at Vinobha Hall, Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya, T Nagar.
About the documentary
Two
hundred years of colonial “modernity” has produced all kinds of
divisions in Indian society. Political authority at every level is now
centralized and flows top-down; and our economy is increasingly driven
by the needs and demands of those who inhabit our cities. Perhaps the
deepest cleavage in our collective existence is social and cultural,
marked by the unbridgeable chasm between our rural and urban
populations. In our cities, the space for culture and community has been
taken over by faceless institutions and markets. Even amidst a steady
and continuous flow of migrants from our villages to our cities,
our familiarity with, and interest in, the people of our villages and
their cultural practices is fast receding. Where our media and
institutions do cast their marginal, and marginalizing, attention on
rural culture, it reaches us in a form that is specially tailored for
our remote, almost colonial, gaze; and film-making, inexorably urban
owing to its industrial and technological nature, does a particularly
bad job of engaging with village life and culture.
“Kelai
Draupadhai”, made by filmmaker Sashikant Ananthachari, is a
path-breaking effort that documents, as well as celebrates, a culturally
significant event which is an annual feature in several hundred
villages in northern Tamilnadu. It covers twenty days of the
Mahabharatham recital and koothu performed in connectin with the annual
thiruvizha, or festival, at the local Draupadhai Amman temple at Eechur
near Senji town, 150km south-west of Chennai. While the entire story of
Mahabharatam is recited over 20 days, based on the 14th century
rendering of the epic by Tamil Vaishnavite saint Srivilliputhurar, the
koothu performance begins, synchronous with the recital, at the pivotal
event of Duryodhana’s invitation to the Pandavas to his kingdom, which
starts a chain of events eventually leading the apocalyptic war in
Kurukshetra. Draupadhai Amman, who is ritually invoked, is the prime
audience for the recital and koothu. She is also the central figure in
the koothu, which enacts her disrobing in the court of the Kauravas and
the fulfillment of her vow to avenge this insult at the battlefield in
Kurukshetra.
In
“Kelai Draupadhai”, the community is the chief and only protagonist. The
people initiate the festival, organize and perform the many events,
articulate the legends underlying the festival’s attendant rituals,
engage with the theatre of the koothu, not only as involved spectators
(who already know the story) but also as participants and collaborators,
realizing the settings for many of the dramatic events of the koothu,
till the borders between the performance and reality, actors and
audience, story and life, are totally blurred, and they enjoy the
triumph of good over evil, knowing that the battle shall recur as surely
as the triumph. In staging the koothu in this traditional way, the way
of their forefathers, and incorporating the memories of their own past
into it, the community honours the proud legacy of their stories and
beliefs, language and text, costumes and drama, music and song,
landscape and crafts, and celebrates their very existence as a community
– cohesive, morally aware and hopeful of the future. ‘Kelai Draupadhai’
is a record of all this and more, as well as a dazzling glimpse into a
way of life we have lost, one that we must recover and honour once
again.
- N Kalyan Raman, Writer and Translator, Chennai
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About the filmmaker and his crew
Sashikanth Ananthachari [Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Researcher]
After
completing my course in cinema from FTII, Pune, I worked as a
cinematographer In Kolkata shooting many award winning features and
documentaries. Important works would be 'Kaal Abhirati' 1991, Swarna
Kamal for the best experimental Feature film, [Director Amitabh
Chakraborthy], 'Yugant', 1995, Best Bengali feature film, Director
Aparna Sen. I shifted back to my home town Chennai and have been working
as an independent documentary producer director. Important works would
be 'Veli' [The Open], a documentary on the river Kaveri. Kelai Draupadai
is part of a trilogy of films which I am working on right now. Kelai
[Listen Draupadi] is about the Mahabharata festival itself and I
completed it last year, Ninaivin Nagaram [City of the Mind] is in the
final stages of post production and is about the history of this
tradition which dates back to the 7th century Pallava period, and the
3rd 'Dhvani' is a film about the aesthetics of this tradition which I am
currently shooting. Kelai has been screened at numerous festivals both
in India and abroad. It was first screened in Pardubice, Czech Republic.
It was recently screened at the Moscow Ethnographic Film festival on 28th September
2012. Kelai Draupadai is also part of the course studies for students
studying culture both in some Indian universities and overseas.
Sashikanth +91 9600113095
N Raja and Santhana Nambi,
the sound recordists, have worked in numerous documentaries as sound
recordists. They specialise in feature films which would like to use
location sound as the final sound track and have an impressive body of
work, main stream to show case their work. This they said was their
toughest project and first non main stream work.
Raja +91 9003021154; Santhananambi +91 9003023258
Ajit Eapen, Editor worked
with PC Sriram’s production house in Chennai where he has edited
numerous documentaries and ad films for the company. Last year he has
shifted to Mumbai where he is currently the chief editor Star TV.
S. Kannan: Bank of Baroda - 2498 5836