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The Centre for Asian Theatre staged Metamorphosis, a bilingual theatre performance based on Franz Kafka’s fiction, at the Experimental Theatre Hall of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on Wednesday.
   Directed by Kamaluddin Nilu and Annette ter Meulen, the play is adapted by Anisur Rahman.
   The CAT in association with Goethe-Institut Dhaka has produced the play.
   The expressive narration took the audience into the story of Gregor Samsa, a young traveling salesman who lives and financially supports his parents and young sister.
   One fine morning he wakes up and discovers that during the night he has been transformed into a ‘monstrous vermin’ or an insect. The horror of the fact and the pain of the transformed man were beautifully captured by the skilled performers. Gregor’s preoccupation with practical, everyday concerns like how he can get out of bed and walk with his numerous legs or whether he can still make it to the office on time, everything was presented in a vivid manner.
   As the story progressed the tragedy caused by the transformation; not only to Gregor himself, who is completely disfigured, but also to his family that is financially dependent on him, started to unfold.
   Gregor’s family went restless as he still sat at home instead of going to work. After a while, Gregor simply wastes away as he suffers from an injury caused by his father.
   Although there are many elaborated analysis of Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ which include different other aspects of the story, this particular play has focused mainly on the stranded phase of human existence amidst financial and social quagmire.
   ‘The Metamorphosis’ is considered the best story by Czech-born Austrian writer Franz Kafka. It was written over the course of three weeks in November and December in 1912 and was published in 1915 under the title ‘Die Verwandlung’. It was first translated in 1936 and has been translated several times since.
   The play starred Abul Kalam Ajad Shetu, Rahmatullah Basu, Mejbaul Karim Chumki, Ismail Hossain Swapon and Erfan Mridha Shiblu.

For the past four years, veteran director Behrouz Afkhami has been working on one of the most imposing projects that could be imagined in modern Iran.
   He has been directing the first feature film about the life of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic cleric who led the Islamic revolution of 1979 that toppled the pro-US shah and then ruled the country for a decade.
   The film –– Farzand-e Sobh (The Morning’s Child) –– is set to be released in Iran in February during the official celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
   Carefully avoiding the approach of an all-out biographical epic, the film focuses on Khomeini’s childhood in his parents’ home in the central city of Khomein, with a few glimpses of him returning from seminary studies in Arak.
   But it also includes flash-forwards to Khomeini’s sermons railing against the rule of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s which led to his arrest by the notorious SAVAK secret police and exile from Iran.
   ‘I still consider myself the imam’s disciple,’ Afkhami told AFP in an interview. Almost two decades after his death in 1989, Khomeini is still universally referred to as the ‘Imam’.
   He said the film was suggested by the institute charged with promoting Khomeini’s work.
   ‘But I refused at first since they expected of me to do a film on the time of Khomeini’s leadership because this is not possible,’ he said, without elaborating.
   ‘Then they gave me the authority to make the film on any period of Imam’s life.’
   ‘This is a mood film — a film that you do not see but you feel.’
   Exclusive preview excerpts shown to AFP by Afkhami show that actor Abdol Reza Akbari has captured an almost perfect resemblance to Khomeini at the time of his agitation against the shah.
   One section shows the day in June 1963 when Khomeini was arrested by the SAVAK after giving a speech denouncing the shah in Iran’s clerical nerve centre of Qom.
   — ‘It is time for evening prayer. Stop the car I want to pray,’ Khomeini asks the SAVAK agent as their car whisks him towards prison in Tehran.

A near complete version of German-Austrian director Fritz Lang’s masterpiece ‘Metropolis’ has been found in Argentina after a quarter of the film was believed lost for 80 years, a German film foundation said Thursday.
   The Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden told AFP reels containing all but one scene of the original of the classic German silent film have been discovered by the curator of the Cinema Museum in Buenos Aires.
   ‘Almost everything that had been missing had been found, including two key scenes,’ said Anke Wilkening, who is in charge of film restoration at the foundation.
   Lang presented his science fiction epic in Berlin in January 1927 and it was screened in the original version here only for a few months, proving a flop with critics and audiences alike.
   Afterwards, the US distributor Paramount simplified the labyrinthine plot and cut the film by nearly half an hour. The edited scenes were believed lost forever.
   Foundation said in fact a copy, missing only a scene where a monk predicts that the inhabitants of Metropolis are heading for apocalypse, had been bought by the head of the Argentinian film distribution company, Terra Film.
   It was taken to Buenos Aires to be screened in 1928.
   The copy survived and was unearthed by Paula Felix-Didier, the curator of the Buenos Aires film museum, who has now brought it back to Germany.
   ‘Even if the quality is poor, the Argentinian material means that the decades-old dream of putting together a full version of ‘Metropolis’ has come true,’ the foundation said.
   ‘Metropolis’ is set in a futuristic, divided city of the same name, where the elite live in luxury and workers slave underground.

Filming of a full length feature film titled Jago, based on sports by Khijir Hayat, began in Comilla on Wednesday.
   The Muharrat of the film was held at the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation on Monday.
   Tareq Anam, Faisal, Bindu, Raunak, Naim, Arefin Shuvo, Kaiser Hameed, Palash, Jotika Joti, Sharleen, Daina and a group of young actors will star in the film, produced by Interspeed.
   The plot of the film revolves around a group of young boys who work hard to save their pride by playing football. ‘The film will also uphold the prospect of football, said the director. ‘Dreams of the young players will also be portrayed through the film’, he added. Besides Comilla, filming will also be held at different locations in Dhaka and Cox’sbazar, said the director. The director hopes that the film will hit the theatres in December.