I View World film festival 2020 – MAADATHY
Watch Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale at I-View World Film Festival alongwith several other gem of the films for free on the Plexigo app from 10-20 December! Visit www.plexigo.com/iviewworld2020 for the full line-up and details on how to register and watch films.
Maadathy speaks French now-Les Rimbaud du Cinema Awards 2020
Maadathy speaks French now. Super thrilled to share with you the good news that Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale is the finalist at “Les Rimbaud du Cinema Awards”. The Festival is a sassy feast of invisible cinema, which celebrates the truest spirit of independent cinematic achievements and honours the words of Poet Rimbaud:“What can I say ? – in a terrible way I insist on worshipping freedom.”
“Les Rimbaud Jury” is composed of professionals drawn from the world of culture and counter-culture (literature , music, architecture, dance, sculpture, etc.) who share the love of independent cinema. Maadathy is also viewed as the pick of the year 2020 by registered members of “The Archipelago of Les Rimbaud du Cinema.” who will give away Public Jury Award too.
Winning films will be distributed in France and internationally. Fingers crossed.
Maadathy, an Unfairy Tale Movie Review: CINEMA EXPRESS.COM
Leena Manimekalai’s blazing, poignant tale of terror
Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy is a rare tale of oppression that gushes with the frenzy of terror and ventures into an inventive genre
Leena Manimekalai’s film, Maadathy – An Unfairy tale, premiered as part of the Coalition of South Asian Film Festival today. Watching Leena’s poignant and powerful film rendered in a stunning visual language, we realise that the tag ‘An Unfairy tale’ is only too apt. Leena fiercely channels gutting truth, horror and pain in her film, which blends the human and the otherworldly as it blazes against the unnatural and inhuman divisions existing in our cruel society.
Director: Leena Manimekalai
Cast: Semmalar Annam, Ajmina Kassim, Arul Kumar, Patrick Raj
Maadathy bears an unsettling relevance to what is currently happening in our nation where religious and communal tensions are rising to the fore. The opening lines chronicle a truth we often tend to overlook as a society, a truth of terror: “Behind every deity in India, there is a story of injustice.” Empowered by a singular narrative unravelling like a folk tale, the finely-layered social drama is the story of this injustice. Our reverence towards religion is deeply tainted by delusions, insanity, and hypocrisy. With what sanity can you comprehend a country which treats its women in the most despicable of ways and rushes to raise temples for goddesses?
Maadathy is a devastating portrait of the inhumanely ostracised lower caste community called the Puthirai Vannars and how the ruthlessness of caste scorches Yosana, a young girl who hails from the Dalit sect. In an intimate scene, when Yosana confronts her mother who keeps chiding her for roaming in the wild, she is told that the beasts of villagers will never let them live. When we first see the villagers, it is in a painting, and we see them for what they truly are: blind ghosts. The film then transitions breathtakingly from painting to reality, from fable to truth. There is a marvellous prowess in the eloquent cinematic style of Leena that elevates her on par with auteurs like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the independent Thai filmmaker known for his phantasmagorical political films with mesmeric underpinnings of allegory. Leena’s visual language is painterly, poetic and evocative of wrenching agony.
Yosana, the film’s central character, bears a spirit that yearns to be free and wild, a spirit that naturally yearns to love. Yet, a higher price is asked of her and in harrowing terror, she becomes one with Maadathy. The inverse is also true as the film is revelatory of the dichotomy of the holy and sinful. Yosana (a wonderful Ajmina Kassim) is part of nature, her sole friends being rabbits, pigeons and monkeys in the mountainous forest region where her family resides, away from the village. She splashes around in the waters and when she is wronged, the thundering skies pour down ceaselessly in pain and anger. Leena’s film takes us deep into the forests, where we find the woods at their most liberating, sensual and frightful — it is both chilling and gorgeous. The forest is Yosana’s paradise, refuge and home. When she steps out of the forest, a beastly society preys on her innocence and life.
I can’t resist talking here about a rousing sequence of female desire in Maadathy, which reveals with striking power why female gaze in cinema is refreshing and beautifully sensitive. It is a brief lyrical sequence which I honestly did not think I would see soon in a Tamil film. It is a moment of a girl’s first rush of desire, her sexual awakening when she spots a man bathing nude in the cascade waters. Karthik Raja’s haunting melody subtly underscores the ecstatic bliss of the moment. His music shifts magically from melody and melancholy to thumping rustic folk.
These wondrous scenes of beauty aside, the horror in Maadathy is visceral. After Yosana’s mother is abused, she takes out her rage on the clothes she washes. She maniacally beats them on the washing rocks and rends the clothes. It is excruciatingly gutting that even her sole vent could land the family in trouble with the village.
A fantastically-made independent film rooted in the ugly reality and irony of India, Leena’s Maadathy is a rare tale of oppression that gushes with the frenzy of terror and ventures into an inventive genre. Leena Manimekalai is a definitive voice in Indian independent cinema, and her Maadathy: an Unfairy Tale remarkably exudes the power of cinema, of storytelling that is poignantly reflective of a society where legends of sin circle and haunt our deities.
Tune in to cosaff.org for the Virtual North American Premiere of Oct 8, 5pm
Tune in to cosaff.org for the Virtual North American Premiere of Oct 8, 5pm (Pacific Standard Time) and Oct 9, 5.30am(Indian Standard Time). This is my first experience to be part of a virtual premiere in my 18 years of film practice and travel(physical all the time) to more than hundred International Film Festivals with my films. Pandemic teaches new lessons.I will have my lead actors Ajmina Kassim and Semmalar Annam and my cinematographer/co-producer Abinandhan Ramanujam joining the Q&A after the premiere.
Ajmina Kassim was just 15 when she played Yosana, the protagonist in the film. Being a singer and a malayali, she learnt Tamil like her music lessons. Sutharsan who worked as my AD and also from the same community whose story we were trying to portray, trained her in dialogues almost for two months. She learnt swimming in forest lakes and rivers from the local swimming instructor in Papanasam, village in Tirunelveli district. She wasn’t wearing footwear in the entire film and she had to practise climbing hills, taming the wild. She lent herself to the soul of Yosana to embrace her. She won the best actor award in Aurangabad International Film Festival for her performance in Maadathy and I am sure there is more coming on her way.
If Ajmina is the goddess, Semmalar Annam is the mother of goddess. Inspite of being pregnant she stayedin Papanasam when we had rehearsals with the community for weeks together. With Sudar in her womb, she braved the rough western ghats playing Veni, the character I had created as the archetype of feminine power facing the harshest oppression of caste and gender for centuries. I should confess I rewrote and added scenes to give room to her brilliance and yet she was wanting more. I have posted a location still of the toughest scene for me as a Director in the film. Filming sexual violence with humanity is oxymoronic and as a woman and an author I was fighting that demon throughout the creation of this film.Without Semmalar, I wouldn’t have gathered courage to attempt it. Her feet in the scene is the feet of every woman who has walked this universe.
When I ran into a crisis after a week of shoot and months of pre production, when everything around became bleaker to continue the project, when I was running in every possible direction for help and support to continue the production, Abinandhan Ramanujam gave his shoulders to lean on. Without him, I wouldn’t have completed the film. For him, doing the impossible is fun. We may be from two different schools of thought aesthetically and politically, but we had a bond to find a meeting point for collaboration beyond our differences. Cinema has always been my big open door for letting hearts like his to open my new veins of affection.
I am extremely thankful to each and everyone who had faith in Maadathy and to the gift of this moment to share my love for Ajmina, Semmalar and Abhi. Please join us for the Q&A after the screening, Oct 8 5pm, PST, Oct 9, 5.30am IST.
