Today, the Bhau Daji Lad Museum will host a mini-retrospective of three Kumar Shahani’s films, Maya Darpan (1972), Tarang (1984) and Khayal Gatha (1988).
The event will also mark the launch of a book of essays by Shahani, The Shock of Desire and Other Essays . Coincidence or not, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Two days after the event, the filmmaker, an early proponent of Indian new wave cinema, turns 75.
So radical was Shahani’s style of filmmaking, so removed from what we popularly perceive as cinema, that he has remained on the fringes of the mainstream all his life; his closest tryst with it being perhaps the critics’ choice awards his films won at the Filmfare Awards.
But for the ‘other’ kind of cinema, and connoisseurs of it, Shahani is an iconic name. He is celebrated in niche circles as one of India’s first formalist filmmakers — one who experimented with the film form itself. His cinema was rooted in Indian aesthetics, finding resonance in other art forms such as dance and music — his Khayal Gatha explores the genesis of the Gwalior gharana.
“When I first heard of his name in the early ’70s, an incredibly politically charged period, there were experiments happening in the visual arts and theatre. He was the only filmmaker who was experimental, avant garde . Even then, the most fascinating part was that he didn’t fit into any paradigm,” says Ashish Rajadhyaksha, a film scholar and a journalist, who has written books and essays on Shahani.
He is also the editor of the latest collection of Shahani’s writings, titled The Shock of Desire and Other Essays.
Shahani made six feature films and several documentaries and shorts — most of which are obscure — including some facing the threat of getting destroyed due to lack of preservation. The films being shown at the retrospective haven’t been shown in the city for years.
The Kumar Shahani Legacy, will see guest speakers such as Rajat Kapoor (he made his debut as an actor in Shahani’s Khayal Gatha ), filmmaker Arun Khopkar, and actor Praba Mahajan (the lead actress of Maya Darpan who married the film’s cinematographer KK Mahajan after they met on the film’s sets). According to many film historians and scholars, Mahajan is to Shahani what Subrata Mitra is to Satyajit Ray. They sang as one voice, an emotional Shahani had said after Mahajan passed away.
One of the focuses of the event is that it highlights Shahani’s role as a film scholar and a teacher. “Apart from Tagore, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray and Mani Kaul, we don’t have too many artists writing on aesthetics. Kumar was another exception who was interested in theoretical intervention,” Mr Rajadhyaksha says.
As someone who sees cinema as an art form and not a commodity, Shahani’s films were more about the experience than about the story. “Story would be a tiny part of what he wanted to do with film. It’s more of a narrative to him, a more complex, inclusive category that is a sum total of the cinematic experience that includes colours, overtones, texture,” says Mr. Rajadhyaksha.
