Sea of Lost Time

A foul odour – maybe similar to the one that every year befell the small town in which Gabriel García Márquez’s story Sea of Lost Time is set – has wafted through the corridors of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune since Gajēndra Cauhān was appointed head of that institution.

One of the biggest and most widely reported-on scandals of his administration was the termination of a graduation film production for acting students Gurvinder Singh had set out to direct, based on Gabriel García Márquez’s above-mentioned story. The decision felt dubiously motivated, to say the least, as Singh was known to be a vociferous critic of Cauhān. But now under the new director B.P. Singh things have changed for the better, and this a moving gem of realist cinema crafted from the materials shot is prove of it. Singh’s style honours the feel and substance of García Márquez-lines such as: "They swim to the depth of the sea, passing various levels in time. They see the bodies of their dead floating past them."