Citizen Sen - on Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen, by Suman Ghosh, India: 2024

 

There is a moment in the film when the actress Shabana Azmi calls Aparna Sen not only one of the finest women filmmaker but rather one of the best Indian filmmaker at all. I go a step further in saying she is one of the finest filmmaker in contemporary world cinema. The time is right to explore the work of this extraordinary filmmaker. That is already a good reason to feel grateful to Suman Ghosh for making a documentary on Aparna Sen. If I talk with people in my own country about Aparna Sen, it is like whenever I talk with Indian cinephiles about my favorite German filmmaker like Rudolf Thome or Peter Nestler. The reaction is always the same, something like “never heard of them”. In the almost 20 years I write on and think about the films by Aparna Sen, she became for me one of the most exemplary filmmaker of this great generation like Terrence Malick, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Victor Erice, Wim Wenders, the late Abbas Kiarostami or the tragically for health reasons premature retired Hou Hsiao Hsien, just to mention some of them.

In Ghosh´s film there is as well a talk about Aparna Sen´s most recent film The Rapist. The film won an important award at The Busan film festival in Korea (which is actually the most important hub for Asian cinema in the world. But beside some screenings on smaller festivals, we wait still after 3 years for a theatrical release, not even a “video on demand” are in sight and DVD-releases are already wiped out in India. The few people I know who have seen it are enthusiastic, why it is not released, I will never understand. When I read at the International film festival Rotterdam, there will be a documentary on Aparna Sen, I hardly trusted my own eyes and it was even accompanied by one of her most famous films Parama (1985). Parama: A journey with Aparna Sen would have fit perfectly in the legendary French film series Les Cinéastes de notre Temps (Filmmaker of our Time), as another portrait of an extraordinary filmmaker and as well a lesson in film history.

Suman Ghosh works in his film with different aproaches.. The first is in using interviews with her closest family members, her husband Kalyan Ray, her daughters Kamalini Sen and Konkona Sensharma (who playes main roles in quite a few films, including the iconic Mr. and Mrs. Iyer) but as well a number of friends and co workers like Anjan Dutt, Shabana Azmi, Goutam Ghose or Rahul Bose among others and finally with the filmmaker herself. It unfolds a compelling panorama of Aparna Sen, her childhood, her first roles, the beginning of her directing career, her upbringing by her cinephile parents, her rising discontent with her first marriages and her career as an actress. Sometime we believe our images of Aparna Sen assembles to one image, sometimes it is shattered and questioned again. Sometimes the cesura between her as a public and a private person are clear, sometimes they become blurred. That is a bit like Citizen Kane. Another beautiful idea and probably the more poetic one in this film is when Suman Ghosh visits with the filmmaker locations of some of her films, especially 36 Chowringhee Lane, 1981 and Paramitar ek din (House of Memories, 2000). These places seem strangely abandoned like fossils of a bygone era in contrast to these films filled with condensed to unforgettable images of people, places, emotions and moods. These moments have something of a pause between the many informations on Aparna Sen we get through the interviews. They evoke in me a quiet melancholy. But we witness as well an idea of how this filmmaker sees and how she transform it into cinematic images. Why the film deals as well with her as an activist for human rights and a sensitive observer of the social and political situation of her country - as a filmmaker she is first of all a visual poet.

Another important approach are the excerpts from her films. They are often not in the best quality, sometimes even from infamous Indian DVD-transfers but at all they are a reminder that her films, especially the analog recorded ones that without proper restorations these films are endangered. And they correspondent in an almost uncanny way with the locations of her films she visited with Suman Ghosh. But despite these signs of material decay which are part of the bitter truth of film history, in these excerpts one can have glimpses of her visual eloquence working with cinematic images. I had to think of John Ford´s term for filmmaker/film director, and why he called himself a “picture maker”. These excerpts evoke in me the insatiable longing to see her films, at best in restored versions during a retrospective on the big screen. And Suman Ghosh´s film will be an ideal companion for such a retrospective yet to come.

The last third of the film becomes quite turbulent. Rahul Bose tells about his very demanding work as an actor in one of her masterpieces The Japanese Wife which also lead to a big argument. Konkona Sensharma tells about how she once asked her mother if it is necessary to burden herself in this age with the hard work of filmmaking. The prompt answer of her mother, Sensharma continues, was: “I do not keep my body alive just for my children and grandchildren.” This moment, probably the most private one in this film. But it is also one of the most moving moment. There is quite a range between a daughter who is worried about the health of her mother and an admirer of her films like me, eagerly waiting for her next films. But it is also a moment in this film where the film is very close to one of the central currents in Aparna Sen´s films, the cinematic exploration of the different possibilities of the perception of the world which includes the perception of the people we love or admire. The last statements by actors Shabana Azmi and Kaushik Sen annoyed me. While referring to some of her late films Arshinagar (a modern interpretation of Shakespeare´s Rome and Julia) and Ghawre Bairey Aaj (The Home and the World today, a modern interpretation of Tagore´s famous novel), their conclusion that her late films have lost subtlety for the benefit of a cause, means these films are made for a cause. How one can come to such an easy conclusion about these multifaceted films, I will never understand.

The film leads at the end to another excerpt from her first film 36 Chowringhee Lane. It is with Ozu´s last film Samna no aji (An Autumn Afternoon, 1962) probably one of the most intense and moving films about aging and loneliness) but for Aparna Sen it was the begin of an extraordinary career as a filmmaker, while Ozu´s film was his swan song. The rest is history. Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen had its world premiere at the international film festival in Rotterdam, one of the few bigger European festivals which had an eye on Indian cinema during the whole last 30 years and the only big festival beside the film festival in Busan since almost 20 years that programmed a film by Aparna Sen. I saw this film in Vienna at the small Red Lotus Asian Film festival and I was happy to witness that it aroused curiosity and interest in Aparna Sens films.

Suman Ghosh´s film works very well as an inspiration for further researches about the art of Aparna Sen, but as well as an introduction into an own chapter of more than 40 years film history.

Rüdiger Tomczak