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New Indian Express
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
The golden year half a century ago
K Balachander's Apoorva Raagangal (Rare Melodies) is a landmark Tamil film often cited for being the breakthrough lead role for Kamal Haasan, the debut vehicle for Rajinikanth and the bearer of one of the most melodic soundtracks of Indian cinema. What's more, it's a milestone in radically positing that love knows no barriers of age. The film turned the idea of romance on its head with its focus on an unusual, complex relationship dynamic where a young man falls in love with an older woman, while her daughter gets attracted to his father. Its ambiguous open-endedness notwithstanding, Apoorva Raagangal feels liberal not just for its own times. The film completes 50 years this August 15, the day that saw the release of one of the most commercially successful Indian films, Ramesh Sippy's Sholay. While this much mythologised film will expectedly be the cause of many celebrations this year, it would be appropriate to also acknowledge the other cinematic saplings born that year that have grown in relevance since. While 1957 is often called the highpoint in Indian cinema's golden age, 1975 was noteworthy in its own way. If it signalled a turning point in Tamil cinema with the arrival of a new generation of accomplished male stars, to eventually take the baton from Sivaji Ganesan and M G Ramachandran, filmmakers like Balachander and later Bharathiraja made mainstream Tamil cinema soar to new heights in the following years. In Telugu cinema, 1975 marked the continuation of the domination of N T Rama Rao. However, Dasari Narayan Rao's Balipeetam is a significant pick from the year's crop, exploring the still-relevant issue of tensions in an inter-caste marriage between a Dalit boy and a Brahmin girl. In Malayalam cinema, the year was one of the most fecund for actor Prem Nazir, with more than a dozen releases. But more important was the arrival of G Aravindan as a force to reckon with in the parallel cinema movement. Though his debut feature Uttarayanam won the national and Kerala state film awards in 1974, its year of release is often attributed as 1975. Aravindan dealt with the crucial issue of unemployment in the 1970s and how it was driven by conflicting ideologies—varied means geared towards the same end. With experiments with storytelling and form, Aravindan made a strong comment on political opportunism and the corruption seeping into the individual and the system.
The Hindu
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
G. Aravindan and the Legacy of New Malayalam Cinema
Published : Jul 02, 2025 17:32 IST - 7 MINS READ He had a short life and an even shorter tenure as a filmmaker: Just 15 years during which he directed at least half a dozen masterpieces that were both the pride and the envy of his best peers. The 90th birth anniversary of the Malayali auteur Aravindan is being observed across the country. Govindan Aravindan (1935-1991), was one of the key figures in New Malayalam Cinema genre. There was a time in the 70's and the 80's when Calcutta film clubs would unfailingly celebrate in varied ways—screenings, discussions, writings in journals— whenever Aravindan made a new film. Like many of his predecessors and contemporaries in Bengal, Aravindan never went to film school, nor did he serve apprenticeship under anyone. The innocence of his foremost characters can partially be attributed to his coming into films without any formal preparation, combined with his intrinsically philosophical temperament that were finely tuned to his eclectic sense of music. He had learnt nothing within the confines of a classroom, so the need never arose for him to unlearn anything when it came to making films. He started out with a tabula rasa, making it easier for him to structure his signature in varying styles and idioms in the few but markedly different films he made. All that he had by way of qualification to be a filmmaker were sharp, sympathetic eyes that took in the minutest detail of human conduct or nature's moods; an ear trained in both Carnatic and Hindustani music; the imagination of the poet, which at times veered on the theatrical, married to the temperament of a wayward minstrel; and the intellectual curiosity to experiment with every input that goes into the making of a film. Combined, these rare attributes make a joke of one of his distinguished contemporaries' constant carping that 'the man didn't know where to place his camera'. Seeing the fascinating end-result of Aravindan's alleged lack of technical knowledge, notably in such masterpieces as Thampu or Kummatty, one can only retort: 'Thank god the man never went to film school, for if he had, there was every possibility that he would have learnt where to place his camera but failed to keep his date with the muse.' Also Read | 'Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum': G. Aravindan's eclectic work comes alive in an exquisite new collection The final outcome of Aravindan's delayed decision to gravitate to filmmaking was that when he died on March 15, 1991, at the age of 55, he left behind a body of work, which would match the best exertions of the best of his peers in this frenetic, highly competitive field. Varied in subject and style, many of his fictional features, starting with Uttarayanam (Throne of Capricorn, 1974) and ending with Vasthuhara, are leavened by a documentary flavour, indicating his interest in not just telling a story but injecting a veiled commentary on social realities. Spirit of free enquiry Aravindan's documentaries, which one would have normally expected to be critiques of the plaintive human condition in modern India, actually relate more to the arts and well-known practitioners of the arts and even include a mystical philosopher. All these point to a restless, esoteric spirit, a seeker of the higher realms of truth and beauty without divorcing himself from the here and now. Not that he succeeded in realising his goals in everything he did, be it fictional features, documentaries or fusions, but the thing to note was his spirit of free enquiry that drove him to tread difficult terrain. The well-read man that he was, it is likely that Aravindan was aware of Corneille's dictum: 'To win without risk is to triumph without glory'. April 5, 1991, was a day of grief and celebration for Aravindan enthusiasts in Calcutta. On that day, the all-India premiere of Vasthuhara (The Dispossessed), the director's swansong, was screened at Nandan, the West Bengal Film Centre. The screening was preceded by a brief, solemn function at which some of Bengal's best-known directors spoke, including Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Goutam Ghosh. Two of Aravindan's associates had come from Trivandrum for the occasion. The speeches were part personal reminiscences of Aravindan, part a respectful assessment of the artist and his oeuvre, highly individualistic but never too far away from the concerns and conditions of the common man, the little man. What change can do to people's lives is the theme of Vasthuhara. The story is of dispossessed people; of men, women and children deprived of their homes and belongings, robbed of their identity and honour. Using Venu, a Malayali officer working for the Rehabilitation Ministry who makes periodic trips between the Andamans and Calcutta to select Bengali refugee families of 'lower' castes for resettlement in the distant islands, as his central character, Aravindan sought to bring home to viewers the pain and anger and humiliation that never leave the materially and emotionally dispossessed. Aravindan explained: 'The attempt in this story of tense personal relationships is to highlight the eternal phenomena of people being uprooted and swept away and forced to seek refuge in alien lands for no fault of theirs. The 1947 post-Partition exodus of people from East to West Bengal forms a prologue and the 1971 exodus from Bangladesh to West Bengal an epilogue to the stor'. Using documentary footage wherever he felt it necessary, Aravindan chose different locales to narrate a story of individual plight and pluck with collective suffering as an enduring backdrop. When Aravindan made Vasthuhara, he dwelt upon the theme of Partition, which had hardly been explored in the cinema of southern States. His choice of subject, and obvious involvement in it, points to his vast reading as indeed to his concern for fellow-beings in distress. Vasthuhara is a political document of unsurpassed value to film-lovers, especially those whose origins lie in East Bengal. Also Read | Aravindan: Anew and again However much the credit-denying contemporary or the insufficiently-equipped critic may try, they cannot take lightly the delicate vitality of Aravindan's work spread out thinly but securely over a period of just one-and-a-half decades. His humanism, his sense of calm even under pressure, his empathy with the loner and the underdog: Each of these remarkable qualities, without which no artist of substance is made, can be easily discerned in his best films. With Aravindan's untimely death, New Malayalam Cinema lost one of its true-blooded treasures, and the repercussions of that loss is felt to this day among film-lovers in far-flung corners of the country. In fact, such was the nature of the man and the quality of the art he produced, that his passing away is still counted as a personal loss by many in well-defined circles in the Indian film world. Like all originals, Aravindan was able to sculpt a small and steadfast audience, a family of like-minded kinsmen fiercely loyal to his kind of filmmaking that blended elements drawn from diverse yet united streams of thought and perception: Mysticism and materialism, modernism and primitivism, realism and fantastical. By his own admission, he felt attracted to philosophy, not so much in the abstract as a lived-living experience, which shows every now and then in his films. Allured by Buddhism With characteristic candour, Aravindan conceded: 'I cannot say I have an in-depth knowledge of Indian philosophy. The basic concepts of Indian philosophy are part of all of us. Something that we live and breathe every day. This interest in Indian philosophy was born and grew with my reading habit. Within Indian philosophy, what fascinated me most was Buddhism, of which I have read more. My association with Jiddu Krishnamurti also helped in deepening my interest and sensibilities'. One would normally expect a person like Aravindan who was inclined to view practically everything somewhat philosophically, be they related to the arts or to life in the raw, to be a solitary reaper of thoughts and deeds. But the reality was quite different. As if by twirling an invisible baton, Aravindan was able to fashion a gharana of his own, consisting largely of younger fellow-artists imbued with his notions of what was worth pursuing in camera, sound, storytelling. It was a group of talented young people that he enthused and inspired to creativity by his own example, by no means unblemished but remarkable all the same. It been said that the true artist lives and works not just for himself, but goes out of the way to make sure that those coming after him or working alongside him get the support and recognition they deserve, simultaneously enriching himself by his association with his peers. To remember Aravindan is to remember many things, but most importantly, the silences of the man, the silences that marked his best films, and the silences that spoke between the artist and his viewers. Vidyarthy Chatterjee writes on cinema, society, politics. He has been following Malayalam cinema for almost five decades.
Hindustan Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
A poet with camera, and his cinema of humanism
Strap: Unscripted, he spun stories on the loom of time, evoking a cinematography that touched your soul. Space elasticised. Nuanced narratives nudged your nerves. Cinematographer-director Shaji Neelakantan Karunakaran, better known as Shaji N Karun from Kerala, breathed his last on April 28 aged 73. Still a second-year cinematography student at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Shaji, as I knew him, had started his filmmaking career at the age of 20, even before he shot his diploma film at the film institute. Once, while teaching at the FTII as a vising faculty, the well-known Malayalam director Ramu Kariat (best known for Chemmeen, which won the national award for best film in 1965), found in his classroom a student who shared his language and land. Kariat asked the young Shaji to shoot an event at Thrissur. Bollywood star, Dilip Kumar, was visiting the cultural capital of Kerala to inaugurate a function. The year was 1972, the silver jubilee of India's Independence. Fortunately, Shaji had Deepavali holidays and could accept the assignment. After the shoot, he went to Chennai to process the black-and-white (b&w) footage at the AVM Lab, where he met G Aravindan, who was there to process his debut film Uttarayanam. This short story led to a much longer one of a wonderful jugalbandi between Aravindan and Shaji that left behind one of the most enduring cinematographic legacies. A cinematography that, in its unique aesthetic, has warped human ethos in its wefts. This duet worked silently in the noisy filmmaking world. Aravindan didn't even utter the word 'cut' during their entire filmmaking practice. 'He never said 'cut' while I was shooting. We had some internal tuning, a sort of telepathy. He would only touch me on my shoulder from behind and that would be enough,' Shaji told me during a conversation. This silence produced Aravindan's contemplative classic Kanchana Seeta, which had Seeta's character not in flesh and blood but in prakriti (nature) in its sensual organicity, where Seeta is felt in her spirit, not physically seen. Adapting a play by N Sreekanthan Nair, Aravindan transforms its verbal dialogues into eloquent silences, which, Shaji imbues with spiritual depth. Starring the local Rama Chenchu tribals of Andhra Pradesh, without any make-up or ornamentation, Kanchana Seeta, to my mind, remains one of the most austerely adorable cinematographic works our world has produced. When it was shot on location, Shaji had just graduated from the FTII with a gold medal. Along with the play, the film also mixed elements of the poet Valmiki's epic Ramayana. Produced with a budget of only one lakh rupees, Shaji had no high-speed film, nor adequate equipment, but he had his will and vision, which was stubbornly poetic. With no conventional script, Kanchana Seeta took only 17 days to complete shooting. Shot with aplomb by Shaji, Chidambaram (the only film for which Aravindan wrote a 21-page screenplay) evokes memories of Peter Bruegel the Elder or one of our own miniature paintings. Compare the scenes of cows grazing in meadows in both these films. As a cinematographer, Shaji was widely exposed to the traditions of Indian and European paintings, including those of the Renaissance. This eye is evident in even some of the popular films he shot for other filmmakers such as Padmarajan (Koodevide), KG George (Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback), MT Vasudevan Nair (Manju), besides several other Malayalam film directors' works, and also Sukhwant Dhadda's Ek Chadar Maili Si, adapting Rajinder Singh Bedi's classic Urdu novella by the same name. When the cinematographer Shaji N Karun took the directorial baton in his hands, a Malayalam film Piravi was born. Piravi, in English, meant birth. Shot by the 21-year-old Sunny Joseph, G Aravindan had composed the music for Piravi, along with Mohan Sitara. Piravi's poignant exploration of time and space like a musical rendering presents to us a face of an old man, Chakyar, immortalised by social reformer/playwright/ actor Premji. This face is turned into water, a boat, a mirror, a geography of Kerala's history and of the world's own at the same time, ensconced in space that viscerally envelopes us like the mysterious muslin. Shaji poured his internal illumination into this cinematographic work that won India over 30 prestigious awards, including the 1989 Cannes festival's Camera d'Or. Awards apart, the film imbues cinematography with a contemplative glow transcending all national boundaries. Metaphorically, the old Chakyar's search for his son is still on, anywhere in the world. It is the archetypal search that still haunts us. This archetype melts genders — father becomes mother and mother, father. The element of love turns universal. Piravi, with the Emergency disappearances as the backdrop, in many ways, became a measuring master stick comparing Shaji's other directorial works, particularly Swaham (1994) and Vanaprastham (1999). Poeticising the emotional texture of sorrow, Swaham, in its womb, carries Piravi's pangs. In Swaham, the son dies in a demonstration protesting against State corruption. However, the search is to find a new form for a familiar Malayalam story, which is announced in a quotation from Kalidasa's Shakuntalam. Like a true artist, Shaji doesn't give up his own muslin for market. Like a weaver, he kept on weaving time on the loom, with space that was left to us to search for a feeling, a sthayi bhava, while meanings keep changing. Shaji owned his quest. He left an emptiness of an absence called death. The streak of light slithers brilliantly through the dark melody of Shaji's oeuvre. Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based author, curator and historian. The views expressed are personal
Indian Express
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Opinion Shaji N Karun, Malayalam cinema's master of shadows and silences
In 1988, when Shaji N Karun debuted as a director, Malayalam cinema was lush with talent. Even as K G George, Bharathan and Padmarajan breathed a new storytelling confidence into the mainstream, the distinctive sensibilities of filmmakers like G Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and John Abraham carved out a space for a parallel cinema. In what is now celebrated as the golden age of Malayalam films, Karun, who died this week at the age of 73, made a mark with films like Piravi (1988), Swaham (1994) and Vanaprastham (1999). His unique visual language — textured with shadows and silences — made him one of the most prominent representatives of Indian cinema. Before he became a celebrated director, Karun was already a highly regarded cinematographer, collaborating with eminent filmmakers — his work with Aravindan shaping his sensibilities and teaching him, as he would say later, the expressiveness of silence. This is on full display in, for example, M T Vasudevan Nair's Manju (1983), and in Aravindan's Chidambaram (1985), the natural beauty of whose setting amplifies the desire, forbidden and fatal, that drives the plot. By the time Karun made Piravi — an Emergency-era tale of a father's wait for his missing son — he was in command of his gifts. Piravi won Best Film and Best Director at the National Film Awards that year and the Camera d'Or (Special Mention) at Cannes in 1989.
New Indian Express
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
50 years of friendship: Director T V Chandran shares memories of Shaji N Karun
It feels as though a friendship of 50 years has come to an end. Seeing My first memory of him goes back to the stunning visuals he captured for Thampu, a film that remains one of my all-time favourites even today. After the shoot, Aravindan, John Abraham, Chandralekha, Sadananda Menon, and I gathered in Madras. We were all mesmerised by the visuals Shaji had captured. That is where our friendship began. In fact, it never felt like we didn't collaborate, because most of my cinematographers -- Sunny Joseph, Madhu Ambattu, and others -- came from what I often call Shaji's school of training. Whenever Shaji arrived on set, it was nothing short of a celebration. His candid camera work was astonishing. In Thampu , he captured several breathtaking moments. One that has stayed with me is a shot of a child from the circus troupe smoking a 'beedi'. It was a raw, unguarded moment caught with such authenticity that it still moves me. Shaji had an extraordinary gift for absorbing the essence of a moment without losing its naturality. We have a long history of spending time together, often at Aravindan's place, bonded by our shared admiration for his work. I was also part of the post-production team for Thampu . The memory of going through those 40,000 rushes still feels alive. Our early days at the Calcutta Film Festival in 1990 are a trove of memories too. I was there with Alicinte Anweshanam and Shaji with Piravi , both of us featured in the Indian Panorama section. Both of us were beginners then and our bond grew stronger. Later, in Mumbai, we spent nearly a week together. Over the years, we served on many committees together, the last one being in 2023 when we were part of the search committee for the chairman of the K R Narayanan Institute. We spent about a month and a half together during that time. One of the moments I cherish most was being able to suggest Shaji's name for the J C Daniel Award to the chief minister. He was so happy about it and had mentioned it to me.
