As a student of cinema, I was always intrigued by the nature of its continuity with the other arts.
Amit Dutta, Director, Nainsukh
As a student of cinema, I was always intrigued by the nature of its continuity with the other arts. Even my interest in early Indian cinema and miniature paintings were based on this intrigue about how the essence of other arts can be internalised by cinema; how can cinema converse with other arts and not just become a tool for recording them.
Also read: Art historian BN Goswamy brings painter Nainsukh to Bangalore
The Pahari miniature art, which drew its essence from the classical texts, aesthetic treatises, musical compositions and court etiquette, was already dealing with many layers of aesthetic experience. Nainsukh was exceptional in the sense although he had internalised these principles, he drew directly from observation.
When I was offered to make Nainsukh, I had just graduated and was also coping with questions about the valid context and function of art forms; so the fact that Nainsukh was going to be an imaginative film based on sound art historical facts to be produced by an art historian (Dr Eberhard Fischer ) and screened in a museum was a very exciting idea for me.
Added to it was the coincidence that I come from the same region that Nainsukh belonged to. The ruins of the Jasrota palace where Nainsukh had imagined his most endearing paintings of Balwant lay only a few kilometres away from home. This film gave me a reason to come back to my own native place and see it with new eyes.
The film is based on the wonderful book about the Pahari artist by Prof. BN Goswamy. The book is so constructed that one cannot enjoy or even follow the art-historical debates without a sensitive reading of the paintings and vice-versa. And I also had the privilege of Dr Eberhard Fischer’s guidance and participation.
Both of us were in agreement that the film would strive more to bring out the essence of Nainsukh’s paintings, based on the meticulous research supporting it. The fact that we greatly enjoyed the synthesis of our ideas about Nainsukh derived from our own practices, and that enjoyment has developed into a friendship is something that I cherish a lot as a film-maker too.
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