Kalpana (1948 film)

Kalpana

Poster
Directed by Uday Shankar
Produced by Uday Shankar
Written by Uday Shankar
Starring Uday Shankar
Amala Shankar
Music by Vishnudas Shirali
Cinematography K. Ramnoth
Edited by N. K. Gopal [1]
Production
company
Uday Shankar Production
Running time
 160 min
Country India
Language Hindi

Kalpana (English title: Imagination) is a Hindi film featuring a dance-drama, written and directed by noted dancer, Uday Shankar, in 1948. It is his only film. The story revolves around a young dancer’s dream of setting up a dance academy, a reflection Shankar's own academy, which he founded at Almora.[2] It starred Uday Shankar and his wife Amala Shankar as leads and 17-year-old actress Padmini making her screen debut.[3][4]

Kalpana was the first film to present an Indian classical dancer in the leading role, and was entirely shot as a dance ballet and a fantasy.[5][6]

It was shown at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI-Goa) (2008), as a part of the section ‘Treasures from NFAI’ (National Film Archive of India) with other "rare gems" from the archives.[7]

Cast

Crew

Production

A still featuring Uday and Amala Shankar

Kalpana was shot at Gemini Studios over five years and inspired the 1948 Tamil film, Chandralekha by S. S. Vasan, which was shot at the same studio and featured the song with dancers over large drum sequence; it was a major success unlike Kalpana which did not do well at the box office.[8][9]

Restoration

In 2009, the film process of digital restoration was taken up by NFAI in collaboration with France-based Thomson Foundation.[10] In 2010, it was being restored by the World Cinema Foundation (director Martin Scorsese is a founding member).[11][12]

References

  1. ↑ Kalpana at the British Film Institute's Film and TV Database
  2. ↑ Synopsis British Film Institute.
  3. ↑ "Beauty, charm, charisma". The Hindu. Sep 29, 2006.
  4. ↑ Subhash K Jha (24 September 2004). "What happened to the classical heritage in our films?". Sify.com Movies.
  5. ↑ "Films featuring dance". Screen (magazine). April 8, 2005.
  6. ↑ "East/west musicals: Play That Back". Outlook (magazine). Jun 26, 2006.
  7. ↑ "NFAI brings its treasures to IFFI-Goa". Ministry of Information and Broadcasting PIB. November 25, 2008.
  8. ↑ In Search of Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (1948)
  9. ↑ Armes, Roy (1987). Third World film making and the West. University of California Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-520-05690-6.
  10. ↑ "French embassy donates 230 films to NFAI". The Times of India. May 3, 2009.
  11. ↑ "Uday Shankar dance ballet, Kalpana to be on celluloid". Indiatimes Movies. 3 Feb 2010.
  12. ↑ Subhash K Jha (Feb 4, 2010). "Martin Scorsese to reviving Kalpana". The Times of India.

External links