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Filming classic
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A tête-à-tête with the award winning filmmaker on his penchant for classics
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NEW WAVE Mohan Krishna Indraganti during the film's shoot
If comedies are entertainment then Devdas should have been a flop, observes Mohan Krishna Indraganti. Well, he belongs to the young breed of filmmakers in Telugu who consider the boy- meet-girl romances baloney and despise the word mainstream. Call his recent award winning flick Grahanam an art film, and you find that he thinks otherwise. "The term art film is oxymoron. It was used where entertainment was looked down. Cinema is an art form fundamentally. I wouldn't want to categorise the audience into class and mass," adds the English Literature (M.A, M. Phil) from University of Hyderabad. So it did not come as a surprise when he took a translation of a Telugu classic Chalam's Dosha Gunam, and a social issue of the 20th Century the writer deals with, for his debut, using a stark black and white medium for his debut.
"There is a popular Telugu saying tirigi aadadi tiruguka mogawadu chedipoyadu. The story is attack on how a patriarchal society uses superstition as a tool to police female sexuality. I spoke to the elders who narrated real life incidences that happened in Vijayawada that went on to say that such practices existed in the state.
Even today the tools of controlling exist. They are complex in a traditional society like ours but even in the West there are sophisticated ways of monitoring.
Take for instance fashion; the entire culture is geared towards judging female beauty. The standards of what is beauty and what is not say physical features, complexion and other parameters based on that society," says Indraganti. Apart from the subject, the narrative also stands out for the cinematography. "The film was shot in black and white to evoke the bygone era, except for a one and a half minute dream sequence in colour. The lighting for black and white is much difficult."
"I would add a special mention for P.G. Vinda, the cinematographer, who was also nominated for the awards. He is an alumni of JNTU and a trained painter," he adds.
Incidentally the film was shot on a digital camera before it was copied onto a film.
Next year Indraganti takes up Butchi Babu's Chivaraku Migiledi. "He introduced a stream of consciousness, a literary technique in Telugu mastered by Virginia Wolf in the English tradition."
"It would be a period film and requires enormous ground work, about 7-8 months before it comes to a film making stage," he sums up as he gears up for yet another challenging adaptation.
SYEDA FARIDA
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