Koodiyattam finds a worthy torchbearer in Kapila Venu and it’s no wonder that the young exponent is the subject of a documentary on the art form.
The documentary, Kapila , has been directed by young filmmaker Sanju Surendran, a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and produced by the Films Division of India.
It was not exactly Koodiyattam per se that brought Sanju to make a film on the art form, at least initially. It was the filmmaking possibilities within the art form that attracted him. “At FTII, I was a student of filmmaker Mani Kaul. He used to tell us that an ideal film is like Nangiarkoothu or Koodiyattam performance, where gestures communicate and silence speaks. I was very taken in by the concept and wanted to explore the art form in depth, using cinema as a medium,” says Sanju.
An opportunity to see Kapila in action found him his muse. “I had been toying around with several subjects and scripts, including a feature on Kapila’s father and Koodiyattam guru Venu G. Then, I saw Kapila in Soorpanakhangam , where she was enacting the beautiful Lalitha, the demoness Soorpanakha in disguise trying to woo Lord Rama. I was thunderstruck, especially with the ‘Raakshasi Sthobham’ scene, where, with blood dripping down her nose, she dances the dance of fury. I couldn’t make out if it was reality or an illusion!
“It was a performance like no other that I have witnessed in recent times. The thunderclap of the mizhavu drums created a primordial ambience. Flames dance in a backdrop of red and white. Mystical chants brewed an ancient dream…I struck gold,” recalls Sanju.
“In Kapila, I found the perfect theme, the perfect character, the perfect muse. Here is a contemporary young woman practising an ancient art form, bridging the ancient with the modern,” he adds.
Indeed, the 62-minute documentary, which was three years in the making, explores the genius of the artiste through performances, rehearsals, memories and desires.
In keeping with Mani Kaul’s philosophy, Kapila moves at a pace that is as detailed as any description in Koodiyattam, leaving the artist and her craft, the ambience of her kalari, the silence, percussion music, the picturesque frames and even the rain, to unravel the nuances of the art form.
“There is a misconception that Koodiyattam is esoteric. We think of it as esoteric, academic because we don’t have the time to explore it, appreciate it. It’s actually a very sensory art form. I am captivated by how wonderfully time is dealt with in Koodiyattam.
“Here an artiste spends hours describing in minute detail the beauty of a flower and then with the swirl of the body, the artiste transcends hundreds of years in a second. There is beauty in how time flows; sometimes as quick as a brook, sometimes as still as a pond, another time as turbulent as an ocean,” he says. “I find this quite similar to the way time is moulded in cinema. In this way, I connected cinema and Koodiyattam. Cinema is a temporal medium...It’s all about time,” adds the 34-year-old, after a short pause.
Sanju, who hails from Thrissur, works as an assistant professor at the Department of Screenwriting and Direction, at K.R. Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts, Kottayam.
He has made a series of critically acclaimed documentaries and shorts such as Kandal Pokkudan , Expressway , Scribbles , Theeram , Gundert - The Man, The Language , to name a few, apart from the signature film of the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala.
While Kapila is doing the film festival rounds, Sanju is busy working on the script for his debut full-length feature that is being produced by the National Film Development Corporation.
“It will go on the floors this year. Godard once said, ‘make a film like a documentary and make a documentary like a film.’ That’s the principle I subscribe to in my films,” says Sanju.
