Fwd: Re: Archive (19) Madhuja Mukherjee
Duration: 00:19:16; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 216.844; Saturation: 0.219; Lightness: 0.104; Volume: 0.147; Cuts per Minute: 0.830; Words per Minute: 122.465
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AR: As was evident even in the first presentation, these presentation don't necessary have beginnings or ends, they go on. We now have Madhuja Mukherjee and in fact this is going to go on over the next few days and Kaushik we're going to miss you too. As we go to Madhuja Mukherjee we will...
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AR: As we look for Madhuja's edit I should say that whats going to happen here is Madhuja returning at once to the formal archives, ie the films themselves, but also I think then moving into the street into actually spaces where the shooting may have happened or where certain public memories may have actually been located in physical spaces in Calcutta. And also I think going into her own family home and speaking to her grandmother as she explores this particular history and creates this kind of topos around it.
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MM: So, one of the things that I have been thinking through the kind of digital platform and the digital archive that we have specially with pad.ma and indiancine.ma is to... what does you know this kind of digital resource, database, archive enable us to do? And one of the things that I was thinking is something that was said earlier in the day, is that we can probably enter the river sideways and not only that we can enter the river sideways but we could also exit and may be move around into other rivers.
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MM: So... that itself is an exciting possibility and that's how I have framed some of the material that is available on the indiancine.ma and tried to connect it with my own projects that have been going on in between. So, I am looking at what I call Train Arriving at Sealdah station. I am looking at the stories at events around this place called Sealdah station which is located across what used to be Harrison road, Kolkata, and connect to it or connect it to my personal experiences of walking the streets. For instance walking around Harrison road. And these connections let's say a film from 1932 and my own experiences of those places set a series of other narratives rolling.
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MM: So, what I am going to do is walk through a set of different films including one film called
Manikjore made in 1952 which was a remake of a well-known 1932 silent film called
Jamaibabu.
Jamaibabu in particular becomes important for studies in Bengali language cinema particularly because that's the sole kind of film that has been found of that period.
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MM:
Manikjore, this film was made by... so its a remake of
Jamaibabu and so there are two films that we are talking about,
Jamaibabu and
Manikjore made by the same director in '32 and '52. And it narrates the encounters of a sort of parochial(?) villager or a suburban person who enters the big city and which results in a set of incidents and so on. So, the first film
Jamaibabu the plot revolts around the village buffoon who enters the big city and is marveled by its magnitude. In this film the
jamai or the bridegroom, he has arrived the city to visit his lawfully wedded wife and they live separately. So as in not separated but that's how the cultures are. And during the latter half of the film he reaches his... finally you know going through the city he finally finds the in-laws place and following a series of misadventures and misunderstanding, mistaken identities he is... they take their wives to the bedroom and the film ends with a kiss.
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MM: So a scene by scene analysis of the film demonstrates that atleast two or three types of styles are jostling with each other. The first half has a kind of a documentary style of location shooting which is mix with slapstick comedy in physical action. So the so-called
Jamaibabu, the person, he ventures into this prowling colonial city, he's overwhelmed by the cars, peoples, buildings, hoardings, everything around him. And he keeps falling... into a ditch, into a manhole, into different places.
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MM: So the director Kalipada Das, Das maps the lived and animated city in which this
babu the
jamaibabu arrives at a particular place and that is important. At Sealdah station which is in central Kolkata and he checks in at a nearby hostel which used to be called and is still referred to as Scott lane. And thereafter, after he checks in a boarding house he decides to go around the city. And is lost amidst the madness and crowd.
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MM: So this aspect of touring the city produces a series of comic scenes as he traverses rather well-known places which is Bowbazar, the Wellington street and finally he reaches the governor's house. So the long shots of the city portraying cars, houses, shops, hoardings, recognizable places gestures towards... and also there are certain gestures, movement, typicality of a period that generate a sensorial engagement with the city. And thereafter, there is a tour through the sort of the more touristic spaces in which where you can see young couples sitting and inform us about contemporary public life.
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MM:
Manikjore on the other hand, which is made in 1952, despite being a remake by the same director evades this thoroughfare that I am talking about. The route from Sealdah station to Bowbazar via Bethakkhanabazar and Scott lane. The latter sections of this film
Manikjore the iconic tourist spots like the Victoria Memorial and all are there. In fact in this version what is emphasized is that the plot sort of shifts from the city to the interiors of the house. And two comic situations arising from mistaken identities. However, having given this introduction I would like to say that I'm not interested in the question of remake plot, narrative, genre, style. Rather what I would like to discuss or show in fact is this missing link, that thoroughfare, this street which I know, that which many laborers and young students took to arrive at the boarding houses located around the Harrison road and College Street area.
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MM: So I wish to also bring to the table my own memories of such places which was activated actually by one shot of
Jamaibabu, a shot of a street with the name of this street inscribed on one of the buildings. So, I would like to use memory as a framework which allows me to move beyond the structures of chronological divisions like silent cinema, talkies and so on or the thematics and stylistic concerns. So... and allow me to move between silent cinema, talkies, post independence Bengali cinema, popular films and a well-known sort of left production. Rather I like to use memory like a thread. So as I pull it, more complicated stories come out. So, what is... what was when I was watching
Jamaibabu what was dangling before me was this one image.
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MM: So ya maybe we play
Jamaibabu...
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MM: Specially young students would come and live here like what is known as in Bangla
mess bari and also there has been a lot of reading around what Sumit Sarkar refers to as the
basha and the
bari.
Bari as in the house and
Basha as in the nest. So the Kolkata houses were always referred to as the nest or the
basha. There are not only the College Street that is far more well-known, the Sealdah station already has 3 others colleges which are still... people from the suburban stations, they come and study and they go way. So, there is a kind of a daily inflow of people who come around, in for the college, to work by the train, they walk. They walk these places and they go to the central Kolkata.
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MM: And this is the next film
Manikjore which was shot in '52 and made by the same director. So,
Manikjore also opens with... actually opens with the train arriving at the station. But instead of taking this thoroughfare, what you see is that it is... a> is that... after the train arriving it is shot in the studios and next this directly goes into a house.
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MM: ...which I am trying to raise is what is this track that
Manikjore is seemingly evading, erasing or not taking?
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MM: So, I wish to actually share with you some of my own projects which took me back to this place called Scott Lane. And now my obsessional with this street is personal, since my family house was right there and I was really marveled by the fact that this so-called only surviving silent Bengali film was shot next to my house. But it was a house, it was a family home, it was a house which had many stories.
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MM: Some of which I have recorded, like my grandmother's tales who died at the young age of 100 in 2014. So, this interview that I shot of her was done in 2004 when she turned 90. Moreover, in 2013 when we were celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema, I did installations in Calcutta which were titled Silent Forms. And one of those included this kind of an installation on
Jamaibabu which entailed the revisiting the location and bringing the archive into practice into art spaces.
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MM: So this is the shot that I was talking about... and this... So as soon as I saw this I completely knew that actually our house was just on the other side of this building. So we went back, it was not difficult to find the place. In fact one of the plaques is still there, this one, and the one that was written Scott Lane is missing. The other house from where he passes... the brick house from where he passes... I was avoiding a bit the long shots because this place was full of political hoardings and the house was not entirely visible. But it was... it still stands now. So what I did, I created this kind of panels and then did the installation there.
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MM: But what I think is... what this kind of movement allows me is to is to take a leap as it were, and move through the kind ofbifurcations, the different branches that could emerge from the archive. And then simply looking at the thematic, the directorial styles, or the genre, or the artist, but you are looking at this one stray thing and then try and build a narrative around that.
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MM: So, the question that I come back to is, what exactly was
Manikjore evading when the director chose not to revisit his own location? Because I later found out that the director Kalipada Das also came from that locality and he had his house there. So... it is hard to tell but I would like to propose or argue that by '47 this thoroughfare had become the lane via which lakhs of refugees arrived Calcutta. So, basically from Bangladesh you cross the river, you arrive at a place called Bon Gaon and then you take the train and you arrive to Sealdah and either you go southwards or you go northwards. So, it is not at the iconic Howrah Station that people arrived, specially from east Bengal or from the suburbs, but it was really Sealdah station.
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MM: So, I would like to end with two clips, one from
Chinnamul, another the recording of my grandmother who narrates as to how different family members came back.
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MM: ...1951 was produced by the... maybe we could put the sound down and I could talk over it.
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MM: So... by Nemai Ghosh, 1951 it was the Indian Peoples' Theater Association production and which as it may described seemed to mark the arrival of the refugee who have arrived to the city to lay its claim. So, the film is sort of regarded as the sole cinematic documentation, as in documentation because it has substantial... so, within this melodramatic story there are these documentary footage, which are put juxtaposed with each other.
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MM: So, the film is regarded as the... we can keep playing... ya... thanks.
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MM: So, the film begins with the voice over speaking about the Muslim peasants and and the Hindu professionals, how they lived happily by the river in Bangladesh. In fact it begins with a leisurely pace and it shows how various workers, the potters, the goldsmith, the jute farmer and others, they lived happily. Then there is evocative sort of montage which juxtaposes shots of waves and storm and a lamp going off with people being misled by the leaders. And who... So... then there is this dissolve into a shot of night just before this, and the people finally... this and the famous sort of evocative scene in the film where the elderly woman says that 'I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go to Calcutta' and this is that... then another character says 'Aunt, you'll be able to see Ganga'. So she says 'I don't need Ganga. I need my home'. So it is that kind of a scene that is there.
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MM: It is... what is interesting that we saw just earlier is the maze of the track, and the shots of... its almost like a dream or a nightmare rather, where people, this sea of people, enter and they repeatedly keep coming through this station, through that road that I was talking about. So you know in a way this film is a trigger because it is constantly inter-cutting between fiction and this documentary footage.
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MM: So, basically
Chinnamul points to a question that I was raising. So, while it was you know, the street remains a part of my childhood memory, but it is also... it sort of allows me through this kind of a resource or through this kind of material to navigate and tell, connect it with other stories which were quite complicated.
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MM: So, I will end with this interview where my grandmother talks about how family... distant family members kept coming one by one and they stayed in this house.
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MM: ...So basically try and then come back to that thoroughfare was what I was trying to do. Ya I'll end here thanks.
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