IFFI 50, X: International Jury for IFFI 2019 has Bailey, Campillo, Yang, Ramsay and Sippy

John Bailey, Cinematographer and Ex-President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (the body that awards the Oscars) will chair the International Jury of 50th International Film Festival of India (IFFI). French film-maker Robin Campillo, who was also a member of the Cannes International Jury 2019, renowned Chinese film-maker Zhang Yang and Ms. Lynne Ramsay, who is one of the leading lights of young British cinema will be the co-jurors. Eminent filmmaker, Mr. Ramesh Sippy is the Indian member in the International Jury.

John Bailey

John Ira Bailey, ASC is an American cinematographer and film director, known for his collaborations with directors Paul Schrader, Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Apted, and Ken Kwapis. In August 2017, Bailey was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 1985, Bailey shared the Cannes Film Festival Best Artistic Contribution Award with Eiko Ishioka and Philip Glass for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. He was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for Tough Guys Don’t Dance. He is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival, in 1987. He worked on numerous comedy films, such as Groundhog Day, As Good as It Gets, and The Producers. He is a veteran documentary cameraman. Bailey’s credits as a director include The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, China Moon, Mariette in Ecstasy, and Via Dolorosa. Bailey has been married to film editor Carol Littleton since March 1972.

Robin Campillo

Campillo is a French filmmaker, born in Morocco, in 1962. Because his father was in the army, he and his family moved around a great deal during his childhood, and part of his adolescence. During this period, movies became a main theme of his existence. In Madagascar, at the age of 9, he discovered Godard’s Alphaville, in a military theatre, where the film was booed. Following this experience, he developed a passionate interest in cinema and an array of film-makers, ranging from Jacques Demy to Mario Bava. In 1983, he enrolled in the IDHEC (Institute for Advanced Cinema Studies) film school. After graduating, however, he took a break from his film career, to dedicate his time to the fight against AIDS. Finally, in the mid-1990s, he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Laurent Cantet as co- screenwriter and editor. In 2004, Robin Campillo directed his first feature film They Came Back. Eastern Boys, his second feature film, received the Orizzonti Prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and was nominated at the 2015 César Awards in the Best Film and Best director categories. His most recent feature film, 120 BPM, a fictional work depicting the Act Up years, was presented in Competition at the Festival de Cannes 2017, where it won the Grand Prix.

Zhang Yang

Born in 1967 in Beijing, Zhang Yang has long been a ground-breaking independent film-maker and occasional actor. He studied Chinese literature in Beijing and later moved to the Central Academy of Drama from where he graduated in 1992. His low-budget 1997 directorial and screenwriting debut, Spicy Love Soup, was among the very first contemporary Beijing romances to succeed at the domestic box office. The film was screened at the Tokyo International Film Festival, heralding the arrival on the world stage of movies about modern-day China. His honest portrayals of Chinese life and his realistic style won him acclaim in China and abroad for his 1999 independent production Shower, followed with Quitting (2001), which fictionalises and re-enacts the real life of the main actor Jia Hongsheng, his struggle with drug addiction, his relationships to his parents and his fellow inmates in a mental institution, and Zhang Yang himself is part of the ensemble cast. Three films followed: Sunflower (a romantic movie), the dark comedy road movie, Getting Home (2007) and the powerful drama, Full Circle. More recently, Zhang’s thought-provoking Paths of the Soul premiered at TIFF 2015, screening with great success in many international festivals, including Busan, Rotterdam, Black Nights, Goteborg, and HKIFF. The film was released in North America and Japan during summer 2016. Soul on a String (2016) premiered in competition at the Shanghai IFF in June 2016, where it won for Best Cinematography and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Golden Horse Awards. His stories, drawn often from real events, resonate deeply because of his sensitivity, humanity and cinematic genius. Zhang continues to help shape the world’s understanding of China and China’s understanding of itself. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, screened Paths of the Soul, his Tibetan-language film about spiritual and redemptive pilgrimage.

Ms. Lynne Ramsay

With only four features and a handful of shorts over a 20-year career, Lynne Ramsay has nevertheless established herself as one of the most compelling and original voices in contemporary international cinema. The infrequency of her films is all the more regrettable considering that she had almost as auspicious a debut as one could hope for. Although she completed only three years after her graduation from the UK’s National Film and Television School (NFTS), her first feature, Ratcatcher, screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, won recognition and critical acclaim worldwide; three years later, she returned to Cannes with Morvern Callar, which picked up two prizes in the Directors Fortnight category. Born to a working-class family in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1965, Ramsay began as a painter and a photographer before her studies at the NFTS, and she has claimed that she continues to see herself as a photographer first and foremost, citing her foundation skills in framing and composition as intrinsic to her film-making process. Largely eschewing traditional character psychology and narrative exposition, Ramsay’s films operate more as portraiture in motion, studies (in the painterly sense) of the figures that happen to occupy the centres of their respective worlds, from the working-class milieus of Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, to the middle-class American suburbia of We Need to Talk About Kevin, to the seamy under-belly of NYC in You Were Never Really Here. We Need to Talk about Kevin opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. It is a devastating powerhouse of a movie about the relationship between a boy and his mother, played with harrowing poignancy by Tilda Swinton. In amongst other wins and nominations, the film picked up the 2011 Kermode Award. This focus on the primacy of the image accounts for the uniquely allusive quality of her films: though grounded in realism, they can reveal magical, surreal, or inexplicable phenomena in the seemingly every-day. In April 2013, she was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, she was named as a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2015 Venice Film Festival.

(Not to be confused with the Indian Ramsay family, makers of Hindi films, mainly in the horror genre).

Ramesh Sippy

Ramesh Sippy is one of the major Hindi film-makers of the 1970s and 80s. Son of producer G.P. Sippy, Ramesh Sippy debuted as a director with Andaz (1971). He followed it up with the Seeta Aur Geeta, and then the iconic Sholay (1975), which set the benchmark for commercial success in Hindi cinema. Shakti (1982) and Saagar (1985) were also well received. He also directed one of the most popular TV serials in India, Buniyaad. He established RS Entertainment in 2005, and has since produced ten films under the banner. Sippy was elected President of the Film and Television Producers Guild of India in 2010. Ramesh Sippy was conferred with the Padma Shri in 2013. Shimla Mirchi (Capsicum), a film he completed in 2015, is yet to be released.

Though the Jury consists of eminent persons, perhaps it would have been better to give Latin America or Africa one representation, instead of having two Europeans on board. Anyway, it is an unenviable task. Having served on Juries, I can say from experience. Do you build consesnus or do you go with the majority? Are you being taken in by familiar names and backgrounds? Juries need to rise above all personal preferences and value strictly nothing but merit. In the end, the citation gives you some rationale behind the choice of the award winner. As 15 films are in the fray, the Jury will probably watch 3 films a day, starting from the second day, which wil lgive them time to arrive at their decisions wel lin advance of the closing ceremony, for some of the winners have to be flown in from faraway placesto collect their awards on the last day. Best wishes, M/s Bailey, Campillo, Yang, Ramsay and Sippy.