outsiders” made in the year 1964, directed by French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard.
Four years after Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard reimagined the gangster film even more radically with Band of Outsiders (Bande à part). In it, two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of both of their fancies (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery—in her own home. This audacious and wildly entertaining French New Wave gem is at once sentimental and insouciant, effervescently romantic and melancholy, and it features some of Godard’s most memorable set pieces, including the headlong race through the Louvre and the unshakably cool Madison dance sequence.
Screening followed by Interview/Video Essays:
i) Archival Interview with director Jean-Luc Godard (6 mins)
ii) Visual Glossary of references and quotations in the film (18 mins)

The second film of the evening is “Mother of Mine” (Äideistä parhain), made in the year 2005, directed by Finnish Filmmaker Klaus Härö, based on the novel by Heikki Hietamies. During World War II 70,000 Finnish children were shipped off to Swedish families to be to sheltered till the end of the war. The award-winning Finnish director Klaus Haro tells the story of one such boy, Eero (Topi Majaniemi), a 9-year-old boy who is shipped off to Sweden by his biological mother (Marjaana Maijala) after the death of his father in the war. Confused about this abrupt abandonment by his mother, but unsure about this new world in which he finds himself. Eero lands at the farm of Signe and Hjalmar (Michael Nyqvist), a young couple whose recent loss of a daughter is still fresh in their hearts. While Eero and Hjalmar bond quickly, Signe's wounds are deep and her resentments deeper. Both she and Eero rebel against each other leading to scenes that are almost heartbreakingly tough, tender and tragic. Still, over time, this surrogate family heals and bonds with one another...then, the war is over, watch how the story unfolds.

The second film of the evening is “The Makioka Sisters” made in the year 1983, directed by the noted Japanese Filmmaker Kon Ichikawa. The film is a lyrical adaptation of the beloved novel by Junichiro Tanizaki was a late-career triumph for director Kon Ichikawa. Structured around the changing of the seasons, The Makioka Sisters(Sasame-yuki) follows the lives of four siblings who have taken on their family’s kimono manufacturing business, in the years leading up to the Pacific War. The two oldest have been married for some time, but according to tradition, the rebellious youngest sister cannot wed until the third, conservative and terribly shy, finds a husband. This graceful study of a family at a turning point in history is a poignant evocation of changing times and fading customs, shot in rich, vivid colors.

The second film of the evening is by Iciar Bollain. The film is set in and around Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city, which the movie’s fictional penny-pinching film producer, Costa (Luis Tosar), has chosen as a cheap stand-in for Hispaniola in a movie he is making about Christopher Columbus. The year is 2000, and Costa is unprepared to deal with the real-life populist uprising in Bolivia after its government has sold the country’s water rights to a private multinational consortium.
Local wells from which the people have drawn their water for centuries are abruptly sealed. Riots erupt when the rates charged by the water company prove ruinous. The rebellion ends only after the protests have brought Bolivia to a standstill and the company has withdrawn.

The second film of the evening is “Bad Education” made in the year 2004, directed by the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Set in 1980, film director Enrique Goded (Fele Martnez) gets a visit from Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), the boyhood pal he hasn’t seen since 1964. Ignacio has a script based on his childhood at school when Father Manolo (Daniel Gimenz Cacho) fondled the boys. Ignacio (the prime object of the priest’s abuse) grows up to become Zahara (also Garcia Bernal), a transvestite working clubs with his pal Paca (the hilarious Javier Cmara) and blackmailing the priest for his sins. This story of two priest-abused boys who become lost men is also Almodovar’s most personal film to date — raw with his own feelings about sex, sin, the Catholic Church and the healing power of cinema. Bad Education hides its complex structure under the shimmering surface of a decadent film noir. The film shows how the act of memory can be a sort of cine-autobiography, in which our past appears as a portfolio of dramatised scenes lit up in our head, and the way we mentally direct these scenes - how we write, photograph, edit and cast them - are all governed by the need to control how painful they can be.

The second film of the evening will be The Motorcycle Diaries, made in the year 2004, by Walter Salles. Based on the journals of a young Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, the film chronicles their journey across South America in 1952 on a battered Norton 500 motorcycle. What begins as an adventure of youthful wanderlust slowly transforms into a profound exploration of social injustice, as the two encounter miners, peasants, and lepers who reveal the realities of a divided continent. Gael García Bernal gives a stirring performance as the idealistic medical student whose compassion and outrage foreshadow his revolutionary path, while Rodrigo de la Serna provides warmth and humor as Granado. Cinematographer Eric Gautier captures breathtaking landscapes that become silent witnesses to Guevara’s political awakening. The film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, is both a road movie and a portrait of the making of a conscience.

The second film of the evening will be The Making of the Mahatma, made in the year 1996, by Shyam Benegal. Adapted from Fatima Meer’s book The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma, the film traces Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s twenty-one years in South Africa that shaped him into the leader who would later be called the Father of the Nation. From his early struggles as a lawyer confronting racial discrimination to his experiments with truth, non-violence, and mass mobilization, the film captures Gandhi’s transformation from an ordinary barrister into a political thinker and activist of extraordinary conviction. Rajit Kapur, in a National Award–winning performance, embodies Gandhi with a rare blend of vulnerability and resolve, while Pallavi Joshi as Kasturba provides the emotional counterpoint to his evolving ideals. Benegal’s restrained direction avoids hagiography, instead offering an intimate portrait of a man in the process of becoming. The film was a joint Indian–South African production, underscoring the international roots of Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha.

The second film of the evening “The Tree of Life”made in the year 2011, directed by the acclaimed American director Terrence Mallick. The film can be seen as a memory drama, of the son, played by Sean Penn (an architect, ill at ease with the world), hinging on the death of a younger brother at nineteen; the whole film might be a poem of deep grief diffused over a lifetime. The time remembered—the time that preceded that catastrophic loss—is the 1950s in a suburb of Waco, Texas. The elusive thread of a story concerns the early life of a boy with two brothers, a devoted but unavoidably scary father, and an adored mother. The father, wonderfully played by Brad Pitt, is a complex memory-portrait put together out of broken slivers, his mass of patents for his profitless inventions, his outbursts of patriarchal rage, his final muted admission of his own inadequacies.

The second film of the evening “The Edge of Heaven” is from the year 2007, directed by the acclaimed German-Turkish director Fatih Akin. Billed as the second instalment in the director's 'Love, Death and the Devil' trilogy, it offers a technically accomplished and deeply compassionate meditation on loss and consolation, as its mosaic narrative follows the intersecting lives of six characters travelling between Istanbul and Hamburg. These include a professor of German at Hamburg University, a political refugee fleeing her native Turkey, and the conservative, middle-aged mother, who travels to Istanbul in the wake of her daughter's death. As in Akin's earlier works, the numerous instances of intercultural exchange throw up insights into the dynamics of east-west relationships, but these are, for the most part, observational and incidental - bumps rather than clashes of culture.