‘Mani Kaul’s films didn’t come to you,you had to go to them’

When Mani started making films,one of his initial films Uski Roti (1969),was the most radical of that time. (The other two notable films that year were Bhuvan Shome by Mrinal Sen and Sara Akash by Basu Chatterjee.) It defied all conventional narrative styles in cinema. These films were a departure from what was being produced by the Indian film industry. It is also important to remember that they were produced by the Film Finance Corporation (the forerunner of NFDC). They can be considered the first products of New Cinema in India. This great start to his career gave Kaul an enormous influence over FTII students for long. However,his later films didn’t fare as well.

Mani was an ideologue of the cinema. The way he visualised the use of space and the fluidity with which he used visual space was extraordinary. His films were quiet,contemplative and leisurely. However,the films didn’t come to you; you had to go to them. But once you unlocked them they could be very rewarding. Another aspect of Mani’s films was the extraordinary use of music,which had a unique quality. That he himself was a Dhrupad singer,of course,helped.

I didn’t know Mani well at all. We were distant social acquaintances. I did watch his cinema,particularly the earlier ones. There would be times when I too would lose my way in his films,but his talent at image construction,which I have always envied,would captivate me. He could never become a popular filmmaker or a household name.

While Mani Kaul remains one of the key filmmakers of Indian cinema at a certain time,I find it tough to place him. Though he was a great teacher of cinema and taught at FTII and at international film schools,his film theories didn’t quite catch on. That is because his style was not easy to unravel. His cinema could never really be totally comprehended. Any filmmaker trying to use what he considered was his style would simply end up mimicking him.

As told to Dipti Nagpaul-D’Souza