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Acclaimed filmmaker Goutam Ghose sees the universe through the eyes of two radicals of completely different persuasions — The Dalai Lama and Jyoti Basu. Saibal Chatterjee reports SINCE the mid-1970s, prolific Kolkata filmmaker Goutam Ghose has made an array of striking documentaries on an eclectic range of subjects. From the impact of famine on human lives to the cinematic gems of Satyajit Ray, from the genius of shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan to the silken grace of veteran Rabindra Sangeet exponent Kanika Banerjee, and from the awesome natural beauty of Sikkim and the Himalayas to the rugged splendour of Rajasthan, he has captured it all with his camera. But never before has
Ghose, or for that matter any Indian filmmaker, handled two subjects
as far removed from each other as the philosophy of a spiritual leader
on the one hand and the worldview of a Marxist ideologue on the other.
Even more interestingly, the two films in question – Impermanence:
A Journey in the World of H.H. the Dalai Lama and Jyoti Basur
Shonge (In the Company of Jyoti Basu) – were made concurrently
over a number of years.
Ghosh’s hour-long documentary on the Dalai Lama had its Indian premiere in New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre on April 6 after being first unveiled at the Venice Film Festival in September 2004, while his film on the former West Bengal chief minister was screened in Kolkata on March 31. In the span of a mere week, Ghose traversed from the universe of the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people to the mindscape of a Communist leader who headed a democratically elected state government for an incredible quarter of a century. They are men of different hues all right but, says Ghosh, there is something that binds them together. "They are both committed revolutionaries," argues Ghose, explaining his decision to work simultaneously on two personalities as diverse as the Dalai Lama and Jyoti Basu. "They have both made far-reaching impact on their times." "The religion that the Dalai Lama practices has markedly revolutionary underpinnings. It is a rationalist, Godless religion that rests on the universal precepts of non-violence and compassion," explains the director who not only scripted and shot Impermanence himself, he also scored the film’s music. "The Dalai Lama," says the filmmaker, "holds the view that you need not profess any religious faith in order to give peace and non-violence a chance in this world. His philosophy is a deeply humanist one." "Neither of the two films," Ghose points out, "represented a professional assignment. There was neither a time-frame nor any clear-cut obligation. The two films just happened." That probably explains the freewheeling quality inherent in both. The Dalai Lama film actually emerged from another assignment – the joint 1994 Indo-Chinese Silk Route expedition of which the filmmaker was an integral part. One of the members of that expedition was Italian chemical engineer-turned-film producer Sergio Scapagnini. Scapagnini’s doctor-brother suggested that it might be a good idea for Ghose to make a film on Tibetan medicine. But as Ghose and Scapagnini discovered more and more of Tibet during that momentous voyage, their interest in the Buddhist culture of the inaccessible region increased quickly and they decided to expand the scope of the proposed film. "For a film on Tibetan culture, we could not have had a better protagonist than the Dalai Lama," says Ghose. "Everywhere we went in Tibet, we could see in the eyes of people unalloyed love and reverence for the Dalai Lama. When they learnt I was from India, they asked me whether I had seen him and whether I was carrying a photograph of their leader," reminiscences Ghose. Impermanence is not a biographical film neither is it a political tract. "I was clear from the outset that the core of the film had to be philosophical. So my emphasis is on the wisdom and compassion that the Dalai Lama represents, not on the political implications of his protracted exile," says Ghose. Impermanence is composed of outtakes from the film that followed the Silk Route expedition, rare footage shot during visits to Dharmsala (where the Dalai Lama gave the crew special access to his private palace and daily chores) and recordings of discourses delivered by the spiritual leader in various parts of the world. But for years, even as work on the film progressed steadily, Ghose did not quite know what the focus should be. "And then 9/11 happened and I found my point of attention. Impermanence is a film about an apostle of peace in a violence-torn world." Ghose’s Jyoti Basur Shonge, a two-hour documentary, also followed a similar creative trajectory. Work on the film began way back in 1996, when Jyoti Basu’s party committed its "historical blunder" of not letting that veteran Communist leader become the Prime Minister of India. "Jyoti babu was reluctant at first and I too decided to take my time because as long as he was in the chief ministerial saddle I knew it would be difficult for me to draw him out on important issues," says Ghose. The Jyoti Basu documentary, which is scheduled for commercial release in Bengal, has the nonagenarian politician talking candidly about, among other things, the Communist Party’s controversial role during the freedom struggle, the collapse of the Soviet Union, corruption in public life, and the contradictions between running a government and kowtowing to the diktats of the party. "Jyoti Basu is the oldest active Indian politician and he has seen Indian politics for nearly seven decades. His views and memories have undeniable archival value," says Ghose. "Cinematically, the
Jyoti Basu documentary was more challenging. Unlike the Dalai Lama
film or the documentary I made on Bismillah Khan, this film did not
have a strong visual backdrop. The Dalai Lam film has Tibet, Bismillah
Khan has Varanasi, a colourful cultural crucible, but for the Jyoti
Basu film, I had to push myself really hard to find ways and means to
make it visually appealing," explains Ghose. |
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