After making a film on U.R. Ananthamurthy, which won the Special Jury Prize at the National Awards recently, noted film-maker Girish Kasaravalli is now making a documentary on Adoor Gopalakrishnan, an icon of Indian parallel cinema.
Mr. Kasaravalli, who is making the film for the Films Division, has just finished the first schedule and planning to complete the 60-minute film by the year-end. He, along with Mr. Gopalakrishnan, visited locations where his famed films such as Elippathayam , Kathapurushan and Naalu Pennungal were made.
Interestingly, the production came to Mr. Kasaravalli at the insistence of the subject of the film. The Films Division proposed making the film on Mr. Gopalakrishnan under a programme to celebrate the centenary of Indian cinema, but the maestro accepted the offer with a rider only Mr. Kasaravalli should make it.
Mr. Kasaravalli is fascinated by Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s cinematic sensibility, language, and austerity of images, which he describes as the “Gandhian way of making a film.” He also notes that Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s cinematic language is strong, and works both in real and metaphorical levels.
He has done a lot of research before venturing into this project. Mr. Kasaravalli keenly watched documentaries made on Mr. Gopalakrishnan by Rajiv Mehrotra, K.K. Chandran, Prasanna Ramaswamy and Vipin Vijay, besides reading books such as A Door to Adoor (edited by Lalith Mohan Joshi and C.S. Venkiteswaran) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan — A life in cinema (by Gautaman Bhaskaran). “I have spoken to many film-makers and read interviews on Mr. Gopalakrishnan,” he said.
Mr. Kasaravalli said the focus and style of this film would be different from that of the one on Prof. Ananthamurthy. “I have staged a few things in Ananthamurthy’s film, but I won’t do that in Adoor’s film,” he said.
The focus will not be biographical, but on the thinking process of the film-maker and his search for completeness. “It is also an attempt to trace how his thought process worked in the films he had made so far,” he said.
Since he himself is a film-maker, did Mr. Kasaravalli found it challenging to make a documentary on another film-maker? “I am presenting Adoor as I see him. I do not believe in the concept of being objective. So it is my subjective perception of the film-maker. It is a creative interpretation of reality,” said Mr. Kasaravalli.
