Tagore's poems to take shape as films

Filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta to bring 13 verses to the silver screen

Eminent filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta has selected 13 verses of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore to be made as films as part of the celebrations of the 150th birth anniversary of the national poet.

Presently at the state of scripting, the films will not be more than 30 minutes long. Mr. Dasgupta plans to release them in groups of four or five films at a time. The first set of films should be ready for release by March or April next.

“The poems are so rich in images. The films will be about those images interacting with my images to create another set of images,” Mr. Dasgupta told

The Hindu .

“When the Ministry of Culture proposed that a film be made based on Tagore's works, I suggested that we make films based on his poems instead of picking a novel or a story. Many of Tagore's novels have already been made into films,” he said.

These films would not follow a linear storyline. They would be “a feast of images,” he said.

To make the films accessible to a wider audience, Mr. Dasgupta will make the film in Hindi instead of Bengali. The films would have minimal dialogue. They would not be verbose, he said.