[Reader-list] K K Mahajan, Cinematographer Extraordinary passes away

[Sanjay Kak]

Sharing a warm tribute to KK:
and a salam to his memory.
Best
Sanjay

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Enduring image

PARTHA CHATTERJEE

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2415/stories/20070810509308700.htm

EVERY generation in cinema produces a cinematographer who helps a
director express his vision with verve and precision. In
post-Independence India, Subrata Mitra teamed up with Satyajit Ray
and, from Pather Panchali (1952-55) to a d ecade on, helped create a
body of work that continues to be called significant. In the next
generation, there was K.K. Mahajan, who made a signal, lifelong
contribution to the cinematic articulation of Kumar Shahani’s
creations and certainly the first two of Mani Kaul’s films, not to
forget the films of Mrinal Sen and the early ones of Basu Chatterjee.

K.K., as he was affectionately called by friends and acquaintances,
happened to be one of the first “schooled” cameramen in India, a
product of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune,
which is located on the premises of the erstwhile Prabhat Studios.
Modelled on the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique (IDHEC)
in Paris, this was the first properly equipped film school in India,
and it has a film archive (The National Film Archive) that is the envy
of many.

Mahajan, no doubt, benefited immensely from watching world classics
and was continuously and subconsciously influenced by the
black-and-white work of Italian masters such as Otello Martelli, G.R.
Aldo and even Gianni de Venanza. He had seen Raul Coutard’s work in
the pioneering black-and-white and colour films directed by Jean Duc
Godard, one of the creators of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave),
and was as impressed by them as he was by the black-and-white
photography of b oth Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvst in Ingmar
Bergman’s Swedish films.

At home, only the work of Subrata Mitra caught his imagination. All
these people worked with basic equipment, which they used with
tremendous inventiveness.

The beautifully photographed Kasba (directed by Kumar Shahani) was
done with an Arriflex 2C camera. Many directors have shot in Himachal
Pradesh and have come back with glamorous views of the mountains and
the surrounding environs. But K.K. managed to help Kumar Shahani
invest the scenes with poetry, capturing the yearnings of the
characters, which were not always positive.

He first worked with Kumar Shahani as a student on the latter’s
diploma film at the FTII, called The Glass Pane (1965), which was
about a couple returning home from a funeral. Both Kumar Shahani and
K.K. were singled out for p raise for their respective work. Thus, a
partnership was formed, and it endured over 40 years, surviving
well-nigh-insurmountable obstacles. When asked a day after K.K.’s
passing away whether he and K.K. “sang” as one voice, Kumar Shahani
declared emotionally: “Oh, absolutely.”

Soon after Char Adhyay (1998), K.K.’s once robust body, which had
survived a relentless assault of alcohol and cigarettes from his
student days, began to send out danger signals. His fuse grew shorter
and his frequent outburst s on the set unnerved even his assistants.
But they stuck to him loyally because of his innate goodness and
generosity and desire to excel. He never made unreasonable demands on
the producer for expensive gizmos. He, like his hero Sven Nykvst, did
wonders with well-maintained basic equipment.

In 1972, the Film Finance Corporation, now the National Film
Development Corporation (NFDC), held a festival of the films it had
produced, at Regal Cinema in Delhi’s Connaught Place. The majority of
the viewers, brought up on a diet of commercial Hindi cinema, were
bewildered by what they saw. But they were unanimous in their praise
of the photography in Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan, where colour was
used with great sophistication, and Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti and Ashadh
Ka Ek Din and Basu Chatterjee’s Sara Akash, three films with exemplary
black-and-white cinematography.

Gifted cinematographer

Thanks to the NFDC, Mrinal Sen was able to make a comeback in 1969
with a low-budget black-and-white film, Bhuvan Shome, shot in
Saurashtra. Utpal Dutt, as a stern senior Railway bureaucrat out on a
bird-shoot, and Suhasini Mulay, a s the teenage wife of a ticket
collector he had just suspended, charmed the audience. But it was
K.K.’s camera that brought spontaneity and a sparkle to a slight tale,
and without it no amount of thespian skill could have saved the film.
Mrinal Sen, recognising his young cinematographer’s gifts, retained
him for his next 18 films. Similarly, Basu Chatterjee, the
cartoonist-turned-film-maker, after the success of Sara Aakash, worked
with K.K. on his subsequent box office su ccesses in colour such as
Piya Ka Ghar, Rajnigandha and Choti Si Baat.

Always outspoken, K.K. riled at Chatterjee’s lack of visual
inventiveness, remarking: “Basu Chatterjee is simply paralysed without
the zoom lens.” However, one must remember K.K.’s visual contribution,
simple yet eloquent, to the picturisation of the song “Kaee Baar Yun
Hi Dekha Hai” sung by Mukesh for Rajnigandha.

Few cameramen in India or abroad used the awkward cinemascope screen
format in conjunction with colour as K.K. did in Kumar Shahani’s
Tarang. It was a film of great perception and subtlety, about a
Mahabharata-like power strug gle in a modern industrialist family; its
articulation was certainly enhanced by K.K.’s superb, unobtrusive
camerawork.

Years later in Khayal Gatha, Kumar Shahani’s controversial response to
Hindustani music, particularly that of the Gwalior Gharana, the
photography once again rose to the occasion. Memorable is a shot of a
passing cloud casting its shadow on a stretch of undulating sand.

Earlier on in his career, K.K. had to work in commercial Hindi films
to keep the pot boiling. Subhash Ghai, Ramesh Sippy and Ramesh Talwar
were some of the other directors he worked with. He was unhappy about
Hindi cinema’s lack of aesthetics: “…They want everything nice and
bright.” He could not understand the pursuit of mindless glamour in
the hope of attracting large audiences. He gradually distanced himself
from the purveyors of bathos and song and dance although he did
Buniyaad for Doordarshan in video (high-band), directed by Ramesh
Sippy. K.K.’s camera managed to invest the drama of loss in the
aftermath of Partition with dignity. Buniyaad remains the most popular
and, perhap s, the best made serial on Indian television.

K.K.’s last years were difficult. He sold his flat in Saat Bangla in
Versova, Mumbai, to move farther afield to Goregaon East. He was
diagnosed with throat cancer and his voice-box was removed.

He went on to shoot a video, As The Crow Flies, in 2005 for his
favourite director, Kumar Shahani. The shooting lasted a day, and the
documentary was about the mounting of an exhibition of the painter
Akbar Padamsee’s latest work. Despite the paucity of means, the quiet
elegance of K.K.’s camerawork was noticed, as was Kumar Shahani’s
taut, sharp and cerebral direction.

The cancer suddenly resurfaced and spread rapidly in the last few
months of his life. Death came on July 13.

Cinematographers, despite the patrician appellation, are taken for
granted in cinema, certainly in Indian cinema, and yet, without them
there would be no film to watch. What would Guru Dutt have been
without V.K. Murthy, Adoor Gopalakrishnan without Mankada Ravi Varma,
now mortally ill and unable to speak, and Satyajit Ray without Subrata
Mitra? What we remember about a film in the end are its images. But do
we ever bother to remember the person who created them? Mahajan was
one of the very few creators of enduring images in Indian cinema and
he will be missed.