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Spanish homage to kathakali
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A Spanish film maker is making a documentary on kathakali in the city. The director, Flavio Signore gives K. PRADEEP the details.
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Photo : Mahesh Harilal
The Spanish crew filming the women kathakali artistes as they train under Kumari Varma.
IT WAS nearly two years back. Flavio Signore had completed the shoot of `The Seven Sisters', a documentary on the women of Andhra Pradesh. Badly in need of a break from the heat and dust of Anantapur, Flavio and his friends flew down to Kerala. Roaming along the famed backwaters and beaches, Flavio was also taken to the Margi School at Thiruvananthapuram. There, for the first time in his life, this Spanish documentary maker watched the magic of kathakali.
"I was simply fascinated. I fell in love with this classical art form. First we saw a demonstration of the art and then sat through a half-night performance. There was Hanuman and Bhima, it was so colourful and so vibrant," Flavio remembers.
That was when this director of the Gandhiji Cultural International Film Festival of Human Rights in Barcelona decided to make a film on this Indian classical art. The ball was set rolling on this project. Flavio came back to Kerala in 2004. "This time it was on the pre-production work of our film on kathakali. I went looking for the right location and finally decided it would be Tripunithura."
Women's troupe
More than anything else, one reason to choose this town as the backdrop was the women's kathakali troupe. This is the first and only kathakali troupe in which all the artistes are women. For reasons of toughness of characters and difficult movements involved, women seldom experimented with certain characters till this group came to the fore in 1975. "The women's group gave our documentary another dimension altogether. It was a sign of changing India. We used this to show how women, keeping within tradition, moved forward. Interesting it was to learn how young girls were put through the rigorous training, grew up, got married, some of them took up jobs, but continued to be part of this troupe. This will be surely exciting to the Western audience who still do not know much about Indian classical dance forms," says Flavio in English with a strong Spanish accent.
Before the real shoot, Flavio and Danilo Licciardello, his Italian cinematographer, sat through a whole night kathakali performance at Mala, near Thrissur. "That was the first time I was seeing this great art form. I had been to Kerala nearly 15 years back as part of an Indian tour with a couple of my friends. We saw a bit of this lovely State then. Even after all these years it still remains so green. What struck me when I watched Kalamandalam Gopi that night was the tremendous energy that was transmitted from the artiste to the audience. I was amazed at the perfect coordination between the movements of the artistes and music," reveals Danilo, whose Vidart Production is a co-producer of this documentary.
Danilo has already canned shots of the backwaters, the lush greenery, shots of girls being trained under the guru, a kathakali demonstration by the artistes of the women's troupe, training in singing and some interviews with the artistes and FACT Padmanabhan, the guru.
"The film is approximately of one-hour duration, which will be telecast by television in Spain and Italy. We will also take this to festivals, including the Barcelona one. And maybe we will also arrange for it to be screened here. Hopefully, the film will be ready by June-July this year. We have provisionally called it `The Dance of Sita.' Of course, it may change," informs Flavio.
Both these men and their production houses are involved with a lot of work on the various dance forms of Europe. This documentary on kathakali, they believe will be an important step to bridge the cultures of their nations and India.
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In honour of Gandhiji
THE GANDHIJI Cultural is a non-governmental organisation in Barcelona that works for human rights through the media. They are also involved in educational programmes in cinema and human rights and produce audio-visual contents of human rights. "We are the organisers of the Human Rights International Film Festival, which is into its third year. It is usually held during October. We have two other projects, like an International Buddhist Film Festival and another festival called Travellings '05," says Flavio Signore.
This organisation works on their own and co-productions, both for television and the big screen. Among the in-house productions they have made are a documentary on Benares, another one on the Alberti, a Spanish poet and a work of fiction titled Frederica.
Among the exhibition they have held is one on Gandhiji, `Mahatma The Biggest Soul.' And why Gandhiji? "He has been our inspiration. We have read a lot on this great man's life and works. Then, of course, we have watched, so many times, the classic film on Gandhiji by Sir Richard Attenborough."
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