Rain in my roots :

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”

                                                                                                                           
Drishya film collective is a pan Indian organization, which addresses modern and also ancient and archaic narrative forms through the mediations of audio-visual formats. Hence one shall be not surprised to find the screening of Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha preceded by folklore depicting the dolour of Sita from Ramayana. Here antiquity bosoms modernity like never before.

PROGRAMME CONTENT :-

From the 26th of February to the 3rd of March,2008, Drishya in association with the Chaitanya Mela Committee is holding a seven day ‘narrative festival’ at the village of Chhotokhelna near Malgram Bazaar, in the police station of Pingla in West Midnapore . The festival will witness performances by renowned artists like ‘Baishnab Kirtania’ and ‘Gour’ songs by Fakirs and Sufi singers. The detested and outcast ‘Pata’ artists shall narrate the epics and legends through narrative forms of paintings or Patas. The city based band ‘Dohar’ shall render songs of Lalan and other Gour exponents shall revive the ancient and obsolete Kirtan forms like Manoharshahi, Moinadhal etc. Renowned Kirtan exponent Sucharita Bandopadhyay shall present recitals on Padabali Kirtan.  The puppet makers of Agradip village of Bardhaman district will undertake an exhibition cum sale programme. ‘Sara’ or pictorial designs of Hindu mythologies on earthen plates will be demonstrated by  the Muslim potters of Taherpur. Performances on puppetry and ‘Jatra’ will be a regular ingredient of the festival curriculum. This effort has already been acknowledged by stalwarts by  Mahasweta Devi and professor Partho Chatterjee. Alongside these traditional narrative forms, screenings of films will take place every evening.
 
PROGRAMME IDEATION:-                          

“Lord Chaitanya” – this sign or this alignment of words, if at all happens to be, like so many other social constructs or manifestations, just another social construct or institution, or for that matter a cultural foundation, even then in the broader or comprehensive domain of Bangla language, the contribution of ‘Chaitanya Dev’ does not subside any bit. The way in which Bhakti movement, Sufi movement churned up and rejuvenated the local and indigenous cultures of various regions althroughout the Indian subcontinent can be drawn up in parallel with reformatory effect which the ascend of Chaitanya Dev had on the dialect, art and culture of Eastern and Southern India.Renowned historian Sumit Sarkar envisages this as something which had the potency of a great revolution.

The influence of Chaitanya Dev and his follower Nityananda and at later period of Janhavi Devi and Birbhadra led to the rise and salvation of the oppressed and the humiliated, a observation which is being put forward by Tagore as the emergence of a great wave which swept over the barriers between the Brahmins or the privileged class and the ‘Chandal’s’ or the ‘untouchable’, leading to the state of exaltation and bliss among the ‘subaltern’ or the downtrodden.

This period witnessed some diverse and radical changes taking place in the terrain of Bangla culture. In the opinion of Sukumar Sen, it is language that constitutes and composes a country, hence the geographic location that is predominated by Bangla is called Bengal. Language being the identity of a territory or region, a change in its dynamics affected every other cultural manifestations like poetry, paintings, architecture, pottery, craftsmanship and every other forms of narrative and folklores.

In the period preceding the Chaitanya era, though the presence of common man in the art and literature of Bengal was profoundly acknowledged, nevertheless everything revolved around glorifying the Gods and Goddess. The period following Chaitanya Dev saw Bangla literature going through a process of liberation. Shedding the rhetoric and magniloquence of Bangla language, Bangla literature adopted an unprecedented simplicity and fluidity which gave the expression a greater degree of involvement and sensibility. The ‘Kirtan’ culture reached the summit of excellence and this radical form of music expressed and demonstrated the collective voice of the most ordinary masses.

This period saw the emergence of diverse and numerous orientation in the traditional Bangla art forms like patchitra, puppetry, pottery, craftworks, poetry and music, a sort of pluralistic exemplification, which was manifest in the later poetry and songs of Lalan Shah Fakir, Hachhan Raja, Gagan Harkara and others. This form of cultural emergence went on to have an everlasting impression on the poetry and music of modern times, exerting its influence on none other than one named Bhanu Singha. This effort of the Bengalis was the conjoined effort of the Hindus and the Muslims, bridging and embracing every section and strata of the society from the mighty Brahmins to the detested untouchables.

Later the colonial period led to the fading away of these rich manifestation of Bangla art and culture. In this present age of globalization, these traditional art form have literally gone extinct. But for the pages of historical documents, these cultural embodiments have lost their existence. The patchitras that was such an effective and popular narrative form of intercourse during the medieval era almost have almost turned barrien and nonextant.

It is a tragedy that these sublime form of cultural excellence, which once was instrumental in moulding the thought process of the Bengal thoughts, is now groveling in the lowly dust.Here, it must be accentuated that this outcry or lamentation for self-sustainence and preservation does not arise from any sense of nationalism or patriotism, simply because the so-called connotation of the term  ‘post-colonial nationalism’ that has been mapped bars no proximity to the pluralistic form of culture that was so very much flourishing in the medieval Chaitanya era.
                                                      
Tagore bemoans that the minds of Bengal has to enkindled to the fact that the regular design of mutualism that exist between the inner and the outer has to conserved. We may well assimilate the minds of the outer world, but their cultivation has to be put through on our very own soil. Just like we pride in our inheritance of Dostoevsky, Godard, Rembrandt, Picasso or Marquez, we should also be aware of our succession of Chandidas, Bidyapati, Lalan, Hachhan Raja and others. Being inheritors of Blues, Jazz, Seeger and Dylan, we must look out that the ‘Kirtan’ singers don’t fade into oblivion. In the present junction of evanescing time and space, one certainly feels great lack of such a sovereign amalgamation. It is for founding this very particular cause that Drishya has undertaken such an endeavor.

Drishya requests your active participation, which shall make this festival a success.