The Organization
Quicksilver Films is part of the Sraddha Foundation, a public charitable trust which distributes the work and thus generates income for the sole trustee and independent film-maker and producer Soudhamini. By keeping the infrastructure of the company at a minimum it has remained afloat through the fluctuations of the last decade. Technicians and production staff are always available and happy to collaborate on a project to project basis. This has allowed that projects are chosen with care, and at the same time to maintain the identity as an artist rather than as a producer or entrepreneur.
The project consists in creating a 40 minute 2 screen video installation, still a relatively new art form in India.
This Video Installation is based on the idea that in Nature there exist two fundamental principles of change, namely Conservation and Evolution. When a tree dies, rather than go to waste, it dissolves into the matrix of its own origins. In this same habitat a bird gives birth to its young, from its own being, so to speak. Watching the two processes almost simultaneously the young tribal Ekalavya - representing human consciousness at its most elemental - grasps the essence of life.
Kapila Venu is a Koodiyattam artist who has trained under the greatest of living Gurus - Ammanur Madhava Chakyar. Koodiyattam is a Sanskrit theatre form that uses mime and percussion far more than the spoken word to communicate. This makes it a particularly interesting form for Soudhamini to adapt to screen.
Suresh is a master percussionist, playing even the most complex of drums like the panchamukhavadhyam - the five faced drum - with ease. Besides this he is trained in yoga and has a fine understanding of the breath and how it animates the living body.
Suresh and Soudhamini have been working all of last year, visiting the reserved forests of Kerala and Tamilnadu to try and define ways of being and moving in it harmoniously. Based on the training of Suresh in Ottanthullal, a folk theatre form and Kalari a martial arts form, they have devised a style of acting that is suggestive and highly nuanced, which has its basis in traditional aesthetics but is tinged with a modern consciousness - of ecology, of caste politics and of rhetoric in art.
Soudhamini has also made lengthy reconnaissance trips stalking the Sarus Crane. This is a wonderful gawky creature, native to India. It has a long history, being among the oldest living species on the sub-continent finding echoes even in myths. Its Indian name is the Krauncha bird, and it is supposed to have inspired the famous epic Ramayana. The Sarus is interesting for its near human breeding patterns and family structures, its famous unison call and dance. The resonances between human and bird 'performances' offers an interesting insight into underlying patterns of expressivity in all living forms - the need in all beings to affirm life.
Working with the two line Sanskrit text quoted below, the installation develops a 40 minute two screen work encompassing all the above mentioned elements. Rather than a traditional narrative, the work becomes an audiovisual elaboration of the text.
"'Poornamadha poornamidham poornath poornam udhyachyathe"
That is full. This is full. From fullness, fullness emerges
" Poornasya poornamaadhaya poornameva avasishyathe " Fullness removed from fullness is still fullness, leaving behind fullness.
Sarus Crane
Kapila Venu
Forest of Kerala, India
'Fullness is born from fullness, say the Upanishads. Fullness deleted from fullness is still fullness, leaving behind - fullness'.
Soudhamini is a film-maker, film scholar and critic from Chennai (Madras). She has made several documentaries, which include Saga of a Poet (2002) on the life and works of the poet Subramania Bharathi; a short film on education for India’s tribal peoples Going to school (2001); a mini-series for television on artists and patronage, The Invisible Flame (1997); and a feature-length documentary called Pitru Chayya: Shadows of our Forefather (1991), inspired by the classical musician M.D. Ramanathan. Soudhamini teaches at some of the premier filmstudy programmes in India, including that of her alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.
