One by one, the speakers on stage at the Sree Theatre in Thiruvananthapuram looked unbelievingly at the bulging young crowd in front of them and remarked, this is such a nice surprise, so different from the time Kummatty was first screened. The first time was 43 years ago, when G Aravindan and Kavalam Narayana Panicker put together a poetic fairytale of a movie for children. The audience of 1979 was not the same, writer Paul Zacharia, one of the speakers, said twice. Looking at Adoor Gopalakrishnan in the audience, he added, “Adoor would know.”
Adoor and Aravindan belong to an early generation of experimental filmmakers, famed for their art house, parallel cinema. Aravindan is no more, Adoor turned 80 last July. One came to witness the world premiere of the other’s restored iconic movie Kummatty at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
For those who knew and loved Aravindan’s Kummatty, it was an emotional moment. For those who didn’t, it became one by the end of the screening. The film becomes endearing to the viewer by simply laying bare what goes through the mind of a child, including a wholesome faith in magic. It was a heartwarming moment when Ashok Unnikrishnan, now in his 50s, introduced himself as the film’s child protagonist – a little boy drawn to the charms, music and laughter of the strange man who visits his town, much like a very old Pied Piper.
Ashok tells TNM, “I don’t have a vivid memory of those days. I did remember the story, but watching it now brings back more clarity. Back in the day, we didn’t appreciate all those shots. But now I know this is a great work of art. The story is set in a remote village, not very connected with the outside world. It brings the feeling of the rustic surroundings, the scenery, the songs and all.”
Shaji N Karun’s camera enviably pans across the picturesque rural grounds, the wilderness and the stray ponds, until it looks like a place you lost to your own childhood. There is so much about the childhood of those days that you wish had at least partly lasted – most of all, the free abandon with which children run wildly into the sprawling building-free grounds of the village.
“The film was shot in a place called Cheemeni Estate in Payyanur. We were there for about a month. The entire unit was there lock, stock, and barrel. It was fun, all of us put up in a big hall together. The whole crew was there, including the legendary director Aravindan sir, Kavalam sir and Nedumudi Venu sir with his mridangam. Evenings were fun as all the artists came together with their songs and percussion,” Ashok says.
The songs found its way into the film, folkish as Kavalam wrote them and emotional as MG Radhakrishnan tuned them. However, through all the merriment, one man remained quiet, rather famously. The director conveyed most of his instructions through his assistants, Ashok remembers. “Aravindan was very friendly. But he was a very reserved person – calm and contained.”
Most of the other speakers fondly shared the same sentiment. Writer Kalpetta Narayanan, in a short analysis of his movies, said that Aravindan was a great listener, not a talker. He looked deeply into Aravindan’s works, describing them as more mythical than historical (“There was an opinion that Aravindan’s Esthappan was like Jesus Christ. But if you asked Aravindan if Esthappan was Christ, he would ask you if Christ was Christ”), and judged Kummatty as his best.
But restoring Kummatty was without exaggeration a herculean task, said the man who helmed the work – Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of the Film Heritage Foundation. He did this in association with The Film Foundation (TFF)’s World Cinema Project, created by renowned American director Martin Scorsese, and the Cineteca di Bologna film archive in Italy.
“Restoring a film is more tedious than making one. I know because I have done both,” says Shivendra, who is also a filmmaker. He has made an acclaimed documentary on PK Nair, founder of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). Like Nair did decades ago with several films, Shivendra too went to a lot of trouble to find whatever was left of Kummatty.
Aravindan’s son Ramu told the crowd at Sree that the restoration of his dad’s great work was a bittersweet experience for him. “What you restore are the physical elements. But there was no negative. Only some prints were left. Shivendra got it from the NFAI. He took years to collect all of this. And even in these prints, old dyes had faded. They had to do detailed work.”
Shivendra decided to keep the grains and scratches as they were, because that was how cinema was made in those days, he said. “You had to preserve the purity of cinema.”
Bina Paul, artistic director of the IFFK, who had been in touch with Shivendra, said that the restoration was a painstaking and slow process, as each frame had to be looked at, corrected and restored to what the artist’s original vision had been. She noted that the premiere of the restored film also brought together the next generation of Aravindan and others associated with him during Kummatty. Prakash, son of K Ravindranathan (Achani) Nair of General Pictures who produced the film, conveyed that his dad was unwell. But he passed on a message – “Kummatty has no equal. Such a film will not happen again.”