Director: TAREQUE MASUD
Cast: NURUL ISLAM BABLU RUSSELL FARAZI JAYANTO CHATTOPADHYAY ROKEYA PRACHY
Synopsis: Tareque Masud's marvellous, Cannes award-winning story tells of family life during the upheavals of East Pakistan in the 1960s. Anu is a village boy sent to religious school by his fundamentalist father. There Anu befriends his irrepressible classmate Rokon and encounters Ibrahim, a teacher unbound by rigid ideology. When Anu returns home for the holidays he finds his village vibrant with festivity, but all is not well as the widening gap between his parents develops into a tacit conflict thatreflects the country's growing political unrest.
Director: GOUTAM GHOSE
Cast: SOUMITRA CHATTERJEE SHARMILA TAGORE TABU SUBENDHU CHATTERJEE CHAMPA
Synopsis: In the sixties, in Satyajit Ray's 'Days and Nights in the Forest', four city-bred young men had wandered into the jungles of Palamau for a vacation. In the new millennium, three of of them decide to return to the forest on a trip down memory lane in "In the Forest... Again." One of the friends, however, has passed away and another is dying of cancer. In this new trip, they are accompanied by their spouses and children as they try to relive and rediscover the joys of the past. In the forest, they find peace in a picturesque setting, a seemingly dream-induced freedom away from reality. That is, until, reality comes back to impinge in a strikingly unusual way...
Synopsis: A hit with audiences at the Venice International Film Festival this past September, Goutam Ghose's new film gives it viewers an intimate experience in the company of the Dalai Lama. Ghose began shooting for Impermanence in 1998. The film captures the Dalai Lama on his worldwide tours -- including Europe and records the Dalai Lama's interaction with his followers at Dharmasala. Beautiful shots of Tibet, interspersed with accounts from the locals, give the film an essential ethnic look and feel. "I tried to capture the philosopher Dalai Lama, who believes in the impermanence of life as exemplified in Buddhism. Only peace and compassion can turn our short stint in this world into a happy one. He calls upon his followers not to expect any miracle from him as he is an ordinary man who can only share suffering with fellow human beings."
Director: NASREEN MUNNI KABIR
Synopsis: The much-hyped, eagerly anticipated documentary on one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Nasreen Munni Kabir has created a quiet profile of a thoughtful man and reveals how one of the film's most public personalities remains a deep, pensive, lonely, and ultimately loving soul.
Director : M.F. HUSSAIN
Music: A.R. RAHMAN
Cast: TABU RAHUVIR YADAV NADIRA BABAAR
Synopsis: Meenaxi, a collaboration between India's pre-eminent artist M. F. Husain and his painter son Qwais Husain, is at once a quiet and gorgeously expansive look at the relationship between art and reality.
Nawab (Raghvir Yadav), a popular novelist of Hyderabad, is suffering from the classic case of a writer's block. Five years have elapsed. Stories of substance seem to have dried up. Almost providentially, Nawab comes across Meenaxi (Tabu) at a traditional qawwali ceremony. The young woman is enigmatic and individualistic. She's not quite willing to perform the part of a passive muse.
Meenaxi assumes different personae. She can be the mysterious perfume trader of Hyderabad, the exotic desert bloom of Jaisalmer and the orphaned Maria of Prague. Inexorably, she consolidates her command over the novelist. She dismisses his renewed attempts at writing as insubstantial and hackneyed, plunging him into a state of deeper despair. She is scathingly critical about his story and is amused by one of the characters he creates, the lovelorn and awkward kaameshwar. Nawab strives to start on a new page all over again. Meenaxi comments that perhaps the book is in vain. In any case, it is much too late. The writer must survive and live, if he can, without her support, inspiration and criticism. Delving into the limitless world of creative endeavour and the vicissitudes in the way of such endeavours, Meenaxi : Tale of 3 Cities approaches myriad aspects, the relationship between art, the real and the imagined being just one of them.
With what some consider A.R. Rahman's best music to date, Meenaxi leaves itself open to interpretations and readings by every viewer and takes Indian cinema to unprecedented heights of aesthetic beauty.
