ISLAMABAD, Jan 1: You can’t fight nature, they say. And even if you want to change the “system” for yourself, you (inevitably!) may have to “return” to your “situation”.

This is the lesson that Azar, the powerfully portrayed girl - in an overpowering feature film from Iran (displayed on the second and last day of karafilm festival showings in the capital - learns to her utter astonishment.

In the film “Dokhtaree Benameh Tondar” (A Girl Named Tandor), Azar wants to behave like a boy. She would be seen zooming like a master motorcycle rider smashing cars of boys (not in the proverbial “tom-boy” style) in a real “boyish” (to be less charitable, ruffian) style; and scan her pictures on her PC, so that she could draw herself into various incarnations of an erratic, young male. But, then, she reads the story of a girl on that very computer, a girl whom her father brought up as a boy in the wild, a “boy” named Tandor who could excel the other boys of “his” age as a fighter.

The pathetic end comes when in a complex situation of mistaken identities Tandor has to fight to save the friend who by now knows that Tandor is actually her beloved, and dies of his injuries before the two are able to meet. Towards the end Azar cries and accepts her gender situation.

The story, and the manner one event has been intertwined to another, has been developed, in a way in which you come to what , in modern literature is called, “a willing suspension of disbelief”. Characters speak out for themselves. One may, however, have desired some better shots, especially in the rural scenes.

The film has been made by Hamid Raza Ashtianipour, born in 1963, and educated at the Art University of Tehran in film direction. He began his career with short films, and is a familiar voice to the audience for his narration in TV documentaries and other programmes. He has bagged a number of prizes, including the golden prize of student film festival for Best Editing in 1985.

Pakistani feature film, “Akhri Tasweer” or the “Last Picture” has been made on the familiar theme of a rich connoisseur of art gone poor, and feeling proud of his art-collection (while in this case it has been sold out by her daughter who looks after his now blind father and an orphan-son that she has to support). The film is based on a story, “The Invisible Collection” by Stefan Zweig.

The film depicts a Nawab, who had been a great art collector and a great lover of music on whom bad days have fallen. He now sits in a wheel-chair; blind - never forgetting his lineage and, in a way, still judging art and the world within the context of “his” days.

Shakeel, the master artist that he is, plays the old Nawab, and Rubina Ashraf, the daughter. “Arsalaan”, the interior designer who goes for interior designing of a bungalow in some other town, finds that art collector whom he always wanted to meet to just see his masterpieces lives in the same town (he had found his name in the ledger of his father’s art shop from where the Nawab had bought some rare collection) has been acted quite sensibly by Yasir Nawaz.

Some of the dialogues in the film are very pithy. For instance when the daughter, thwarting the efforts of the designer to meet her father tells him that they have left the exterior designing of their houses to the ravages of time.

Khalid Ahmad, an actor, writer and director associated with theatre and television for two decades, has made this interesting film. He has directed more than two dozen stage plays and written and directed a number of telefilms and an eight part television serial,”Faisla”(The Verdict).

The German short feature,”Crevetten”(Crevettes) narrates the story of the nineteen year-old Luce who takes her first nursing job where she tries to bring an old woman, Rosa Schmenzale, back to life; she even helps her avoid sleeping pills and eventually takes her to a restaurant outside the nursing home, where the 93- year old lady orders a “fish-like” dish, but not fish with which she develops allergy.

Those who know the German language would enjoy the sweat conversation between the representatives of differing German generations. The movie has been made by Peta Biondina Volpe, born in Switzerland in 1970. He is a film student and works as a freelance editor and author.

Coming out of the auditorium, on the chilly (last but one) night of 2002, some from the audience must have wished to spend many more such nights (of the new year) in watching the interesting productions of all hues presented at the real, Karachi festival by Karafilms in the capital.— Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad