Govindan Aravindan

Interview with Indian filmmaker G. Aravindan, conducted by Thomas Waugh, 1988.

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Vasthuhara (Malayalam: വാസ്തുഹാര English: The Dispossessed) is a Malayalam social film by the late G. Aravindan which looks into the lives of partition refugees from East Bengal to West Bengal.

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When his son fails to arrive home to attend his daughter's engagement ceremony, aging patriarch Raghava Chakyar waits daily for him at the bus stop. He soon comes to learn that his son, Raghu, was taken into police custody for political reasons and tries to get to the bottom of this.

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In the 1950s a village in Kerala is preparing itself to be included in the nation's electric grid. Things are looking up for villagers and everyone is optimistic about the progress that electrification will bring. However soon some trouble brews starting with petty quarrels on trees being felled for the power lines. A series of unfortunate events follow the electrification as the village comes into terms with rapid modernization.

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Chidambaram is based on a short story by noted Malayalam writer C. V. Shriraman. The film is a deeply symbolic exploration of the man-woman attraction leading to betrayal and eventually to the purgatory of guilt.

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A young artist lives with his father, a radical friend and music loving young woman. His father dies, the radical friend leaves him and the woman is taken away by her family to another city.

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Esthappan is a fisherman, who lives in a seashore colony. His story unfolds through narrations by other fishermen about his miraculous acts. Through the contradictory statements of these people, a mystical figure of Esthappan unfolds.

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A stranger who may be the trickster magician Kummatty comes to a village in Malabar, India.

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The film interprets a story from the Uttara Kanda of the epic poem Ramayana, where Rama sends his wife, Sita, to the jungle to satisfy his subjects. Sita is never actually seen in the film, but her virtual presence is compellingly evoked in the moods of the forest and the elements. The film retells the epic from a womens' liberationist perspective, and is about the tragedy of power and the sacrifices that adherence to dharma demands, including abandoning a chaste wife.

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The arrival of a travelling circus sends ripples through the inhabitants of a remote Keralan village.

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Aaro Oral introduced to Malayalam a genre of personal cinema, which is deliberately anti-realist.

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Ravi, an unemployed young man, faces a series of encounters during his search for a job.

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