Tagore's meditations get a third dimension

Away from the discourse about purple lips and feathery capes at the Cannes film festival this year there was a small but significant conversation inspired by an Indian legend A 3D recreation of Natir Puja 1932 the only film Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore ever directed was being screened for a select audience The project titled Natir Puja mdash The Court Dancer and helmed by USbased researchercriticfilmmaker Karl Bardosh is a tribute to the poetphilosopherrsquos meditations on spirituality religion and womenrsquos empowermentKarl Bardosh with his team on the set in New Theatre StudioThe film has since then been selected for an openair screening as the Closing Night Event of the GangesDanube Cultural Festival June 1719 at the Tagore Promenade where the poetlaureate had planted a tree at the VESOUL International Asian Film Fest in France It will be released in Bangladesh next after which it will release in IndiaNatir Puja is the dramatic adaptation of Tagorersquos epic poem Pujarini 1899 which is a retelling of a Buddhist legend about court dancer Srimati who resists King Ajatshatrursquos attempts to reimpose Hinduism on the masses A part of both his ruminations on Buddhism and his dancedrama oeuvre it is considered one of the most complex compositions When cinema legend BN Sircar founder of New Theatre Studios approached Tagore with the idea of filming Natir Puja which was first staged at the latterrsquos residence in Jorasanko he decided to film the staged version Shot over four days at New Theatres it made a social statement at that time by featuring an ensemble of allwomen performers for the very first time All of them were young students from Shantiniketan Despite Tagorersquos presence he also acted in it the film failed to attract audiences The original film was destroyed in a fire in 1933 though the legend of Natir Puja survivedSutapa Awon PradhanThe central theme mdash of a social outcast a woman facing religious intolerance with her unshakable faith in Buddhism mdash was not easy to dramatise But it touched a chord with Bardosh whose first introduction to Tagore was through his Gitanjali while a student at the University of HungaryBardosh was already into cinematic poetry making shorts that experimented with philosophical cinematic poetry while he worked as an AD and a young director of everyday garden variety film and television Once he moved to the US he began making Poetry Music Videos in collaboration with the great poet Allen Ginsberg I wrote and produced a Holocaust feature film about the tragic death of Hungaryrsquos national poet Miklos Radnoti who was shot into a mass grave at the end of a Forced March by the Hungarian Nazis When they opened the grave after the war they found a notebook in his overcoat pocket with heartwrenching poems of the Holocaust This triumph of poetry over war had to be told Natir Puja has a similar message of the heroine facing death by religious intolerance he saysNew Theatre in Tollygunje where Natir Puja was shot PicRana ChakrabortyBardosh believes we have been thrown back into the dark ages of religious wars It takes the genius of a Tagore to conceive a dancedrama based on a 2400yearold Buddhist legend to express the tragic timeliness of murder in religious intolerance as a recurring curse on humankind throughout history he saysKarl BardoshMeanwhile in 2011 the ICCR Kolkata was on the lookout for a creative production that could be staged in neighbouring countries where Buddhism has left its footprints They reached out to danseuse Sutapa Awon Pradhan who took up the challenge of adapting Pujarini for the stage It was not easy because Pujarini had not been written as a dancedrama I picked up singleline references to Kali and explored other elements with dramatic potential and elaborated them says Pradhan She introduced folk martial dance form of Raibeshe for some segments The production also featured songs by eminent Rabindrasangeet singer Jayati Chakraborty The singer feels a strong spiritual connect with Srimati the martyrprotagonist in the play The moment she makes the sacrifice the complete surrender to her atman her faith she is transformed from being a court dancer to a pujarini she explains Several verses from Pujarini resonate with this deep spiritual exploration says Chakraborty almost like a conversation the poet had with himself During his research Bardosh stumbled upon Pradhanrsquos production at the Satyajit Ray Auditorium of the Tagore Center in Kolkata marking the 150th Birthday of Tagore in 2011 I wanted to take this to the soundstage at New Theaters where Tagore directed his only film Thanks to Saugata Nandi the studio CEO we did he saysBardosh calls this a film essayVery little is left of the blackandwhite original and is in terrible shape so we just used a few seconds as a reference in my film essay As to the 3D cinematography by documentarist Leonard Retel Helmrich we used his innovative approach of Single Shot Cinema that made the dance scenes look special My intention to make this dance drama in 3D was twofold I was influenced by Pintildea the Oscarnominated dance documentary by Wim Wenders and I wanted to be the first one to express Traditional Indian dance in 3D I also used 3D as a hedge against piracy as the images become unusable upon copying he addsOther collaborators include USbased musician and DJ Satya Hinduja who composed an original score accompanying Tagorersquos own voice singing dramaturge Gauri Basu who is the narrator both in the 2011 stage production and in the original film and Kolkatabased composer Suman Sarkar It also features conversations with artistes who have performed Natir Puja over the yearsHinduja who spent three winter days of 2015 working on the project with Tagorersquos gentle and surreal voice singing right into her ears says The song Tabu Mone Rekho Remember Me sung by Tagore was clean for me to compose around but also had a lot of analog crackle and dirt from the recording of that time 1887 It was challenging to engineer out the frequencies that were disturbing the vocal elements and yet keeping the authenticity and clarity of his voice so as to not lose itrsquos essence It was so magical to work on artistically for me because capturing the frequencies of that era and reliving it in the now is what made being a part of this project an honour more than a challengeSpeaking about the significance of Natir Puja Bardosh observes how Tagore made this as an educational venture at a time when only commercial cinema existed Besides Tagore made his film in 1932 and it burned in 1933 when Hitler rose to power and the Reichstag was burning Unbelievable metaphoric parallels with the rise of mass murderers in religious intolerance and racism that Tagore rejected It was the premonition of brutal religious war by the poet genius This apart from the powerful message he conveyed by casting middleclass women in the productionIncidentally Bardosh had also written and directed in 1992 the first documentary about Indian Cinema for the American Public Broadcasting System Entitled The World of Film India with Rita Gam the former Hollywood star it was coproduced by Prakash Mehra who got Amitabh Bachchan Shashi Kapoor and BR Chopra to add heft to the productionI was looking for a way to pay tribute to Indian Cinema with a followup to my documentary and research brought me to Tagorersquos Natir Puja he says I believe Tagore has a hand in this miracle