Screening of films by the National Award winning Dir. Kamal Swaroop
Photo by : Incredible India Info
At Kiran Nadar Museum of Art , Saket in Delhi
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art invites you to
Screening of films by the National Award winning Dir. Kamal Swaroop
Friday, 27th July 2018. 11am onwards
Mr. Swaroop will be present for a conversation with renowned film scholar Dr. Kaushik Bhaumik at 6.30pm
Kamal Swaroop is a two-time President’s award and Filmfare Award winning film, television and radio director and screenwriter. In 1974, he graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and even his student works met with unusual international acclaim. In 1982, he assisted Sir Richard Attenborough in the filming of Gandhi. Om Dar-B-Dar (1988) is his path breaking masterpiece.
Kaushik Bhaumik is currently Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. He was previously Deputy Director, Osian's-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, New Delhi, 2010-2013. He has also been Curator at Osian's-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, New Delhi, 2007-2009.
Films:
Om Dar-B-Dar (1988) - 11.00 am
(1 hrs 40 mins)
Om Dar-B-Dar is a 1988 Indian postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop and starring Anita Kanwar, Aditya Lakhia and Gopi Desai in lead roles. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, is set in Ajmer and Pushkar in Rajasthan, and employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist story line to satirise mythology, arts, politics and philosophy.[2] The film won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie in 1989.
Rangbhoomi (2013) - 2.00 pm
(1 hr 20 mins)
Director Kamal Swaroop introduces this screening of his experimental documentary. The film is a lyrical journey through the iconic ghats, narrow lanes and forgotten spaces of the holy city of Varanasi, where Swaroop tries to find traces of film-maker DG Phalke's life. Known as the father of Indian cinema, Phalke shot his first film in 1913. His movies were successful, but later in life he found himself without backers. Becoming increasingly marginalised, impoverished and disillusioned with the world of cinema, Phalke went to live in Varanasi, where he returned to the theatre and wrote the semi-autobiographical play Rangbhoomi. Swaroop brings Phalke's story alive through the vibrant palette of sounds, sights and characters so typical of the holiest of the seven sacred cities to Hinduism and Jainism.
Pushkar Puran (2017) - 4.00 pm
(1 hr 40 mins)
“All year one sensed a hidden tension, all year something was going on in preparation for those days, as if the ultimate purpose of the year was to home in on those three days.†(Roberto Calasso, “Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of Indiaâ€)
Pushkar is a small town in the Federal State of Rajasthan in northwest India and one of the holiest places of Hinduism. Once a year, however, during the full moon in the autumn month of Kartik, the town and the desert surrounding it turn into a sprawling fun fair with Ferris wheels and carousels, music from folklore to rock and colourful dance performances. Thousands of people, Hindus and Muslims alike, pour in from villages in the whole region to trade camels, horses and cattle. The spectacle appears in the desert as suddenly as a Fata Morgana. And just as suddenly the colourful magic is over. Director Kamal Swaroop – who shot one of the (post-)modern classics of Indian cinema with “Om Dar-B-Dar†in 1988 – captures the exuberant goings-on with a precise eye for strong images and details, exploring the myths and gods of India as well as their political instrumentalisation.
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