Martin Scorsese rescues Kalpana
Kalpana was a masterpiece of India's golden age of cinema, a surreal blend of comedy and dance that told the story of a struggling writer's attempt to break into the movies. But decades of tropical heat and humidity severely damaged the only known copy of Kalpana, and the film was close to being lost forever.
It found an unlikely saviour: Martin Scorsese. The American director's World Cinema Foundation, set up to preserve classics of film history around the globe, plans to start restoring the neglected classic within months.
Satish Kaushik, the respected Indian film actor and director, said: "I was really thrilled when Martin Scorsese told me he was interested in all these old Indian dance classics. It's really good news. It's a great opportunity for a new audience in India and elsewhere to see these wonderful works."
Another Indian director, Deepa Mehta, who sits on the board of the WCF, confirmed Scorsese's personal interest and said it was important that such films were not lost. "We have become so overcome by Bollywood that Indian classic films get left by the wayside," Mehta said.
Kalpana, a Hindi-language comedy-drama influenced by modernist trends in Europe, was directed by Uday Shankar, the elder brother of the famous Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and a pioneer of Indian modern dance.
Released in 1948, the film starred Shankar and used dance, drama and dream sequences to tell the story of a writer pitching a movie to a film producer.