And, Towards Happy Alleys [2023]

 And, Towards Happy Alleys – to paraphrase its director Sreemoyee Singh’s cogent summation – is a political film, albeit made poetically. This delicate balance between its eloquent feminist voice and wistfully lyrical aesthetics, as well as defiant expression of solidarity and touchingly intimate diary form, both informed and shaped this remarkable documentary essay. Germinated during her doctoral thesis, and over six years in the making during which the Jadavpur University alumnus made frequent trips to Iran, stayed for stretches in Tehran, and even learnt Persian to enable better cultural appreciation and meaningful exchanges, this pean to Iranian cinema, poetry, and collective resistance by the country’s women, artists, activists and citizens – against patriarchy, repression and censorship – marked a stirring transition for her from Film Studies into filmmaking. It covered a surprisingly large ground for its brisk length – interviews with the great dissenting auteur Jafar Panahi, fearless human rights activist Nasrin Sotudeh, actor Mohammad Shirvani et al; paying heartfelt homages to the iconoclastic feminist poet Forough Farrokhzad and filmmaking giant Abbas Kiarostami; observing people and life through her empathetic lens; and cataloguing her lived experiences in this vibrant city. The film, interestingly, is filled with memorable moments that added ironic, self-reflexive and even metatextual touches – Panahi cheekily evoking Taxi Tehran; Aida Mohammadkhani’s emotionally charged reliving of The White Balloon by locking gaze with Panahi; director Mohammad Shirvani’s views on eroticism getting inadvertently “censored” by his neighbour’s drilling machine; Singh’s melodious crooning of Persian songs gaining rousing meanings given the ban on solo female singing; reimagining of Offside during the 2018 football World Cup; and foreshadowing the ‘Mahsa Amini Protests’ that would lead to 38 years’ imprisonment for Sotudeh subsequent to her interviews here.

Director: Sreemoyee Singh

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Diary Film

Language: English/Persian

Country: India

John & Jane [2005]

 One of India’s most ubiquitous modern-day contributions to world economy – pejoratively speaking, of course – might just be white-collar sweatshops, viz. 24/7 outsourced call centers. There, college-educated, English-speaking youngsters slog for a pittance, and often at the oddest of hours, for jobs that’re far more profitable to relocate from the US to the other side of the globe; and, ironically, they must also impersonate Americans – by taking false names and imbibing fake accents – and display artificial geniality even while facing bad behavior, as part of the standard operating procedure. In his gently observational documentary and debut feature John & Jane – made 6 years before the dazzling B-movie homage Miss Lovely – Ashim Ahluwalia provided a wry and at times captivating peek into this cloistered world driven by efficiency, targets, fakery and relentless salesmanship. The filmmaker weaved his narrative through short vignettes focusing on six young women and men employed in this sector – the cynical, lively “Glenn”; the effervescent, dance-loving “Sydney”; the hyper-optimistic “Osmond” brainwashed by the “American Dream”; the homely “Nicki”; the upbeat “Naomi”; and “Nicholas”, who gets only a brief window with his wife at a deserted McDonald’s over breakfast, due to their contrasting shifts, reminded me of the delightful Bengali film Asha Jaoar Majhe. And their stories were alternated with shots of jam-packed executives making desperate sales pitches to disinterested customers in the US or calming frayed nerves of agitated callers, along with their training on the American way of life that bordered on crass propaganda. Ahluwalia, interestingly, largely avoided judgemental standpoints or pointed tones, which made it a sedate, low-key affair that was affecting if not incisive, while also blurring the lines between straight-up documentation and performative elements.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Ashim Ahluwalia

Genre: Documentary

Language: English

Country: India