[Reader-list] Excavating Indian Experimental Film

[shai at filterindia.com]

Further to my discussions with film critic, curator and archivist, Amrit Gangar, on the identity of
Indian experimental film, and the innovations that took place at Films Division in the 70's, he
wrote this brief note om Pramod Pati to elucidate some of his ideas on the  topic.

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PRAMOD PATI THE CINEMA OF PRA-YOGA, OF SVA-BHAVA
BY Amrit Gangar

Indian Cinema has not seen an avant-garde movement or tradition like Europe and North America.  Yet
there have been sporadic sparks of experimentation with the moving image. In 1912, Dadasaheb Phalke
used stop-motion or time-lapse photography to make the animated short film The Growth of a Pea
Plant. The loosely equivalent word for the English ‘experiment’ in Sanskrit is
‘prayoga’ (pronounced prayog). In a dramatic sense, ‘prayog’ also means
‘representation’. However, we seem to be using ‘experiment’ in the English
lexiconic sense – ‘an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown
or of testing a principle, supposition, etc.’ And interestingly, ‘experimental’
means something that is based on or derived from experience. It is empirical. In short, the
often-used word ‘experimental’ in all its manifestations should be crucial to our
cinematographic discourse.

I would like to call Pati’s cinema, the cinema of ‘prayog’ that carried its
creator’s own state, own temperament. It had the quality of being intuitive and congenial
capable of achieving a certain bhavasandhi, a unity of emotions in its characteristic manner. 
Bhava is being, or becoming, nasato vidyate bhavaha. Prayoga was, I think, Pati’s svabhava
(pronounced svabhav) and hence even on themes such as family planning he created narratives of
sharp curiosities. Before he made the film Abid he had met Abid Surti, the artist, at the
latter’s exhibition of mirror collages. Discussing the pixilated narrative with Surti he told
him that it ‘fitted his work and personality like a glove’. Pati had learnt the art
from Norman McLaren of the National Film Board of Canada. As he explained Abid, “Unlike a
cartoon film, which is rapidly moving series of photographed drawings, in pixilation moving object
is shot frame by frame and then through clever editing made to appear in motion. By its nature,
this movement was agile, energetic and unpredictable just like the pop art movement.” Then
Pati was a 23-year-old man full of youthful exuberance. He also studied animation filmmaking in
Czechoslovakia for a couple of years and returned to India in 1960.

Looking back, Abid Surty makes an interesting observation: “In technique and content it seems
closer to the MTV graphics of today than the typical Films Division documentaries of the seventies.
Perhaps that is what makes it so timeless. Pramod Pati had come to make a film about me, and ended
up making a film with me. Though the film is titled Abid, it could be the story of any artist
anywhere.” 

The concept of the film Abid was simple: An artist comes into the world, fulfils his karma and
departs, but his work remains for future generations to enjoy. In 1998, I had curated a
retrospective program for the MIFF and Abid was one of the inaugural films along with some from the
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Angela Haardt, the former director of the festival
who presented the Oberhausen program was quite amused to see the ‘prayog’ parallel
between India and Europe of that time – there prevailed creative urge and energy all around. 

Pati’s wasn’t a conscious effort to make something different for its own sake but to
put his art at stake with his own artistic and idealistic endeavors. His methodical choice for
Explorer, for example, merged with the youthful spirit. Obviously, within the Films Division’s
 constraints, Pati must have taken a risk to make such films. As Jag Mohan mentioned in one of his
books on the Films Division, “… films of the type popularized by Norman McLaren, Len
Lye, Lotte Reiniger, Maya Deren and later by the American Underground filmmakers cannot be found
here. Probably for a hitherto underdeveloped and now a developing country like India, such films
are a luxury.” John Grierson is said to have criticized Pati for his artistic inclinations.
But Pati was the man of prayog, an artist who stuck to his own anubhav (experience) and svabhav and
integrity. Unfortunately, he died very young in 1974, two years after he made Abid.

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