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Maihar Raag
The music of a place
Speakers
60 min, 16mm, Hindi with English Subtitles, 1993, India
Directed by Arunabh Bhattacherjee
Produced by Sunil Shanbag
Synopsis:
Maihar Raag started as an exploration of the importance of a physical place in the Hindustani Music tradition of gharanas. Maihar in Madhya Pradesh was home to the Maihar gharana formed by Ustad Allaudin Khan, a guru to several great musicians of the 20th century, and an icon of a secular & syncretic tradition of Hindustani music. Filmed in 1992, twenty years after the passing of Ustad Allaudin Khan, the film looks at what happens to a place after the guru is no more.
Awards:
National Film Award for best non-fiction film 1994
National Film Award for best audiography for Indrajit Neogi.
In collaboration with Vikalp Bengaluru
Speakers
Arunabh Bhattacherjee
Arunabh Bhattacherjee is a filmmaker based in Mumbai. He began his filmmaking career with fiction films. After working with Govind Nihalani on four features, Arunabh partnered with Sunil Shanbag to form a production house for documentary and nonfiction projects.
Aside from several TV non-fiction shorts, they made Maihar Raag, their first independent documentary.
Subsequent work for television and related projects ensued, and Arunabh continues to produce/direct with increasing infrequency.
Sunil Shanbag
Sunil Shanbag is a Mumbai based theatre director, and documentary filmmaker and producer.
His film, Maihar Raag,directed by Arunabh Bhattacherjee, won the National Award for best non-fiction film in 1993. His Aamakaar, The Turtle People, directed by Surabhi Sharma, won the prestigious Ramsar MedWet Award at Ecocinema in Greece in 2004.
His films include a re-telling of the history of the Palanpuri Jain community which dominates the diamond trade in India and Europe, and “Sharing A Dream” which traces 50 years of the history of IIT Kanpur.
He works closely with contemporary dancer Astad Deboo in an ongoing project of visual documentation of his work. He has also created a visual archive in collaboration with ethnomusicologist Dr. Greg Booth of Auckland University, New Zealand, of oral histories of film musicians from Mumbai and Goa.
Swati Dandekar
Swati Dandekar is documentary filmmaker from Bangalore, India, with a special interest in creating visual narratives of the living history around her; of people, places, ideas, traditions, practices, and the continuous process of change. Her most recent work is “Neeli Raag”, a feature length documentary on indigo, the natural dye, and the few surviving craftsmen who still work with it. Her past work is a series of essay films that explore the relationship between place, people, resources and the institutions that govern these. Her film “Water and a City” was widely screened in India and abroad, and is part of the curriculum for courses in water management and development studies. In addition, she has been closely involved with designing media for education. As a founder member of Vikalp Bengaluru, she has been actively screening documentary films and curating festivals in Bangalore city for over ten years.
At present, she teaches film at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.
