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He's a deep one

Madhuri Velegar

Girish Kasaravalli. Click for bigger pic!

The clouds' underbelly swells as it readies for a downpour on the already hill-rumpled terrain below. They never fully manage to empty themselves till 250-odd days of a year pass. Now the puddles turn into pools, the pools into lakes, the lakes into streaming rivers.

A young boy named Girish Kasaravalli, bored with his indoor games, considers the silent, verdant landscape that spurs his imagination in a thousand different ways. Wrapped inside him are ideas of visual aesthetics, an acute awareness of his surroundings and a desperate urge to create.

But Girish patiently waits for that one week of sunshine when a tent is pitched in the village grounds, a movie projector whirrs to life, and a steady stream of seven films are shown to a motley band of youngsters.

My experiences and observations of people around me get concretised into images of sounds and visuals, which is film. The 18-odd films that I have made are a depiction of my worldview; one or two of them cannot be discussed in isolation, each represents a phase of my evolution, both as a person and as a director.

In my earlier films, my first one for instance, Ghatashraddha (The Ritual) there was a lot of pent-up anger -- against the system, the bureaucracy, the establishment. There was a good guy and a bad guy but, as I went along, I made my characters introspective, not just black and white caricatures. You had to understand a situation and believe that no one person or institute could be blamed for it; my perspective expanded and so did my worldview.

A still from Thayi Saheb. Click for bigger pic!

Till Thayi Saheb, my latest film, where there is a multi-layered representation of my characters, each knotted within their own dilemmas set against a backdrop of pre and post Independence. This film has been the turning point in my film career.

Today if you ask me which has been my favourite film, I would unhesitatingly say Thayi Saheb and, of course. my first film. But this would not be my answer when I would be well into the script of my next film, six months down the line.

None of my films have an answer. Giving an answer is the easiest thing to do but films are not mathematics, where two plus two equals four. You're dealing with human relationships, social norms, a cultural and political milieu, a traditional background etc. So there are options or possibilities suggested, either subtly or overtly through the film, but no definitive conclusion is presented on a platter to the viewer. He has to decide for himself, draw his own conclusions close to his milieu and heart.

I think a film works when the viewer comes out feeling one inch taller (metaphorically). If he's simply thrilled watching a film, then the experience can be likened to watching a India-Pakistan cricket match. Thrilling in the afternoon, forgotten by evening.

Part 2

Click for bigger pic!

Law College Road, Pune.

Smoke belching autorickshaws run amok on Law College Road, hugging one of the pristine, evergreen shrine for our country's finest film-makers. This is the Film and Television Institute of India.

"Film is difficult because it is easy," said film critic Andre Bazin. He explained that anyone can watch a film and follow its narrative, which reinforces the belief that that is all there is to it. But film is a complex work of art. To understand its complexity one has to be better informed. Such a state of information does not exist in India, except perhaps at the FTII.

The 100-year old banyan tree in the centre of the campus becomes the hub of heated debates on Kurosawa, Fellini and Tarkovsky, muted only by chivda and endless cups of tea drunk from chipped glasses.

Girish was here. He was adjudged best student of the year of 1975, and his diploma film, Avashesh, went on to win the President's Silver Lotus award as the best short film of 1976.

That was a time when big changes were blowing in. A new wave of cinema, either reflecting reality or testing it was emerging.

That projected reality more than fantasy and was spearheaded by one of the country's foremost directors today, Shyam Benegal. There was no looking back. The challenge was great. And Girish had made his choice.

Click for bigger pic!

Studying films at the FTII was, perhaps, the best thing to happen to me; my stay here played a major role in shaping my career.

Training here was important to me personally for two reasons. First, for being able to gain technical expertise, something nobody teaches you outside a film school. For instance, even if you hang about the sets with a second assistant director for 24 hours, he's still not going to have the time to explain why a particular shot was captured in a certain way, why he chose an effect with a red cloth instead of any other, how a sequence is built to its climax... Or just about any aspect of the language of film.

Technical knowhow is the fundamental route to your understanding and creating a film. At FTII you are provided with lecture-student interfaces coupled with a comprehensive archival library of information.

Second, your exposure to films. Beside that one week of film watching as a young boy, I never saw any Kannada, Hindi or Hollywood films till I came to the institute. I realised the full potential and the many dimensions a film could work on and relate to people; I understood the universal language of cinema.

I could also touch and feel a film camera, experiment with it, develop the rushes, edit, change, experiment again, the sky was the limit for my creative impulses.

This learning experience has stood me in good stead. Even today in Bangalore when we have a workshop of films, it's important to screen the basic, the early films made by pioneers for the simple reason that so many people haven't had access to them. And if you do not have a yardstick to measure what is good cinema and what is shoddy, how will you appreciate films?

Part 3

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House 1015, BTM Layout, Bangalore.

It's a house made of stone, with a palm tree growing toward the roof in the centre of the living room. There are brass lamps, a dancing Natraja, and a work table strewn with clumps of paper. Within the heap lies an unfinished rough draft of a forthcoming film script.

Wife Vaishalli, who worked on the costumes for his latest film, is near the mixer, churning coconut flakes for dinner. The children are out. The cat licks her paws for the hundredth time while the Dalmatian sleeps outside, his chain tied to the gate.

I'm still revelling in the afterglow of Thayi Saheb winning the Swarnakamal national award for 1997. Two drafts of scripts are waiting to be read, but I'm in no hurry, I'll probably start work on my next project early next year. It would be great to make one film a year, like Ray did, but that's difficult.

Click for bigger pic!

If you ask me which out of the three, money, fame or recognition in the form of awards, was important to me, I'd say all three of them. It's crucial that someone who watches my work feels its worth watching and when I get an award for it, it makes me stand taller among my contemporaries. There is a sanctity attached to winning an award, and it attracts people to see the film.

Of course, I get that desperate, sinking feeling every time my film has to fight for a release. You want films to be seen, see people's reactions to it, and put your thoughts across. But if that doesn't happen due to a lack of initiative or understanding by a distribution network, then it's sorely disappointing. Thayi Saheb ran for only one week in Bangalore. And I felt bad.

But I believe there is a market for such films and though the groups who see these films are small, they will shape the thinking of the communities in the future years to come.

Committed film-makers the world over face problems of distribution and finance but that never stops them from making the kind of cinema they want to. I particularly like the films of Aki Kavas, Ang Lee, Abbas Khairostomi and Latin American film-makers too.

Andrei Tarkovksy made brilliant films -- which are still watched by students and film buffs the world over -- in a stifling political climate. We're lucky we don't have these problems except of the market forces which favour popular cinema.

But we need to have a cauldron of cinema, a variety, not just popular cinema, because only this diversity will keep us culturally alive and vibrant. Everybody likes to put up calendars but it's good to see a painting of K K Hebbar once in a way, too. It may even change your perspective of life!