There was a time when I was called mad, says Adoor

At the age of 21, today's celebrated Malayalam film auteur Adoor Gopalakrishnan - GK Unnithan as he was known then - had a secure government job with the National Sample Survey, earning Rs 546 a month.  But he wanted to be a playwright.  "I applied to the Film and Television Institute to determine how different film scriptwriting would be from play writing," he recalls.

He travelled to Pune to write the exam. Veterans Rajinder Singh Bedi and K.A. Abbas were on his viva voce board. Adoor joined the course in screenplay writing and direction.

Narrates he, "Even then I would read books on playwriting and theatre production. I'd spend hours after class reading plays. I learnt theatre has very little to do with cinema. Till I went to Pune, my only significant cinema experience had been Pather Panchali. My uncle had a cinema hall, so as a kid I'd go to see films without paying. But films were magical and miraculous, not for people like me. I'd  never dreamt of making films. 

"While in college in Madurai, our professor had taken us to a studio in Madras, where a Sivaji Ganesan film was being shot. Then we went across to another studio owned by actress Bhanumati.  The man painting a set of heaven with clouds told us not to watch, because then we wouldn't like the movie."

Early days at Pune were spent, listening to the "big talk" of the city boys: "I was from a remote village in Kerala, I was shy.  Among our teachers, PS Pruthi, was excellent. Satish Bahadur also inspired generations of students. Ritwik Ghatak was vice-principal and professor of direction. He would often discuss his own films, it was a great learning experience."

"Contrary to popular opinion, Ghatak talked appreciatively of Satyajit Ray. Jagat Murari did not teach much, but he was a strict disciplinarian who built up the institute. We had guest lecturers like Balraj Sahni, JBH Wadia and Kidar Sharma.  During my days, Ray did not come to Pune-he was self-taught and did not think much of the institute at all."

Of the ten students who joined with Adoor, only five completed the course. Adoor was the only one who took up film making as a career.  His diploma film was a charming comedy about a worthless fellow, who impresses his would-be father-in-law, a dentist, with his gleaming teeth.

Adoor graduated in 1965, the year Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul joined the institute as screenplay and direction students, and Subhash Ghai and Asrani as acting students.Adoor went on to establish the Chitralekha Film Cooperative to produce and distribute offbeat cinema.

Adoor, then, organised the first international film festival in Kerala: "That was the real beginning of film literacy in Kerala. I spent seven years in spreading film culture, held workshops and showed classics. After the 1970s, several film makers emerged from the film society movement. Many people in Kerala called me   mad, they said I was screening good films but made by mad directors like me."

After a slew of documentaries in 1972, Adoor made his first feature film Swayamwaram..and started his habit of winning awards.