Karnad, Bendre and Kuleshov...
Girish Karnad Girish Karnad made his documentary film 'D R Bendre' (Da. Ra. Bendre) in the year 1972, fifty years after Robert Flaherty made one of the first long documentary narratives in USA called 'Nanook of the North'. Flaherty's silent film had, over an entire season, captured the life of Nanook and his family in the hostile terrain of the arctic. The film claimed to be anthropological in nature, shows us the 'reality' of the Eskimo community. But it is obvious that events shown in the film were staged, not by using professional actors but by deploying 'real' life characters and 'real' locations. Forty three years before Karnad made 'D R Bendre', Dziga Vertov filmed 'The Man with the Movie Camera' in the erstwhile Soviet Union, portraying a day in the life of a city. This silent film is a representative of what is called the 'Kino-Pravada' group of films made by Dziga Vertov and his associates. In Russ...