Dir: Nishtha Jain | Doc 90′
The Jute industry has been the mainstay of millions of Bengalis for hundreds of years but is now in a state of decline putting their livelihoods in jeopardy.
In artfully composed shots Nishtha Jain’s documentary exposé examines the relationship between factory and labour in an industry which has come under pressure due to the switchover to plastics. The Golden Thread transports us from the peaceful riversides of West Bengal, where the green canes of jute grow in abundance, to the two largest jute factories in the Indian region around Kolkata where the plant is woven into material.
The Golden Thread could easily be set in the 18th century but this is modern day West Bengal. The camera follows hot on the heels of workers arriving by bike at the vast Naihati Jute Mills where the dried jute is being stored in bundles before it reaches the massive weaving looms. The frenzied din of spinning soon takes over and then cuts back to the peace and tranquility of a muddy riverside where a man in a large straw hat is cutting down green canes in preparation for drying.
Although the heyday is over for the jute industry, Naihati is proud to announce “we manufacture environment friendly jute… which includes food grade jute products (hydrocarbon free) and geo-textiles”. State aid has kept this sustainable alternative to plastic going but the future looks bleak despite the eco potential of jute.
The challenge to survive continues for many Bengali labourers who still rely on the factory to support themselves and their families despite poor working conditions. Accidents and jammed machines are a frequent occurrence. Grievances, hopes and fears are aired and compete with the din of the whirring spinning machines. The workers’ plight is taken up by the unions who are fighting to raise pay to a minimum wage requirement of £200 a month and improve conditions in general. It’s a familiar story of quality over production that connects to a global narrative of struggling traditional industries and communities all over the world. @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9 – 16 March 2024
Bergamo Film Meeting unveils its 42nd edition from March 9 – 17, 2024. One of the most important events in the Italian festival calendar the meeting draws thousands to its annual celebration of auteur and arthouse cinema in the mountainside venue just north of Milan in the Italian Dolomites.
BERGAMO FILM MEETING is back for its 38th edition running from 7th March until Sunday 15th in the alpine region of Lombardy. 
Dir: Stephane Goël | Wri: Antoine Jacoud/Stephane Goël With: Mathieu Amalric | Doc, 92′
Born in Skopje (Macedonia) in 1943, Godina soon moved with his family to Slovenia in the north where he later joined Ljubljana’s Kino Club Odsev and went on to study at the Academy of Theatre there. Film clubs were everywhere at the time and his early 8mm efforts gained him popularity as he joined the festival circuit, widening his circle as he developed his craft. And although his films often had serious social themes they also frothed with a feelgood sense of joy and irony. Even topics such as religion and army service took on absurdist proportions with his clever writing and light-hearted sense of the ridiculous. And they always looked brilliant thanks to his talent as a cinematographer and his skilful sense of lighting, framing and mise en scène. Trained under strict Soviet principles he never cut corners and was professional to the last during a career which spanned from 1968 to 2003.
PASOLINI AND THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
In 1966 Léaud would star in Godard’s Masculin, feminin: 15 Faits Précis, winning a Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlinale for his role as Paul, who is in a ménage-a-quatre with three women in a contemporary Paris. Loosely based on Maupassant’s short stories, this feature was the beginning of the break Godard would make with narrative cinema. Also called The Children of Marx and Coca Cola (an inter-title of the feature), sex and politics are at the core. Léaud is fragile, and the lighting shows him as beautiful and vulnerable as the three women, Madeleine (Chantal Goya), Catherine (Isabelle Duport) and Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert). All four main protagonists have very different plans for the future, when their agendas collide. There is immense elegance and beauty here (DoP Willy Kurant), and Godard treats his actors (perhaps for the last time) with more care than in the verbal politics of later films. Pauline Kael called it “that rare achievement: a work of grace in a contemporary setting” and for Andrew Sarris it was “the film of the season”.
A year later Godard would cast Léaud as part of a group in La Chinoise (1967), this time surrounded by two women and two men, but with a very much harsher political focus. Based on Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, this was Godard’s first adventure into Maoism. Léaud is Guillaume, in love with Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), who has a much stronger personality than him, and will finally leave him. Kirilov (Lex de Bruijin), is the weakest of the trio and he will kill himself, as in the novel. Léaud’s Guillaume is in love with Veronique, but he is very much a man of clever words, but little action. Veronique on the other hand, is much braver, and decides in the end to assassinate the Russian Cultural minister on a visit to Paris. But he mixes up the numbers of his hotel room, and kills the wrong man. Wiazemsky, the grand daughter of novelist Andrew Malraux, then the Gaullist minister for Culture, fell in love with Godard, and the couple married after the shooting. As an in-joke, Godard casts Francis Jeanson in the film (Wiazemsky’s philosophy lecturer at the Paris 10 (Nanterre) University) having a debate with Veronique while on her way to assassinate the minister.
Truffaut’s 1973 outing La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night), is essentially about filmmaking, showing Léaud as the weak and self-obsessed actor Alphonse. During the filming of Je vous présente Pamela , a conventional weepie, he fancies leading lady Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who has recently had a breakdown. Out of pity she sleeps with him but Alphonse then ‘phones her analyst, Dr Nelson (David Markham), who has left his own family to live with her, and spills the beans on their fling. Léaud plays the histrionic weakling with great skill. And Truffaut, playing himself as the director, assumes the role of his protector – much as in real life. Godard, who by now had broken with his ex-friend Truffaut, called Day for Night “a big lie” – later the two founding fathers of the Nouvelle Vague fought over Léaud who somehow survived the acrimony and went on to work with another enfant terrible, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.
I hired a Contract Killer (1990) was one of Kaurismaki’s first English language films and he made a beeline for Léaud in the lead role. The gamine actor of Day for Night had since changed dramatically. His slight, almost feminine appearance was gone, and he’d put on a substantial amount of weight – his acting too was from another dimension. He plays Henri Boulanger, an English Civil Servant, who is sacked after fifteen years of service due to privatisation. With no life outside his work, he tries – in vain – to commit suicide. Then asks a contract killer (Kenneth Colley) to step in. But Margaret (Margi Clarke) gives his life a new meaning. With time running out, Henri tries to contact the killer, to reverse the order. Léaud is totally morbid and emotionally reduced, the environment is straight out of the 1950s, the colours pale, bleached out by wear and tear. Léaud’s agile friskiness has been replaced by gentle placidness, making him look much older than forty-six. But his acting had matured too, and he slips easily into character roles nobody would have expected from him in his New Wave days. AS