Kalpana

1948 Music 160 minutes Directed by Uday Shankar

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About Kalpana

A writer brings a producer a story, and the dances in it take the screen. The story is a young dancer's plan to open a dance academy, drawn from Uday Shankar's own school at Almora. Uday Shankar plays Udayan, and his wife Amala Shankar plays Uma. The film is staged throughout as ballet and fantasy rather than as ordinary dialogue scenes.

Cast & crew

More about Kalpana

Uday Shankar wrote the story and directed his only film. Amritlal Nagar wrote the screenplay. K. Ramnoth photographed it, N. K. Gopal edited it, and Vishnudas Shirali wrote the music. Gemini Studios in Madras was the production base. It opened on 1 January 1948.

Themes

  • A dancer's school
  • Art against a producer's office
  • Fantasy ballet
  • dance academy
  • Almora
  • ballet
  • writer and producer
  • classical dance

Background

A Hindi dance film finished for release at the start of 1948, the year after Indian independence, built around a classical-dance company rather than a studio star.

In film history

Shankar's only film, and the first to cast an Indian classical dancer as the lead, shot entirely as dance ballet and fantasy.

Making

Shankar used the plot of a dancer founding a school as a frame for the company he had trained, including dancers from his Almora academy and guest classical dancers.

Look

K. Ramnoth photographed the dance sequences at Gemini Studios.

Technique

The picture is staged from start to finish as filmed dance, with fantasy episodes inside the writer's pitch to a producer.

Music

Vishnudas Shirali composed the music for the ballet sequences.

Preservation

Held by the National Film Archive of India. Restored with the Thomson Foundation and the World Cinema Foundation, and released on home video by the Criterion Collection. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • It is described as the first film to put an Indian classical dancer in the leading role.
  • Lakshmi Kanta plays Kamini. Padmini, then 16, appears with her sister Lalitha. Usha Kiran, credited as Usha, made her film debut in it.
  • Satyajit Ray was said to have watched the film 16 times.
  • In 2008 the National Film Archive of India showed it at the International Film Festival of India in Goa, in the section Treasures from NFAI.
  • Digital restoration began in 2009 with NFAI and the Thomson Foundation. In 2010 the World Cinema Foundation, whose founding members include Martin Scorsese, took up the restoration. Criterion later issued the restored film on home video.

Scenes

  • The writer's pitch turns into full dance numbers as he tells the producer the story.
  • Udayan tries to build the academy that the film borrows from Shankar's school at Almora.

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons
  • Criterion Collection (restored home-video edition)