Mani Kaul 25 Dec 1944 - July 6 2011

Sixty six is not an age to die but then Mani Kaul the philosopher may well have disagreed. Mani Kaul was an unusual director in Hindi cinema. "He should have made films in Malayalam or Bengali," said a classmate long ago, "I wonder why he chose Hindi." Call that a back-handed compliment?  A Kashmiri Pandit who was born in Jodhpur (Rajasthan) as Rabindranath Kaul, he grew up in the Hindi belt. Throughout his childhood he was exposed to the sights and sounds of Rajasthan and sorrounding areas.

I remember interacting with him when he visited the FTII Pune in June 1991 for a screening of his documentary Siddheshwari (starring Mita Vashishtha) for those attending the Film Appreciation course.

His debut film Uski Roti (1969) brought him to the notice of critics and connoisseurs of fine cinema. This film is also well known for the fact that the legendary Malayalam director John Abraham was the Assistant Director. 

I remember seeing his film Nazar (1991)  in which a forty year old antique dealer (a role essayed by Shekhar 'Elizabeth' Kapur) is obsessed with a teenager (played brilliantly by Mani's daughter Shambhavi). I doubt anyone in the Hindi speaking areas barring cineastes remembers this 'heavy' Hindi film.

The documentary Siddheshwari on the singer - a role played by Mita Vashishtha - was exquisite and I consider myself lucky to have seen it in a hall where he was also present. The Wikipedia article on him has this quote by him  "The dividing line from my films and documentaries is thin. Some of my films like "Siddheshwari" are like poetic documentaries." Will Hindi cinema get another director like him? I doubt it even though there are some very promising guys there today.

In her tribute The Solitary Artist  written for Hindustan Times the critic Aruna Vasudev talks of his love of Hindustani Classical music and also of painting. According to Aruna he was about to start work on a feature film based on the book Under Her Spell by Dilip Padgaonkar on Rossellini's stay in India during the fifties when his affair with an already married Sonali Das Gupta scandalised India and Nehru (of all people) had to ask him to leave.

 Click here for the Wikipedia article which also contains plenty of links to articles on Mani Kaul.

 

Bharat Gopi... Actor par excellence is no more....

Question: Smita Patil, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah and Amitabh Bachchan are four of the five actors who have had the honour of a retrospective of their films being shown in Paris by the French Government. Who is the fifth?

I won't be surprised if most of us get this wrong. The answer is Malayalam film actor Bharat Gopi. Bharat Gopi expired today, Jan 29, in Thiruvanantapuram of a heart attack. He was 71. He was taken ill five days ago while shooting. My mother told me this when I returned home today evening. She liked Gopi as an actor and knew that I was also a fan of Gopi.

Gopi was at his peak during the eighties. He was famous for his roles in films directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, K.G. George and Govind Nihalani among others. A paralytic stroke laid him low for a long time during which he faced a lot of difficulties. He turned to film direction later on.

In her tribute to Gopi written for rediff.com Shobha Warrier mentions how Gopi got noticed in his very first film Swayamvaram directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. His frustrated face drew attention to it for the brief span that it was shown on the screen. The Guardian had an article on him titled The Face of Unemployment. Click here to read Goodbye Mr. Bharat Gopi, Shobha Warrier's excellent tribute to Gopi.

Some of his well known films include Kodiyettam (1977) which won him the National Award for acting. This award was known as the Bharat award in those days. It was after this award that he came to be known as Bharat Gopi. He had also acted in Mani Kaul's Satah Se Udta Aadmi and Govind Nihalani's Aghaat.

His book Abhinayam Anubhavam won the National Award for the best book on cinema (1994). His production Padhyam (1991) won him the V Shantaram award for the best film. A very intense person he overcame personal tragedy and put great passion into everything he did. He will be missed.

Links:

Wikipedia article on Bharat Gopi.

Tribute in the Hindustan Times

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) is no more...

 Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) is no more...


Thus Spake Antonioni:
"I am not a theoretician of the cinema. If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: I don't know. The second: All my opinions on the subject are in my films."

"When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film. "

"When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it."

As if the news of Ingmar Bergman's death wasn't tragedy enough for one day we  came to know that another giant of world cinema - Michelangelo Antonioni-   also died the same day.


There is a reference to Antonioni in Kundan Shah's Hindi film Jaane Bhi Do Yaro  (1983, starring Naseeruddin Shah,  Ravi Baswani, Satish Shah, Om Puri and Neena Gupta) - the park where the duo discover the corrupt Municipal Commissioner D'Mello's dead body is named Antonioni Park. In Blowup (1966) - Antonioni's first English Language film - we have a fashion photographer who believes that the photograph of lovers that he took in a park also shows a murder being committed. In Jaane Bhi Do Yaro Kundan Shah salutes Antonioni by using the same idea. Incidentally, Blowup was the first British film which displayed full frontal female nudity.

The master of film aesthetics Antonioni was famous for his trilogy - L'Avventura (1960),  La Notte (1961), L'eclisse (1962). This trilogy deals with man's alientation in the modern machine dominated age.
Monica Vitti in L'Avventura (1960). This film received many brickbats in the form of boos, catcalls and walkouts at the Cannes film festival. In 1961 the magazine Sight and Sound conducted a poll and declared this to be the second best film of all time after Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

Antonioni had said "In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!"



Beyond The Clouds (1995). Directed from a wheelchair after suffering a stroke with the help of director Wim Wenders. According to The Guardian this is "a serious, stately meditation on the meaning of life ... and the beauty of naked women."

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Videoclips:
From L'Avventura,1960 (4:31)

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 From Blowup, 1966 (3:15)
 "You are right to say that Blow-up is my most unorthodox film, but it is unorthodox in montage, as well as photography. "

"In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!"

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From Zabriski Point (6:40) which had music by Pink Floyd, The Who and The Rolling Stones

Tributes and links:
Italian visionary Antonioni dies at 94 - Xan Brooks  and agencies (Guardian Unlimited, July 31)
Michelangelo Antonioni, 94, Italian Director, Dies - Rick Lyman (The New York Times, July 31 2007)

The languorous, achingly hip films of Michelangelo Antonioni by Dennis Lim (Slate July 31)

Article in TIME (Feb 19, 1965) on Antonioni's Red Desert.

Quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni