Well-known film researcher and expert on Indian films, Karl Bardosh, has remade “Natir Puja”, the only dance drama directed and filmed by Rabindranath Tagore at New Theatres which unfortunately got burnt a year later. Excerpts from an edited interview conducted during the academic’s recent Kolkata trip:
What prompted you to make a film on ‘Natir Puja’ and why are you planning to film it in New Theatres?
I wanted to pay tribute to 100 years of Indian Cinema in 2013. My research led to the discovery that Tagore made only one film, ‘Natir Puja’ in 1932 at the New Theaters Studio but all copies of the film perished in a fire at the Studio’s warehouse a year later. So I thought it would be a true tribute to Tagore and his connection to Indian Cinema to remake his destroyed film, ‘Natir Puja’. Only we did film it in colour and in 3D. Also, my forte as a filmmaker has always been poetry on film. For example, in 1984, I created a new genre, Poetry Music Videos, with the great American poet Allen Ginsberg. So I’ve been wanting to make a film about the poetry of Tagore for a long time.
What led you to select Sutapa Awon Pradhan’s Dance Company for the film?
Again, research brought up a poster about her company’s performance of ‘Natir Puja’ in the Satyajit Ray Auditorium in 2011 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s birth. She sent me a DVD of their performance and I was very much impressed with her adaptation of ‘Natir Puja’ into a beautiful dance drama, true to Tagore’s spirit. I then decided to take her company’s performance to New Theaters, the same studio where Tagore directed it 80 years ago. I also brought in as our Director of Photography, the world-renown filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich, the inventor of Single Shot Cinema, to shoot the film in 3D, which would enhance the beautiful movements of Sutapa Awon Pradhan’s dancers. Our 3D Modelling Artist Attila Bela Kovacs will process our footage and perform all the visual effects during the postproduction of our film.
What light has the storyline of ‘Natir Puja’ thrown on you?
Tagore wrote an original poem, ‘Pujarini’, a play based on the poem, and a film as well to emancipate women, to promote the participation of reputable women on the stage and on films as that was not customary during the silent film period of Indian Cinema. So this was a socially progressive move by Tagore and received some criticism. This dance drama is based on a 2500-year-old Buddhist legend, and it’s also about religious intolerance, that he firmly rejected, making ‘Natir Puja’ very timely even today. Tagore is simply a genius ranking with the greatest ones in human culture, in poetry, music, painting, and intellectual discourse alike. His amazing conversation with Einstein will be included in our film for the first time ever in cinema. In our film, we will tell the story of how Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ won the very first Nobel Prize for India (and all of Asia) in the same year when Indian Cinema was born, 1913. So we managed to pay tribute to the 100th anniversary of Indian Cinema and Tagore’s Nobel Prize at the same time. This connection happens only once in 100 years.
What will be the uniqueness of your new film? on ‘Natir Puja’?
Thanks to Nick and Steven Schlatmann’s new Fresh Start Films company, we got the financial support to make ‘Natir Puja’ in 3D. Together with Anthony Gude, they also made it possible for us to film a documentary framework about Sutapa Awon Pradhan’s creative process adapting ‘Natir Puja’ into a dance drama. The song and dance numbers from our film will then be incorporated into a larger narrative feature film that will tell the story of how Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ won the Nobel Prize. That means,by filming the ‘Natir Puja’, we have already completed about 35 per cent of the larger feature film as well.
Are you only planning any documentary on the film?
The project has three levels. In December 2013, we filmed ‘Natir Puja’ as a remake of Tagore’s dance drama in 3D, and it will be available upon finishing the editing. Secondly, we filmed a documentary framework about Sutapa Awon Pradhan’s creative process that is also currently moving into editing and post-production.
Finally, we are planning to shoot a feature film incorporating the song and dance scenes from our remake of ‘Natir Puja’ into the story of Tagore’s winning the Nobel Prize for ‘Gitanjali’. The story will be framed with Tagore, as the film’s director, watching the burning rolls of his film in the 1932 fire, and recalling the highlights of his life. Several poems from ‘Gitanjali’ will be visualised in the feature film. I’ve created a new format, transmedia screenplay, with the help of Research Assistant James Holcomb.
In addition to Nick and Steven Shlatmann, and Anthony Gude, we have the famous British producer, James Simpson, and the owner of the Bollywood-Hollywood film company’s, Prashant Shah, our consulting producer, helping to put the feature film together. Sandeep Marwah’s Studio has expressed an interest in helping us from Film City, Noida.
We’ve also received great assistance from Saugata Nandi, the Head of New Theaters Studio in Tollygunge, and we hope to work with him on the same sound stage again where Tagore directed ‘Natir Puja’ 80 years ago.
The company producing our film is Fresh Start Films, a first feature joint venture between Nick Schlatmann’s Mind Over Media Group and M1T Invest from Wall Street, run by Anthony Gude and Steven Schlatmann in New York. They are the guardian angels of this project.
