Talk of the Golden Lion and the Venice Film Festival and Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001) comes to mind. And for those more inclined to quality cinema, the obvious Indian connection is Aparajito, the centrepiece of Satyajit Ray’s famed Apu trilogy, that won the coveted award in 1957. But not many remember today that even before Ray put Indian cinema on the world screen, Prabhat Film Company’s 1937 Sant Tukaram had been feted at the same festival as one of the three best films of that year. That’s because of a simple quirk of fate: the citation announcing the participation of the Sheikh Fatehlal and Vishnurao Govind Damle classic in Venice was lost. Today, by yet another strange, rather cinematic turn of events, the original citation has been found and is now displayed in the office of K S Sasidharan, Director, National Film Archives of India, Pune. Here’s a screenplay of the past and present, nothing less than historic. Way back in 1979, a student of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, discovers a green, approximately A-3 size poster in a garbage heap. Initially, he thinks of it as just that, a poster to be hung on the wall. But by the time the student graduates into a full-fledged cinematographer, the now-familiar Sunny Joseph (Piravi, Train to Pakistan, Mango Souffle), he has pored over enough film history books to realise that what he has stumbled onto is a treasure. He then frames it with loving care and keeps it with him. Cut to 2003 and Sasidharan is at the Kerala International Film Festival where he meets up with Joseph, who tells him about his treasure over a casual conversation. Typical of archivists, Sasidharan is sceptical at first. ‘‘But when I saw it and made a few enquiries of my own, I realised that he did have the citation from the festival, then known as the Mostra Internationale d’Arte Cinematografica,’’ says Sasidharan. After that it was fairly easy. Sasidharan convinced Joseph that his treasure would be looked after at the archives, that after all, it deserved to be part of a national collection rather than a personal possession. And yesterday, at the FTII academic council meeting, Joseph dropped by and handed over the framed citation to Sasidharan. Ajit Damle, grandson of Vishnurao Damle, is happy that the citation is now with the NFAI. ‘‘We lost a lot of our records during the formal transfer of Prabhat Film Company to the Government in 1960. The citation may have been lost then. Later I came to know about Joseph and how he had discovered it in a trash heap. But it’s nice to know that now all film lovers can have a glimpse of this wonderful piece of history.’’ It was on December 12, 1936, that Sant Tukaram was released at Central Cinema, Bombay, and after an initial record run of 32 weeks went on to play at the same theatre for one year wherein no less than six million people from Maharashtra alone saw it. The film narrates the life of Tukaram (played by Vishnupant Pagnis), a shudra who overcomes twin adversaries (wife and a rich Brahmin) in his quest for eternal peace as he goes about singing spiritual songs of Lord Pandurang and spreads the message of inner freedom and peace. International acclaim apart, the importance of Sant Tukaram lies in its cinematic adaptation of a philosophy that helped oppressed masses identify with the self and the need for higher aspirations in life. So if Sant Tukaram was one of three films that earned special mention (Australia’s Flying Doctors and Hungary’s Maria Novre were the others), what was the film Venice feted with the Golden Lion in 1937? Carmine Gallone’s Scipione L’africano (The Defeat of Hannibal), which was meant to be Mussolini’s propaganda film showcasing the glory of battle but with so graphic a portrayal of the barbarism of war that it became just the opposite—most of all entertainment, least of all propaganda.
