The year – 1964; the place – Melbourne, Australia. Just picture yourself for a moment as a teenaged apprentice working for The Australian Broadcasting Commission. You have made an independent film which wins every conceivable award including the prestigious AFI’s Best film of the year. You travel abroad and visit various countries on the festival-circuit and are even offered a job in London despite the fact that you are still a film-trainee! You come back home to be adored by the press and give an interview on the national television. To put it all in a nutshell, you are on top of the world! And then, you return to your routine office-work to be told by your boss to go and wash his car outside!!
That is precisely what happened to Mr. Cowan, the man who brought home to millions of cine-goers, the splendour of Antarctica in IMAX format. Even after nearly six decades, whenever he recalls that bitter incident it leaves him reflecting not on the insult meted out to him personally but on the wretchedness embedded in such uncivilized human behaviour. He spoke to The Hindu , on the sidelines of BIFFes 2018.
Thomas Michael Cowan developed a keen interest in Motion Picture Photography at a very early age. He initially dabbled in photography with his brother’s camera. Saving a little money on odd jobs, the teenager bought for himself an 8-mm camera, an edit-machine and a projector. He started making home movies, all self-taught! (I need to constantly remind the readers that it was an age in which internet did not exist and that Cowan was a teenager in a country which had no film industry of its own!!) Taking note of his keen interest in the movies, his mother coaxed him to apply for a job with the Australian Broadcasting Commission (something similar to our own Films division). But little did she realize at the moment that she, in fact, was preparing the ground for a new-wave Cinema movement in a distant land, another continent altogether! And precisely that is what happened less than a decade later! Cowan walked into the interview hall armed with his projector and a few of the films that he had made. There was no way that he could not have been selected as a film-trainee. Till date, the gleam of that victorious moment shines in his eye, each time he recalls it.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission in Melbourne had numerous departments (not only Direction, editing, graphics, production Design but also literature, music, dance, science, religion etc.) including a light entertainment division. Thus, ABC virtually became Cowan’s film school! Here he also got an opportunity to do a talk-show with the sitar maestro Pt. Ravishankar when he visited Australia. Having gained sound technical knowledge dabbling in various departments, Cowan made two films independently devoting his weekends. Both of them were shot on 16mm. Nimmo Street (1962) was a movie in the neo-realistic genre and worked as a template when he teamed up later with Mr. Pattabhirama Reddy for Samskara . The second movie was based on the life of a ballet-teacher. When he got on to this project, Cowan studied the work of the French impressionist, Edgar Degas and was greatly inspired. The Dancing Class (1963), titled after Degas’ celebrated work, brought Cowan all the accolades mentioned at the beginning of this article. With all the laurels that accompanied his work, it was not difficult for Mr. Cowan to land a job with the Commonwealth Film Unit in Sydney. But due to some strange reason, he was offered the job of a Cinematographer and not the Director!
Cowan took it as a learning opportunity and started experimenting with 35mm film. He learnt the nuances of the art of Cinematography in greater depth and travelled to other parts of the globe on various assignments. It was on one such journey that he happened to meet the well-known Indian artist, S.G.Vasudev at Cholamandalam who was about to commence work on Samskara as the art-director. Listening to the plot of Samskara on the moonlit sands, Cowan was transported into the realm of a bygone era which was as yet open to rationale, logic and debate. Dr. U R Ananthamurthy’s novella was revolutionary in its approach. Cowan told Vasudev – “ It is dramatically brilliant. If I could be a part of the creative team, I would like to make the team, if you wish. ” There was a huge responsibility that awaited him as neither Vasudev nor Pattabhi had undergone any formal film-training programme. All that they had was unbound enthusiasm. Tom (Mr. Cowan insists that he be addressed as Tom) took charge of the situation and prepared the shooting-script keeping in line with Pattabhi’s poetic vision. He narrates the experience of working on the path-defining film in his own words:
“Initially, I worked for Australian Broadcasting Commission as a trainee. And then, I joined The Commonwealth Film Unit at the end of 1964. I was lucky enough to be able to shoot thousands of feet of film. So, by the time I got to Samskara , I had a thorough understanding of the laboratory-practice and what you could do with film… In 1963 I had seen Pather Panchali in Melbourne. And in 1967, I was introduced to Satyajit Ray in Sydney as a film-maker. I had just then completed my second film, The Dancing Glass which had won several awards globally. Ray invited me to Calcutta…When I visited the city, he happened to be out of town. I did meet his Cinematographer, Subrata Mitra who had done some phenomenal work designing his own indigenous lighting system. So, you see, I had a fairly good knowledge of India by the time I landed in Madras in 1968 on my way back from an assignment in Israel. That’s when I met S.G. Vasudev through my friend Stephen Carthew (who, incidentally went on to become the Creative Editor of Samskara ). Vasu narrated to me the plot of a film for which he was going to do art-direction. The story was an extraordinarily compelling one. It was dramatically brilliant. Structurally it was wonderful. It delineated in great detail, the relationship of the characters to the background (the space in which the action takes place). It is a visual thing – this relationship. Isn’t it?... I didn’t concentrate on the caste-issues. To me, it was a drama… Vasu later introduced me to Pattabhi and he offered me the job. It was my first feature-film as a cinematographer.”
“Both Pattabhi and I had a similar understanding of cinema which made things a lot easier. We had a fairly good idea of how we wanted to shoot Samskara. The art-direction by Vasu was revolutionary in a way. He did an enormous amount of work finding the choicest locations which made it obvious how we were going to shoot the film. The textures and rhythms of southern India of the period that get into the film is a combination of so many things. Of course, these details are there in the novel. But Pattabhi’s vision as a notable poet and mathematician of repute was instrumental in bringing these textures - the ethos of South India, especially Karnataka, on to the screen… We did the screen-play and the shooting-script in Madras (Chennai). In a sense, we made the film in Madras. Of course, I had a slight edge in the technical areas because of my earlier experience in cinematography and editing. But in terms of the poetic focus, it was a joint effort between the two of us. It was a symbiotic relationship.”
“My relationship with the crew, at the beginning, was not an easy one. My methods seemed completely wrong to them. I had to gain their confidence. I had to persuade them to see that what I was doing was the right way to do it. They were very, very patient. Once they were convinced, not only were they willing to have a go at what I was proposing, but did it extremely well. Of course, there were limitations. The lights I had were crude. I needed much softer lights. Secondly, we were doing direct (synchronous) sound. So we had this huge, unwieldy blimp which was like a little submarine! It slowed us down enormously. That meant I had to combine shots to keep up the production-schedule. And then, we didn’t have enough foreign exchange to buy KODAK film stock. So we shot with ORWO which was difficult to process. It didn’t have the same Dynamic Range as Kodak. But these limitations did not restrict my creativity… I personally prefer to work in a situation like Samskara where you are using or augmenting natural light in terms of finding the textures of the location and the relationship of the characters to the background. That’s where I build my skill. If I didn’t have those limitations, I think I would be lost.”
“I would like to encourage people to keep and try persevering with a personal style (developed through) studying the work of great cinematographers and to do the best according to their sensibility. My best advice to a young cinematographer would be to persevere, to study and see the work of cinematographers that you admire, analyse their work and then try and find a style from all that with your own personality involved in the final result.”
