REVIEWS FLASH FORWARD Joan And The Voices


Director Mikayel Vatinyan. Armenia. 2011. 64mins Production companies Hoshkee Film Producer Armine Anda Screenplay Mikayel Vatinyan, Armine Anda DoP Tammam Hamza Production design Ivana Krcadinac Editors Tammam Hamza, Arthur Petrossyan Music Arthur Manoukyan Main cast Armine Anda, Mikayel Vatinyan


Armenian director Mikayel Vatin- yan’s debut feature, Joan And The Voices, is an experimental work stripped to the bone, more a collec- tion of images than a coherent story. Though the film does engage the


viewer on some level, and the images themselves are sometimes breathtaking, the almost total lack of human interaction on-screen will relegate this work to a niche audience. Joan And The Voices, premiering


in the Flash Forward section, depicts a woman travelling through various regions of post-war Arme- nia, conducting interviews with a diverse collection of people — though this only becomes clear in the closing minutes of the film because the interviews themselves are not shown. What we see is a series of recur-


ring situations: a man hiding out in the rubble-strewn wreckage of a building, machinery at a grain mill, a snowy mountainous landscape, a


mine shaft, and children being taught in what appears to be a school for the arts. The students’ recitation of sections from The Pas- sion Of Joan Of Arc, and the instruc- tions given by their teachers, make up almost completely the spoken lines in the film. Vatinyan (who, with producer/


co-screenwriter Armine, acts in the film) avoids providing any context for the scenes he presents, so the viewer experiences them on a purely visual level. A thematic connection with Joan


of Arc’s testimony about hearing voices is implied strongly, and seemingly accounts for the almost total lack of voices heard within the film itself. Joan And The Voices received


development and post-production support from Sweden’s Gothenburg International Film Festival and also participated in the Pusan Promo- tion Plan (now renamed the Asian Project Market) in 2007.


AWINDOW ON ASIAN CINEMA The Temple


Director Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni. Ind. 2011. 135mins Production companies Devisha Films Sales TBC Producers Abhijeet Gholap Screenplay Girish Pandurang Kulkarni DoP Sudhakar Yakkanti Production design Nitin Chandrakant Desai Lyrics Swanand Kirkire Main cast Nana Patekar, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Sonali Kulkarni, Mohan Agashe, Girish Kulkarni


Indian director Umesh Kulkarni’s third film, The Temple, is a real achievement in film satire: a skil- fully shot and raucously told story of a rural village’s transformation. The Marathi-language film —


which received a Hubert Bals award at last year’s NFDC Film Bazaar in Goa — can expect strong reviews and a healthy festival career over the coming year. Kulkarni’s previous films The Wild Bull (2008) and The Well (2009) both screened at Berlin. The story begins as a simple


herdsman named Kesha, while fol- lowing his cow, has a vision of the god Shri Guru Dutta. Rushing off to tell the other


members of his underdeveloped vil- lage, he is met initially with ridicule and disbelief from all but his mother. However as time passes, the villagers begin to interpret various auspicious events in relation to Kes- ha’s vision. When marks appear on the tree


where Kesha witnessed the deity (in reality, we see they are made by a


n 18 Screen International October 2011


passing repairman), the village is fully convinced. A local journalist, who has been


writing about Kesha’s vision, sug- gests building a temple on the spot, and several politically ambitious locals back the project. Soon, thanks to wide publicity, pilgrims from far and wide begin to visit the temple and economic forces quickly trans- form the town. Kulkarni excels at handling the


large ensemble cast of characters, who make up a bewildering array of egos and idiosyncrasies. He is also skilled at capturing the dislocating speed of the village’s transforma- tion, by creating a highly distinctive rhythm through editing, verbal tim- ing and the occasional use of music. The comic situations are thor-


oughly entertaining, but these also raise issues related to economic development, corruption and reli- gious belief. To his credit, Kulkarni never drives home these points, but leaves the audience to tease them out on their own.


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