Biswaprakash

  • 148'
  • India
  • 1999
Biswaprakash portrays in various shades of grey an intelligent young man caught in the contradictions of small-town life in the ancient Hindu religious centre of Puri. Located by the sea, Puri doubles as a tourist resort, complete with many foreign visitors. Biswa has many questions and ambitions which lead him to a variety of experiences. One in particular is responsible for his coming of age. The film is about an individual quest riddled with disappointments, yet one lightened with a paradoxical sense of fulfilment. At another level, the film is about the ambivalent co-existence of tradition and modernity.I like Biswaprakash for its narrative style, an engaging fusion of drama and documentary; its impressive formal and visual qualities; the mood of serenity that pervades its long duration; theperformance of its principal player; and its strong, unapologetic desire to be culture-specific - to discuss characters and situations authentically in the context of a given society at a given point of time. The suffocation in the soul and the limbs of a restless youth wanting to reach out to the world has been quietly and movingly realised. This is the kind of cinema that needs to be supported in a film world largely surrendered to the Philistinism of unrestrained sound and spectacle. (Vidyarty Chatterjee is film editor of the Indian magazine Economic Times.)
  • 148'
  • India
  • 1999
Director
Susant Misra
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
India
Year
1999
Festival Edition
IFFR 2001
Length
148'
Medium
35mm
Language
Oriya
Producer
National Film Development Corp.
Sales
National Film Development Corp.
Cast
Nandita Das
Director
Susant Misra
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
India
Year
1999
Festival Edition
IFFR 2001
Length
148'
Medium
35mm
Language
Oriya
Producer
National Film Development Corp.
Sales
National Film Development Corp.
Cast
Nandita Das