Sunday, July 24, 2016

Where is the Friend's Home?


Aware of Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami after his death; at an obit. Got to know more after reading Anurag Behar in Mint (this paper has some fine columnists) mentioning 35 school teachers in a government school at Pithorgarh in Kumaon mountains viewing Where is the Friend's Home? made in 1987. A talk followed the seeing. Son Ganesh got me the film and me saw the 80 minutes film twice on Sunday alone with Rama on an outing with friend Mala. A verdant imagination, a veracity in a school boy Ahmed running over a rather bare up and down land with a lone tree at a far end in search of his school friend Mohamed Reda Nematzadeh; crusty olds in thick glasses, smoking on porches, frowning discipline as the school teacher threatens dismissal for home work not done; they whimper and hedge Ahmad as the charmy little fellow insists on giving a school book to his friend; the camera brings up close the innocent eyes reminding me of Satyajit Ray, Durga and Apu in Pather Panchali; Durga and Apu search a train as elders cynic; of Swami in Swami and Friends questing a little fun. Do not know what the school teachers debated but am sure homework could have been on the list. Should school children be given home-work; honestly do we need schools as they are today; are not schools an exemplar of oldies playing chor-police; gated kids; kids having no say; have we at home ever tapped them for their views? what they want? know them; we order, they obey; an unfair dadagiri; of course, without home-work Abbas Kiarostami could not have made the film; the camera intros with a school teacher shutting the class room window; ends with the school teacher opening the same window; and the flower stuck in the school book; the poorness all over. School boy Ahmed is like you and me when we were kids, wanting an abandon and today turning old denying it. Abbas followed with Life and Nothing More plus Through the Olive Trees - based at Koker. Wish someone could help me with them. 

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