Dushyanth Sridhar channels his analysis on Indian scripture into a film in Sanskrit, Sakuntalam
“Why no longer Sanskrit?”
Dushyanth Sridhar, a Bangalore-based speaker and researcher on Indian scriptures, will quickly be posing this query to audiences around the globe when his Sakuntalam releases. An adaptation of Kalidasa’s Abhijnana Sakuntalam, Dushyanth hopes to recreate a ancient international in his upcoming Sanskrit movie.
“If other folks can watch a Korean sequence known as Squid Recreation, they’re going to no doubt perceive Sanskrit and heat as much as Sakuntalam,” says a assured Dushyanth, who was once not too long ago within the town to oversee post-production paintings.
The adventure started all over an opportunity dialog he had with a chum, Srinivas Kanna, who’s related to the movie trade. “He instructed I absorb filmmaking, however I used to be nervous because it was once completely the other of what I used to be doing at that time (spiritual discourses). However I knew the immense achieve of cinema.”
Then, he thought of Sakuntalam and Kalidasa’s storytelling nature. Given his skillability and publicity to the language, Dushyanth made up our minds to do it himself. “I was a filmmaker by accident.”
Starring debutants Shubham Sahrawat and Payal Shetty within the lead, and YG Mahendran, Mohan Raman and TV Varadarajan in essential roles, Sakuntalam guarantees to be a classy adaptation of a well-liked literary paintings. “The drama in Sakuntalam is so dynamic. India is not only in regards to the aghoris in Varanasi, or the rubbish piled up at Perungudi… there may be a lot more than it. There may be such a lot previously to look at.”
Tale of the material
- One of the most highlights of Sakuntalam is its costumes; the individual in the back of them is Chennai-based textile dressmaker Lakshmi Srinath. “My imaginative and prescient stemmed completely from what I had amassed due to my readings of Kalidasa’s textual content all over my early life days,” explains Lakshmi, who has previous labored on a dance-theatre manufacturing in keeping with the poet’s Meghadootam as smartly.
- Assisted by way of Asen Terangpi and costumers Ramakrishna and Govind, Lakshmi opted for pure dyes for the mission. “We additionally went in for cushy, natural-looking colors. The wonderful thing about pure dyes is that it will provide you with surprising splashes of color. We took a large number of pleasure within the result of the method. A curated number of uncooked khadi cloth was once sourced immediately from the weavers of Gandhigram. The jewelry worn by way of characters within the hermitage have been in my view hand made the use of picket beads, scraps of material, jute, thread and cord.”
He is making an attempt to get audiences to try this along with his movie, which could have dialogues in Sanksrit and Prakrit, with subtitles in English. Dushyanth can have selected to ship this message by means of a lecture in a sabha or a video on-line — however he opted for the cinematic medium as an alternative. “Cinema is a formidable device and has a really perfect achieve. I used to be no longer apprehensive on set, but it surely did take a couple of days for me to heat as much as this new medium,” says Dushyanth.
Dushyanth intentionally roped in some seasoned names, together with Nationwide Award-winners Pattanam Rasheed and Lenin for makeup and enhancing. “It took away such a lot of of my worries, due to the technical pampering I won.”
The upward thrust of OTT platforms and publicity to other types of cinema within the fresh previous augurs smartly for the group of Sakuntalam, says Dushyanth. “As soon as all of the product is able, we will be able to take it to OTT platforms. It additionally has international enchantment and can pastime students of linguistics internationally. Some other folks describe Kalidasa because the Shakespeare of India, however it’s if truth be told the wrong way spherical: Shakespeare is the Kalidasa of Europe.”
