Indian silent film ‘White’ offers rape survivor tales
Cannes blasts legal bid to thwart Gilliam premiere
LOS ANGELES, May 1, (Agencies): Rape. The topic is never easy to talk about, is stubbornly topical, and infuriatingly Indian. So it is appropriate, perhaps, that an Indian silent film “White” will be offered to buyers next week at the Cannes Film Market, an adjunct of the Cannes Film Festival.
“White” comprises three tales of survival; the narrative of a factory girl abused at work; an unwanted child’s return home after being brought up in an orphanage; and a husband’s acceptance of a child born from the rape of his wife by another man. It stars Kaushik Roy, and Arjaa Banerjee.
The film is directed by Aneek Chaudhury, whose previous directing effort “The Wife’s Letter” was a 2016 amalgamation of Salvador Dali’s artform and a short story by India’s Rabindranath Tragore. Production is by Laartiste productions and international sales by US-based Adler & Associates Entertainment.
“Rape leads to a suffering that needs no words to explain. It is a subject that is universal. I wanted it to connect to a wider group of audiences and did not want language to be a barrier. Visual expressions make a film more identifiable than spoken words,” Choudhury told Variety. “I wanted the pain of the characters to be empathized by a person sitting in an Indian slum, as well as by a person staying in Europe.”
Chuadhury says the title is a symbol of hope. “Here, ‘White’ refers to an existing goodness amidst tons of diabolic happenings. I wanted to stress more on the positive side i.e. strength of women to nullify darkness, who fight the odds of life, even after getting raped.”
The Cannes Film Festival on Monday denounced an attempt to thwart the world premiere of one of the most cursed films in history, standing by its director, Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam.
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote”, which Gilliam has finally finished after nearly two decades of repeated disasters, was due to close the world’s top film festival in the south of France next month.
Legal
But the comedy’s former producer Paulo Branco launched a legal challenge last Wednesday to stop the screening and its French cinema release, claiming that his company Alfama Films owns the rights.
Festival organisers said Monday that they backed Gilliam, although they will respect a court ruling due on May 7 — a day before Cannes opens — on whether or not the screening can go ahead.
“We stand squarely on the side of filmmakers and in particular on the side of Terry Gilliam,” they said in a statement.
“We know how important this project, which has gone through so many trials and tribulations, is to him,” it added.
Gilliam’s various attempts to shoot the surreal story have been beset by a series of calamities worthy of a film themselves — they are in fact the subject of an acclaimed 2002 documentary, “Lost in La Mancha”.
The set was washed away during an aborted attempt to make it in 2000 starring Johnny Depp, when the lead actor Jean Rochefort also had to be airlifted to hospital after falling ill.
A host of Hollywood stars including Ewan McGregor, John Hurt, Robert Duvall and Jack O’Connell were later linked with the project, but each time the production fell through.
Branco insists that he holds the rights to the film, but Gilliam argues that the Portuguese producer lost his stake when he failed to raise enough money to make Cervantes’ “unfilmable” novel in 2016.
The producer then tried and failed to block a new and successful shoot last year, starring “Star Wars” actor Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce.
Judges in France and Britain have previously sided with Branco in a series of rulings in the long-running dispute.
Branco has accused Gilliam and the festival organisers of trying to “railroad” through the Cannes premiere and French release before the courts have had their final say.
Cannes organisers shot back, accusing Branco and his lawyer — his son Juan Branco, who also represents WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange — of “intimidation and defamatory statements, as derisory as they are ridiculous”. “Defeat would be to succumb to threats,” they said of the dispute. They added that in a year when two filmmakers in the main Cannes competition are under house arrest, “it is more important than ever to remember that artists need us to support them, not attack them.”
Branco hit back through his legal team Monday, condemning the “virulence and aggression” of the festival’s organisers, “which would change nothing”.