The second cycle of the Bengal Cinematheque excavated from our fear of death the longing for the supernatural and the gentle.

The event was free and open for all.

Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)
5 September 2015, 7:00pm Saturday
2004, 125 minutes, colour

Thai soldiers play in the wilderness. Two young men meet and smile at each other. An atmosphere accumulates and time passes in tentative episodes. The village, the city, the jungle meld. We observe how barely they have to touch. Afterwards there is a re-creation of a northern-thai folk-tale where a lone solider tracks spirits in the wild. Upon finding one, they tussle. Depleted, he survives in the jungle until, seduced, he gives his soul to the mysterious coursing of the deepest myth.

The Flowers of St. Francis (Rossellini)
6 September 2015, 7:00pm Sunday
1950, 89 minutes, black and white

A saint and some men, who are children, come upon the idea of goodness. They act this discovery out in the Italian countryside by applying metaphysics to everyday situations. Some of their ideas work, others lead to a beating. Through laughter, amazement, disappointments and corrections they come to venerate suffering and sacrifice. They overturn existing morality, and having developed a potent product, set out in random directions to tell others of what they’ve learnt and to show them how to be.
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Bengal Cinematheque presented films and ideas of cinema’s greatest auteurs, shown at the highest quality, to support a community of emerging film-makers, writers and programmers in Bangladesh.

This cycle was programmed by Omar Chowdhury.