Thrills and chills

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I've always been terrified of horror films. So I was greatly honoured when invited on the International Jury of the 25th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) in South Korea, but had mixed feelings. Yet, the festival was an eye-opener. Literally. Usually, during a scary scene, I always cover my eyes and tell the person next to me in the theatre to tell me when the scene is over. But on the jury, I had to watch entire scary films - that too with my eyes open.

So I gamely watched a woman eat the flesh of a man's bleeding, wriggly maggot-infested leg (cannibalism? Wormism?). An iron rod pierced the forehead of a man driving a car, after cracking his windshield. Another fellow, in a coma, had a metal thingie pierced in his forehead, that began to rotate like helicopter blades while still in his forehead. Don't ask. A woman organising dinner skinned two rabbits in front of the camera. Uff!

The competition is called Bucheon Choice Features, and the festival ran from July 8-18. ‘Fantastic' film festivals, I discovered long ago, are festivals specialising in genre films - horror, ghost and zombie films, fantasy, sci-fi films and thrillers. And thanks to Bifan's invitation from Festival Director Shin Chul and Ellen Kim, Head Programmer, Asian Cinema, I learnt to even respect the genre.

I've always had a soft corner for Bifan, in Bucheon, a satellite city of the capital Seoul, just half an hour across the Han river. I had curated a Bollywood package for them way back in 2003. They had insisted on including Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, of which I'm not a big fan. When Kim Hong-Joon, then festival director, took me to the open air screening of K3G, my mind boggled. I counted an estimated 5,000 people in the audience in a massive mayor's maidan, a number I have never seen even in India, not even during our Ganpati open-air screenings on the chaurasta as a kid. Entire joint families had come for a mid-week screening, with picnic hampers, including tiffins like our Bombay dabbas, with dinner and mega bottles of Coke. The screening was very challenging, as there were simultaneous, double sub-titles on the film: horizontal English subtitles, and vertical Korean sub-titles, uff! People were laughing and crying throughout the screening, and at the end when I asked them why,
they said, "Oh, this is the story of the two Koreas!" Whaaat? I exclaimed. Bollywood's melodramatic weepie about estranged sons uniting was for the Koreans, a cathartic national reunion story that touched a deep chord. If Johar's film touched the hearts of masses also in a foreign culture (among others), you've got to admit it was successful and give credit where it's due.

Bifan went beyond conventional labels. There was also NIMBY, a political film about a Finnish-Muslim lesbian couple in Finland, coping with their families and neo-Nazis. I like how its director Teemu Nikki described himself: "a prolific self-educated, award-winning filmmaker and son of a pig farmer from Sysmä, Finland." I learnt from gifted Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy's Caveat how to make a superbly crafted, low budget horror film with one house, a cast of two or three, and use outstanding production design, lighting and cinematography to create terror.

My fellow jurors were director Tony Kaye (UK), Jarod Neece, former Senior Film Programmer, South by SouthWest SXSW Film Festival, Austin, Texas (US), actress Moon Jeong Hee (Korea) and director Jo Sung-hee (Korea). We gave the Best of Bucheon Award to Banjong Pisanthanakun's The Medium (Korea, Thailand), a mockumentary about a Thai shaman. The Best Director Choice went to Lee Haven Jones's The Feast (UK), in which a village girl hired to help with a dinner party exhibits strange signs, and includes the maggot-chomping scene. The Jury's Choice went to Hsu Fuhsiang's Treat or Trick (Taiwan), a thriller about cops and robbers and a bag of diamonds. Now Bifan even has a Scary Tales Campus, to teach filmmakers to make good horror films and create an ecosystem of fear. I'm not dying to see more horror films, but let's say I've learnt to respect them - and leave them in peace.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.

Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com