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Reviews and Interviews
Resonance |
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THE HINDUSTAN TIMES, 25 April, 1992
Delicious daawat
Indian Architect and Builder, May 1995
Manu Rewal, son of architect Raj Rewal, is a film-maker, Here, he discusses
his film on his father’s architecture, how he has captured the essence and
philosophy, with his own techinical expertise.
SARAYU AHUJA
Architect, Bombay
When I first met Manu Rewal it was in Bombay. He was handsome, fairly tall
with a curly crop of hair and full of youthful enthusiasm. He was just back
from France after doing a course in filming or so, his father Raj Rewal had
informed ,me.
I met him more than a year later in Delhi and he talked at length about
himself, his choices, options; and the films he had made on his father’s
works.
“I finished my schooling in Delhi and then went to France. I was there for
two years; I was interested in Biology but I also realized I was interested
in films, in the theory of cinema. I read a lot and came to know that film
making had so many different art forms and this was exciting. I joined a
theatre course in the evenings and during the day, I was studying Biology at
the university. After three months, I had nearly stopped going to the
Biology class. I was interested in acting, and by then, I decided that I was
really interested in making films.”
“Then, I joined a university which had a course in plastic arts and
cinematography. There they trained me in many subjects: sociology,
psychology, psycho-analysis and liberal arts. Here, I got introduced to
western music which I didn’t know much about though I knew about Indian
music; I had learnt to play the sitar. It was very important to understand
music and its use in film-making. The third year was only about cinema and
in the fourth year, I did my thesis on Satyajit Ray’s films.”
“Then my father needed a film of his buildings and at the university I had
already worked on 8 or 10 small films. It was a great opportunity for me to
put to use what I had learned. I had no idea about architecture. I filmed
all of dad’s buildings, keeping in mind his views and ideology about each of
them. I used a formal device which has been used millions of times in films.
It is a dissolve. In movies, it is used for flash back, You know like when a
person is hit in the head and he connects to the past; he dissolves in to
the past. I used it to make a connection with the past, with the historical
buildings; to emphasize the courtyards and terraces in his architecture.”
“Also I didn’t want a running commentary. So, the camera explored each
project and at a particular point, the commentary would come on and talk
about a specific feature. There would be only two features in each projects
that would be commented upon without going into the depth of each project.
The basic idea was that of resonance: the resonance between the past and the
present and how its being used in the modern context. In NII, I used the
image of a haveli which I dissolved into one of the clusters with the
courtyard and I did the same thing with the terraces.”
“I just concentrated on small design elements and the commentary was related
to the dissolution of images; and there was music throughout the film. Now,
however, I think I could have done better with the music. What I chose as a
backdrop, was quite well-known north Indian classical music; each project
had a different soundtrack I used the tabla, a santoor and a guitar which
sounded more like a sitar.”
“I used some workers from the site; making them walk through different
spaces to give it scale. I didn’t shoot indoors at all. This film was
processed in France. The production cost was about 5 lakhs for a duration of
30 minutes.”
“I got a lot of feedback. Some people felt using people in the film was
distracting and only architecture should have been filmed. Others felt that
if they were not the ones using the buildings, why show them. Just to make
it exotic? Some commented on the sound track; they felt it; I should have
included an interview with my father. He appears in the beginning of the
film, just a small bit, I think that it is not well done: he just comes says
his line and disappears. But, he didn’t want to be interviewed at all; he
only wanted that his work be shown”.
“In the World Bank film, I have gone into the details. As the titles run,
there is the shot of the opening ceremony followed by some shots of Delhi.
For an Indian, seeing the Lal Quila or Lutyens’ Delhi or the Qutab Minar,
may not be anything new, but for foreigners it would make a difference. The
site is in Lutyens’Delhi so there are shots of the surroundings, then, there
is a shot of the Lodhi garden.”
“At a point in the film, the architect from World Bank, explains how he
selected the architect and the brief for the building design. Then my father
appears in the film, giving a general idea of the design concept. I show
him, making sketches and explaining how the design was done. I show him,
talking to the model maker, who then works on the model. There are shots of
my father meeting the senior architects and the engineers. And, then
finally, the final image of the design appears on the computer screen. The
idea was that the film would show the process of design to non-architects as
well.”
“The next sequence is on the workers, the stone workers from Rajsthan –
their traditions, master craftsmen cutting stone, carving and cladding them,
we then zoom back and show the entire building in its finished state. Then,
there is an architectural exploration of the outside and the inside, the
courtyard the workstations, the sunken garden their connections, the idea of
transparencies, miniatures, old buildings, I haven’t done any dissolve in
this; I have kept it straight because dissolves are very expensive. Then I
show the building in the Lodhi Garden, the dome, vault, the curves and the
comparison with the World Bank building.”
“ Finally, there is sequence on the technological aspect of the building its
intelligent computerized systems and eventually the finished building with
the furniture and the artwork. It ends with one of the secretaries in the
building. She says it is very good “Manu laughs and confides, “may be the
World Bank told her what to say.”
tried to show how inspired by our old
architectural traditions and the material used in constructing buildings in
the Mughal and earlier eras, Raj Rewal had been able to modernise those
concepts and produce some things of beauty. The super imposition and cross
fades of Rewal’s modern designs over old ones which had acted as inspiration
were particularly well done
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