India, mother earth
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | India, mother earth |
| Original title | India - मातृ भूमि - Matri Bhumi |
| Country of production | Italy , France |
| original language | Italian , French |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roberto Rossellini |
| script | Roberto Rossellini Sonali Senroy The Gupta Ferydoun Hoveida |
| music |
Philippe Arthuys classical Indian music |
| camera | Aldo Tonti |
| cut | Cesare Cavagna |
India, Mother Earth is an Italian - French documentary film directed by Roberto Rossellini from 1959 . The film was shot in 1957 with Indian amateurs who were selected at the respective locations. It is structured in four narrative parts.
In India, Rossellini caused a scandal during the filming, as he had an affair with the married Sonali Dasgupta , his co-writer of the film, and was therefore forced to leave the country before the filming was finished.
content
After introductory impressions of the city of Bombay , the film shows the rural south of India, Kerala's backwaters and south Indian temple architecture ( Madurai ).
Elephants are presented both as temple elephants and as working elephants that transport logs in the forest near Karapur guided by mahouts . After work, the animals are given a nourishing bath by their handlers. Everyday life in the mahout's home village is shown.
The way of the water goes from the mountains of the Himalayas to Dal Lake and via Benares on the Ganges to the Mahanadi and the almost completed construction work on the Hirakud Dam , where countless people still transport the building materials by hand. A worker who came to the country from East Bengal in the course of the partition of India says goodbye to the dam project, his place of work for the past five years.
A journey through Indian landscapes ends in a bamboo forest. An old man lives there with his wife in a Bengali village in harmony with nature and the Bengal tiger .
The earth has dried up under the summer heat, humans and animals are looking for refreshment in the water. A man with a monkey collapses dead in the arid landscape. The vultures are already waiting, his monkey stays chained with him. You can see the monkey again at a fair with a circus, knife throwers, snake charmers and ox-cart races. He survives on his own and finally finds employment as a trapeze artist.
The film closes with shots of Bombay.
background
Rossellini originally wanted to travel to India by land via Turkey, Persia and Pakistan and shoot in all countries, but had to limit his project to India for financial reasons. He came to India in December 1956 and was accompanied there by the painter and film enthusiast Maqbul Fida Husain . The filming took about 9 months. Rossellini Giovanni Brass and Jean Herman acted as assistant directors . Vincenzo Talarico wrote the Italian voiceover , the French version Jean L'Hôte . India, Mother Earth premiered out of competition on May 9, 1959 at the Cannes Film Festival . The 1959 Italian television arose from the record except for this movie RAI broadcast ten-part television series India vista da Rossellini .
Sonali Dasgupta
Rossellini's marriage to Ingrid Bergman had already broken down in 1956, but not yet divorced when he traveled to India. The 51-year-old director met 27-year-old Sonali Dasgupta, who was married to the Bengali documentary film director Harisadhan Dasgupta and had two children - the youngest only a few months old. While working on the film, an affair developed between the two of them, which MF Husain helped to keep secret. Even before filming was scheduled to end, the liaison became public and Rossellini had to leave the country. Sonali fled with him in September 1957, taking their baby with them; She left her six-year-old son Raja Dasgupta - now also a film director - in India. In 1957 Sonali Dasgupta gave birth to Raffaella, their daughter with Roberto Rossellini in Paris. They married after Rossellini's divorce from Ingrid Bergman and he adopted their son Arjun, who was henceforth Gil Rossellini and who became known as a film producer and director.
literature
- Dileep Padgaonkar: Under Her Spell: Roberto Rossellini in India
- Jean Vautrin : J'ai fait un beau voyage, Photo Journal 1955–1958
- Adriano Aprà : Rossellini, India 1957 , Rome 1991
Web links
- India, Mother Earth in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- L'India vista da Rossellini and India - matri bhumi
- Rossellini's INDIA by Fereydoun Hoveyda
- After the sunset: Roberto & Sonali story
- The scandal that rocked Calcutta in The Telegraph India, June 1, 2008
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the original, these three terms stand below each other without a separator: Screenshots of the French and Italian versions in comparison
- ↑ http://www.hoveyda.org/india.html
- ^ 'I can paint anywhere; there's no question of exile ' in The Telegraph India dated July 8, 2007
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated August 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
