Restored ‘Ghatashraddha’ is a reminder of the ‘complex question of oppression’

The Film Heritage Foundation’s latest restoration project resurrects a Kannada classic that was nearly derailed by a perceived curse. Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha (1977), a piercing look at the oppressive nature of Brahmanical thought, was completed in challenging circumstances because of its bold theme.

Kasaravalli’s directorial debut has been restored with the backing of The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project steered by Martin Scorsese and the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation run by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson. Ghatashraddha will be screened at the Venice Film Festival (August 28-September 7). The previous Film Heritage Foundation restorations that have been premiered at international festivals are Aravindan Govindan’s Kummatty and Thamp, Aribam Syam Sarma’s Ishanou and Nirad Mohapatra’s Maya Miriga.

Kasaravalli’s adaptation of the UR Ananthamurthy short story of the same name is set in a Vedic school in a village in Karnataka. The school’s founder has a widowed daughter Yamuna (Meena Kuttappa), who becomes a surrogate mother to the new student Naani (Ajith Kumar). Yamuna’s involvement with a school teacher leads to cruel gossip that escalates into tragedy.

One of the film’s motifs is the belief that the worship of snakes improves fertility. The response to Yamuna’s pregnancy exposes a veritable snake-pit, as the pure-hearted Naani realises.

Ghatashraddha had been on the radar of Film Heritage Foundation’s founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, but the available print was in a “horrible condition”, Dungarpur recalled. “There were scratches and the sound was problematic,” he added.

A global hunt ensued for a viable negative of the black-and-white movie. “The Library of Congress in the United States had a very good print, from where we took the sound,” Dungarpur said. “We worked a lot on the grading. We wanted the blacks the way Girish remembered them. We also consulted film stills. And we worked with Girish closely on fresh subtitles.”

Celebrated in its time, Ghatashraddha continues to resonate for its examination of calcified beliefs in ritual purity. Naani’s coming-of-age experience is as brutal as it is tender. Yamuna’s ostracism is contrasted with the petty-mindedness of the villagers. One of the most well-remembered scenes is of Yamuna trying to kill herself by inserting her hand into an ant-hill frequented by snakes.

Kasaravalli went on to make several acclaimed films, include Tabarana Kathe (1986), Thaayi Saheba (1997), Mane (1990), Dweepa (2002) and Gulabi Talkies (2008). The 73-year-old director spoke to Scroll about what went into the making of Ghatashraddha. Here are edited excerpts.

What was the context that gave rise to Ghatashraddha?

There was a great resurgence in the Kannada cultural scene. The new literary movement – the Navya, or modernist movement – had reached its pinnacle.

BV Karanth had started a new theatre movement. SG Vasudev had started a new kind of painting. Poetry, short stories, novels, theatre, art – all of these seeped into cinema.

Pattabhirama Reddy’s Samskara came out in 1970. It was quite shocking because we had never experienced those kind of visuals before. In the South, many of us had only heard of Satyajit Ray. A few Hindi films like Jagte Raho and Do Bigha Zamin from the 1950s were considered to be the landmarks.

The visuals that we had been seeing in Kannada films were synthetic. The truth that Samskara showed, the harsh representation of reality, impressed me a lot. It was one of the reasons I took to filmmaking. I joined the Film and Television Institute of India, where I was exposed to the cinema of many countries. I was especially taken by Asian and European cinema.

Like Ghatashraddha, Samskara too was based on a story by UR Ananthamurthy.

One of the great qualities of UR Anathamurthy was that many of his short stories could be beautiful sources of cinema. He didn’t just play with words, he played with the images created by the words.

Among the strong points of the Navya movement was its critique of the caste structure, how it was stifling women as well as the lower castes. This trend in Kannada literature and theatre was also the theme of many serious Kannada films.

How did you adapt Ananthamurthy’s prose for the screen?

Since Ghatashraddha is about ritual, it is constructed in a ritualistic way. The scenes are not dramatic or emotionally charged. The camera movements are invisible and integrated into the content, so you don’t notice them. The camera doesn’t charge towards the characters but moves towards them so that you don’t notice the construction.

Arun Kaul’s Diksha [1991] was based on the same story. He gave prominence to a lower-caste character who was peripheral in my movie, just as he was in Ananthamurthy’s story. Arun made Diksha like a protest film. In my films, protest is at a subdued level. They are not polemical.

The oppression of certain people in the name of rituals, religion, caste, economic status – this othering is a very painful and complex process. All my films talk about this problem of othering, the complex feeling that it generates.

How did you find a producer for your debut feature?

A journalist friend introduced me to Sadananda Suvarna. Sadananda wanted to make a film based on a play he had written. He had employed S Ramachandra as the cinematographer. Ramachandra was also the cinematographer of two films on which I was an assistant director.

I gave Sadananda the script for Ghatashraddha. He decided to fund the film. He had only 60,000 rupees, but he said he would take a loan. We finally finished the film in a little over Rs two lakhs.

What did the making of the film involve?

For some strange reason, Samskara was opposed by the Brahmin community. There were protests against the film when it came out in 1970.

In 1976, I went looking for locations in the same belt where Samskara was filmed. I needed an agraharam, a village full of Brahmins. But when people heard the title of the film [which means a death ritual performed for somebody who is still alive], half their enthusiasm died. When they further learnt that the film was based on a story by Ananthamurthy, they turned around and said no. The film was considered a bad omen.

I decided to shoot the film in my own house in my village near Agumbe. But even here, there was opposition from the family. My uncle was alive then, he was the senior-most in the family. He wrote a letter to the family stating that someone is trying to make a film, why are we opposing instead of supporting him?

One of my cousins, who came out in support of my film, wanted a role in exchange. I agreed, but unfortunately, before he was supposed to shoot, he had a heart attack and died. Rumours spread that the film was cursed. Nobody touched the film for at least a year.

And yet, Ghatashraddha was released in 1977 – were these adventurous times for filmmakers?

That was the spirit that existed in Kannada cinema at the time. Everybody wanted to experiment.

Samskara was made on a budget of Rs 85,000, of which there was a government subsidy of Rs 50,000. By the time I made my film, the subsidy had increased to one lakh. My producer eventually made back the money he had invested.

In those days, these kinds of films did fairly well. Chomanda Dudi ran for 100 days at many centres. Kaadu ran for 80-90 days. Ghatashraddha ran for 50 days in eight centres, which was considered a big achievement.

What has been the journey of the film’s restoration?

Digitisation is a costly process. Charges need to be paid for films to be stored properly, but that hasn’t happened.

For Ghatashraddha, Shivendra had to search for a print all around the world. He finally found it in the United States. He took the interest in tracing the print.

Ghatashraddha had been processed in a lab in Bengaluru, which shut down soon after the film’s completion. They asked the producer to take away the negative. He kept the negative at a lab in Mumbai. A friend saw cans of Ghatashraddha lying in a toilet.

I informed PK Nair [the former National Film Archive of India director], who got the cans shifted to the archive. By then, three reels of the negative had deteriorated, so Nair made a dupe copy of the print lying with the archive.

No mint-condition print was available. The sound negative had been spoilt too. When you dupe a negative, it picks up a hissing sound, which is what you hear on the DVDs and the print that is on YouTube. To remove the hissing sound was a Herculean task.

I am very keen to see the film on a big screen in Venice. People say great things about my other films too, but many of them are in bad shape. One of my most popular films Dweepa, which won many awards, has deteriorated. Today, you can barely watch the film. We have to find a few more Shivendras to rescue Indian cinema.