Muraleedharan c k, isc, Director of Photography
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John Sir

31/7/2018

3 Comments

 
Picture
 
A cold morning of 1984 winter.

I was sweating standing outside the FTII interview room.
I was not worried about the questions; I was seriously worried about how I am going to communicate. Kids standing around me continued talking in English and Hindi effortlessly.

Hindi was out of the question, English I could write very well, but when it comes to conversing, it was a tough game.

This was my second attempt. I stood at the same place last year also. Getting through the written exam was easier for me. This time I must get through, before my family forces me to take up a bank job as it was the norm those days.

I presented my certificates to a 7-8-member interview board, while they passed it around. I nervously sat on the edge of the chair.
Educational certificates, short story writing, poetry and drama competition certificates and few photographs that I managed to take at the last moment with a borrowed camera.

The first few questions were technical.
I started answering in my broken English.
“What are you doing now?”
“I am doing my 1st year Masters in Malayalam literature.”
“You graduated in Physics right?”
“Yes Sir.”
“It looks like you are jumping around. Physics, Literature now Cinema. You don’t seem to have a focus, What’s your real interest?”
 
That’s a tough question, but I must answer.
 
“Sir, I came last year, but no admission, so I joined Literature… my second interest, now I am here again… for my first interest.”
 
It looked like he was convinced.
 
Silence.
 
A tall bearded man who just finished going through my certificates looked up.
“You are doing Malayalam literature?”
“Yes Sir.”
“What is M.T.Vasudevan Nair’s contribution to Malayalam literature?”
 
That’s a googli. I could write a three-page essay on that subject, but there’s no way I could explain that in English here.
My throat started to dry
I kept staring at him.
“You don’t know?”
“I know Sir.”
“Then?”
“I don’t know how to say”
He looked at others
 
Silence.
 
I realized the interview is coming to an end. There are lot of students waiting outside. They wouldn’t want to waste time on me now.
I sat there frozen.
Someone pushed the bunch of certificates towards me.
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.
One more year of waiting.
Frames of bank teller counters flashed through my mind.
 
മലയാളത്തിൽ പറയാമോ?
(Can you answer in Malayalam?)
 
Ehh….. Yes, YES Sir.
 
പറയൂ
(Tell Me)
 
ബോധധാരാ സംപ്രദായം
(Stream of Consciousness)
 
ഒരു കവിത ചൊല്ലാമോ
(Can you recite a poem in Malayalam?)
 
I recited an old poem
 
പുതിയ കവികളിൽ ആരേയാണിഷ്ടം
(From the new generation poets whom do you like?)
 
ബാലചന്ദ്രൻ ചുള്ളിക്കാട്
(Balachandran Chullikkadu)
 
അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ ഒരു കവിത ചൊല്ലൂ
(Recite a poem from his collection)
 
I recited another poem.
 
The interview continued in Malayalam for another ten minutes with questions from literature, cinema and art.
I couldn’t believe the interview went off well.
I had answered every question and all of them were correct, I knew.

When I came out of the interview room first thing I wanted to find out was who is this person who spoke to me in Malayalam. Senior students told me later that it was John Sankaramanagalam, Dean. FTII.
 
Two weeks later I received my admission letter.

If John Sir hadn’t shifted my interview to Malayalam, it would have ended much earlier. I don’t know whether I would have gotten admission that year.

For years to come I watched John Sir walking through the campus.
The slow paced walk. If you have to talk to him you have to walk with him, he wouldn’t stop.
I never gathered the courage to walk with him and thank him.
 
He must be having his slow paced walk somewhere now.
One day I will catch up with him to say ‘Thank you Sir’.
 
 
John Sankaramangalam. (1934 - 18)
In his long career, John won two National and four Kerala State Film Awards. He also served as chairman and jury of many national and international film festivals.
His directorial titles include Saramsham, Samandaram, Aval Alpam Vaikippoyi and Janma Bhoomi.
Later, he went on to become the director of FTII. Post retirement, he was seen as an authority on the history of Indian films.

 


3 Comments

Forgotten Images – Ramchandra

14/3/2014

10 Comments

 
Picture
Summer of 1996

Four of us were in Pune National Film Archives- Monica, Jeebesh, Shuddha, and I, searching through old issues of ‘Film India’, looking for anything related to cinematographers and their craft. We were in the middle of our research on ‘Practice of Cinematography in India’ supported by ‘India Foundation for the Arts.’

We read about K A Abbas and his films- ‘Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Main’, ‘Sath Hindustani’ ,’Rahi’, ‘Munna’ etc. One name was common – Ramchandra, the DoP of most of his films. We decided to interview him as soon as we hit Mumbai.

Couple of months later we got together again in Mumbai to do a series of interviews.  We had a long list, Jal Mistry, K K Mahajan, Ashok Mehta and many other people. One important name in that list was Ramchandra. We managed to find his phone number and took an appointment.

We had lot of work that day and by the time we left to meet him at his house in central Mumbai, we were late. In my old maruti 800 we kept discussing about his work in many films from early fifties to late seventies. We had many questions to ask, setting and lighting the cityscape backdrop of Mumbai in one of the songs in ‘Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Main’, shooting of ‘Sath Hindusthani’ in the jungles, working with Mr.K.A.Abbas, shooting the desert song at night in ‘Shera aur Reshma’ and of course shooting ‘Yadein’… so on and so forth.

Half way through the journey I realized we had crossed the appointment time.

I stopped at a pan shop to make a call to inform him that we are on our way.

Monica went to make the call and we continued our discussion in the car. After five minutes or so she came back with a puzzled look. As I started driving she said

“Arre he seemed to have forgotten about our appointment. I spoke to the maid.”

“You didn’t speak to him?”

“No. The maid spoke to him and she said he will wait for us.”

An old housing society in Dadar.

We rang the bell and a lady opened the door. She took us to the living room where Mr.Ramchandra was waiting for us. We sat down, apologized for the delay and started unpacking our recording equipment.

It was a neat drawing room with a bookshelf full of books.

Bound volumes of ‘American Cinematographer’ from the fifties were neatly stacked there.

The wall had many photographs including one where he is standing beside Mrs.Indira Gandhi.

Top of the shelf adorned a row of awards.

As always we started our interview with a question about images from his childhood. He looked out through the window and talked about his school days, his love for football and about his parents in a low voice.  As we advanced into later period, his voice became more and more weak. He took more time to remember and stopped answering after a point.

How did you start working in Bombay Industry?

Whom did you assist?

When did you take this photograph with Mrs. Gandhi?

Sir, what was your last film?

We could feel the discomfort in his eyes. It was painful to see him struggling to remember. Soon we realized he has no memory of his past and we are putting him through severe pain.

We apologized again and packed up our stuff.

Nobody spoke about anything in the car on the way back.

Three months later I met a friend of mine who stayed in the same housing complex. He told me that Ramchandra passed away a week back. He was in the advanced stage of Alzheimer’s.



10th March 2014-

I couldn’t find much about him on Internet databases. Most of them got his name confused with other DoPs with similar names. His films went into their filmography. Other web sites where I thought I would find him, didn’t mention his name either.

Like his memory he too has disappeared from history.

I dug out my 18-year-old diary and these are the listings I found in it-  

Rahi- Two leaves and a bud           Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1952

Munna                                                           Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1954

Char Dil Char Rahein                                   Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1959

Gyarah Hazar Ladkiyan                   Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1962

Sheher our Sapna                           Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1963

Yadein                                                         Dir:Sunil Dutt                              1964

Aasman Mahal                                 Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1965

Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Main                       Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1967

Sath Hindusthani                             Dir:K.A.Abbas                               1969

Reshma our Shera                            
Dir:Sunil Dutt                              1971

National Awards-

Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Main               1967

Reshma our Shera                        1971

Filmfare Award-

Yaadein                                 1966

He was known for his Black&White works. But ‘Reshma aur Shera’ got him his second national award for colour cinematography.

Here is a song from ‘Reshma aur Shera’
Picture
10 Comments

    Hi all,
    There’s lot of hard work behind every scene in every film. Very little is written about it. 

    Media, critics and film historians are generally ignorant about it.
    Here’s an attempt to write about some of my moments behind the camera. 
    Please read on.....

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