A farewell to Kara

The Arts Council Theatre opened the doors of its auditorium last weekend for the screening of the last movie to show at the Sixth KaraFilm Festival, Immaculate Conception by Jamil Dehlavi. A huge crowd had gathered in the hallway, most waiting patiently while a few complained consequent to the 45-minute delay. Within minutes, the same crowd dispersed to fill the auditorium seats and the movie began. Post-screening, a question and answer session took place.

The Sixth KaraFilm Festival, which carried the Ghalib-inspired tagline of Tamanna Ka Chatta Qadam (the sixth step of desire), was symbolised by a butterfly over a desert rose, the desert rose being used as a symbol for Karachi. The sixth Kara also carried forward a tradition of having the film-maker and the audience interact, a move which no doubt proved to be popular among movie-enthusiasts, students of film-making and anyone who was interested. Instances in which a film began late were rare and occurred in a select few, which was a welcome change from last year’s Kara.

he venue featured a creatively done up stage with a grid of screens showing scenes from different movies towards the right side and the Kara butterfly set against colourful squares at the other end. Although beautiful to look at, the set-design was not ideal for performances since the sheer detail tended to distract the viewers’ focus from those performing during the ceremony. There were large screens scattered throughout the venue which displayed the names of the award winners and clips from the Ciepie- (pronounced seepee meaning seashell) winning movies.

The event was hosted by Adnan Malik and Zainab Qayyum to a full house comprising politicians, musicians, television personalities, businessmen and film-makers. Although their tenure on stage seemed well scripted, one could not help but notice how they, at times, seemed to blatantly read from the bits of papers they carried.

It was interesting to note that although the featured directors for the current Kara were Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, British-desi film-maker Jamil Dehlavi and the French film-maker Frabcoise Traffic, the one movie that sold out before the day of its showing and which managed to elicit the largest crowd was the Indian import, Omkara, no doubt for the star power it wielded in the form of an appearance by Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan. This was evident from the small group of people that seemed to monitor every move he made and followed him everywhere (even to the restroom where additional security had to be posted) at the closing ceremony that took place at the PAF Museum.

The first performers of the evening were a French jazz band that went by the name of Caravan Quartet, courtesy of the Alliance Françoise. Although their backstage warm up depicted them as skilful musicians, they failed to create much of a presence on stage (save for those sitting near the front). A major reason can be accounted to the fact that the sound during their performance wasn’t good. They closed their performance with a song about “the relationship between a man and a woman”.

Begum Nawazish Ali took the stage before the second group of musicians came up and sent the audience rollicking with her cleverly humourous take on the film-makers present and on the movies that were meant to be. Donning a new blonde look, no one was spared from the Begum’s suggestive comments as she engaged the audience for roughly half-an-hour before prancing off stage.

Sajid and Zeeshan, the second act to perform, started off with their animated single, Freestyle Dive. Complementing their performance were clips from their videos and graphics that were being displayed on the screens around the hall. They went on to perform a non-video single off their debut album titled Free And Underestimated, and subsequently closed the performance with the extended version of their single King of Self, which they dedicated to Kara. The sound during their performance was much better and could be heard clearly. Though one isn’t sure whether their performance fully catered to the audience present, the response they elicited was much better than the one that was given to the Caravan Quartet.

But the real stars of the evening were Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood of Strings, also the last act to perform and by then the evening had dragged on into the wee hours of the morning with the audience quietly raving for food. They performed some of their most popular singles from Na Jaane Kyon to the rock version of their recently popular number, Yeh Hai Meri Kahani, with which they closed their act. They proved to be immensely popular with the crowd, both young and old.

Besides the incredibly prolonged duration of the event, the only other criticism is that there just seemed to be too many awards that were given out. Most of those who were given the awards weren’t present and out of those who were, Ahmed Rizvi’s acceptance for the awards given to Man Push Cart was the most memorable. The sixth KaraFilm Festival has come a long way from its inception, and anticipation for the seventh one has already begun.


Kara Awards

Best live action short:
Tricko (The T-Shirt) by Hossein Martin Fazeli (Czech Republic) Avatar by Llvis Quilez (Spain)

Best animated short:
Adjustment by Ian Mackinnon (United Kingdom)

Best Pakistani film made for television:
Daani directed by Farooq Rind and produced by Khalid Ahmed

Best documentary:
AFSPA, 1958 by Haobam Paban Kumar (India)
Fuego de Angel (Angel’s Fire) directed by Marcelo Bukin (Spain and Peru)

Best female actor in a leading role:
Nathalie Baye in Le Petit Lieutenant (France)

Best male actor in a leading role:
Saif Ali Khan in Omkara (India)
Ahmad Razvi in Man Push Cart (US)

Best female actor in a supporting role:
Rukayya Prachi in Ontorjatra (Bangladesh)

Best male actor in a supporting role:
Raza Jaffrey in Infinite Justice (UK-Pakistan)

Best cinematography:
Marcel Zyskind for The Road to Guantanamo (UK)

Best editing:
Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom for
The Road to Guantanamo (United Kingdom)

Best original screenplay:
Jaideep Sahni for Khosla Ka Ghosla (India)

Best adapted screenplay:
Vishal Bharadwaj, Robin Bhatt and Abhishek Chaubey for Omkara (India)

Best musical score:
Vishal Bharadwaj for Omkara (India)

Best direction:
Ramin Bahrani for Man Push Cart (US)

Best feature film:
Girish Kasaravalli for Nayi Neralu (In the Shadow of a Dog) from India

Lifetime achievement award (1):
Talat Hussain

Lifetime achievement award (2):
S. B. John

KaraFilm Society award:
Mahesh Bhatt


First Published:
Images
December 24th, 2006