Bharat Gopy

Swayamvaram is a Malayalam feature film written and directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Critically acclaimed upon release, the film marked Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s debut in feature film. The film starkly portrayed the middle class angst of the post-Nehruvian society and the transition of Kerala’s middle class into a modernist society. Although the economic and social crises of the middle class is pervasive in the film, the emphasis is on the existential problems at an ontological plain. This film marked a transition in Malayalam film aesthetic as it was the first break with social realism and an attempt to come to terms with the disillusionment in ideologies.Read More »

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Aravindan’s finest b&w film chronicles three days with a circus in a small town in Kerala. A series of high-angle shots, as the circus drives into its new location, introduce us to the village. Several sequences use a remarkable quasi-documentary effect combined with minutely choreographed action e.g. the sunset as the manager (Gopi) directs the raising of the big top. The episodic film tells of a soldier who befriends the circus strong man in a toddy bar and shows how the bizarre characters from the circus including the dwarf merge with the local populace.Read More »

Adoor’s second feature film made five years after Swayamvaram achieved commercial success in Kerala, while reaching an artistic height.

Its structure is that of a festival in a village temple. I wanted to create an intimate experience of everyday rural life. It is structured in such a way as to look natural, as if there are no outside interventions. During the course of the film, the festival comes full circle, parallel to it is the inner development of the character as well.Read More »

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Kaul’s film addresses the writings of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-79), one of the main representatives of the Nai Kavita (New Poetry) movement in Hindi. Muktibodh also wrote several short stories, one of which provides the film with its title, and critical essays. The film integrates episodes from Muktibodh’s writings with material from other source, including a reinvented neo-realism derived from Muktibodh’s literary settings. The narrative is constructed around 3 characters. Ramesh (Gopi) iis one who speaks and enacts Muktibodh’s writings, functioning as the first-person voice of the text; his two friends, , Madhav (Jha) and Keshav (Raina), are Ramesh’s antagonists and interlocuters esp. in the debates about modernity. Kaul gradually minimizes the fictional settings until, in the remarkably shot sequences of the factory, the audience is directly confronted with the written text itself.Read More »

Chidambaram (Malayalam) is a 1985 Malayalam film written, directed and produced by G. Aravindan. It is the film adaptation of a short story by C. V. Sreeraman.The film explores various aspects of relations between men and women through the lives of three people living in a cattle farm. Themes of guilt and redemption are also dealt with. Bharath Gopi, Smita Patil, Sreenivasan and Mohan Das play the lead roles. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film and five Kerala State Film Awards including Best Film and Best Direction.Read More »