/ARTS WEEKLY/FILMS: Asian Cinema Gets Raunchy but With a Cause

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alka Singh

NEW DELHI, Aug 2 2005 (IPS) - If there is a case for saying that Asian – including traditionally conservative Arab cinema – is going the raunchy way, there is equally another one that argues that sexuality is now being examined by regional filmmakers in a more sensitive way than ever before.

Much of that point-counterpoint was available to viewers and critics at the 10-day 7th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival that was billed as ”the largest showcase of Asian cinema” by its promoters when it concluded on Jul. 24.

With 120 films from just over 30 countries being screened to capacity crowds, the claim was justifiable though what exactly drew in the crowds continues to be debatable and veers between raunchy and sensitive portrayals of sexuality.

Take Niki Karimi, the Iranian actress-director’s ‘One Night’, which looks at the experiences of Negar, a young girl who is asked by her mother to spend a night away from home, so she would not be in the way of a male guest.

There is more exposure to the lies and deception that surround human sexual relationships when Negar steps out into the streets of Tehran and Karimi’s portrayal of sexuality actually serves as ”a tool to articulate gender problems.”

”The lies, violence and sex seethe under the surface and people look for a foothold in all of this,” said Karimi.

Neville Tulli, chairman of the Osian’s Festival, rubbishes the point of explicitness saying that the media likes to focus only on a particular thing, excluding all others. He opines that if a picture of a woman smoking is exhibited it does not mean it is a universal reality.

In ‘Cry no More’, another Iranian film, a shepherd woman is shown bathing but is loved by a man in spite of her bad reputation. He touches her gently, she takes off her wrap and says, ”Take me like other men have. I will feel nothing because you too are a man”.

Later when she inducts her young daughter too into prostitution, the man gets the point and says, ”So I have to be a woman to feel hurt, wounded and humiliated."

He puts on eye make-up, reddens his lips and dons a woman’s gown and asks her, ”Now will you accept me?” in a way that did move the audiences, going by the absence of catcalls in the movie theatre.

It would seem that directors are even drawing from the past to give a new orientation to the treatment of sex and sexuality. ‘Borrowed Bride’, a Turkish offering, examined, for example, the defunct practice in which women were employed to teach prospective husbands the finer points of sex.

”What interested me was that sex education was practiced freely through a respected institution at a time (in the mid-1930s) when strict Islamic codes were in force ,” said the film’s director Atif Yilmaz in a note circulated at the screening.

Asked about the trend Neville Tulli, chairman of the Osian’s Festival said he could discern no such thing. ”If films show women smoking it still does not reflect a universal reality.”

But in on reform or another the majority of the films that were on show dealt with sex and sexuality.

‘Nisshabd’ (Silence), which bagged the prize for the best Indian entry, is a story of a man desperate to find himself through his childhood friend and love ‘Sonali’ but is frustrated by what amounts to an obsession.

The director,Jahar Kanungo, explained that the story was really that of a selfish man who was doomed to rejection because his approach was flawed.

To be sure the Osian Festival had other themes too. The entry that bagged the prize for the Best Asian Film, ‘Of Love and Eggs’ , by the Indonesian director Garin Nugroho was popular for its humourous portrayal of the rebellion of a boy who sells ducks’ eggs in a Jakarta market and because it managed to project the benevolent side of Islam through the character of a bumbling imam (preacher).

Yet some of the more memorable ones did deal with sexuality and too in a way that could be considered revolutionary anywhere in the world and was clearly indicative of a new in Asian cinema which once tended to be romantic fantasies.

The Thai entry, ‘Iron Ladies’, told the story of a group of transvestites who are successful as a volleyball team while Tsai Min Liang’s ‘The Wayward Cloud’ has been described as ”an attempt to turn pornography into art.”

Said Sharon Lowen, the Detroit-born danseuse who lives in India, ”People who go into creative arts – films or the performing arts – have a deep desire to communicate and films have so many rich possibilities to bring a vision to life on a grand scale and express themselves.”

Lowen told IPS she wished the films at the festival could have been shown to a really wide public. ”If everybody saw these films that would have gone a long way towards neutralising fears and sense of otherness that people have”.

”These film makers have experienced what has been transformed by creative work on the screen. They all have a burning desire to touch others as they have been touched,” Lowen said.

There were other trends discernible too. One filmmaker, when asked what was happening to the fantasy that Asian cinema was once known for, replied: ” Fantasy has gone to the west and realism has come to the east ”.

”In the West, cinema has become computer-oriented while Asian / Arab cinema has become more rooted in today’s reality and both have passed through such turbulent times over the last two decades”.

Most of the competition films and other sections had women protagonists but with a difference. The Asian woman is now seen as someone who changes the course of things because she suffers most from the changes taking place in a developing world.

So, in the Osian Festival love is only incidental and couples are forced together for reasons of convenience or survival, said Bhushan Nagpal, film critic and one of the main organisers.

”Today’s protagonist could be a Bengali prostitute who has to cross the border in order to survive and manipulates both love and religion just to stay alive in a new and hostile environment,” Nagpal said.