Trust seeks Tagore film for rural screening

KOLKATA: The Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust, which was set up by Mahatma Gandhi in 1945 to address issues of women in rural India, has written to Union information minister Ambika Soni, seeking a copy of the Films Division documentary on Rabindranath Tagore for screening in rural Bengal.
"The commentary and subtitles in the 50-minute documentary are in English. We are keen on buying a Bengali version so that viewers in rural Bengal are able to understand it.It will indeed be a pity if the film is not available in the very language which Tagore used as his medium," the trust's Bengal branch representative, Yasmeen Sengupta, wrote in the letter.
The 50-minute documentary, titled Dreams of Rabindranath', is the most comprehensive one filmed since Satyajit Ray's famous work
in 1961. The shooting of the documentary, completed barely 10 days before Tagore's Nobel medallion was stolen from Santiniketan, has been lying in neglect after the initial burst of screening across theatres in 2006.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker K G Das, the documentary produced by Films Division traces the genesis of Tagore's thoughts on education, his rebellion against established systems of his time, his model for reviving the guru-shishya parampara or teacher-disciple tradition of Vedic India.
Inspired by the gurukul ashram, Tagore set up an open-air school in 1921 that blossomed into Visva-Bharati, a university that became a legend in his own lifetime.
"The documentary interlaces this philosophy with events of his life, his relentless struggle to keep his dream alive. It covers his life from the age of 11 to his death. A substantial portion is on Visva-Bharati and the various festivals he created Briksha Ropan (afforestation), Hala Karshan (ploughing) and Poush Mela (winter fair)," said Das.
The documentary also includes rare shots of Tagore's meeting with Gandhi in 1936, his art exhibition at a Piccadilly gallery in the late 1920s and his departure from Santiniketan in a special saloon car to Kolkata in 1941, two months before he passed away. Besides, there are shots of Tagore's foreign tours, footage from World War I that prompted him to write The Crisis of Civilizations' as well as songs sung in the bard's own voice.
Though the film, produced at a cost of Rs 17 lakh, is sporadically screened in schools, it is yet to find takers by government agencies preparing the itinerary for Tagore's 150th birth anniversary celebrations.