Maati Maay (A Grave-Keeper’s Tale). 2006. India. Written and directed by Chitra Palekar
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Printed Rainbow. 2006. India. Directed and animated by Gitanjali Rao |
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Maati Maay (A Grave-Keeper’s Tale). 2006. India. Written and directed by Chitra Palekar. With Nandita Das, Kshitij Gavande, Atul Kulkarni. Widely admired for her performances on screen and on the Marathi avant-garde stage, Palekar makes her directorial feature debut with this forceful adaptation of the short story "Baayen" ("Witch") by the well-known author Mahasweta Devi. A young woman, torn between familial and lower-caste duties and her own maternal instincts, makes a fateful decision to abandon her sacred responsibility as the caretaker of a children’s graveyard. Fearful that the nursing mother has become an evil spirit, the superstitious villagers banish her to a life of poverty and isolation. Palekar’s intricate interweaving of past and present, Debu Deodhar’s stunning location photography in the stark landscape of northern Maharashtra, and the impassioned performances of Nandita Das (star of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Water) as the wild-eyed outcast and thirteen-year-old non-professional Gavande as the boy who is strangely drawn to her, imbue this feminist ghost tale with grandly tragic overtones. In Marathi, English subtitles. 98 min. New York premiere.
Preceded by Printed Rainbow. 2006. India. Directed and animated by Gitanjali Rao. In Rao’s gorgeously animated short, winner of three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, a lonely old woman dreams of traveling the magical worlds printed on her precious collection of matchboxes. 15 min. New York premiere.
Saturday, April 28, 6:15; Monday, April 30, 5:30. T1 |
