/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Film on Girl’s Journey from Prostitution Goes Far

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

KOLKATA, India, Oct 29 2002 (IPS) - A low-budget Bengali film on the quest for freedom by a sex worker’s daughter is the rage in festivals worldwide, boosting the credentials of avante-garde director Buddhadeb Dasgupta as India’s most accomplished serious filmmaker today.

Dasgputa, the Kolkata-based director of ‘Mondo Meyer Upakhyan’ (A Tale of a Naughty Girl’, is being slotted with such greats as French master Jean-Luc Goddard and Italian Bernardo Bertolucci after the Toronto Film Festival in September.

The film tells the story of a poor girl’s quest for a new life away from the quagmire of prostitution, a quest that is likened to and juxtaposed with that giant leap of mankind in 1969 – the landing on the moon.

Rated a masterpiece in Toronto Film Festival, critically acclaimed in Vancouver, awaiting European premier in the Berlin film festival and being sold for a record price for any Indian film abroad, ‘Mondo Meyer Upakhyan’ is the story of young Lati, daughter of a prostitute in a small Bengal village.

"It may well be worthy of that overused term: masterpiece," Canadian film critic Steve Gravestock wrote of the film in the Toronto festival journal.

"Dasgupta finds poetry and hope in the darkest and least hopeful places," says another critic after the film’s viewing in Toronto and Vancouver.

Dasgupta weaves celluloid magic as he zeroes in on Lati’s struggle in 1969, when American astronauts also landed on the moon. He juxtaposes footages of the moon landing with the young woman’s story.

"When Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin stepped on the moon it was termed a small step for man but a giant leap for the mankind. It was a journey of hope and unparalleled human achievement in the quest for new knowledge,” says Dasgupta.

”I have caught the no less extraordinary journey of another young woman, caught in the vortex of prostitution,” he adds. "It is a journey sometimes real, sometimes magical. A journey which is actually a giant step for a woman.”

The poet-director developed the idea for ‘Mondo Meyer Upakhyan’ from the lines of Bengali writer Prafulla Roy’s poems.

The film focuses on a young Lati, whose mother Rajani (Bengali screen diva Rituparna Sengupta) lives in the suburban brothel where she works.

Rajani plans to hand her daughter over to a lecherous elderly man, who will be a wealthy patron for the daughter and a shelter for the mother. But Lati’s own desire in life is to go back to school.

‘Mondo Meyer Upakhyan’ also subtly explores lesbianism among prostitutes. Says Dasgupta: "Yes, there is an element of lesbianism in the film. You can call it female bonding. And this is quite normal among the prostitutes as their physical relationship with the male is not of pleasure."

‘Mondo Meyer Upakhyan’ was was also bought by a Toronto-based company, Cinema Vault Inc, for two million U.S. dollars, a record price for any Indian film.

"Toronto was very hectic but extremely satisfying as the critics rated the film as the best with rave reviews everywhere. More important is the world distribution deal signed with Cinema Vault Inc with a record value that has never happened to any Indian film. It is travelling to many festivals, including Berlin," Dasgupta gushes.

All of this is happening to Dasgupta just two years after his ‘Uttara’ (The Wrestler) was adjudged best film at the Venice Film Festival.

Journeys are what fascinate Dasgupta.

So while ‘Uttara’ deals with fundamentalism and human insensitivity to the beauty of creation, his earlier national award-winning film ‘Lal Darja’ (The Red Door) is a celluloid poetic odyssey into the lost world of mysterious innocence.

"My fondness for films was a natural fallout of my love for poetry and painting," says Dasgupta.

Often, his films are a takeoff from his own poems. ‘Lal Darja’ is drawn from his poem ‘For Hasan’, which tells the story of a successful city dentist whose life has been dulled by middle-class respectability.

Now in his fifties, Dasgupta was initiated to the beauty and richness at a tender age, having spent the childhood in a village called Anara in Purulia district in India’s West Bengal province. This has in fact been the backdrop for his films, including the latest.

"I always used to think in terms of images which are stored in my hard disk through the years," explains the maker of such critically acclaimed films as ‘Tahader Katha’ (Their Story), ‘Charachar’ (Shelter of Wings) and ‘Bag Bahadur’ (The Tigerman).

Dasgupta’s own celluloid journey began in 1979 with ‘Durotto’ ( The Distance). He was a lecturer of economics before he dabbled in films, for which he had no formal training.

After doing a couple of documentaries, he started working on a full-length feature film in the late seventies, but had no financer. He took out loans from the bank and close friends and pawned his wife’s jewellery to make ‘Durotto’.

After the film won accolades, including a national award, there was no looking back for Dasgupta.

For Dasgupta, the creative crusade must go on by, as one of his idols, the late Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, said, "declaring a war on mediocrity, greyness and lack of expressiveness, making creative inquiry a rule”.

/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Film on Girl’s Journey from Prostitution Goes Far

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

KOLKATA, India, Oct 29 2002 (IPS) - A low-budget Bengali film on the quest for freedom by a sex worker’s daughter is the rage in festivals worldwide, boosting the credentials of avante-garde director Buddhadeb Dasgupta as India’s most accomplished serious filmmaker today.
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