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Three Times Piparsod: Life in an Indian Village
It all began with the idea to initiate a cultural exchange: Two filmmakers, an Indian and a Frenchman, were to create their own personal take on the same subject. Both were given the same timeframe and the same technical conditions for the project. As an outsider, the view of the Frenchman remains on the surface of things: he portrays his initial impression of external appearances without preparation, without knowledge of the language. The camera becomes the instrument of this discovery and its “naïve” presentation. Raymond Depardon, reporter, photographer, and great filmmaker of the cinema direct is able to pull off this very difficult feat. His Indian counterpart is Saeed A. Mirza, who is familiar with the realities of life in India and has made a name for himself as a socially engaged filmmaker.
“The future of India lies in its villages,” Nehru once said. The village of Piparsod had already been researched for more than twenty years by the ethnologist Jean-Luc Chambard, whose KALAVATI, shot in 1961, became an initiative part of this trilogy. Chambard published the book Atlas d’un village indien – Piparsod, Madhya Pradesh in 1980, and the photographer Marie-Laure de Decker was also involved in this interdisciplinary project. The three parts of the trilogy are not screened chronologically, but in a movement from outside to inside. First a discovery without words, then a jump into social actuality and finally, like remembering, the ethnographic backstory.
PIPARSOD – KALAVATI OU L’ART D’ETRE FEMME EN INDE
Indien, Frankreich 1961 / 35 Min. / BetacamSP (von16mm) / OF
Regie, Kamera, Ton: Jean-Luc Chambard; Schnitt: Philippe Luzuy
KALAVATI follows the life of women, a life that consists mostly of work: fetching water, washing laundry, braiding each other’s hair, collecting fruit, and preparing food. They patch a house with clay, give the walls and courtyard a smooth coating, and artfully decorate the floor with white ornaments. The last third of the film documents two major celebrations in which women play an important role: the Holi festival and a service in the honor of a goddess.