Film enthusiasts may remember the Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal - Yukt Film Co-operative’s shining star, the underdog that was dragged through the mud for being too ordinary by commercial standards and singular in its attempt and experimentation.
Yesterday, after 36 years, the movie came back to India for its first screening since its appearance at the Berlin Film Festival in 1978, where K Hariharan, one of the directors, took the film.
The film screening took place at Max Mueller Bhavan on March 5 and was followed by a conversation between Prakash Belawadi and Dr Mohan Agashe, who played one of the main characters in Ghashiram Kotwal.
City Express spoke to K Hariharan, who is now the director of the L V Prasad Film and TV Academy, about the film and its journey.
The co-operative
“Yukt Film Co-operative was formed in 1976 while we were still students at FTII. Sixteen technicians including four directors, four cinematographers, four sound recordists, three editors and one actor, got together and formed the same.”
“While fifteen of us were batchmates, we had one director who was 10 years our senior who wanted to join us, Mani Kaul. This was also the period when Indira Gandhi had called for the Emergency. We decided to go socialist and abandon the idea of a single author and collectively took all the decisions when it came to the production of the films we made. So the film didn’t belong to a particular director or a particular cameraman. It simply belonged to the co-operative.”
the concept
“We were very sure that we didn’t want to show films in a simplistic manner. We wanted to deconstruct the art of film-making and there were a lot of people who told us that “de-constructing could be self-destructing”.
But we wanted to incorporate all of our references, our tributes and our influences into the films that we made. The movie was based on Vijay Tendulkar’s play of the same name which was about Nana Fadnavis. Because of the Emergency then, we compared Nana Fadnavis to Indira Gandhi and tried to show a historical story through a contemporary pair of eyes.”
UnexpecteD
Backlash
“We were all just graduates then, fresh out of the lunatic asylum that was FTII. And we were mad enough to believe that we were making something path-breaking and something that would be a landmark in the history of Indian cinema.”
“But we weren’t prepared for the kind of press coverage we received. They were very inconsiderate and blasted the film. Even if they could have shown cynical understanding, that would have been enough. But they demolished the film. It was meant to be an experiment, but no one understood.”
Restoration
“It was in Berlin last year. So I told the guys there that I’d love to watch my film on the big screen again.”
“And they happened to have the print that I had taken there in 1978 still preserved quite well. They were kind enough to restore it, although it wasn’t done properly.”
“Ideally, a restoration requires a negative film, we only had access to the positive. But something is better than nothing and now we can at least have DVDs of the movie.”
Message lost on Audience
“I do not like to fool myself. I know the reality of the Indian film watching community. We have been conditioned to watch films with a beginning, middle and end and come out of the theatre with a strong message ringing in our heads.”
“They will not be able to understand the kind of movie we tried to make.”