Artist Krishen Khanna is not only prolific but also has influenced the artscape of India, capturing with brilliance and accuracy the vibrant hues of a diverse nation. The banker-turned-artist joined the Bombay Progressive Artists Group to become a full-time artist. Christie’s has auctioned his works and prestigious galleries across the world display them. In her documentary A Far Afternoon — A Painted Saga by Krishen Khanna,Sruti Harihara Subramaniancaptures in reel how the life and craft of this artist are intertwined. The film was screened at DAG Modern Gallery in Mumbai recently. Sruti has acted in the serial Sahana directed by veteran K. Balachander and worked as an assistant to actor-director Revathy in the tele-film Verrukku Neer. In an interview toRini Mukkath , she revisits the making of the documentary, which has as its centrepiece the artist working on A Far Afternoon, his largest canvas, from the conceptual stage to the time it hit the floor. Excerpts:
How did the idea of this documentary come about?
I have been working in mainstream commercial Tamil, Hindi and Telugu films as an assistant director. I then had my feature-film script ready and I was in the process of pitching it to producers. Ashvin Rajagopalan, director of the Piramal Art Foundation, came to know that Krishen Khanna was painting one of the largest canvases in his career. He felt that this process had to be catalogued and archived as it is a big moment in the history of Indian art. I was also excited to do this film as very rarely one gets to see the creation of an art work and to know what goes into a mind of an artist.
Having to focus on the life and moments of just one person and to make it interesting for audiences can be a challenge. How do you think your film manages to sustain interest?
The artist took about six months to complete the painting. It took me close to 10 months to complete the film. Initially, my cinematographer and I took some time to get to know the artist. We visited him in his home, which also housed his studio. We read up a lot on him, mostly biographies and articles. I got to see some of the lectures that he had given before. This made us understand Krishen a little better, the person he is and understand many theories that he had stated. It also made me realise that invariably certain stories or anecdotes or concepts got repeated in all the platforms that we had explored.
So at that point, I was very sure that my film had to say things that have not been said before. Simultaneously, we started shooting him paint. Krishen is a man full of life and energy even at the age of 90. But when he paints, the process is extremely slow, every step well thought of and meditative. This “meditativeness” was passed on to us while we were filming. We too got into a “zone” and even technicians like our lightmen or camera assistants became extremely silent and watchful of every step.
I thought this was something wonderful. Especially since films have so far had a way of portraying artists as splashing colours, moving the brush fast and running around their work space. I wanted to break that notion and tell the ‘truth’ on how Krishen paints. I wanted to try and bring the same meditative feeling that we experienced as a viewer of his work to the viewers of my film. But I had to also keep a watch on the overall pace of the film. Also the contrast of Krishen in his studio painting and the person he is while not painting was interesting for me.
Krishen used to keep saying that he would never know where the painting is taking him; so we also couldn’t initially make concrete plans on how the film had to go. At the end of the first schedule, after many discussions with my cinematographer, editor, producer and interactions with Krishen, I realised it is impossible to do justice and cramp his whole 90 years of lifetime in an hour’s film. While going through the rushes I realised what we had was priceless because nobody else has captured his process of painting and the painting was surely heading to be a great masterpiece. It was at this time Ashvin mentioned that the painting could be catagorised as a mural for its sheer size. We decided to talk about Krishen’s murals.
This one painting encompasses all the elements of his life and experiences — the motifs he has used in his other paintings such as Bandwala . To see a 90-year-old man paint a 20-ft work is a story by itself. This was enough to create interest in my viewers on Krishen Khanna. So I decided to keep this particular painting as the centrepiece and decided to talk to people about him through it. It was a gamble I took but I think it worked because I have had people who have not been associated with art go back home and google and get to know more about the artist. I think it is important to create interest and curiosity rather than providing every bit of information on a plate.
Any anecdotes from your time with Krishen Khanna?
It very hard to narrate one particular anecdote. One forgets his age the minute you meet him. He was a total charmer and a man full of energy. In fact, there were times when we so-called “young” crew found it hard to catch up with his pace. His memory too amazed all of us. As a person working in the creative field, I was able to take back so much from him. Personally too, it was an amazing experience for me. He and his wife are totally hospitable and such wonderful people. It is heartening to see the love they have for each other even when the two are just sitting in their living room reading a book or sketching and not saying a word.
Any challenges you faced while shooting this?
After working in fiction films, my greatest personal challenge was to unlearn everything I knew to fit into the non-fiction mode. In fiction, we work on bound scripts, know the scenes being shot for the day, plan the shots, basically everything is planned in advance. But in non-fiction, even if you had a basic plan, you had to be ready to improvise and make sure you do not miss out on any important moments. Some people do stage things in documentary, but I was very clear that if I have to depict the truth it has to be the whole truth
Also in fiction, we can get into editing even during the shooting stage and get scenes ready once they are shot. The process is far more simple and short compared to non-fiction. In non-fiction, we have to wait till we have all the footage to build the film on the edit table. The scripting happens after the shoot. I also wanted to make sure that in no way the truth is manipulated on the edit table.
We also took a decision to shoot the film on Arri Alexia [a film-style digital motion picture camera system], which is unheard-of in modern-day documentary film-making. We were glad we took that decision but it did put immense pressure on the budget. Also a dominant part of the film was shot in Delhi, where Krishen lived and it is a city that is not very film-friendly like Chennai or Bombay. The whole of Delhi had just two Arri Alexias and we had to work around the dates.
Our cinematographer is from Pondicherry, editor from Mumbai, production sound recordists from Mumbai, Krishen from Delhi and the producers, music composers and I are from Chennai. So it was difficult for all of us to coordinate on our shoestring budget and we all had to work without assistants.
What plans for the film in the future? Are you planning any screenings and festivals?
We are planning to have private screenings in various Indian cities. For now, we have planned two in Delhi and one in Bengaluru. We would like to reach to as many art lovers, art students and film lovers. We are also in the process of applying for various film festivals. Eventually, we would like to share the film with a wider audience by taking it online and alternative platforms. But those are decisions the producers will have to take.
What do you think about the culture of documentaries in India?
Documentaries in India always had ‘step-motherly treatment’. And I must confess that coming from a mainstream fiction background I used to see it as the “other’’ kind of films. Unlike the U.K. or Germany, which supports documentaries by commissioning them for their channels or having exclusive theatres for their screenings, we still do not have avenues to reach out to a wide audience thereby not making it commercially viable to make documentaries. Also in India, documentaries are still seen as something used only for an educative purpose or to speak for a cause or a medium used by activists. There is a sort of mind block faced by film-makers and the audience that documentaries cannot be entertaining or talk about fun topics. Bert Haanstra was a director who was able to achieve this with élan. Also there was a generation of film-makers in India (like Shyam Benegal) who were able to dabble in fiction and nonfiction effortlessly. We rarely see mainstream film-makers today trying their hand at documentaries.
