An Actress Prepares | Conversations with Mita Vasisht | Mani Kaul | Kumar Shahani | Govind Nihalani

Описание: The queen of Indian avant-garde cinema, Mita Vasisht is an actor who gives her all to a role. From learning Kathak for Mani Kaul's Siddheshwari to spending days perfecting a walk with Kumar Shahani, we get to know of her incredible commitment as an actor. She tells us fascinating stories from film sets, about her unending love affair with theatre, and speaks at length about her recent experiences of directing her film - Mani Kaul and That Thing Called the Actor. This is a conversation that left me feeling incredibly enriched, and for the trivia hoarder in me, was an absolute delight. Listening to her, you feel like you can touch those years, and feel, once again, that there's so much more to learn and do in this one life.

Host: Aryama Sen

Production lead: Ishan Ghosh
DoP: Subin Sunilraj
Edit: Anirban Das
Colour: Ayush Tater
Post-production supervision: Anabil Mukherjee

Location courtesy: Veda Factory

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro, Calcutta, Ekti Nodir Naam, and Patalghar
3:43 Mani Kaul and That Thing Called the Actor
7:04 Watching Mani and Kumar at work
8:48 Setbacks, finding her DoP
13:29 Stories from the shoots
17:21 Finances, finding her editor
20:43 Why make a film on Mani? And Var Var Vari stories
22:44 First meeting with Mani
23:55 Preparing for Siddheshwari - music, dance, painting
28:33 Getting into the director's mind
31:05 Kumar Shahani's process
33:25 On being mocked by peers
36:03 Mani and trained actors
39:40 The Kasba walk, and working with the body
44:25 KK Mahajan, cooking stories
45:44 Avant-garde vs parallel cinema, and fights with Govind Nihalani
52:18 The molestation scene in Droh Kaal
55:10 The differences in working styles
56:41 The evolving relationship with theatre
1:03:20 On reading
1:04:44 Love for Chekov
1:05:38 On existentialism