Director: Arun Khopkar

English (subtitled), 28 min, 2000, India

‘Rasikapriya’ undertakes the challenge to visualize the poetry and notes of the raagas of Indian classical music.

Synopsis:

‘Rasikapriya’ is a cinematic exploration- the camera's desperate attempt to "see" music. The journey becomes a meditation on Indian rock paintings, sculpture, nature and cities and what the camera manages to create is a canvas of vivid calligraphic designs that often allude to poetry and rhythms of Indian classical music. The terminology of Indian classical music like Khayal and Dhrupad are examined through this canvas. The perfect cinematic gesture is perhaps created when architecture, monumentality, pillared arches, the curve of the rock caves or the drop of waterfall meets a musical moment and we realize that both abstraction and concreteness have emerged from generations of influences.

Producer: Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India

Director: Arun Khopkar

Camera: Prasann Jain

Editing: Sankalp Meshram

Sound: Rajat Dholakia

About the Director:

Arun Khopkar obtained his Diploma in Film Direction from FTII in 1974. He has directed two feature and several non-feature films. His films on arts and artists have won over fifteen national and international awards. He was awarded the Golden Lotus, the highest National Award three times for his short films. His book on the film director Guru Dutt won the National Award for the best book on cinema. He is a film scholar and has contributed papers on film aesthetics to international journals. He is an internationally recognised authority on Eisenstein. He has taught film theory and practice at various institutions like Moscow School for Advanced Cinematography, Jawaharlal Nehru University, FTII, National School of Drama, etc. He was a Homi Bhabha Fellow. He is widely travelled and knows French, German, Russian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, English, Italian and Japanese.