Cinematography, an art that creates make belief to our hearts content. Without the genius of a great photographer there is no movie.
I remember my first encounter, with the shooting of a motion picture, back home in Kollam, in the early 70’s. On my regular cycle journey to fetch our thandaan Sivan (one who plucks coconut). I was pretty surprised to see a huge crowd at such an early hour, in the small hut near Sivan’s home, normally such crowd pulls for 3 reasons death, wedding or a fight.
Being a social animal, not sure what was happening out there, but always willing to support any eventuality I rode to the hut, seeing me Sivan’s daughter Kumary came running waving her hand, and gesturing in sign language, calling me in and asking me not to open my mouth and make any sound, so it was do not snort, sneeze, smile or snore.
She squeezed me into the house, to the house owner who was standing by the side room literally pushed out by people, reflectors, cameras on tripods and strange men. I had never seen anything like this in my life before and didn’t know what to expect.
He managed to give me a spot asking one of the ladies from next door to move a bit, she bent her body a bit and I peeked through the gap of her pleated waist and hip, just enough to glance the stars!!
I saw Sobhana (Roja Ramani) and Raghavan sitting on a wooden bed in the small thatched hut. They were sweating like mad, same as Lekhu’s palm or much more, with all the flash light and reflectors, which was so powerful, their makeup was flowing down their cheek like the trickle of a water pipe with no washer and the director would shout Action! And they both had to hug each other tight, and then the director would say Cut!
This went on and on for 25 times, believe me it was counted as it was being written on the black clap board every single time. Each time the makeup man had to puff, wipe, puff, wipe and prepare them for the shot again, I felt so miserable at their plight, since I used to act in drama at school, I knew the hassle to repeat a scene and wondered how they coped and I thought to myself what a tough job this is; to show emotions repeatedly every time something or someone goes wrong and under adverse conditions.
The song “Chakravarthini ninakku njanente shilpa gopuram thurannooo, (ചക്രവർത്തിനീ നിനക്കു ഞാനെന്റെ ശില്പ ഗോപുരം തുറന്നൂ) is from this amazing movie “Chembarathy” (ചെമ്പരത്തി), this was our favorite song in School as Lekhu sang this and won prizes all the time.
Chembarathy was mostly shot in Kollam at Jyothi Nikethan College near our Church and locations near my home in Uliyakovil near the Ashtamudi lake, if I am not mistaken it was one of the first movies that went outdoors to real open fields from the four walls of studios.
Let me be honest after this episode I have never fancied to see film shooting anywhere, whoever the actor may be.
Chembarathy was directed by the genius, Sri P. N. Menon, incidentally Sri Bharathan one of my all-time favorite director, is the nephew of Sri P. N. Menon. When I built my home in Sydney in 1999, I planted Chembarathy, and it’s such a wonderful feel to watch the flowers in my backyard connecting me to my dear friends, family and the great movie.
Chembarathy, smiling in Sydney
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