CHENNAI: When astrologer Jeanette Groenendaal from the Netherlands visited Tamil Nadu 28 years ago, she didn’t know that her life would change forever. She discovered the pilgrimage through the solar system — the Navagraha temples and the rituals the people had followed. After that discovery, it was a journey of connecting the dots between what she has learned so far and her new experiences. She started creating her own films to spread the wisdom she gained.
On a screening tour in India is her recent creation draMAYAma, a 90-minutes long docu-fiction film. Ahead of the screening in Chennai at DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum on January 25, the astrologist turned filmmaker speaks about her journey so far and how the film will be a different experience for everyone.
The movie follows Branly, a Mayan timekeeper from Guatemala in the 21st century, as he searches for purpose in his life and affirms his Mayan spirituality. “Branly studies Mayan Cosmology in an effort to restore rites and knowledge that has been sadly lost due to 500 years of colonisation. In the Dravidian Temples of the Vedic South of India, draMAYAma is a space-time journey through the past, present, and future while participating in astrological rites for the planets of our solar system,” explains the filmmaker.
As an astrologer who did her Masters in theatre, stepping into films wasn’t hard for Jeanette.
“The film is more like a research. In the Navagraha temples, I saw the cosmo-choreography where the worship of the planets was mirrored in a social ritual as a practice. The rituals aligned with the planets’ positions. People were wearing different colours symbolising different planets. I thought the whole thing was visually appealing and could be made into a film,” she says.
Things took a different turn when she had to do almost every aspect of the filmmaking on her own. “After I saw a tourist die from a drug overdose, I was avoiding the tourist places in India. The culture of people drinking and using drugs scared me. The idea of hiring a dutch cameraman or another technician who drinks or smokes was not in the cards. I did almost everything from writing, camera, production to distribution,” she explains.
In 2017, she began researching The Mayan Calendar and linking spirituality, rituals, and theatre to make a film. Explaining the challenges she had faced, she shares, “My former protagonist was a Brahmin from a Dutch colony. He spoke Dutch and Sanskrit perfectly and he knew all the tantras, mantras, and rituals. Unfortunately, he died so I didn’t know how to proceed with my film. Also, the film was not scripted because I wanted to make it a documentary. Since the film front will support the film only if there was a script, I wrote one with 80 pages in a year. I visited a lot of places in India, even secluded temples. It wasn’t easy and I didn’t have that much money but things happened. During the pandemic, I also worked for one and a half years on editing. We had a different version in 2020 and it was finally edited with the voice-overs from the new protagonist Branly López Quemé.”
The film will be screened at DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum on January 25, 11.30 am. For more details, visit: www.dramayama.com