Thampu [1978]

 Aravindan’s gently observational, lyrical and understated docufiction Thampu delicately straddled between fact and fiction. Alongside its form and aesthetics that were shaped by verité and fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, through portraitures deeply rooted in social realities, fragmentary structure, poetic visual language, and startling instances of breaking the fourth wall, it manifested that through its making too. Aravindan travelled to a coastal hamlet in Kerala with few former circus artistes; they set up tent, called the villagers to view performances, and shot the acts juxtaposed with the audience’s enthralled reactions; the villagers eventually got involved in the preparations of an upcoming festival, which therefore led to closure of this setup that merged avant-garde filmmaking with social experiment. Its spare three-point arc – viz. a traveling circus troupe arrives from somewhere to a nondescript village; temporarily sets up shop, provides performances to paying audience during evenings, while practicing during the days; and quietly departs for some other destination – was accompanied with fleeting insights into the group’s long history, current financial challenges, and growing weariness among its older crew members, and interspersed with the aforementioned local festivities and existential crisis of a young guy belonging to an upper class family who’s at odds with his father on account of his love for arts and music instead of worldly affairs. The cast comprised of non-professionals as well as few professional actors like Bharath Gopi as the troupe’s brusque manager who wields his power over this motley group of impoverished, marginalized, disenfranchised and nomadic performers. Shot in austere B/W by veteran cinematographer Shaji N. Karun, it wasn’t surprising that Aravindan displayed such profound empathy for his subjects considering that, like them, he too existed in the margins.

Director: G. Aravindan

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Docu-fiction/Experimental Film

Language: Malayalam

Country: India