tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-279776342024-03-13T14:40:08.833-07:00rumblestripvenkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-69879073878724980662014-04-03T23:10:00.000-07:002014-04-03T23:13:58.936-07:00<b>Adieu, P. Ramadas<b></b></b>
<i>“It was a baby that was born prematurely, faintly breathing cinematic life. But in our country there were no incubators at that time to look after and nurture it..” </i>
this is how T.M.P. Nedungadi, film critic, described the fate of P. Ramadas’ Newspaper Boy, the first neorealist film in Malayalam. Ramadas was indeed creating history by making Newspaper Boy at the age of 22 when he was a college student. But history is replete with such instances and heroic acts that blaze a trail, but go unacknowledged at that time, and are later accorded ‘classic’ status.
What Ramadas did for Malayalam cinema was one such act. He was not merely creating a record of sorts by becoming the youngest filmmaker, but his work too was totally fresh and path breaking in its thematic choice and cinematic vision. Even though it was made and released (on May 13, 1955) a few months before Pather Panchali (released on August 26 the same year), Newspaper Boy could not create the same impact, nor could Ramadas, like Satyajit Ray continue in his film career.
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Newspaper Boy was shown in various cities in India, and did receive critical acclaim: ‘Amateur film group proves brains are better than big-budgets, said Bombay Chronicle, while Blitz saluted the ‘students who produced a film and made history’. But the film did not do well at the box office, and Ramadas had to go back to his studies and pursue legal profession. Though he did come back to cinema two decades later to make Niramala (1976) followed by Vatakaveetile Aththi (1981), they were not in or ahead of their times or matched the brilliance of his debut film. All through life, his passion for cinema continued. He was also the founder of one of the first film schools in the State – Kalabharathi Film Institute, which he launched in 1974.
Newspaper Boy was based on one of his own stories titled ‘ Compositor’. As a student, after learning about Raj Kapoor being the youngest filmmaker in the country, Ramadas wanted to break that record. He was active in theatre and other cultural activities; for instance, his film was produced by one such youth collective Adarsh Kalamandir, which was part of Mahatma Library in Thrissur.
After his initial foray into cinema, he returned to study law and went on to become a lawyer, a profession he pursued till the end, along with teaching cinema and practising alternative medicine.
Newspaper Boy stands apart from the rest of the films of the period, for its bleak yet deeply humanistic view of life. Its narrative follows Appu and his family; It is a story of the grit and determination of an adolescent in the face of tragedies. Most importantly, the film kept away from the popular and omnipresent love story formula of the period; and instead dealt with everyday life and its tragedies, firmly set in post-independence India.
Unlike many films that dealt with similar themes, the film was not tempted by slogans or empty rhetoric either in its dialogues or visuals. It also dared to take cinema out of sets and studios, and some of the most memorable scenes in the film were shot on the streets of Thrissur and Chennai, all of which, coupled with its innovative use of sound, added to its realistic aesthetic. But the mood of the times was not in its favour nor did it receive encouragement it deserved and needed.
Still, the creative spirit of Newspaper Boy and Ramadas will continue to inspire generations of young filmmakers who dare to dream and realise them against all odds.venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-62855973595006821172011-11-09T23:11:00.000-08:002011-11-09T23:12:51.754-08:00Sudevan – Filmmaker in Our Attic<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cKWbiiiQcyY/Trt5a7WXB5I/AAAAAAAAAPE/VwqkpJSfHQ0/s1600/director-sudevan.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 252px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cKWbiiiQcyY/Trt5a7WXB5I/AAAAAAAAAPE/VwqkpJSfHQ0/s320/director-sudevan.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673261659118307218" /></a><br /><br /><br /> <br />Sudevan, whose film ‘Thattumpurathappan’ (Lord of the Attic) was in the competition section for short films in the recently concluded International Short and Documentary Film Festival of Kerala, is the most unconventional of filmmakers to emerge in the video scene in Kerala. He is from a remote village in Palakkad district, and never had any exposure to film ‘classics’, film societies or film festivals. The first film festival he attended was the one which showed his first video! He has been making small video films at regular intervals for the last six years, all of which were noted for their deceptively simple visual treatment and sharp thematic focus. In a way, he is one of those rare organic filmmakers who is firmly rooted in his milieu and surroundings, and weaves his narratives from them. Shorn of all technical fineries, his films are very much visceral and have a captivating intimacy to them. More importantly, he believes in ‘real audience’: he would like to know and converse with them all at a personal level. For instance, more than 1000 DVD copies of his last film – Thattumporathappan - have been sold during the course of one year, which is an indicator of the success of the film. It is also the natural outcome of Sudevan’s relentless commitment to marketing his film, most of which has happened through word of mouth of his own audience.<br /> <br />Till date he has only made four films, all of which were made in association with Achuthanandan, his actor and alter ego, neighbour and producer, all rolled into one. He works with a very limited crew, and uses only the most essential low-end equipments, for want of money and fear of paraphernalia. But he makes elaborate preparations before each film: he develops the story line discussing the film threadbare with Achuthanandan, charts out camera angles and movements, and identifies all the locations. Finally, they garner all the local support and infrastructure for productioon, and do detailed and repeated rehearsals before the actual shooting. ‘I would place my camera and plan its movements in such a way that I perfectly know how it will look at the editing table’. Their post-production work does not end with editing and mixing, but with a detailed plan as to where to show the films and how to reach their target audience.<br /> <br />His first video ‘Varoo’ (2004) is a Kafkaesque take on the theme of ‘finding one’s own way’. Shot with an ordinary videocam by an amateur girl, who was the only person they knew who happened to possess a camera, it charmingly captures the winding country paths and the verdant terrain in all its seeming simplicity and labyrinthine dimensions. In his next film ‘Planning’ (2006), he looks at the flip side of Malayalee middle class family from the point of view of two thieves, who make detailed plans to rob a house when its occupants are away. Eventually, when they sneak their way into the house, they only find a letter which announces the decision of the house owner to put an end to his life and lists out his mounting woes and debts. ‘Randu’ (2008, Two) deals with a very fundamental theme of selfishness, and how it can crop up even in the most unlikely of circumstances. It is about two labourers who are digging a well; one among them chances upon a treasure, which turns out to be the fatal moment where they, who were one in their labour and life, become ‘two’ – each monstrously following his own greedy dream.<br /> <br />His latest film Lord of Attic (2010) takes a bleak but hilarious look at the whole phenomenon of spirituality business that is thriving in India today. Here is a young man, who while running away from the police, takes refuge in the attic of a house, and gradually works his way out by assuming the role of god and using the gullible devotee living below. In the end, we find that the same house turns out to be the hottest spiritual destination in the locality. What makes the film interesting is the way in which Sudevan works through the tenuous and almost uncanny relationship between god and devotee, both dependent on each other, and yearning for ‘liberation’.<br /> <br />Interestingly, in all his film till date, Sudevan has worked with a duo at the centre – seeker of the path and the one who shows it (Varoo), the two thieves (Planning), the manual labourers (Two), and the ‘god’ and devotee (Thattumporathappan). Having gained enough experience and confidence, he is planning to venture out to work on a larger canvas and format.<br /> <br />Taking around and showing his films in all possible venues, Sudevan has already assiduously built a network of Malayalee audiences across the world. But he would like to avoid the mistake of the hero of his first film and would like to find a way of his own, without falling for the lure of empty offers and trodden paths.venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-428838380416027392011-11-09T23:08:00.000-08:002011-11-09T23:10:21.749-08:00Mullanezhi – The Lyrical Rebel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5PHbZ3hkBsE/Trt4pICvTOI/AAAAAAAAAO4/L4i5Mc3TTVA/s1600/Mullanezhi.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 146px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5PHbZ3hkBsE/Trt4pICvTOI/AAAAAAAAAO4/L4i5Mc3TTVA/s320/Mullanezhi.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673260803532213474" /></a><br /><br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘The verdant dream land of ours<br />Where did it fade away,<br />That promised land?’</span> asked Mullanezhi in a song in the film Lakshmivijayam by K P Kumaran. For, his was a lifelong romance with lyricism and radicalism, despair and optimism, his deep love for nature and the awareness about the inevitability of change. One can see all these conflicts and themes providing the form and flesh to his plays, poems and songs. So too, was his commitment to hope. For instance, one of his last poems goes like this: It is dawn, and opening their eyes/ here comes fresh blossoms, / Leaving the brow of the blue sky /The little crescent is fading away.. Throughout his life Mullanezhi wrote poems in which he was able to create a curious and fascinating blend of traditions: he belonged to the ‘old school’ and had a firm grounding in the Sanskrit and the folk traditions in music and literature. In his writings, this rootedness comes into vibrant contact with the new and the radical. He didn’t deride his past or tradition in order to embrace the best of modern currents.<br /> <br />Mullanezhi Neelakantan was born in 1948 in a traditional Nambudiri family in Trichur. Though he began to write poems from his childhood, it was Vyloppilly, who discovered the poet in him and guided him in his life and career. Vyloppilly was also instrumental in prompting him join for Vidwan course, and thus to become a school teacher.<br /> <br />He became a film lyricist in 1976, by penning songs for Njavalpazhangal by Azeez (Karukaruthoru pennane..) and Lakshivijayam by K P Kumaran’s (four songs: Pakalinte Virimaril, Ravurangi thazhe, Manathu tharangal punchirichu, Nayaka manuja snehagayaka). If one looks at his oeuvre, both as a lyricist and actor, one can see that from the beginning, Mullanezhi was more comfortable with offbeat films and filmmakers like Azeez, KP Kumaran, Pavithran, Shaji N Karun, MP Sukumaran Nair, Priyanandanan, and Madhu Kaithapram. The mainstream filmmakers, barring a few, were uneasy with his unconventional ways. Yet, whenever he penned for the mainstream, he consistently produced memorable lines, like ‘Pavizhamalli poothulanja neelavanam’ and ‘Kanninu pon kani, kathinu then kani’ in Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam by Sathyan Anthikkad, 'Manasoru Manthrika Kuthirayayi’ in Mela, ‘Swapanam kondu thulabharam’ in Veenapoovu by Ambili and in films like Vellam, Chora chuvanna chora, Ayanam, Kayyum thalayum purathidaruthu, and lastly, in Indian Rupee (‘Ee Puzhayum’). More than film songs, Mullanezhi’s forte was writing of songs for albums: his songs in Grameena ganangal by Vidyadharan (Thiru Thakruthi Thirumuttam, Thekkunnu Vannalum, Punchavayal Cherayurakkana Thottampattu) and K Raghavan’s Thoranam ( Punchavayal Punchirikkana Nerathu, Panchara Kunnathu, Thrikkakkarappante) are both very popular and memorable and they freely mix folk, traditional and lyrical-modern themes, tunes and imageries<br /> <br />He was also a theatre activist, leading the Agragami Theatres and wrote many plays, some of which have been collected in the anthology, Samathalam. In theatre, he was inspired by the social reformist movement inaugurated by the likes of VT, MR Bhattathiripad, and Premji. He came to cinema late in his life, but essayed some very striking roles in films like Piravi, Uppu, Kazhakam, Swam, Garshom, Neythukaran and Neelathamara.<br /> <br />An active political worker before he became a teacher, his passion for arts and progressive politics never left him; he was part of all the progressive initiatives that took shape in Kerala in politics and arts, like Peoples’ Science Movement, Literacy Movement, Progressive Writers’ Movement etc. The songs he wrote for the Kalajathas of Sastra Sahitya Parishad and his translation of Brecht poems (Enthinnadheeratha.. ippol thudanganam... ellam nammal patikenam.../ Pattiniyaya manushya nee/ pusthakam kayyiledutholoo etc) were very popular with the activists and one would rarely find a sensitive youth in Kerala who has not sung a line of his. In that sense, Mullanezhi was a true ‘midnight’s child’, someone who lived and voiced the angst and concerns of our land, relentlessly upholding progressive and democratic values throughout his life.<br /> <br />One can never forget his disarming smile and the glint in his eyes. With his departure, we lost a very warm and kind human being who celebrated his life, and always quarreled and engaged with the world with the creative resources at hand. As he himself wrote, <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Only a wee bit of time<br />Do we have, here<br />But the life that mother gave us<br />We ought to nurture with goodness</span>.venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-25753486110371451532011-07-14T19:49:00.000-07:002011-07-15T03:36:53.178-07:00Ravindran aka Chinta RaviDeparture of a Radical Pilgrim<br /><br /> If one were to identify Raveendran a.k.a. Chinta Ravi (1946-2011) with any single characteristic, it would be that of a traveller. Throughout his life, he was fond of journeys – both inward and outward. Shunning all bonds and boundaries, he journeyed across various spaces – all along Kerala, the tribal belt of India and abroad, across genres – journalism, art criticism, film review, cultural studies, travelogue, stories, narration and commentary, and across media – print, film and television. And the ideal traveller that he was, he travelled light: with his commitment to Marxian ideals, concern for the downtrodden, and passion for art .<br /><br />Midnight's Child<br /><br />A typical ‘Midnight's Child' of Kerala, born in Kozhikode, Ravi was part of progressive movements and made his mark as a writer by publishing a novelette ‘Athiranipookkal' when he was a student. After completing a journalism course in Mumbai, he came back to Kerala and began penning political articles and features on art and cinema in publications such as Searchlight , Chinta (the ideological mouthpiece of the Marxist party), and Kalakaumudi .<br /><br />Ravi catalysed critical writing in Malayalam by introducing New Left ideas and ideological criticism. Both in life and writing, Ravi followed the struggles and crises in Marxian ideology and aesthetics, globally and locally. ‘Kalavimarsham: Marxist Manadhandam' (1983), the path-breaking anthology he edited, was a qualitative leap in critical thinking in Malayalam that brought together an array of eminent thinkers to address vital issues relating to politics, art, literature, film, and spirituality. He was always adept at developing apt theoretical terms and concepts in Malayalam, he imaginatively drew words, phrases and usages from local dialects, everyday speech, and Sanskrit, freely mixing them to create a fresh idiom that was simple yet intense.<br /><br />His travelogues opened up the sensualities of alien lands, evoking our senses through minute descriptions of sights, noises, scents, people, places, and events around him, peppered with a keen sense of history. And all his journeys were to the margins. His best writings are undoubtedly about the tribal people of India from Andhra Pradesh to the North-East, which are rich in ethnographic details and insights.<br /><br />The three films he made also resonate with the same energy of critique and resistance that charge his writings. Ironically, if his life and writings were all about relentless journeys, his films deal with social and political stasis and the efforts to break away. His first film ‘Harijan' (Telugu) was about downtrodden communities in rural Andhra in the cusp of a political crisis and rebellion. ‘Iniyum Marichhittillatha Nammal' (1980) was about a group of radical youth caught within an oppressive social system that envelops them. Ravi described this film as a ‘film essay,' a treatise that grapples with the dilemma of contemporary youth torn between thought and action, dreams and reality. ‘Ore Thooval Pakshikal' (1988) set against the historical background of the last days of British Raj, is a film that excavates the origins of class consciousness in a remote rubber plantation in Malabar.<br /><br />Pioneer of art criticism<br /><br />Ravi was also the pioneer of art criticism. He was fellow traveler of the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association during their show at Kozhikode in 1989. This show, under the leadership of mercurial sculptor Krishnakumar, challenged the art establishment up front , and was the first one of its kind in the country that brought together a number of young artists, who were to dominate Indian art scene in the next decades. Many artists such as Ganesh Pyne, Laxma Goud, and C.N. Karunakaran were close to Ravi, about all of whom he wrote with great sensitivity and detail.<br /><br />In the 90s Ravi turned to television and made several innovative programmes on art, history, and culture for Doordarshan, Asianet (‘Ente Keralam'), and later, for Real Estate Television (about the architecture and habitat of various South Indian communities). ‘Ente Keralam' (1994 to 1999) was a meandering journey through the everyday life and culture of the State. By introducing people from various walks of life, obscure institutions and events, Ravi held up a mirror towards the often forgotten facets of Kerala's pluralistic culture and its inexorable transformations.<br /><br />The rich and varied oeuvre of Ravi also follows the radical paradigm shifts in Malayali life, culture, and politics during the last decades, whether it be the tremors of the Naxalite movement, theoretical forays of cultural/art criticism, counter aesthetics in filmmaking, or television programming. A leftist to the core, Ravi never pontificated or sloganeered in his writings and always shunned the vulgarity of the mainstream. Throughout his life, he assiduously kept away from positions of power of all kinds. Ravi revelled in friendship and camaraderie, exuding a certain lightness and vigour in his carriage and demeanour, and in all his exchanges and engagements with the world.<br /><br />In a way, every traveller shuns destinations, fearing it would end the journey. And like a typical traveller, Ravi too was acutely aware of lands not-yet-visited and destinations unrealised. Towards the end of his life, a feeling that his generation never realised its potential seemed to haunt Ravi. He said in one of his last interviews: “Personally, I think my interests were fragmented; I could never achieve completion in my writings or cinema, nor did I persist long enough with any. I was driftwood of sorts. It happened with many people in my generation, we were caught up in too many flows...” Obviously, it was such frankness and courage to introspect that made and continues to make Ravi dear to all.venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-50050401404034515022011-07-13T03:09:00.001-07:002011-07-13T19:51:54.445-07:00adieu chinta ravi<span style="font-style:italic;">"Knowledge depends upon travel, upon a refusal to respect boundaries, upon a restless drive toward the margins" </span> Stephen Greenblatt<br /><br /><br />in 2002, i along with manilal and aslam had done a long interview with ravi at his house, the colour stills are from that footage.. <br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xBKJH44NSYk/Th1vMsSItgI/AAAAAAAAAOw/gdATtkzo5nc/s1600/ravi%2B4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xBKJH44NSYk/Th1vMsSItgI/AAAAAAAAAOw/gdATtkzo5nc/s320/ravi%2B4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628777373119329794" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A9s_NASw5k0/Th1vHkirk_I/AAAAAAAAAOo/z3PdtLRMq9w/s1600/Raviettan.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 263px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A9s_NASw5k0/Th1vHkirk_I/AAAAAAAAAOo/z3PdtLRMq9w/s320/Raviettan.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628777285141894130" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lIqwN-9psok/Th1vBfkMQ5I/AAAAAAAAAOg/azd8DfFDPzM/s1600/ravi%2B1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lIqwN-9psok/Th1vBfkMQ5I/AAAAAAAAAOg/azd8DfFDPzM/s320/ravi%2B1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628777180726838162" /></a>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-76094522489529665092011-06-16T00:14:00.000-07:002011-06-16T00:19:46.519-07:00homage to chidananda dasgupta<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5SwY6s2jEVs/TfmuESpP1TI/AAAAAAAAAN4/1ZkvoR4R4ck/s1600/chidanandadas.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 118px; height: 160px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5SwY6s2jEVs/TfmuESpP1TI/AAAAAAAAAN4/1ZkvoR4R4ck/s320/chidanandadas.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618713398868956466" /></a><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Upperstall profile by: <strong>Shoma A Chatterji</strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">The film critic in India is marginalized within the world of journalists in general and critics in particular. The investigative journalist, the political commentator, the environmental reporter and the rural explorer lead the hierarchy of journalists with their 'hard-core' writing. Chidananda Dasgupta has changed the scenario forever. Film criticism is now as 'hard-core' as mainstream journalism, though it does not command the space and the platform in the print media the way it used to when Dasgupta was a practising critic. Rather, it is Film Studies that is now a much-in-demand discipline in several universities in India. In this sense, Dasgupta is a pioneer in the movement towards serious writing on cinema, stressing time and again, through his writings, that the distinction between art house cinema and mainstream cinema is a myth. He made history with the Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed on him for Best Writing at the Sixth Osian''s Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema in July 2004. This is the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award to have been conferred on a film critic and scholar. "I am getting this award at a time when film criticism is almost dying out in India. We spent our lives teaching people the value and worth of cinema. When we first asked for government help to form the first film society, the official at the ministry said, "Film society, what's that?" Thankfully, lots of things have changed since then," he said in his response to the award. </p> <p style="text-align: justify;">To label Dasgupta only as 'film critic' however, is unfair because he pioneered the film society movement along with like-minded friends Satyajit Ray and Harisadhan Dasgupta in 1947. "A comment from Cyril Connelly, editor of Horizon, who said, "Calcutta is a city which has no film society" set off the trigger, more because Bombay had already laid the foundation for two film societies, one in 1937 and another in 1942. Neither of these evolved into a movement. Nor did they bring about changes in Indian cinema. We decided to change all this. With 50 members at a membership fee of Rs 5.00 per month and Prasanta Mahalanobis as our first President, the membership looked like a veritable Who's Who ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the Calcutta intelligentsia." Dasgupta suggested the forming of a Film Federation and along-with six others. "We met Krishna Kripalani in 1959 and in 1960, the Federation began to function," reminisces Dasgupta.<br /><br />read more at <a href="http://http://www.upperstall.com/people/chidananda-dasgupta">http://www.upperstall.com/people/chidananda-dasgupta</a>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-57523884415480833912011-06-14T01:44:00.000-07:002011-06-14T01:49:34.588-07:00“It seems death never passed between us..”<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ih1tcK9iMs/TfcgjulgBtI/AAAAAAAAANM/m_ZaUV5mI7Q/s1600/sankaranum.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 152px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ih1tcK9iMs/TfcgjulgBtI/AAAAAAAAANM/m_ZaUV5mI7Q/s320/sankaranum.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617994858340812498" border="0" /></a><br /><div> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>A Conversation with T V Chandran on his new film <i>Sankaranum Mohananum</i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b> C S Venkiteswaran</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Your new film Sankaranum Mohananum seems to mark a fresh phase in your oeuvre. Compared to your other films, it seems to have a totally different take on life and death. If earlier films were about the all too real yearnings and desires of the here and now, this film is about them outliving death..</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes. If you look at my earlier films closely, you can see that their narratives were always very much embedded in and sensitive to their historical and sociopolitical atmosphere. In Ponthanmada, Danny, Mankamma, Ormakalundayirikkanam etc you can see this. But in this film it is a sort of trip into the mindscape of a sensitive young man, Mohanakrishnan, whose life is loveless. The storyline goes like this: Sankaran, Mohanakrishnan’s elder brother, a school teacher in his 50’s, suddenly decides to marry his colleague’s young daughter, in order to help him. But once he gets to see Rajalakshmi, he blindly falls in love with her. Tragedy strikes when on the morning after the wedding night, he is bitten by a snake and dies. Though the official funeral is over and done with, Sankaran refuses to leave the world and appears before Mohanakrishnan in various guises, pleading with him to talk to his wife and inform her that he is still around. At first Mohanakrishnan is scared, but he slowly comes to terms with this strange situation. To add to the confusion, Sankaran is visible only to him and he has a tough time convincing others about his existence and his brother’s pleas. Their efforts to block Rajalakshmi’s re-marriage lead to various bizarre and hilarious situations in the film. Mohanakrishnan himself is a man living a lonely life, away and estranged from his wife and child. In the end, his brush with the undead brother and his travails lead Mohanakrishnan back to life and to look at it afresh..</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>What was the inspiration behind this theme about the dead haunting the living?</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Actually, I wanted to do this film around 2000, after I finished Danny. At that time I even discussed the story with Mohanlal. But it didn’t work out, and I moved to other projects. Through years the film grew in me to take its present shape. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The film draws a lot from my personal experience, especially from the sudden and painful death of two persons who were very close to me, my elder brother Madhavettan, and friend and filmmaker John Abraham. Madhavettan, was my elder brother, but he was very much senior and like a father to me, also my guardian and guide. A lecturer by profession, he tried to ‘reform’ me in various ways, weaning me away from ‘bad influences’ and persuading me to pursue my studies. Later he went to Uganda and during a vacation time when his family was about to fly to meet him, he met with a car accident there and died instantly. We never got to see his body; he was cremated there. After that, Madhavettan began to visit me regularly in my dreams, telling me he is not dead, and also about a lot of other things. I could never come to terms with his absence and still can’t believe he is no more. Similarly, the sudden and accidental death of John Abraham was a shock to me. I just can’t imagine him as a dead man; he too appears before me from time to time trying to tell me something, and reminding me he is not dead. “People are lying I am dead” he says. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This film is my attempt to come to terms with the absence of these dear ones. In fact you can see the portrait of John in the film in Mohanakrishnan’s studio, when his wife asks him, “How did he die?” It is my question too: how did he die? Did he die at all? So, this film is also a homage to these two people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Q</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>The theme of absence and death is a universal one. Everyone around us will have someone dear who is no more, and about whose absence one has <span> </span>not been able to come to terms with. But the treatment of such a theme can be very bleak and brooding…</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is where this film differs from the usual style. Though this film deals with death and ghostly presences, the story is told in a humorous manner. Even though Mohanakrishnan’s various encounters with his dead brother are macabre in its essence, those scenes will evoke laughter in you. The film is structured around this dual presence - the visible and live Mohanakrishnan who only can see his brother and the invisible presence of Sankaran. There are a number of desperate attempts of Sankaran to make himself visible and present to the others, especially his young bride. But he fails in that and it leads to further and more desperate attempts. In fact, there is a long sequence where the duo plan and attempt to block the re-marriage of Sankaran’s bride that verge on the slapstick. That sequence ends with the image of Chaplin – from the famous poster of The Kid, where the face of Chaplin suddenly turns into that of Sankaran. Adding to the hilarious surface of the macabre undertones of the movie, is the presence of actors like Jagathy Sreekumar, Kalpana and V K Sreeraman.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Q <i>The film also has a very interesting structure, it is like a letter to the undead.. </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Yes, the film is structured like a letter addressed to Madhavettan and John. It in fact begins my addressing them, and ends with the line from a poem, “it seems death never passed between us…” In between is the shifting and tumultuous mindscape of Mohanakrishnan. <span> </span>Jayasoorya has done a splendid job in the totally different roles of the brothers, with the dead one appearing in different guises and costumes. While one is real, the other is unreal and doesn’t leave any footsteps or traces behind. In one scene, we find them both trying to take a photograph. But the camera fails to capture Sankaran: he is just an absence in the picture. Jayasoorya lived up to the challenge playing these contrasting roles, that of the real Mohanakrishnan and the apparition of his brother.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later in the film, he begins to see and hear the voices of several people who are dead and have many desires, needs, wants and yearnings, which they want to fulful through him. At the end, there is an indication of his return to the world of the living. We see the protagonist sitting below a peepul tree and gradually removing his make up. His image also gradually disappears from the mirror, and we are left with a make up box and a collection of spectacles – which Sankaran wore in his different guises throughout the film. So, there is a sense of exorcising the undead and a positive return to life and its affirmation at the end, all accomplished through a journey with the dead.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Q<span> </span><i>Like in your other films, this film also pays homage to your favourite authors, this time Saramago etc..</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Later in the film, he begins to see and hear the voices of several people who are dead and have many desires, needs, wants and yearnings, which they want to fulful through him. At the end, there is an indication of his return to the world of the living. We see the protagonist sitting below a peepul tree and gradually removing his make up. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The image of Sankarettan also gradually disappears from the background, </span>and we are left with a make up box and a collection of spectacles – which Sankaran wore in his different guises throughout the film. So, there is a sense of exorcising the undead and a positive return to life and its affirmation at the end, all accomplished through a journey with the dead.</div><div class="im"> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Q<span> </span><i>Like in your other films, this film also pays homage to your favourite authors, this time Saramago etc..</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> </div><p class="MsoNormal">Yes, after I completed the script, I happened to stumble upon <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Saramago's <i><a title="The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis">The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis</a></i> w</span>here he quotes the lines of his poet: “it seems death never passed between us…” This line struck me, because it was exactly the feeling I had about the deaths I was also grappling with. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I have used an adaptation of this line at the end of the film. </span><br /></p>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-42281199915885408112011-06-06T05:43:00.000-07:002011-06-06T05:53:57.627-07:00rain in malayalam cinema - a note<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5GCzbyxf1o/TezMi4EvtDI/AAAAAAAAAM0/5gKlDHsKFNQ/s1600/Thoovana%2Bmohanlal.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 231px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5GCzbyxf1o/TezMi4EvtDI/AAAAAAAAAM0/5gKlDHsKFNQ/s320/Thoovana%2Bmohanlal.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615087734964073522" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><b><span style="color: black; ">Only a drizzle, not a downpour</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><span style="color: black; ">C S Venkiteswaran</span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; ">Borges, the Argentinian writer, responding to the question why there are no camels in Quran says, “Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were particularly Arab; they were, for him, a part of reality, and he had no reason to single them out, while the first thing a forger, a tourist, or an Arab nationalist would do is bring on the camels, whole caravans of camels on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned; he knew he could be Arab without camels” I think one could say the same about rain in Malayalam cinema. How come we have a very few striking or memorable visual passages of rain in Malayalam cinema? Is it because of its overwhelming presence our lives? Does that limit its metaphorical charge?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; ">Yet, whatever presence rain had in our cinema, it has undergone transformations through time. Till the late 60’s or during the claustrophobic studio-bound decades of early film production, picturisation of rain must have been a technical challenge. In most of the rainy occasions in the narratives of that period, it was mainly to drench the heroine and provide voyeuristic pleasure to the audience; many a time it was a narrative ruse to make the lovers scamper to a lonely shelter away from the eyes of social mores, where it is an all too divine intervention invariably benign to the male. But there were rains of other kinds too. Neelakuyil opens with a heavy rain that lashes outside Satyan’s house; in a way, it is nature’s fury that vainly knocks at the doors of that false messenger of culture and eventually drives the dalit woman Neeli into his hands. In that period rain either re-vealed women for men or accentuated human tragedy, as world’s tears.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; ">It was since the 70’s, when outdoor production and location shooting became more popular that the visual and metaphorical potential of rain were explored. I think there is not a single Adoor film without a rain – it drizzles and pours over human foibles, agonies and angst. In Shaji N Karun’s Piravi, the looming clouds and relentless downpour provide the bleak setting to the protagonist’s vain search for his son. The rain that pours over Mankamma’s dead body in TV Chandran’s Mankamma, is also one that tragically interfaces human fate and the indifference of the world. In Kamal’s Perumazhakkalam too, it has tragic dimensions, while his Azhakiya Ravanan has a song sequence that literally romances with rain, and the final, much awaited downpour in Bharathan's Vaishali has mythic as well as orgasmic dimensions. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; ">I think one of the most romantic and lyrical of rains in Malayalam cinema in Thoovanathumpikal by Padmarajan, where rain stands in as the metaphor for love, in all its unpredictability, physical charm, and yearning. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But one feels that there is a lot more layers and nuances, drizzles and downpours waiting to be explored by Malayalam cinema visually, aurally and thematically</p></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-4042893234137118612011-06-03T00:53:00.000-07:002011-06-03T00:54:37.205-07:00On a Great Actor <p><img src="http://artconcerns.net/2008august/essays/ammanur.jpg" height="214" width="265" /></p> <p class="heading1">A Thespian Leaves The Stage</p> <p>The departure of the thespian Ammannur Madhava Chakyar (1917-2008) marks the end of a long, tumultuous yet glorious era in the classical art performance of Kerala. An all time great of Kudiyattam*, he was the one remaining vibrant link connecting the present generation of viewers and artists with the brilliance and also the rigours of a past that had endured many a moment of highs and lows. For, his life spanned the entire history of modern Keralam. Coincidentally, he was born in the year of the Russian Revolution, a historic event that was soon to have deep repercussions on his own society, community, life, and vocation. Spending his childhood during the last heydays of an economic system – the temple economy that sustained and sponsored art forms like Kudiyattam and temple-dependents like Chakyars – he had the fortune to get early training under the tutelage of his uncle the legendary Ammannur Chachu Chakyar, one of the all-time-greats of Kudiyattam. By the time he grew up into an able and noted performer, the temple economy that sustained his art was in shambles. Moreover, the social changes that were sweeping Kerala had other concerns and priorities, and naturally, classical arts like Kudiyattam were not at the top of the list. With the spread of secular art forms, the once elite and popular art forms - both classical and folk – entered the 'endangered' list. Even with the establishment of Kalamandalam, it was Kathakali that got more prominence and international visibility, and not a 'difficult' art like Kudiyattam. Ironically, many of these rich traditions of performance survived through sheer conservatism, and the total commitment and dedication of the practitioners who went on performing (most of the time ritually) despite the shrinking material support and an indifferent audience. No wonder, for Ammannur, performance was like prayer, while he performed, he never saw an audience in front of him, he instead played to the flame of the <em>Nilavilakku</em> lit in front of him. It is this intense and exuberant belief in oneself and one's art, and the understanding and realization of that art as a 'medium' (in the real sense) that must have sustained the likes of Ammannur through those difficult times. </p> <p>From the early days, Ammannur was noted for his talent that was burnished through training under scholars like Kodungallur Kochunni Thampuran. By the 60's he was considered one among the trinity of Kudiyattam, along with Painkulam Rama Chakyar and Mani Madhava Chakyar. But unlike the other two, Ammannur's career spanned the very history of Kudiyattam across 20th century. For, he entered the scene in its glorious days, spent his youth while it began to be derided, even ridiculed and marginalized, then later, was witness to its gradual resurgence and ultimately, its growing international and local recognition when he reached old age. His life encapsulates the history of the art in many ways; it was a journey from the elite confines of the koothambalam into the open, secular spaces, from obscurity to worldwide renown, from the local to the universal, from the select or condemned few of performers to the secular-many. </p> <p>Among the trio, though Ammannur was known more for his <em>vacika,</em> and for his mercurial <em>vidusaka,</em> he also shined in other departments, immortalizing characters like Ravana (Thoranayuddham), Bali (Balivadham), Arjuna (Subhadradananjayam) etc. Who can ever forget his performance of the extended death throes of Bali, and the dillydallying Siva, a Lord torn between his love for Parvati and Ganga?<br /> <br /> Like his legendary ancestors, he too was vitriolic in his humour; and for him, humour was not just drawn from local scandals as in the case of many of his contemporaries, or mere buffoonery. He brought his deep knowledge of the puranas, mastery over language, and more importantly, understanding about current affairs, into his humorous discourses.</p> <p>I still remember those dark days of Emergency, when during his performance at Irinjalakuda as <em>Vidusaka</em>, he deliberately wove the political context looming large into his performance, reminding and warning the viewers of its monstrosity, subtly yet very pungently. Thus he in fact re-claimed the essence of being a <em>chakyar</em> today, that of being a critic of the powers-that-be and of speaking truth to power. As he aged, his mastery over all departments blossomed, his <em>angika-abhinaya</em> was graceful and chiseled, and his command over <em>vacika</em> also attained a matured beauty. He was an artist for whom his art was the be-all and end-all of everything. He continued performing, totally engrossed with himself and that enigmatic flame in front. </p> <p>Actually, the credit for taking Kudiyattam out of the confines of the koothambalam goes to the progressive and daring Painkulam. And it was later popularized by the charming presence of Mani Madhava Chakyar. In the case of Ammannur, it was the very same conservatism that sustained the rigours of the art through the ages that prevented him from coming out. He was the last to come out and perform outside the koothambalam, but once he came out, his brilliance was readily appreciated and recognized all over the world. He not only carried the art to the next century, he was also instrumental in rearing a new generation of Kudiyattam artists and honing the skills of some of the best talents in the art today like Kochukuttan Chakyar, Usha Nangiar and Margi Madhu. His brief but influential stint at Margi School inspired a generation of viewers and disciples. </p> <p>Now the great thespian has left the stage leaving behind memorable performances and a great legacy. </p> <span class="footer_txtblack">* Koodiyattam[kutiyattam], meaning 'combined acting' signifies Sanskrit drama presented in the traditional style in temple theatres of Kerala and is the only surviving specimen of the ancient Sanskrit theatre. It has an attested history of a thousand years in Kerala, but its origin and evolution are shrouded in mystery. It seems that Kutiyattam is an amalgam of the classical Sanskrit theatre of ancient India and the regional theatre of Kerala. It is believed that Kulasekhara Varman Cheraman Perumal, an ancient king of Kerala, who ruled from Mahodayapuram [modern Kodungallur] reformed Koodiyattam, introducing the local language for Vidusaka and structuring presentation of the play to well defined units. He himself wrote two plays, Subhadraharana and Tapatisamvarana and made arrangements for their presentation on stage with the help of a Brahmin friend of him called Tolan. These plays are still presented on stage. Apart from these, the plays traditionally presented include Ascaryacudamani of Saktibhadra, Kalyanasaugandhika of Nilakantha, Bhagavadajjuka of Bodhayana, Nagananda of Harsa, and many plays ascribed to Bhasa including Abhiseka and Pratima. The Kutiyattam performance was confined to the temple precincts of Kerala in specially constructed theatres called Kutambalams. </span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-2751852959407768712011-05-31T20:41:00.000-07:002011-06-03T00:20:55.313-07:00sajith paintings<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" ><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><b><span style=";font-size:10pt;" >Mapping The Neural Networks of Civilisation -<br /></span></b></p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" ><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" ><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >On the Paintings by A.S. Sajith</span></i></span></span><span style=";font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >C </span><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >S Venkiteswaran</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >The Terrain Named Diamond White</span></i></b><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > - </span></i><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >According to Sajith what he is attempting to do in this series of paintings and drawings titled <i>The Terrain Named Diamond White</i> <span> </span>is "to observe body through a different faculty which is "neural" in nature. Sense organs furnish only the external in body. We approach the internals through the faculty of consciousness, which is lauded as a thing capable of seeking itself. We think that we think therefore we are." And he places himself outside the usual binaries that we are fond of and seek refuge in. For he is not "a romantic who believes that human being is miniscule before infinity. The capability of human to destroy and construct, to bring about<span> </span>dramatic changes to the<span> </span>environment<span> </span>are<span> </span>rendered in the Terrain series . The paintings unfold repetition, growth and transformation rather than a clear cut preplanned visual."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >If his earlier show 'Kari' tried to sketch these intensely and overwhelmingly multiplying details in charcoal, here he breaks out in colour. In these canvases you encounter sights that one could describe as 'out of the body', as they look at our life-world, life and civilization from a perspective or angle that one could term aerial, one that reveals us in our fatal contexts – physical, natural as well as civilisational. Sajith's paintings thus attempt to map the neural layout of perception as well as human condition.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k_6k0SQ3Gqc/TeW1SRuH4ZI/AAAAAAAAAK4/ZFFB5GGQLP0/s320/terrain%2Bof%2Bdiamond%2Bwhite%2Bsajit.jpg" /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >These canvases are an invitation to a maze; they invite you into an engrossing yet dispassionate journey, full of enigmatic encounters and discoveries, and traverse extremes - the most miniscule and the gross, the organic and the inorganic, natural and man-made. While the organic realm teem with flora and fauna – miniscule and proliferating – the other, the man-made yet impersonal realm is busy engrossed in their seemingly repetitive activities and motions. These oneiric images drenched in dull yet luminous hues, are populated by monocultural forests, both of vegetation and urban habitat. Sometimes you find upright phallic structures and formations – a mount, a flag pole - rising up against the teeming and pullulating mass that envelops it. Other times, the growing mass is ruptured by chasms and openings that gape into the void. One encounters such stillness and silence in the middle of the tumultuous animation, like stark and silent reminders of the dark potentials of life and civilization, as it were. Like hope or despair, they persist against the abundance of presence around it, as if mediating between life and death, organic and inorganic. On the other, you also have the crystalline lilac mount rising up from the fluid oceanic vastness that surges around it, a huge yak-like figure submerged in water, its hump and horns sticking out, and a bluish forest of entwining branches with snake-like proliferation below it. All his images place the explosive presence of life and living against the ominous presences of its other.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><img src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=8cffb639f6&view=att&th=11eedaed69a5abab&attid=0.3&disp=thd&realattid=f_fq30zoci&zw" alt="Terrain of Diamond white- City 3 sajith.jpg" /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >These paintings encounter us with visions that are somehow freed from our everyday corporeal selves and its perspectival bounds. Accompanying it is a certain sensation of extreme involvement and also non-attachment, a willful duplicity that privileges us with disturbing yet clinical insights into our-selves.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" >The all-pervasive desolation that arises out of perspective offered by these paintings reminds us of the baffling complexity and boundedness of our life-world – both of body and consciousness, the most subtle and the atomic, the gross and the big. Thus these images follow and map the neural networks of our civilization, one that is simultaneously inside and outside.</span></p></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" ><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" ><br /><br />On the Exhibition of Paintings by A.S. Sajith at Lalit Kala Akademy Hall, Vailoppilli Sanskriti Bhavan, Thiruvananthapuram in</span></i><i><span style=" ;font-size:10pt;" > January 2009</span></i></span></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-60861557467413694552011-05-31T20:39:00.000-07:002011-05-31T20:40:37.425-07:00on videos<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><b><span >Videos - Against the Pace of Television and Glitter of Cinema</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> As a medium, videos exhibit an immediacy, vigour and spontaneity that go beyond both television and cinema. While television frets and fumes, trying to keep pace with the world, these video documentaries pause and pose disturbing questions, pry into the interstices, contemplate upon the uncanny and the 'ordinary' in our life and polity. If cinema is all about spectacles and melodrama, these video features do not conceive or address a passively consuming mass audience, but consider spectators as fellow-travellers in this unpredictable journey of thrilling experiences and troubling thoughts. In other words, these works look at things from below, and are astounding in their diversity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >What distinguishes them is the keen sense of history and location. They are firmly rooted in their space and time, and excavate angles, viewpoints and layers of experience that we often miss in this supposedly 'media-saturated' world. Lalit Vachani's <i>The Salt Stories</i> revisit Gandhiji's legendary Salt March to map the legacies and memories it has left behind in Narendra Modi's Gujarat today. This journey gradually turns into one through history, even while revealing how fragile and deceptive stuff like memories and 'History' are. Here video becomes yet another tool to fight forgetfulness and to reclaim history and memory. Likewise R V Ramani's <i>Nee Yaar?</i> (Who are you?), a film about Sundararamaswamy, the eminent Tamil writer, gradually unravels the conflicting facets of his life – domestic, literary, social and political. Here the video is as unobtrusive as a friend, moving through reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries and relatives like fish in water. One could describe Sourav Sarangi's <i>Bilal</i> as a searing attempt at 'video neorealism'; this film plays an unflinchingly witness to the life of Bilal the adolescent son of blind parents who are struggling to make a living at the fringes of a metropolitan city like Kolkata. Here, the video camera is a witness to the grind of the everyday, with all its frustrations, violence, and also hopes and dreams.<br />Ranjan Palit's <i>Forever Young</i> is an enchanting human document about Lou Majow, a rock singer from Shillong, and a great admirer of Bob Dylan. Tracking his life and following him in his nomadic adventures, the film brings out the enigmatic power of music that transcends all barriers. . Anirban Dutta's <i>'In for motion'</i> is an interesting look at the IT industry in India, its lineage, trajectories of development and the dilemmas it is mired in now, with the personal narrative of the director woven into this 'historical-analytical' narrative. M R Rajan's <i>Cinemayude Kalpadukal</i> (Footsteps of Cinema) looks back at a vibrant period in the history of Malayalam cinema, through the experiences of<span> </span>Sobhana Parameswaran Nair, a producer. For this, it uses film songs along with first person narratives and evocative visuals. Ramachandran's <i>Saamam</i> traces the legacy of an enigmatic singer like MD Ramanathan, where his biography meshes with comments and reflections.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >Similarly, in the fiction category also, the videos have a different take on various themes and formats. Most of them do away with 'cinematic' conventions and search for narrative structures that challenge the viewer. A film like <i>Many Stories of Love and Hate</i> (Shyamal Karmakar) weaves a very complex narrative about human relationships, in a very contemplative manner, composing his images and monologues poignantly to create drama. Sherry's <i>Last Leaf</i> is a very daring attempt portraying the love between two nuns that swings between the divine and the carnal, the spiritual and the physical. Murali Manohar's <i>Karna Motcham</i> (a student film) takes a very simple and mundane situation, but succeeds in finely juxtaposing the traditional and the contemporary. Tony Sukumar's <i>When This Man Dies </i>is a dark satire on middle class urban poverty and aspirations, while Shyam Arjun Salunke <i>The passion of cricket </i>takes a hilarious look at how a collective frenzy like cricket sucks us into its vortex turning everyone into a player. If Vishnu Shyamaprasad's<span> </span><i>A Writer's Affair</i> tries to probe into the very process of script writing,<span> </span>Sreejith Remanan's <i>Yakusha Co Ltd </i>sketches the despair of an actor at the fag end of his career.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span > </span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >The strength of these videos is the easy and effortless use of the camera, which is employed like a pen (a la Astruc's <i>camera stylo</i>), innovatively and freely mixing monologues, texts, multiple screens, chapterisation and commentary. Unlike the documentaries we are used to in its Films Division and Television avatars, these are intensely introspective, and never pose the author as invisible or omnipotent, instead they are very much present and active in the unfolding narrative, hence the prevalence of intimate autobiographical voice-overs in many films.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >Ironically, despite the huge audience for film festivals in the state, films from Malayalam seem to be working in isolation from the rest of the country. Most of them seem to be obsessed with the big screen format and tend to use video as its apologetic substitute and not as a medium in itself. This gets reflected in treatment styles also, which is more often very stilted and self conscious, instead of being self-reflexive. One hopes that festivals like this will inspire them to break conventions about the technologies of narration and the fear of bringing oneself into one's work.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >(written for SIGNS 2009 Video Festival Book)</span></p><div style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; "><span ><br /></span></div></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-90256163604055587692011-05-31T20:35:00.000-07:002011-05-31T20:38:40.340-07:00BHOOMIMALAYALAM – A Budge Forward<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ysa9rvxws8k/TeWz2PfCZAI/AAAAAAAAAKo/O1BCseF_9t0/s1600/t%2Bv%2Bchandran.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 117px; height: 130px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ysa9rvxws8k/TeWz2PfCZAI/AAAAAAAAAKo/O1BCseF_9t0/s320/t%2Bv%2Bchandran.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613090255038211074" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">TV Chandran talks to C S Venkiteswaran</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">about his film<b>BHOOMIMALAYALAM</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">All the films of TV Chandran explore and map the plight of female life in Keralam. Films like Alicinte Anveshanangal, Mangamma, Susanna, Padam Onnu Oru Vilapam, etc look at malayalee women and their lives during the last decades in Keralam. In his latest film, Bhoomimalayalam – literally, Malayalee perception of the world – Chandran weaves together the lives of several women whose lives are struggles for existence and survival, if not, expression and exuberance to excavate the world we inhabit. Bhoomimalayalam received John Abraham award for the Best film this year.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>How did this film first occur to you? Was it an image, an incident, a person or a thought?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This film was actually in my mind for a long time. In a way it springs from my film ‘Kathavaseshan’ in which I wanted to use the song of a Pakistani singer. It went like this: “At night, when alone, why are women scared?” (Rath mein andhere mein, ladkiyam kyon darthi hei?). Due to copyright issues, I couldn’t use that song in that film. Instead I gave these lines to Gouhar Raza and created songs for that film. It is from this song that this film sprang, this image of the fear of women when alone. In that way, this film is a continuation of Kathavaseshan in many ways. So, when you say that my film is ‘female-oriented’ it doesn’t make sense, since there are many common elements recurring, and certain moments and characters finding their place in all my narratives..</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The issues dealt with and the structure of the film is not something that I ‘thought up’ or developed through research. There are several things happening simultaneously in my mind. For instance, in the film though there are references to many real incidents, none of them are shown in the film. They do not appear as such in the film, but the film is ‘about’ those incidents. More than the incident itself, what becomes important is those who are affected by it. They stand within it and it triggers nightmares in them. Maybe that boy didn’t get drowned like this or that brother was not exactly beaten to death in front of his mother. Maybe these things happened in a different way. And that girl is actually dreaming about a suicide that never happens. The past events in Thillankeri are actually recollected by the daughter who was not even born then. So these incidents are in the background and what the film explores is the aftermath, the effects and affects.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gVOYadCzZig/TeWz2EhkDII/AAAAAAAAAKg/xHErtvbeNNY/s320/tvc.jpg" /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>All your films have looked at the plight of women, but Bhoomimalayalam is structurally different from the earlier attempts. Can you elaborate on that?</i></p><p>I think it is a transformation from one to many. In earlier films, I placed one single individual at the centre of the narrative. In this film there are several women. <span style="font-family: Calibri; ">This film weaves together the experiences of seven different young women from different walks, times and parts of Kerala. All of them share something between them - fear – something that pervades their lives. And they all have nightmares.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">What I am trying to do is to map the consciousness of a region through the lives, experience, dreams and anxieties of these women. In this narrative, the conscious and the unconscious mesh together. That was what I was trying to explore</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I have also tried to map it in time and space; you have incidents and places of 1948 and then the present; likewise you can also find the narrative stretching geographically across Keralam. It is also a rumination upon our present ‘state’ – a stocktaking of sorts through time. This, I think is a shift from my earlier films.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>In a way it is history, history as nightmare..</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But each woman experiences, understands and faces them differently. In the film you find that one girl accepts the murder and then the death of two men in her lives, another one escapes a rape attempt, yet another one survives a divorce, while one girl is pregnant and alone, she is helpless. Finally one girl triumphs and makes a leap, out and away, from this nightmare. This is how the film is structured. And I don’t end the film on the girl who wins. Instead it ends with the other girl who is witness to it, who for me represents all the others. Maybe they all desired that triumph, like her, the winner. So again, more than the incident itself, it is the look and experience triggered by it that the film follows..</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>Where does this film find a place in your oeuvre?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I consider the words of Mani Kaul, who was the Jury chairman for the John Abraham Awards about the film a great recognition. He said we are nobody to judge a film. So what one can do is to see whether a film is able to move the medium of cinema a bit forward. Judgment is all about this and not comparing one with another and placing one against and above the other.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I found those words of Mani Kaul very important and inspiring. For I believe that through each and every film, what I am trying to do is to move an inch forward from where we are, to make a budge..</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><span ><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p></span></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-81034550938485937012011-05-31T20:33:00.001-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.355-07:00Producer of a Film Era in Malayalam<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L8Ww4eSPsU0/TeWzMeATqyI/AAAAAAAAAKY/CpAlPOAI6yY/s1600/sob%2Bparmaeswaran.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 95px; height: 119px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L8Ww4eSPsU0/TeWzMeATqyI/AAAAAAAAAKY/CpAlPOAI6yY/s320/sob%2Bparmaeswaran.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613089537381346082" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b>SHOBHANA PARAMESWARAN NAIR </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>“Our cinema should not be like what it is now. The characters should speak like the way we speak and eat the way we eat. And they should wear the same clothes as we do” </i>said Shobhana Parameswaran Nair in an interview about how they made Neelakuyil (1955). Along with other pioneers of the time like Ramu Kariat, P Bhaskaran, A Vincent and KS Sethumadhavan, Vayalar and Devarajan, TK Pareekutty, Sathyan and Kumari, he was one of those persons who was instrumental in giving Malayalam cinema a body and soul of its own.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The departure of Shobhana Parameswaran Nair marks the end of an era in Malayalam cinema, one that was marked by camaraderie and cooperation, one in which a fledgling industry was freeing itself from its several dependencies, and finding its own form and voice. But for a producer and visionary like Parameswaran Nair, Malayalam cinema would have been poorer by several towering legends.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In <i>Cinemayude Kalpadukal,</i> M R Rajan’s 3-hour long documentary on Shobhana Parameswaran Nair, the latter reminisces that it was after watching B N Reddy’s film <i>Devata</i> (1941), that he fell in love with the medium.<span> </span><i>Devata</i> was a landmark film in the history of south Indian cinema that attempted to break away from the loud theatricality of the times and to find an ‘indigenous’ idiom. The period in which Shobhana Parameswaran Nair entered film production (early 60’s) was also one when Malayalam cinema was breaking away from the claustrophobic studio sets and melodramatic modes to rediscover itself in local soil and idioms. <span> </span>The period witnessed a spate of films that were realistic in approach and progressive in their concerns.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Shobhana Parameswaran Nair, a still photographer by profession, represents that fraternity that ushered in radical change in Malayalam cinema, and it included actors and actresses, scenarists and lyricists, producers, technicians and musicians. He associated with some of the best works of the period like Neelakuyil, Bhargavinilayam and Rarichan Enna Pouran before becoming a producer. Though he produced only a handful of films – the most significant of them between 1963 and 1978 – he represents the spirit of his times in various ways. Through these films he led the way to virtually transplant Malayalam cinema to Kerala, both physically and thematically. It was not just the discovery of locations like the surroundings of Bharathapuzha, but was also through symbiotically linking cinema with our literary, imaging and musical traditions. Suddenly, our cinema began to vibe with our longings and belongings.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">An ardent reader, he was close to many creative writers of the period like Vaikom Muhamed Basheer, M T Vasudevan Nair etc with whom he had lifelong association. It was he who persuaded the latter to write film script – <i>Murappennu</i> in 1965 which was his first, and then <i>Nagarame Nandi</i> in 1967, thus virtually inaugurating a new age in Malayalam cinema. The film scripts of established writers like MT and Uroob, firmly placed cinema in contemporary space, time and culture. In their commitment to realism and reality, they rediscovered and literally re-located Malayalam cinema in local spaces, communities and locales. For instance, Bharathapuzha and its surroundings, and Valluvanadan slang which became the norm in Malayalam cinema in the decades to come, were identified and celebrated first by MT Vasudevan Nair scripts; regional slang, milieu and ways of life, folk music and rustic comedy thus became part of cinema. If till then, Malayalam cinema industry as well as its themes and even storylines and musical scores were drawn from Tamil and Hindi, this period saw a new self-awareness and consciousness about one’s own tradition and surroundings. And Parameswaran Nair was in the forefront of that transition, catalyzing and facilitating it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">His films are landmarks of Malayalam film industry and they map the emotional and thematic concerns of the period.<span> </span>For each film, Shobhana Parameswaran Nair chose different writers and directors. For his debut film <i>Ninamaninja Kalpadukal</i> he chose a novel by Parapurath. It was directed by N N Pisharoty and won Silver medal at the national level. If his next two films were written by MT Vasudevan Nair, he chose the story of Perumbadavan Sreedharan for <i>Abhayam</i>, which was a film about a female writer, and was directed by Ramu Kariat. For this film, he used a bunch of original poems by legendary writers like Vallathol, Changampuzha, Sugathakumari, G Sankara Kurup etc. <span> </span>His next film <i>Kallichellamma </i>was based on a G Vivekanandan novel and was directed by P Bhaskaran, and <i>Ammuvinte Attinkutty, </i><span> </span>children’s film by Ramu Kariat was based on a story by<i> </i>DK Pottekat. Apart from their deep sense of milieu and emotional intensity, his films will also be remembered for unforgettable songs of haunting quality and charm.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">What makes Parameswaran Nair different from other producers – even of that period – was his ability to play the role of a catalyst to the whole process of filmmaking. For him filmmaking was not just about finance and profits, because his capital was not money but passion, and he wanted to make films that were really contemporary and timeless. As a producer, his involvement and commitment was total in all departments of the art. Whether it be the identification of the story, choice of actors (artists like Madhu, Jyotilakshmi etc played their first major roles in his films), scenarists, lyricists or directors (<i>Ninamaninja Kalpadukal</i> was N N Pisharoty’s debut film), Parameswaran Nair followed his own tastes and hunches, most of which proved to be trendsetters later. And it was a period when filmmaking was a celebration of friendship and creativity. It was this quality that endeared ‘Paramu Annan’ to filmmakers and films lovers of his generation and of the future.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-14839409297447608972011-05-31T20:28:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.357-07:00- The Achani of ‘Art’ Cinema<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QspOHdv6hSM/TeWyYhRZ7pI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/wnNDtu2bC0M/s1600/ravi.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 115px; height: 120px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QspOHdv6hSM/TeWyYhRZ7pI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/wnNDtu2bC0M/s320/ravi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613088644905168530" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b>K Ravindran Nair </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">K Ravindran Nair, fondly called ‘Achani Ravi’ or ‘General Pictures Ravi’ could be described as a single-man army who sustained the ‘art film’ movement in Malayalam. From the late 70-s to the mid-90’s, he produced some of the most significant films that won national and international acclaim and put Malayalam cinema on the world map. The most important films of the two great auteurs of that period – Aravindan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan – came out under the banner of General Pictures.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">What brought Ravindran Nair, a cashew producer and exporter, into cinema was his lifelong passion for literature and arts. A successful businessman, he was able to hit the right combinations from the beginning. His first film ‘Anveshichu Kandethiyilla’ (1967) based on a novel by Parapurathu and directed by P Bhaskaran was an instant hit. It told the story of a woman fighting against all odds to make a life of her own. It was a passionate story that raised troubling questions about the role of women in our society.<span> </span>He followed it up with two more films by P Bhaskaran in 1968 (Lakshaprabhu and Kattukurangu) which were also successful. His next film Achani (The Axle) directed by A Vincent was a big box office hit and` eventually became his first name. From then on he was known as “Achani Ravi”. Achani was about a self-sacrificing elder brother who toiled all his life for others in the family. The theme definitely touched some raw nerve in the Malayalee psyche and had several ‘remakes’ in Malayalam cinema in the coming decades. And it marked a turning point in the career of Ravi also.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From the beginning Ravi was committed to the quality of films that he produced, which was evident in his choice of themes and directors. He never considered cinema as a means for money-making alone. In cinema, he sought expression for his ‘non-commercial’ dreams. And he entered cinema when well established producers and production houses dominated the scene. So, from the beginning his aim was to carve a niche for himself, not just through instant and local commercial successes, but through quality and experimentation, and in creating brand equity of his own.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">During the next one and a half decades, he produced films that broke all norms and transformed the very idea of cinema in Malayalam. Before him, no other producer would have given such free rein to his directors, and that too, with absolutely no pressures to conform with any norms – commercial, aesthetic or formal. And his was not an intervention that was half-hearted or half-baked. He consistently produced films, year after year. Aravindan’s most memorable films like Kanchanaseetha (1977), Thampu (1978) Kummatti (1979) Esthapan (1979) and Pokkuveyil (1981) were produced by General Pictures. Kanchanaseetha, one of the most poetic films in Malayalam, was a freakishly free adaptation of a CN Sreekantan Nair play; it had no stars; nor did it even have a ‘proper’ storyline or follow any narrative conventions. Likewise, Pokkuveyil was a film that used a young poet and his poetry to weave a tragic narrative of the creative and political hallucinations of the time. It still remains one of the most haunting films of the period. Interestingly, for this film, music was recorded first (Hariprasad Chaurasia in flute and Rajeev Tharanath in Sarod, both elaborating upon Rag Shubha Pantuvarali), and then visuals were rendered to suit those musical scores</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In the following years, Ravi went on to produce a series of films with Adoor Gopalakrishnan: Elipathayam (1981) Mukhamukham (1984), Anantharam (1987) and Vidheyan (1993). These films, like Aravindan’s, are some of the best cinematic works of Indian cinema. The first two films look at men caught within the traps that systems raise around them. While Elipathayam excavated the claustrophobic world of a man caught within a decadent feudal system, Mukhamukham is one of the most introspective of films on the degeneration of communist movement in Keralam. Anantharam, most enigmatic of love stories on celluloid, dwelt upon the splintering inner world of a man yearning for love. Vidheyan, the last film produced by Ravi, is an adaptation of a Zachariah novelette, an intense portrayal of a sado-masochist relationship between a ruthless master and his ‘self-less’ slave. In 1982, Ravi also produced Manju (1982) directed by MT Vasudevan Nair based upon his own novel.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">It was because of visionaries like Ravi that the tradition of ‘parallel’ cinema still survives in Malayalam cinema. It did not die out like it did in other languages with the retreat of state agencies. What makes Ravi different is his vision and commitment. According to him, “I did not make ‘experimental’ cinema. I only made good cinema.” He was a producer that any filmmaker would dream of. He dared to make films that he believed in and would outlive their times. And for that, he put full faith on his directors, and they made works that gave a sense of pride and identity to Malayalam cinema. Those films are sure to inspire generations of cineastes. This year’s J C Daniel Award is a fitting recognition of his contributions to the spirit of good cinema.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><span ><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p></span></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-17419535224478949692011-05-31T20:16:00.000-07:002011-05-31T20:28:17.027-07:00Fear and Freedom –<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YdApNfUBNmw/TeWxyYcicoI/AAAAAAAAAKI/tTvthSpWeXs/s1600/fear.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YdApNfUBNmw/TeWxyYcicoI/AAAAAAAAAKI/tTvthSpWeXs/s320/fear.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613087989700915842" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JST6O9NbeQY/TeWvP4olEzI/AAAAAAAAAKA/GYsVKKaka60/s1600/fear%2Band%2Bfreedom.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JST6O9NbeQY/TeWvP4olEzI/AAAAAAAAAKA/GYsVKKaka60/s320/fear%2Band%2Bfreedom.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613085198022677298" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><b><span ><span >Exhibition of Photographs by Shaju Subramanian</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><b><span ><span ><br /></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span><span > </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >Photography is the most frustrating of occupations in today’s world. When everyone is a photographer happy clicking on digital cameras and mobile phones, how does a professional photographer find space and seek the attention of others with what is one’s bread and butter, and also life, blood and tears? In a world that is inundated with photographic images, can yet another image hope to signify something? Shaju Subramanian’s photograph exhibition at Trivandrum Press Club – Fear and Freedom – addresses this challenge by inviting the viewer to ponder and reflect upon that primal object of all imaging – the human body. Obviously, Shaju is not a photographer who revels in excess, but an intense observer who waits for the right light and moment and all the attendant risks and surprises. Placing the human body against our vision, these photographs invite us into a dialogue with the human form, one that is increasingly being devalued both by mental and physical intrusions – through the excess of digital/ized images that assault our minds and eyes, and the various prosthetic devices that invade our body.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span ></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; ">At the centre is the body, our only and ultimate prison, only means for expression and exuberance, and the only vehicle to freedom as well as fear. These images of the naked male body celebrate its corpo-reality, as the world grinds its way through it, leaving its marks and signatures all over. Here, the body stretches, squirms, and writhes, as if engrossed in itself and creates abstract forms revealing the world in its bodily affects and effects. Pure and resplendent in its nakedness, the world is inscribed on it and the body itself becomes the eye and the object for the eyes of the beholder. Shunning the digital and its ‘post-shoot’ techniques, these images are moments of that enigmatic encounter between the lens and the body; and they work through variations in colour temperature, lighting and tonalities, mapping the most visceral and the abstract, or, History and his-story.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span >These images - often contorted, partial, and enclosed upon itself<span> </span>- are also an invitation to the freedom and exuberance of nudity; they open our vision into ourselves through our own bodies, naked and direct, plain, unmediated, freed and abstracted from its various shackles – of attire, backgrounds and settings. They are never placed against anything except the light that burns it and the darkness that looms all over. In their pristine solitariness, these images celebrate the body and its image, and in the process, the possibilities of freedom and also that of fear.</span></p></span></div>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-53172828861995038232011-05-31T20:11:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.358-07:00RAAMANAM – ON ADAPTATION AND REVELATIONS<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br />MP Sukumaran Nair talks about his new film Raamanam</span></b></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MuiFLPYItBo/TeWuM7BD5HI/AAAAAAAAAJw/C-oXYUkF-xA/s1600/sukumaran%2Bnair.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 74px; height: 88px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MuiFLPYItBo/TeWuM7BD5HI/AAAAAAAAAJw/C-oXYUkF-xA/s320/sukumaran%2Bnair.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613084047610995826" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">Raamanam is an adaptation of ‘Smarakasilakal’ the celebrated novel by<br />Punathil Kunhabdulla. What were the challenges in making a film out of<br />a much-read novel that was written decades ago?<br /><br />It was a daunting task and there were difficulties at different<br />levels. The novel is actually set in the 1940’s as can be guessed from<br />its reference to the Onchiyam incident. When you take up such a story,<br />one cannot mechanically reproduce it today. After Babri Masjid<br />demolition, one cannot conceive of the Muslim society in Keralam or a<br />character like Thangal in such a manner. Maybe one can take such<br />liberties in literature, but in a visual medium like cinema, it’d look<br />totally apolitical and retrogressive today..<br /><br />What about the narrative style followed by Punathil?<br /><br />Punathil has his own style that is very readable. But though he is<br />descriptive in a sensual way and very articulate about sensual<br />aspects, he does not give us many visual clues. Moreover, I had to<br />visualize a milieu with which I was not very acquainted.His<br />descriptions about life in the Thangal family indicate a big joint<br />family, but character-wise, it looks like a small family. Thangal’s<br />relationship with Neeli itself is very ambiguous. All this made the<br />task of fixing the visual coordinates arduous. But Punathil’s novel is<br />rich with stories about people, places, incidents etc. I have drawn<br />this aspect into the film.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TflQ57l0UCA/TeWuYI6BnOI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/RlnBwV6Mqyk/s320/still%2Braamanam.jpg" />still from Raamanam<br /><br />You’ve placed your narrative in the period between 1970 and 1990’s.<br />How and why did you’ re-historicize’ the narrative?<br /><br />The novel is apparently set in the 1940’s when independence struggle<br />was raging all over. But the only indication of this is the mention<br />about Onchiyam incident. Historically, I begin the narrative of the<br />film in the 1970’s when a split occurs within the Muslim League with<br />one faction moving closer to the left. You can see that Thangal<br />belongs to the pro-left faction, and so, the film traverses that<br />historical trajectory followed by two other historical moments: the<br />Emergency and Babri Masjid demolition. That is how I structured the<br />narrative time of the film.<br /><br />Thangal is more of a libertine in the novel and his sexual escapades<br />are numerous and dominant…<br /><br />One cannot possibly portray him like that now. If I do so, it will<br />distort the very image of the community and can lead to dangerous<br />readings in the present context. For instance, a scholar who had done<br />research on the novel told me that the violent death he meets with in<br />the end was in a way a punishment to his actions in life. But my<br />attitude to this character was different; I didn’t want to portray him<br />like that, especially now. Despite everything, he has a certain kind<br />of eccentricity in him, which prompts him to give refuge to Neeli,<br />adopt her son as his own, educate him and his daughter, and teach the<br />latter an art like Nangiarkoothu etc. He is not a normal person in<br />that sense. All this places him in a very different manner in the film<br />narrative.<br /><br />But there is a strong thread of goodness running through the novel.<br />For instance the personal care he takes for someone like Eramullan,<br />the horse, Neeli etc. It is something that defies any kind of<br />stereotyping. I took that element too from the novel.<br /><br />In all your early films, you have worked with other contexts and<br />communities. How was your encounter with this milieu?<br /><br />During the shooting of the film, I had the opportunity to mingle with<br />many people there, both men and women. I met a lot of old women who<br />were active in the communist party and had taken part in street<br />processions etc. But in the present, I felt that there is a certain<br />sense of insecurity running deep within the community. I don’t know<br />whether it is fear or anger or suspicion. This was evident in the way<br />local people interacted with us. Majority of them earnestly wanted to<br />help us in the shooting by finding locations etc but were reluctant to<br />do so; they seemed to be afraid of something. I felt very sad about<br />it, because it is not at all a healthy. It indicates the positions<br />into which we’ve driven a progressive community like the Muslims in<br />Malabar. Evidently, the Babri Masjid demolition has affected the<br />community in a very profound manner. So, I think its inclusion in the<br />film was also justified by my experience during shooting. I never<br />thought its repercussions were so deep..<br /><br />This is also being telecast as a television serial, isn’t it?<br /><br />Yes, but I shot the film and teleserial in different formats and with<br />two different camera setups. The serial dwells much more upon details,<br />subplots and other characters in the novel. But a film can’t afford<br />it.</span></div>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-19585407737315942832011-05-31T20:05:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.360-07:00A Film and A Time<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b>Njatadi – The Film and its Time</b><br /></span><br />Films follow curious lives. While some films are remembered for their<br />memorable story, character or acting, certain films stand apart for<br />their radical otherness and refusing to play to the dominant tunes of<br />the time. The latter kind are rediscovered as moments in history. The<br />case of ‘Njatadi’, debut film by Gopi made in 1979, is one such story.<br /><br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ff8SpPOnCwI/TeWszF6e6cI/AAAAAAAAAJg/Siwhbcmjpt4/s320/gopi.jpg" /> <b><span class="Apple-style-span" >Gopi, director of Njatadi at the sets</span></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">Literally ‘njatadi’ means the bed of seedlings in a paddy field; it is<br />the site where fresh seedlings are weeded, sorted and kept for<br />planting. Thought njatadi itself does not result in any yield, the<br />tender plants in it provide the future harvest. In that sense,<br />‘Njatadi’ the film could be seen as a metaphor of sorts. Most of those<br />who were part of this venture went on to make significant<br />contributions in cinema and other fields: Gopi, its director, actors<br />like Murali, K R Mohanan (now Chairman of Kerala Chalachitra Academy)<br />and Aliyar, cinematographer Vipin Mohan, etc. It featured several<br />other first-time actors like veteran journalist V R Korappath,<br />Kalamandalam Girija, MK Gopalakrishnan etc. It was also entirely shot<br />and processed in Keralam.<br /><br />Paradoxically, the film was screened only twice and its print still<br />untraceable. For a film like that, which was seen only by a few, there<br />is every chance of it being relegated to the oblivion. But in the case<br />of Njatadi it was not so. On September 24th , after 30 years, the<br />group of youngsters who made that film possible got together to<br />refresh their memories.<br />They paid homage to the stalwarts who departed during this long<br />interregnum: director Gopi, Murali, Korapath, producer-organiser Dr KN<br />Sreenivasan etc.. In that sense, Njatadi is more than just a film.<br />Though the film in its physical form is irretrievable, the spirit<br />behind it survives.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MfGxDGxsHIA/TeWszJzlf_I/AAAAAAAAAJo/gSSAY5xbt9g/s320/still%2Bfrom%2Bnjatadi.jpg" /> A Still from Njatadi<br /><br />To mark the occasion, a book and a video documentary on the film was<br />also released. The book – Njatadi Smaranakal - edited by K Bhaskaran<br />contains personal memoirs of those who took part in the making of the<br />film. Apart from such reminiscences, the 20-minutes video documentary,<br />pieces together the narrative of the film through poignant stills from<br />it. The book and the documentary, unique in their mission, are earnest<br />attempts at recapturing a lost film, and in the process, memories,<br />incidents and experiences that such an experiment involved in the late<br />70’s. What transpires through these personal flashbacks, are the sheer<br />joy of doing something new, the exhilaration of collective, selfless<br />action and also its attendant frustrations.<br /><br />As one of the main organizers and the scenarist of the film, TK<br />Kochunarayanan recalls the period: “All over the world, 1970’s mark<br />radical changes in political thinking. Naturally it had its resonance<br />in India and Keralam too. There were fresh sprouts of an ideology that<br />was committed to providing the villages a new life and vigour. In<br />Keralam, it had the resonances of a rural wake up song and was the<br />indigenous version of an ideology that inspired the youth and rattled<br />the old. Caught in its tune and rhythm were some young minds, who were<br />ready to take up that arduous journey to achieve lasting peace.”<br />According to him, this was the background that made ‘Njatadi’<br />possible.<br /><br />Any act of remembering is also an act of defiance against forgetting.<br />By keeping memories alive, we make vital links not only with the past,<br />but also to the future. Such remembrance is sure to inspire the<br />njatadis in the present too.</span></div></div>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-83085875747115911782011-05-31T20:03:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.361-07:00Another Great Actress Leaves the Stage<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CScPJIjIK6E/TeWsOTl2lOI/AAAAAAAAAJY/hrWPplCPqP8/s1600/adoor%2Bbhavani.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 92px; height: 110px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CScPJIjIK6E/TeWsOTl2lOI/AAAAAAAAAJY/hrWPplCPqP8/s320/adoor%2Bbhavani.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613081872364377314" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">ADOOR BHAVANI <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">C <st1:place st="on">S Venkiteswaran</st1:place></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Acting in cinema is not like any other vocation. Appearance in films and the ‘recognition’ that invariably follows transports the actor/actress into a magical world where nothing else matters. It holds a fatal attraction despite umpteen disappointments, ups and downs all along - in the form of one’s role being editing out, films bombing at the box office or never getting released, and almost invariably, bounced cheques that never get realized or even regretted. But the lure of the tinsel world is such that once there, one is doomed for life. In the case of artists who survive by doing ‘side roles’ this can be an especially frustrating experience. For even while one floats over the tinsel froth and tides, there persists a certain emptiness within, a lurking feeling that one hasn’t been able to play a fulfilling and challenging role that is equal to one’s talent and experience. Many an artist fades out and dies with this feeling, neither making it big personally or financially. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The demise of Adoor Bhavani augurs such sad thoughts in one’s mind. She had been a very impressive presence in Malayalam cinema for at least five decades (1953-2003). Yet she never got a real break like some of her colleagues, like for instance, Premji in Piravi, Adoor Bhasi in Cheriyachante Kroorakrithyangal, Bahadoor, though very late in his life, in Thilakkam, Oduvil in Oru Cherupunchiri etc. She had to remain at the margins throughout her carrer like many other stalwarts of her generation: S P Pillai, Paravur Bharathan, Alummoodan, Kuthiravattom Pappu, Meena, Philomena etc. Yet they all firmly etched themselves into our memory through small roles yet striking performances.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Adoor Bhavani virtually stumbled into films with Sariyo Thetto in 1953. From the beginning, she had a style of her own, for she was neither a conventional ‘beauty’ nor was she known for her dancing skills. But her persona had a rustic charm and vitality that immediately vibed with the audience, an unassuming style that was intimate and neighbourly. As she could effortlessly transform herself into the character, her very presence added a certain rootedness to the ambience of the narrative. In that sense, she was a ‘milieu actress’; all her impressive performances were of characters belonging to a definite milieu, for eg. as a fisherfolk woman Chakki in Chemmeen, the self-effacingly loyal Nair sister to her brother in Koottukudumbam, the friendly Muslim neighbour in Kadalpalam, Chellamma’s guaradian-neighbour and fellow street vendor ‘Valliakkan’ in Kallichellamma or the proud but caring mother-in-law in Kodiyettam </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">No wonder her gradual sidelining within Malayalam film narrative coincided with the retreat of such milieu-based narratives, and its withdrawal into male-dominant, upper caste/middle class homes, where aged people and women were mere appendages. If actresses like Kaviyoor Ponnamma and Sukumari graduated to motherly roles and those like Meena and Philomena tried their hands at comedies, Adoor Bhavani persisted with small but serious roles. Though she was often typecast, she was able to handle all such roles with equal charm and ease. Like many of her contemporaries, for whom acting was never just a career, her last days too were spent in loneliness and penury: another instance of our utter disregard for art.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Adoor Bhavani was one of the last representatives of a generation of actors who came to cinema from theatre; their acting style drew its energy from stage experience. With the varied and direct encounters they thus had with spectators all over Kerala, they could make their presence felt in film too without resorting to any kind of antics or exaggeration, even in very small roles and brief appearances. They easily became part of the narrative milieu and merged perfectly with its ambience. Sadly, Adoor Bhavani was one such actress, of whose talents Malayalam cinema could only capture a few glimpses.</p>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-24540093717088814232011-05-31T19:56:00.000-07:002011-05-31T20:02:40.657-07:00Raoul Peck<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cesZ5Ep4aps/TeWquWqhodI/AAAAAAAAAJA/iqAuV3zQcdY/s1600/raoul.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 115px; height: 101px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cesZ5Ep4aps/TeWquWqhodI/AAAAAAAAAJA/iqAuV3zQcdY/s320/raoul.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613080223921840594" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; "><h4><span class="Apple-style-span" >RAOUL PECK – FROM AFRICA TO THE WORLD AND BACK</span></h4><h4><span class="Apple-style-span" >C S Venkiteswaran</span></h4><h4><i><span style="font-weight: normal; " >“I am not interested in avant-gardist narrative form, but rather in ideological deconstruction. The idea is by multiplying angles and superposing layers of narrative, you can create a different perception, closer to reality. I advance step by step, trying all possible combinations.”</span></i></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: rgb(61, 61, 61); " >The Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck’s oeuvre deals with some of the most troubling questions of contemporary Third World politics and life: the exploitation under the new global economic order, lack of visionary leadership within and fragmentation of the socio-political fabric, and the haunting memories and the harrowing present of diasporic life. All these themes recur in Peck films, though they are set in various milieu, cultures and nations.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: rgb(61, 61, 61); " ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="color: rgb(61, 61, 61); " > </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="color: rgb(61, 61, 61); ">The life of Raoul Peck also traverses a very curious path. Born in Haiti, </span>his parents fled the Duvalier dictatorship when he was 8, and found asylum and a new life in the recently independent Republic of Congo. He was educated in Haiti, Zaire (Congo) and later studied engineering and economics at Berlin University, worked as a journalist and photographer from 1980 to 1985, and received his film degree from the Berlin Academy of Film and Television in 1988. <span style="color: rgb(61, 61, 61); ">For a brief period, he was also the Minister of Culture in Haiti. His oeuvre includes short experimental works, political documentaries and features. Hi</span><span style="color: rgb(3, 8, 10); ">s first feature film feature <i>The Man by the Shore</i><strong> </strong>(1993) was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1993. </span>His later films, <i>Lumumba: Death of a Prophet</i> (1992) and <i>The Man By The Shore</i> (1993), Lumumba (2000) <i>Moloch Tropical</i> (2009) etc have received international acclaim.</span></p><p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MJWwa8rJc9U/TeWquvMPu7I/AAAAAAAAAJI/0Qe58Q9FtKA/s320/lumumba.jpg" /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" >It was indeed a very strange journey for an African filmmaker like Raoul Peck, who is always haunted by his roots and frustrated by its historical trajectories. For Peck, it has always been a struggle of discovery and reinterpretation. Though his films have been consistently criticized by his opponents for its ‘partisan’ views, he has never relented. Film after film, he has dug into the very roots of the condition of Africa today. <strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal; ">Haitian Corner</span></i></strong>, the film which first drew international attention to him, is about a Haitian in New York who, like his parents fled Haiti during the Duvalier dictatorship. One day in the street the protagonist thinks he recognises someone who tortured him and from then on, he is obsessed with the idea of revenge. It is a film about the conditions to which the dispossessed are driven. In <strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal; ">The Man by the Shore</span></i></strong> Raoul Peck takes up the complex relationship between the victim and torturer, and the diabolic dimensions of violence in sociopolitical life. His most well known film is on Lumumba, first a documentary and then a feature, which chronicles the events surrounding the leader’s assassination - an event that shattered of the great hope of African unity and self-determination. It has been hailed as a heartwrenching film both for cinematic and political reasons, as it depicts a visionary leader caught in the crossfire of colonial economic interests on the one side and African ethnic intrigues on the other. </span></p><p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><i><span style="color: black; "><br /></span></i></span></p><p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><i><span style="color: black; "><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dt-ZHg6OMrQ/TeWquoLYx0I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/S2odz7iGJxM/s320/hotel%2Brwanda.jpg" /></span></i></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><i><span style="color: black; ">In Desounen:<b> </b>Dialogue with Death</span></i><b><span style="color: black; ">,</span></b><span style="color: black; "> is a fantastic dialogue between Death and a peasant, interspersed with interviews with Haitians from different walks of life. Formally, this film uses an open, dialogic format where fantasy and reportage converge.</span> <strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal; ">Sometimes in April,</span></i></strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal; "> another landmark film,</span></strong> deals with the traumatic events surrounding the massacre in Rwanda, the fatal procrastination of justice and the criminal indifference of the international community. Raoul Peck's most recent work <i>Moloch Tropical</i> is an clinical examination about the workings of the mind of a tyrant, ruler of a country but ultimately a petty human being caught between personal-psychological and global-political forces. His documentaries also have probed the same themes incisively. His <i>Profit and Nothing But!</i> is about another dictatorship - that of global capital that has devastated "developing nations" like Haiti. In <strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal; ">Haiti</span></i></strong></span><strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >, Silence of the Dogs</span></span></i></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" >, he returns to the theme of political intrigues and the eventual betrayal of the people. </span></span></p></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-45332025874225383452011-05-31T19:52:00.000-07:002011-05-31T19:55:11.269-07:00television and malayalee<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b>Television and Malayalee Life</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">C S Venkiteswaran</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8vMk60JvHik/TeWpzbEdhLI/AAAAAAAAAI4/THTuUcq0XQ4/s320/mal%2Btv.jpg" /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Television is an ubiquitous presence in Malayalee life. Within a brief period, it has emerged as the most popular and influential medium in our society and polity. Setting our political agenda, voting patterns, culinary preferences, and even our personal tastes, this omnipotent medium virtually wields the power to create, sustain and destroy. Many an issue has been raised and erased by it, and many a politician and public personality made and demolished by it, throwing all notions about the private and the public into disarray,. Nowadays, it also creates singers or performers out of all of us, through its umpteen ‘reality’ shows.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The televisual experience of a Malayalee household is a multilayered affair and functions at least at four levels: the local cable television channel that beams local news, events and programmes, the language channels that now address Malayalam-speaking population across the globe, the ‘national’ channels in Hindi and English, and the international channels. And these channels together provide an astounding variety of programmes - news and entertainment, education and spirituality, movies and sports. It is impossible to imagine how anyone could wade his/her way through this maze every day.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">If one takes the Malayalam telecast by Doordarshan in 1985 as a beginning, Television, has never since ‘looked back’. The new economic policies of the 90’s and the ‘opening up of the sky’ brought in its wake, the cable TV revolution, which virtually opened the flood gates of images, information and narratives into our homes. In 1993, the first non-Hindi satellite channel in the private sector in India, Asianet, came and transformed the entire scene; Sun (1998) and Kairali (2000) soon followed. Yet another major initiative came in the form of 24 Hours news channel, Indiavision in 2003. If anyone thought that for a narrow strip of land with a media-hungry population of around 30 million, this was too much, they were proved wrong. Still more channels entered the scene: Jeevan, Amrita, Manorama, People, Kiran, and Yes, apart from the umpteen spiritual channels. Yet another important sector that often goes unnoticed is the overwhelming presence of cable TV networks and their local channels. The cable TV networks in Keralam are not mere distributors of electronic signals but producers as well. Many of them have regular news bulletins and telecast local events live to their audience. The ACV and its Rosebowl (the only metro channel worth its name in Keralam), and<span> </span>Kerala Vision, which is a state-wide channel, also beam programmes round the clock. As for the economic model that sustains such proliferation of channels, one is left clueless, for this has not happened in any other language in India. Of one thing one can be sure, the size of total television ad revenue has definitely not grown in proportion with the increase in the number of channels. Yet, the channels manage to survive! That is Kerala Model in television for you. Obviously, such proliferation is driven not only by economic and political interests, but also by communal, regional and other interests. Surely, it also has to do with the insatiable media appetite of Malayalees.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">When television sector was opened up for private players, it was feared that it would lead to ‘MTV-isation’ of our culture. But when one looks back, what one finds is not an one-way flow, but a complex process of acceptance, rejection as well as adaptation. But has proliferation actually led to diversity in content? Sadly, no. If one flips through these channels one is struck by similarity rather than difference. Channel after channel follow the same patterns, formats and even time schedules. The crucial question is, despite this massive expansion of media time and space, whether real issues and the marginalized in our society find a place there.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">One significant change that has occurred during the past decade is the capture of television by the people. Till recently, spectators were passive consumers of television content: they watched serials, news programmes and live events, heard professional singers and enjoyed trained performers. But now, the roles are reversed. With the reality shows, all hitherto avid viewers of television have become performers with the ‘professionals’ watching and judging them. With citizen journalism, anyone with a mobile is a potential TV journalist.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">So is the case with news. Every other issue becomes ‘Breaking News’ and issues often reduced to mudslinging. If people discussed politics in tea shops and reading rooms earlier, now they discuss about TV news and reports about it. With television’s overwhelming emphasis on the local, are we losing sight of the national and the global and its perspectives?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Anyway, television is here to stay and very much part of our lives. What comes of it depends upon what we <i>make</i> of it.</p></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-89992165758979782582011-05-31T19:44:00.002-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.362-07:00Master of the Realm of the Senses<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" >P Padmarajan - Master of Realm of the Senses</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">C S Venkiteswaran</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages;</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>Let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded,</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>Whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i>There I will give you my love”</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b>- Song of Solomon, VII:10-12</b></p></span><div><br /></div><div><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HHMGvUn2c5I/TeWn59iuipI/AAAAAAAAAIg/kGGHU2Z1uyI/s1600/padmarajan%2Band%2Bvenu.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 211px; height: 166px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HHMGvUn2c5I/TeWn59iuipI/AAAAAAAAAIg/kGGHU2Z1uyI/s320/padmarajan%2Band%2Bvenu.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613077124801792658" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">It is unbelievable that two decades have passed since Padmarajan left us! It may be because of the fact that he and the enchanting words and images he created never lost their charm and are still close to our heart.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Though his life was short, Padmarajan (1945-1991) was very prolific as a writer and filmmaker. He was one of the youngest authors to receive Kerala Sahitya Academy Award for his very first novel<i>Nakshathrangale Kaval</i> at the age of 27. He went on to publish around 17 books of fiction, wrote as many highly successful scripts for filmmakers like Bharathan, KG George, IV Sasi and Mohan, and directed 18 films during the brief period between 1979 (<i>Peruvazhiyambalam</i>) and 1991 (<i>Njan Gandharvan</i>), apart from editing many of his own films! And even when he was busy making films, he continued to write till the end.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In literature, he belonged to a generation of writers who were in many ways the midnight’s children: born into a period of great hope they matured into a bleak era of utter loss of belief. Devoid of the baggage of ideologies or legacies, they vociferously quarreled with everything, though they were not sure about their dreams. In their works was a virtual and ‘literal’ explosion of sensuality. Padmarajan’s works of fiction like <i>Nanmakalude Sooryan, Shavavahangalum Thedi, Manjukalam notta Kuthira, Prathimayum Rajakumariyum, Pukakkannada, Syphilisinte Nadakkavu </i>and<i>Rithubhedhangalude Paarithoshikam</i> belong to that tradition and charged with existential angst and carnal yearnings. Even the very titles suggest an earthy otherworldliness about them.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In the mid-70’s, Padmarajan started writing film scripts, and established enduring partnerships with directors like Bharathan, Mohan, and IV Sasi, whose films ushered in a new sensuality in Malayalam cinema. Even after becoming a director himself, he didn’t stop writing for others. Starting in 1975 with <i>Prayanam</i> for Bharathan, Padmarajan went on to write scripts for other directors till the end: his last script was <i>Eee Thanutha Veluppankalathu</i> in 1990 for Joshi. And all his screenplays invariably dealt with his favourite themes: desire, passion, memory, love, sex and violence.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">He was basically a storyteller par excellence. Though apparently, his stories and films teem with ‘ordinary’ men and women, and very ‘local’ cityscapes and villages, these people and places are charged with a raw and explosive kind of passion and desire; they lie dormant within them and is aroused at the slightest instance: it can be the arrival from outside of a man or woman, an unexpected turn of events or an accident. At the centre of all his films is this sudden intrusion of the ‘real’ that leads to the eruption of tempestuous passions lying behind the placid surface of these lands and mindscapes.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">His first film <i>Peruvazhiambalam</i> (1979), one of the finest films in Malayalam, is an incisive examination of how violence or totalitarianism works in our society that dealt with disturbing questions relating to masculinity and how people adore and dread it at the same time. Very few people resist it directly; some exile themselves in space, while others do the same in time, hoping for better times. It is the meek who are forced to resist and rebel, but once the act of violence is perpetrated, the mantle of ‘heroism’ is thrust upon them too, which is nothing but another invitation to domination.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span>In <i>Oridaththoru phayalvaan</i></span> (1981), which won an award at Asian Film Festival, it is the arrival of a wrestler that creates ripples in the village, and sets passions in motion. His towering body is an alien object that triggers desire, admiration, jealousy and also avarice. In the end, the village spits him out, and regains its calm, but in the process, several hearts have been wounded and minds set aflame. Both <i>Kallan Pavithran</i> (1981) and <i>Arappattakettiya Gramathil</i> (1986) are voyages into another world. While Pavithran, a smalltime thief is accidentally transported into a world of wealth and luxury, in the latter, the casual sexual escapade of the group of youth all of a sudden turns into a nightmare of sorts. Transgressive love is a recurring theme in Padmarajan. Both in <i>Prayanam</i>and<i> Rathinirvedam</i> (both directed Bharathan) love breaks the barriers of age and caste. In <i>Thoovanathumpikal</i> (1987) and <i>Desadanakili Karayarilla</i> (1986) Padmarajan explores the polymorphous dimension of desire, always placing the female at the centre of the narrative. In <i>Thoovanathumpikal</i>, one of the most romantic of Padmarajan films, it is Clara who enters the hero’s life like a rain and exits it as easily to break away and seek freedom. Similarly, <i>Desadanakili Karayarilla</i> deals with two school girls who elope from school to seek their own freedom – social and sexual. Though the normative, heterosexual regime catches up with both the eloping duo and Jayakrishnan in <i>Thoovanathumpikal</i>, the taste of freedom and difference is destined to mark their future lives.<i>Namukkuparkkan Munthirithoppukal</i> (1986) revisits the theme of sexuality in both its forms – that of inhuman lust and romantic love, weaving the evocative Songs of Solomon into its narrative.<i>Innale</i> (1990) deals with the ultimate male fantasy: that of the sudden gift of a dream girl sans memories; without a past, she can take any form that love wills.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VuNBWdh34fk/TeWosrgmXyI/AAAAAAAAAIw/ng1hfU7kOEA/s320/padmarajan.jpg" /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In Padmarajan’s narratives, male and female sexualities, though fatally attracted towards each other, follow different trajectories, often to tragic effect. While male sexuality easily tends towards violence and aggressive possession, female sexuality is almost always enigmatic and mysterious, breaking out into freedom and exuberance. Characters like Clara or Shali, Sophia or Savitri, Chakkara or Gouri portray the wide spectrum of female desires that can never be pigeon-holed or cast into the moulds of male desire. They rebel and provoke, yearn and splurge, never afraid of taking control of their lives and destinies. It is men who come in the way, coercing them into violence, like in <i>Novemberinte Nashtam </i>(1982) and<i> Koodevide </i>(1983), or force them to run away to freedom like in <i>Nombarathipoovu </i>(1987)<i> and Parannu parannu parannu </i>(1984). More than relationships themselves, what Padmarajan films deal with is the havoc that these fatal attractions wreak upon the person. And it is female desire that stretches the narratives into a triangle, as they almost invariably break out of their prisons (<i>Prayanam, Arappattakettiya Gramathil, Namukkuparkkan Munthirithoppukal, Thoovanathumpikal, Oridathoru Phayalvan). Aparan, Thinkalazhcha Nalla Divasam, Season </i>and<i> Moonam Pakkam</i> are films that stand apart in his oeuvre; these films focus on death, loneliness, longing, old age, revenge and the fascinating theme of the double.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i> </i></p></span></div></div>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-78715726100235623722011-05-31T19:42:00.000-07:002011-05-31T19:44:31.808-07:00kochin haneefa<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8x9CrkVbXO8/TeWndBs0hYI/AAAAAAAAAIY/yFyREDmbxeY/s1600/kochin%2Bhaneefa.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 137px; height: 118px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8x9CrkVbXO8/TeWndBs0hYI/AAAAAAAAAIY/yFyREDmbxeY/s320/kochin%2Bhaneefa.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613076627701663106" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b>Adieu, Kochin Haneefa</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">C S Venkiteswaran</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The departure of Kochin Haneefa is like the sudden and unexpected exit of a character in the middle of a play. He was at his prime and in the middle of so many things. As a noted actor, director, scenarist and producer, he was very active both in Malayalam and Tamil for more than three decades. In his own words, “I played several roles in life: actor, writer, scenarist, director and politician. But I loved acting above all. I appear before you, changing through time and your tastes. And, upon seeing me, if your mind is aroused and whispers ‘Kochin Haneefa’, my life is fulfilled.” He was also one of those rare artists from Kerala who made a mark in the South Indian film industry.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span>Salim Ahmed Ghoush</span> alias Kochin Haneefa was many things at the same time. Though he was one of the first products of Kalabhavan to enter films, his acting was not defined by ‘mimicry’ style. He entered films playing villain roles, but ended up as a comedian. And even when he shifted to comedy in Malayalam, he was an acclaimed villain in Tamil films. Till the end, he went on producing, writing and directing, not comedies, but films dealing with serious issues, social and familial.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Even as a college student, Haneefa had made his mark as an actor, and like many others he too was lured by cinema and went to Madras to pursue his dreams. He yearned to be an actor and did manage to get some minor roles, but he was more successful in script writing, something he literally stumbled upon. His acting debut was in Azhimukham in 1972 as a boatman, followed by a handful of films in the 70’s. He couldn’t find a niche for himself in that period and had to be satisfied with supportive roles. The first break came for him when he became a script writer of Aval oru Devalayam, which starred major actors. He went on to write Irumpazhikal (a remake of Sholay), Raju Rahim, Adimachangala etc. followed by commercial successes like Kadathanadan Ambadi, Lal Americayil, Inakkili and Puthiya Karukkal. Meanwhile he continued to appear in villain roles. The second turning point in his career was Kireedom (Siby Malayil, 1989) in which he played the role of a village ruffian, who is a coward. This role that combined the villain and comedian, in a way encapsulates his career till then and also of his future fame. One can never forget the hilarious characters in films like<span> </span>Punjabi House, Narendran Makan Jayakantan Vaka, CID Moosa, Meesa Madhavan, Thilakkam, Mannar Mathai Speaking, Harikrishnans, Friends, Suthradaran, Ee Parkkum Thalika, Sundarapurushan, Kunjikoonan, Swapnakkoodu, Pulivalkalyanam, CI Mahadevan 5’ 4”, Chathikatha Chanthu and Udayananu Tharam.. He was a noted actor in Tamil also, with films like Annyan, Pattayan, Mahanadi, and most recently Vettaikaran. In Mahanadi he plays a crafty villain who traumatizes the life of the hero (Kamal Haasan). He was at ease with both the film worlds and loved to switch roles, languages and styles. Like many actors of his kind, who constitute the magic of cinema but are not rewarded by recognitions, Haneefa too had to satisfy with public adulation rather than official recognition. The only state award that came his way was as Second Best Actor for his performance in Soothradharan in 2001.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">His directorial ventures in Malayalam include <span> </span><i>Bheesmacharya</i> (1994), <i>Valtsalyam</i> (1993), <i>Veena Meettiya Vilangukal</i> (1990), <i>Aankiliyude Tharattu</i> (1987) <i>Oru Sindoora Pottinte Ormaykku</i> (1987),<i>Moonnu Masangalkku Munpu</i> (1986) and <i>Oru Sandesam Koodi</i> (1985). Most of these films did well at the box office and dealt with social and emotional issues.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Though his acting career spanned more than three decades from Azhimukhan (1972) to Bodyguard (2010), and he made notable contributions in various fields, what made him a popular figure were his comic roles. In comedy, he was able to create a style of his own. His acting was situational rather than something that emerged from himself through mere idiosyncrasies or dialogues. It had more to do with the dynamics between his body and the context in which it found itself. For instance, like many of his contemporaries and competitors, his comic identity is not fixed onto or one arising out of his regional slang or mannerisms. It was his body as a whole that was at the centre: one that stands out, never accommodated by the ‘normal’/normative system that envelops it. Haneefa character is always a ‘misfit’ and the comedy arises out the mismatch between body and mind, appearance and reality, words and deeds, status and ability. For instance, in several films, he plays the role of a police officer, but he is invariably a coward, a stooge or corrupt to the core. In Kaliveedu, he is a psychiatrist, who hypnotizes people, but in the end he himself falls prey to a smarter woman, who becomes his wife.<span> </span>In Oravadhikalathu, he is a physical trainer, but has to send letters addressed to himself to prove his worth. In Swapnakoodu, though he is a distant relative of the hapless family that includes two beautiful girls, in the end we find him trying to sell them off in the flesh market. In films like Punjabi House, Pulivalkalyanam, Narendran makan Jayakantan vaka etc, he plays hilarious roles where humour arises out of a body that is out of place, one that can’t neither flaunt nor hide itself from public gaze. In film after film, he celebrated this state of being that is always caught between the rhetoric heroism on the one side, and the sheer necessity to survive on the other. Like any comedian, his roles stand apart and above the narrative, never seeking closures and finales but always bursting forth with mirth and laughter in the present. These comic characters had no axe to grind or point to prove, they were neither nostalgic about the past nor worried about future goals, but always lived here and now to light up our lives in unexpected and uncanny ways.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">One of his most striking his qualities was that he knew his role really well; small or big, central or marginal, he always played it to the hilt and with total commitment. Most importantly, never in his life, art or career was he parochial or partisan in any way, the reason why he was dear to all. The Malayalam film industry will surely miss him very badly, especially in times like these when any sense of camaraderie is sorely lacking.</p> </span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-73953590173334223852011-05-31T19:39:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.364-07:00Departure of a Master<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NKGVHJsgtpc/TeWmu1aqntI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/10WII-2_8Jk/s1600/c%2Braghavan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 125px; height: 95px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NKGVHJsgtpc/TeWmu1aqntI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/10WII-2_8Jk/s320/c%2Braghavan.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613075834130308818" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">C Raghavan - A Translator par excellence<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">C <st1:place st="on">S Venkiteswaran</st1:place><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">C Raghavan, one of the finest multilingual translators from Keralam, died on 20<sup>th</sup> February 2010 at Kasargod. He was 79. Raghavan ‘Master’, as he was fondly called, was a very lively presence in the cultural scene of Tulunad, and was an integral part of all the progressive social and literary movements in the region during the last several decades. His contributions as a teacher, writer, historian and translator have inspired and shaped a generation of literary enthusiasts, writers and students.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A true polyglot, he was at ease with several languages. He was an expert in Tulu, Kannada and Malayalam languages and was very well at ease with Tamil and English. Raghavan Master was one of those rare translators who could translate from and into more than one source and target languages. He translated a number of notable literary works from and into Malayalam and Kannada, and has ‘literally’ been an ambassador between the two languages. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Throughout his life he lived in Kasargod or Tulunad, as he would describe it, which is a virtual confluence or melting pot of cultures- Tulu, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani and English. In more than one way he was the son of Tulunad, and his magnum opus is about it. His book ‘Tulu Language, Society, Culture’, is an encyclopedic work and the result of decades of research - a unique one of its kind that delves into the diversities and confluences that define Tulu culture.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soon after graduation, he got a government job in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madras</st1:place></st1:city> as a clerk in Southern Railways. But, to the shock of his family and well wishers, he decided to return to Kasargod to take up the job of a school teacher. He was indeed answering a call. For, since then there was no looking back for him. A committed educationalist, he went on to hold several important positions in Education department, and received the award for Best Teacher. He was also active in Bharat Scouts, teachers’ training programmes and curriculum development. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was the translation of the Kannada novel Chirasmarana by Niranjana, based on the lives of the communist revolutionaries and martyrs of Kayyur, that brought Raghavan into the limelight. According to Niranjana, when Chirasmarana was originally published in Kannada, it did not receive the attention it deserved but it was the Malayalam translation that gave it a new lease of life. In the coming decades Raghavan translated several celebrated works from Kannada like Bharatipura, Divyam, and <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Avasthe by UR Anantamurthy, Chidambara Rahasyam by Poornachandra Tejaswi, Kulothe Chinkaramma by Chandrasekhara Kambar Baduku by Geeta Nagabhushan (which received Sahitya Akademi Award for translation), and other noted works of masters like Masti and <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bendre. Another master work of his is the translation of the Kannada epic Pampa Ramayanam.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Raghavan Master was also instrumental in bringing several authors into limelight. For instance, the novels of Sara Abubacker, a writer living in Kerala and writing in Kannada, became popular through his translations. Similar was the case with writers like Boluvar Muhammedkunji and Fakir Muhammed Katpadi. He also introduced to Malayalee readers the poetry, plays and writings of another polyglot and scholar of his region, Manjeswaram Govinda Pai. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some of the major works he translated from Malayalam to Kannada include O Chandu Menon’s Indulekha, which received Kendra Sahitya Akademi award in 1998, Kesavadev’s Odayil Ninnu, MT Vasudevan Nair’s celebrated novel Randamoozham, Sukumar Azhikode’s philosophical treatise Tatvamasi and a selection of poems by Ayyappa Panicker. He also wrote the biographies of Malayalam writers like Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer in Kannada. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For him, translation was not a technical or literary affair. While introducing the best of works in one culture to another, it should also engage them in a cultural dialogue with each other. Taking up this cultural mission, Raghavan Master always selected works that dealt with the oppressed and the marginalized sections in these societies. According to him, translation was not just ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">bhashantara’</i> (language to language) but was also ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">bhavantara’</i> (emotion to emotion) and a tool for fostering deeper understanding and fresh synergy between cultures. And what distinguishes his translations is such complex and sensitive understanding of culture. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">C Raghavan was one of the last among a generation of great translators in Malayalam that includes stalwarts like Nalappatt Narayana Menon, Ani Thayyil, P Madhavan Pillai, MN Sathyarthi and Ravivarma, for whom translation was a mission. While the entire Tulunad mourns his demise, the writers and readers in Kannada and Malayalam will deeply miss his warm, gentle and stimulating presence.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-48346528400418842362011-05-28T02:54:00.000-07:002011-05-28T03:00:45.741-07:00a pestering journey<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><table bg="" color="white" width="448"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" bg="" color="white" align="left"><p> <b> <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Quest for ‘the pest' </span></b> </p><p style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);" align="justify"> </p><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> C.S. VENKITESWARAN </span><p> </p><p align="justify"> </p> <table bgcolor="ddffdd" border="0"><tbody><tr><td><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><center><br /><b> Festering wounds:A scene from ‘A Pestering Journey'. </b> </center><p> </p><p>K.R. Manoj's documentary ‘A Pestering Journey,' which won the best investigative film award at the 58th National Film Awards, begins with some seemingly simple questions: ‘What is a pest? Is it you? Is it me? Or is it the way you look at me?' As the film progresses, one is constantly confronted with the diabolic dimensions these posers can assume in our life.</p>Obviously, this is not just a film about endosulfan or pesticides, but about how the very notion of ‘the pest’ orders our ways and means of life and builds a system and logic of immutable power around us – an order that condemns certain organisms<br />to death and tampers with the designs of nature.<br /><br />The use of pesticide, in the larger sense, is also a process of<br />‘othering’ where the powers-that-be decides over what the ‘other’ is and abrogates upon itself the right to liquidate. This manifests in the relationship between men and ‘pests’, between certain professionals in power vis a vis the farmers/residents, between the gigantic machines of industry against the culture of agriculture, or between the chemistry of Science against alchemy of human life.<br /><br />Though the desperate struggle of the people against the use of<br />Endosulfan has been raging in Kasargod district for decades, it was only a few months ago that the issue suddenly attained critical mass and assumed life-or-death immediacy. All this eventually led to its ban, or at least to a decision to phase it out. Better late than never; but the damage it has already wreaked upon human lives and environment is unimaginable and unpardonable. How does one account for the massive suffering it has engendered? The film ponders over this<br />question, by journeying to the sites of pain and suffering. The film begins with the ‘cancer train’ that embarks on a pilgrimage of death everyday at 9.20 pm from Bhatinda town for Bikaner in Rajasthan, and continues through the ruins of the lives of cotton farmers in Punjab, who have paid with their lives for Green Revolution. The second part of the film travels back to Kasargod to portray the festering wounds that this pesticide has left behind in the form of human beings,<br />lives, and ecosystem.<br /><br />Obviously, the new ‘science of linkage’ is only beginning to realize the after-effects of a pesticide that transcends our normal frameworks of space and time. As Ravi Agarwal observes, ‘though all pesticides are poison by definition, some like endosulfan are particularly toxic. They persist in the environment for a long time, accumulate over the food chain and travel long distances globally, contaminating the food<br />in distant lands.. In all such cases, chronic human health impacts are difficult to prove, since they occur over long periods of time, and in very low doses of exposure”. It is this very elusiveness of a poison that masquerades as medicine that makes the struggle against its use extremely frustrating. The film is also about the struggle between the time horizons of ‘scientific’ interventions vis a vis the evanescence of human life and ‘historic’ struggles.<br /><br />Any film about an issue like this and about ‘victims’ can end up as yet another kind of victimization – making ‘them’ into objects for ‘our’ vicarious visual consumption. Pestering journey, in contrast tries to be reflective about the whole process of othering and victimization, by bringing in several perspectives – a montage of ‘pests’ that form part of our houses and farms, the visuals of earlier attempts like archival photographs and a documentary footage, and also play with texts and words - all attempting to liberate the heart-wrenching linearity of the journey and the searing personal<br />testimonies with other presences and complexities.</td></tr></tbody></table></span>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27977634.post-16756814430211473462011-05-28T02:36:00.000-07:002011-06-01T22:32:03.365-07:00A Master Narrator<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wz1f6H1RbDE/TeDC8TroaXI/AAAAAAAAAHY/lin6khp4fag/s1600/ks%2Bsethumadhavan.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 160px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wz1f6H1RbDE/TeDC8TroaXI/AAAAAAAAAHY/lin6khp4fag/s320/ks%2Bsethumadhavan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5611699477034854770" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">K S SETHUMADHAVAN – Master Narrator</span></span></p><p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">C S Venkiteswaran</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This year’s JC Daniel Award for lifetime achievement in cinema goes to K S Sethumadhavan, the veteran director whose contributions were foundational to the evolution of<span> </span>the language of Malayalam cinema. None could be more deserving and coincidentally, this year also marks the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of his entry into Malayalam cinema; his first film Malayalam, Jnanasundari was made in 1961. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Born in 1931 in Palakkad, K S Sethumadhavan took to the world of films like fish to water. And his lineage runs back to the beginnings of Malayalam cinema: he began his career in films under TR Sundaram of Modern Studios who produced the first Malayalam talkie, Balan. After a brief apprenticeship under K Ramanathan, he made his debut with a Sinhalese film, Veeravijaya, which became a commercial success. It earned him the reputation of being a responsible director and before long, he moved to Malayalam. From his very first film in Malayalam till the end, it was a long and fascinating engagement with literature. He was virtually a ‘writer’s director’ and almost all the major writers of the period like Muttathu Varkey,<span> </span>Kesavadev, MT Vasudevan Nair, Thakazhy, Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, Pamman, KT Muhammed, Thoppil Bhasi, Vettoor Raman Nair and Parapurathu feature in his oeuvre that spans more than four decades.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span lang="EN">K S Sethumadhavan was a prolific filmmaker and in the first two decades of his career, he made more than 50 films. There were times when he used to make five to six films in a year. What made him different from the rest was that amidst this steady flow of work, he managed to produce some of the finest works in Malayalam cinema at regular intervals. His early films were all social melodramas like Kannum Karalum (1962, which introduced Kamal Hasan to cinema), Suseela, Nithyakanyaka<span> </span>(1963), Omanakuttan, Manavatti, and Anna (1964). The year 1965 marks a turning point in his life with two landmark films Odayil Ninnu, and Daham Odayil Ninnu was the screen adaptation of a celebrated novel by Kesavadev which dealt with the life and struggles of a rickshaw puller. It was a commercial success and also received critical acclaim for its raw energy and the acting performance of Sathyan in the lead role. Daham, set in a hospital, was about a murderer, who<span> </span>gradually wakes up to the feelings of love and compassion. A few films later, Sethumadhavan made another Sathyan-starrer, Yakshi (1968), based on a psychological thriller by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, which inaugurated the genre in Malayalam cinema. It was about a college lecturer, who is disfigured during a scientific experiment, and whose erotic life is even more deeply scarred by it. Other significant films to follow were Kadalpalam, Adimakal, Vazhve Mayam, and Mindapennu. In 1970 he made six films, among which Aranazhikaneram, which was based on a novel by Parappurathu stands out as one of the finest works of the period. Following the novel closely, the film adopts Biblical themes and captures the moral rot within a middle class Christian family. The narrative is about the last days in the life of Kunjanechan, who, as his life ebbs away, becomes a helpless witness to the various deadly sins his offsprings succumb to. Anubhavangal Palichakal (1971) based on a novel by Thakazhi, is yet another landmark film that starred Sethumadhavan’s favourtie actor, Sathyan (he met with while doing this film). A rare and reflective film about communist movement in Kerala, </span>it is a disturbing and emotional look at the question of belief and faith - in two crucial institutions – the communist party and the family. Both institutions seem to push the individual into deep conflicts, demanding huge sacrifices to sustain them, and the institution and morals of the party is conflated with that of the family. formally, like in Aranazhikaneram, here also one finds the prevalence of night shots; as if the characters occupy a twilight, liminal world, caught up in its web and groping to find a way out.</span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-skMD4SyyOGs/TeDC8jq90tI/AAAAAAAAAHg/wDayS4S7nZo/s1600/pani%2Btheeratha%2Bveedu.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 159px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-skMD4SyyOGs/TeDC8jq90tI/AAAAAAAAAHg/wDayS4S7nZo/s320/pani%2Btheeratha%2Bveedu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5611699481327030994" border="0" /></a><p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Some of the significant films in the next years include Panitheeratha Veedu, Kanyakumari, and Chattakkari. Oppol (1980) based on a story by MT Vasudevan Nair, which received several awards at the state and national level, returns to the theme of Oedipal conflict. It is an emotionally intense story about an illegitimate boy, his unwed mother, and her new husband, who is a soldier. The rustic charm of the performance of Balan K Nair won great appreciation and Sethumadhavan once again proved his mettle in bringing out the best in his actors with the help of a tightly-knit story. By the 1980’s, the film scene had undergone radical changes both in terms of thematic concerns as well as in technical and stylistic vocabularies. Between 1981 and 1990 he made only few films and some of which were in Hindi. But in 1991 he made a come back with Marupakkam which won National Award for Best Film. Based on a story by Indra Parthasarathy, it is a chilling film about marriage and scholarship. It is about an aged traditional vedic scholar, at the fag end of his life, being haunted by the memory of his teenage love. She is finally brought to him by his estranged son, and the film ends with the vacant and devastated stare in the face of his lifelong companion and wife in the face of that final rendezvous. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Always working from within the hub of commercial film industry, Sethumadhavan has made films belonging to different genres and also languages – apart from Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Oriya! As for official accolades, he has won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Director 4 times: <span>Vazhve Mayam </span>(1970), <span>Karakanakkadal </span>(1971), <span>Pani Theeratha Veedu </span>(1972) and <span>Oppol </span>(1980). In 1973, he won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration<span> for Achanum Bappayum and i</span>n 1966, his Telugu film <span>Sthree </span>won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Sethumadhavan belongs to a period when Malayalam cinema was trying to find a narrative idiom and language of its own. Sethumadhavan firmly anchored it by weaving intense film narratives by symbiotically linking it with literature, and drawing out impressive performances from his actors. When one looks back, it seems that one of the recurring motifs in Sethumadhavan’s oeuvre is the crisis of the patriarch or the male hero, which sometimes assumes Oedipal character. In many of his films, the masculine centre of the narrative is under severe crisis. Many of his male heroes are loners who are disfigured or impotent, nurse compulsive doubts about the fidelity of their wives, or fight futile battles. In Odayil ninnu, for Pappu the rickshaw puller, life is a constant slide to helplessness and self denial, in Kadalpalam the blind patriarch who stays upstairs and rules over his sons, finally finds himself powerless, and Aranazhikaneram is about the final days of another father figure, whose moral world is collapsing around him. If in Oppol, it is a virtual Oedipal battle between the illegitimate son and the new husband of his mother, in films like Yakshi, Anubhavangal Palichakal, Punarjanmam, and Vazhve Mayam one can sense a strong undercurrent of castration complex. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We often dub Sethumadhavan as a ‘literary’ filmmaker. When one looks back, one can find that the film narratives of this auteur par excellence are animated by certain deep ambivalences about a period that on the surface, seemed to be driven by political idealism and a sense of mission in life and polity. These celluloid portrayals of the deep conflicts of masculinity and male agency marks him off as the cartographer of<span> </span>malayalee male psyche of a particular period in our social and political history. As far as cinema was concerned, it was also a period that was prior to the advent of super stars and macho, one dimensional heroes.<span> </span></span></span></p>venkiteswaranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05630650728401371766noreply@blogger.com1