133. A Night of Knowing Nothing; movie review
A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING
Cert TBA
99 mins
BBFC advice: TBA
Remember those ghastly days when a found footage horror or zombie film would be released what seemed like every week.
Well, for the first time since The Blair Witch Project, a film-maker has taken the concept to create a movie which is original, hard-hitting and captivating.
Payal Kapadia's A Night Of Knowing Nothing is based around the concept of poignant letters written by an anonymous student being discovered at the Film and Television Institute of India.
She writes to her estranged boyfriend after he is forced to quit film school and denied permission from his family to continue dating her because she is not of the same caste.
Her letters become more impassioned as the film goes on, moving from mulling over their lost love and to description of student protests in which she has become embroiled.
The spark for the conflict is the insertion of a right-wing former actor as the new chairman of the Film and Television Institute.
The students are outraged but become victims of a brutal clamp down by Narendra Modi's government who have no tolerance for dissent.
Complementing the words from the letters are home-movie style images of the horrors which are unfolding.
They show baton-wielding police appearing to relish their work as they hit out at male and female students as well as mere bystanders.
Initially, I had feared that A Night Of Knowing Nothing wouldn't be for me because its reliance on reading letters seemed similar to The Metamorphosis Of Birds which was, in my view, dreary.
But the fusion of the poignant language and the startling images of repression mean that Kapadia's movie works where others' haven't.
It also offered an insight into a slice of Indian life which is not represented by the country's mainstream cinema.
It is personal and powerful.
Reasons to watch: A very personal insight into Indian politics
Reasons to avoid: It is quite haphazard
Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity:Yes
Overall rating: 8/10
Did you know? Narendra Modi dedicated his life educating Indian youth in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh culture. RSS is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. which expects obedience and reverence of authority.
The final word. Payal Kapadia: "By 2019, we had this huge archive of the past five years, and even our own footage began to seem like it was found. So many years had passed, and we had changed so much as people. That’s when the idea of the found-footage film began to form." Film Comment
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