[Reader-list] Excavating Indian Experimental Film

[Shai Heredia]

4th POSTING

Abid Surty - the artist in Pramod Pati's experimental masterpiece 'Abid' (1969) discusses Pramod Pati and the creative freedom of Films Division at the time.

 

Excerpts from an interview with him below:

 

S: When did you first meet Pramod Pati?

A At that time Pramod Pati actually wanted to make a film on Hussain, but Hussain was too busy and I think he ditched Pati 3 or 4 times. I remember I had an exhibition on at Taj Art Gallery & Pati dropped in one day. This was the first exhibition I had done on mirror collage, and seeing all the broken pieces of mirror he got baffled and confused. After few minutes he approached me & said "Abid I want to make a film on you with your work". So that was the first time we met. 

 

S: What kind of work were you involved with at that time? 

A: I was a painter.I am a painter. At that time I had experimented by painting my whole house and this had become a very popular art work and it was well publicized in newspapers and magazines. It was an experiment of living within a painting. When people live with a painting - you have a painting on the wall or you have a painting displayed somewhere, so you are living with a painting. So I thought, why not live within a painting instead. I was living in a single room at that time, so I started painting the walls & whatever came in the way like fan, furniture, floor, ceiling, cupboard, even small utensils, chairs, everything in my room became a part of this one painting. It took me about one month, & there was no compulsion, it wasn't for anybody. This was done in those days - late 60's, early 70's. At that time I was freelancing for Times of India, but there was a continuous labour strike for 3 months, so a major source of my income had stopped. I had ample time & ample colours at home, but I didn't have money to buy canvas, so this was the basic thought that led me to this experiment. So the house became my canvas. Like if a figure is sitting on the floor.so half the body is on the wall where somebody is resting and the legs are on the floor. So like that the figures were merging with the floor, merging with the ceiling, & going from wall to ceiling. Like that everything became part of one painting. 

 

S: So how did you work out the concept for the film eventually?. 

A: So Pati had seen the publicity for this work, he was highly impressed. And then he came up with the concept that I should recreate the whole thing in the Films Division studio. Pati showed me one of his earlier films where he had tried pixilation for the first time. But he was not satisfied with that film, so he wanted to use that technique plus the concept of the painted house. He also wanted it to be a biographical film on me. So he told me to come up with a concept. I came up with a simple thought, an artist is born, he creates work & passes away, but the work remains. Now how to show that on the screen. So finally we came upon the concept of the artist coming from the floor, from the earth, so the door is on the floor. So the door opens & the artist comes out & in the end the artist goes back, to the earth. Thus the traditional concept of the room was broken - if the door is on the floor then the window is in the ceiling, the fan is somewhere else.. It became a surreal space.

 

S: How long did the actual painting and shooting process take? Would you paint something first & then he would shoot you painting that.?

A: The shooting process was determined by pixilation that is an animation process. It was frame by frame shooting, so the actual shooting went to about 18 days so the total coverage of footage was of a feature film. So that was trimmed down and then used. Many people came to the set to see what was happening. It was a fabulous set! Even Satyajit Ray came to see it. It was shot for 20 days. It was the talk of the town you can say, all these film industry people, B.R.Chopra and others used to come and peep in 'kya ho raha hai dekhne ke liye'.

 

S: The pixilation technique is enhanced by the abstract soundtrack which really makes the film quite an eccentric work of art. How did Pati decide on the sound? 

A: The sound was done by Pandit Vijay Raghav Rao. He was the king of music at that time at Films Division. He was the most creative sound artist at the time so with whoever he worked he gave what the requirement was and more.



S: How did people finally respond when the film was finally finished and shows in public?

A: There was a tremendous response. It went all over the world to many film festivals.  It became a landmark film for Pramod Pati. 

 

S: What was it like working with Pramod Pati? 

A: He was a giant of a worker, very cooperative, very understanding, and very loving. He used to work, about 19-20 hrs a day. He would take just 3-4hours to get fresh. He was completely committed. It was real fun working with him at films division at that time.

 

S: So what do you think of that time at FD?

A: It was the most creatively free period at films division. That time so many experimental films were made, so many experiments were done by different filmmakers. The main thing was that the chief producer's were visionaries and it was not a bureaucracy at, otherwise this kind of freedom would never have been there.

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