The filmmaker: Once Mani Kaul was an iconic figure among filmmakers, critics and audience who approached cinema seriously in India. He made many interesting films between 1960s to early 1990s; a time when it was possible for someone like Mani Kaul to make his kind of cinema in India. Most of those films never made any success with general audience, but they where genuine experiments for Mani Kaul. Later on he took up teaching and moved to Netherlands for a long time. Sometime around 2005 he came back to India hoping to make films again, but by then India and
the film scene has totally changed. The parallel cinema stream was completely disappeared. In this new globalised India everyone was talking about 'projects' and 'profits' not cinema. 100 Crore Club and Multiplex Films etc. became the new vocabulary. Anurag Kashyap and Dipakar Banerjee were considered alternative filmmakers. In this celebration of 'the market' and 'mediocrity' there was no space for someone like Mani Kaul and his experiments. He tried. He failed. And he passed away
in 2011
The Teacher: I was fortunate to attend few lectures by Mani Kaul as part of Berlinale Talent Campus 2005 in Delhi. I have never in my life met a more inspiring teacher than Mani Kaul. I think it is because he always spoke about things he believed in deeply. There was absolutely no self doubt or cynicism in Mani Kaul's lectures. He spoke about everything as the ultimate truth as he knew it, and you could feel how much he cared about that truth. It was refreshing to meet a man with such integrity in our times. And he could pass on his strong sense of integrity to his students, it is not for the students to follow his belief but to find their own beliefs and believe in it deeply. On one occasion I remember him talking passionately about his young film students' experiments on sound; which in-fact has nothing to do with his way of thinking, but he loved the idea that his students were pushing the medium forward in their own way. Mani Kaul's films will be there for for a long time for anyone to watch, evaluate and like it or hate it. But his contribution as a teacher is something intangible and my guess is that the impact his teaching has made on cinema students is phenomenal.
Here are few videos -
1. Mani Kaul's talk at International Film Festival of Kerala:
the film scene has totally changed. The parallel cinema stream was completely disappeared. In this new globalised India everyone was talking about 'projects' and 'profits' not cinema. 100 Crore Club and Multiplex Films etc. became the new vocabulary. Anurag Kashyap and Dipakar Banerjee were considered alternative filmmakers. In this celebration of 'the market' and 'mediocrity' there was no space for someone like Mani Kaul and his experiments. He tried. He failed. And he passed away
in 2011
The Teacher: I was fortunate to attend few lectures by Mani Kaul as part of Berlinale Talent Campus 2005 in Delhi. I have never in my life met a more inspiring teacher than Mani Kaul. I think it is because he always spoke about things he believed in deeply. There was absolutely no self doubt or cynicism in Mani Kaul's lectures. He spoke about everything as the ultimate truth as he knew it, and you could feel how much he cared about that truth. It was refreshing to meet a man with such integrity in our times. And he could pass on his strong sense of integrity to his students, it is not for the students to follow his belief but to find their own beliefs and believe in it deeply. On one occasion I remember him talking passionately about his young film students' experiments on sound; which in-fact has nothing to do with his way of thinking, but he loved the idea that his students were pushing the medium forward in their own way. Mani Kaul's films will be there for for a long time for anyone to watch, evaluate and like it or hate it. But his contribution as a teacher is something intangible and my guess is that the impact his teaching has made on cinema students is phenomenal.
Here are few videos -
1. Mani Kaul's talk at International Film Festival of Kerala:
2. Mani Kaul's talk at Osian Film Festival, Delhi.