Flandres

Came to know about Bruno Dumont in the 'Rendezvous with French cinema' organized in the Lincoln Center at New York. I am not aware of the current developments in French cinema, but this movie didn't seem to be an exceptional one. I didn't find the director to exceptionally good either that I would expect any better movies from him.

Like a typical on-stage conversation in performing arts, there were some questions and answers exchanged about the way director works, how much and what importance does he give to the script and so on - probably because of the abundance of budding movie-makers in the screening.

There is nothing much substantial in the movie that I could compare to the great movies I have watched in the past. There is thus very little I would recollect from the movie. Still one of the scenes would stay in memory for an interesting follow up. There is this scene in the movie which I didn't completely understand while watching it, where the woman raises up on her heels and the camera focuses on her from above. When Bruno was asked to explain this a little further, he mentioned that it is only the woman who is living within her body unlike the others in the movie. When rising up on her heels, she feels the whole exterior world in a resonating manner.

An interesting question that thus followed from one of the female audiences that why doesn't she herself feel anything like what Bruno said while watching the movie. Bruno's simple answer was that it is because he is a male, and she is a female. There are differences in the way we look at the universe and he completely admits that.

The memorable experience from this visit would be the Lincoln Center itself. This was one experience that I can connect really well to the screening of Rituporno's movies in Chowdiah memorial hall at Bangalore, India. Even though Bangalore never felt like New York, this was an experience similar in many ways. I walk into the building brimming with chitchats in a language I don't fully understand (Bangla/French). There is a strange unfamiliarity in the air which is somehow soothing because it serves as an escape from the world that surrounds it. I guess that is how it would be for any immigrant if he enters into such tents erected by other immigrants; those who don't belong here and have a world of their own that no outsider is welcome to, still they continue to share the inescapable common ground that belongs to everyone and yet it is no one's.