Vote for the MWFF’09 Poster!
The official website for the Montreal World Film Festival has opened up voting for their festival poster contest. Of the 160 submissions, six finalists were chosen. You can vote by e-mail until May 4th to choose the new look for the 2009 edition. Continue to see the finalists from graphic artists Ian Goulbourne, Laurent Grislain, Mathiew Lavoie, Azarnoush Nazari, Nima Farzaneh, Isabelle Pepin and Chlöé Surprenant. Read more »
Film Festivals | 
April 26, 2009 | No Comments »
Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Four Chapters (Chaturanga) is a film that deals with timeless issues: religion vs. reason, the status of women, and the dichotomy of Western ideas vs. Eastern ideas. Based on a novel by Novel-prize winning Rabindranath Tagore, the film is about Sachish, a man wrestling with the numerous ideas and worldviews life has to offer, and ultimately the inability to really follow just one. What makes Chaturanga of such interest is its ability to act as heuristic device for discussion on such issues; much of this is credited to the original author. At a running time of over two hours, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s latest is a rare beast in that it is split into four chapters, the first two of which seem to lead nowhere, and the last two of which have some particularly potent and revelatory scenes that make sense of the first half of the film. 
Part of the Montreal World Film Festival’s official selection in World Competition, Departures (Okuribito), directed by Yojiro Takita, is a picture of emotional beauty. Celloist Daigo Kobayashi departs from city life with his wife after the orchestra disbands and moves back to his home town in rural Japan. His job searching leads him to an ad in a newspaper advertising “departures” as the job description. Assuming work in a travel agency, Daigo is shocked to discover the work involves taking part in the Japanese death ritual of preparing the body of the dead for burial or incineration. Departures reveals to the world a heartfelt story through a cultural ritual that will feel alien to Western audiences. 
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