Documentary on Manakkal Rangarajan

[mankuthimma]

There has been some distance covered , in the making a of a Documentary on Manakkal Rangarajan .
Planned as a low cost effort , this first exercise is a loving contribution , sponsored by a few rasikas . The project is being handled by a well known documentary maker who is now looking for valuable inputs from rasikas , in order to make it a top class effort .

I post this information here , for casting the net far and wide , to locate people who may be interested in participating .

Members with valuable suggestions leading towards a novel approach to chronicling such Life stories , can email the Producer at [email protected].

Amshan Kumar has 21 movies / documentaries to his credit ( none of them on Music ) and has also authored a Tamil book on Film Appreciation . Which is a standard text book in some Universities in Tamil Nadu .

Coming Sunday , He will be interviewing Manakkal Rangarajan at his residence , on camera .
If there are members who wish to be present , please let him know at the email address mentioned.

Members who are willing to be part of the process can get in touch with him - Like say for the interviewing part etc
Members who have a list of questions to be addressed to MR may kindly send them by mail at the address given above.

This is a pilot project through which rasikas can find a medium to give back something to the artists .
This particular project has completed the financing formalities .Hence this thread is not about donations.

Being a low cost initiative , it may be an interesting idea to deploy this idea in the near future , over a wider range of Maestros . Some of them who are fairly Old and hence cases where Time is at a premium.

This first effort will be a gift , to the Maestro ,from the rasikas .For his personal use and commercial exploitation .

In case anyone has more queries , I may be contacted .
Either here .Or by mail , at [email protected]

[rshankar]

Kji - Fantastic - Best Wishes! I have no questions for Sri MR, or you for that matter, (just appreciation!)...I am sure the product will be a collector's delight. I do hope he commericalizes it ASAP.

[Nick H]

Congratulations on making this happen, and best wishes for the project

[smala]

A fitting tribute to a great artist even if somewhat late. The very best in wishes for this happy endeavor and congratulations on taking the initiative.

-from a documentary film-maker-in-training moving back to India to put this art into practice.

[mankuthimma]

congratulations on taking the initiative.
-from a documentary film-maker-in-training moving back to India to put this art into practice.

Not my initiative , though . Some one else on this forum . But that detail can wait until the member decides to declare it personally.
SP- Good Luck with your training . We will need all of that here .For future projects .
BTW members can also give ideas about what they prefer in such documentaries . And what has left them exasperated with documentaries that they have seen.
For instance we never liked the camera panning up and down a Tanpura in the videographing of a CM concert and the result is that we have 20 odd lovely videos of our own !!!!
Anyone owns 20 Gb space here , so that I can permanently put them up as a block ?

[smala]

Thanks for the wishes, Thimma. Hoping to put the interest to some good use.

[fduddy]

The best documentary I have seen so far is on Tanjore S Kalyanaraman and Mallikarjun Mansur. Absolutely brilliant production.
Mallikarjun Mansur's was extremely realistic in the scene that he goes to his friends house in mumbai (chawl) and listens to the water dripping from the tap. Excited he starts singing, haha superb portrayal. Done by Shyam Benegal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maTEDFjb ... re=related
http://www.washingtonbanglaradio.com/co ... production

[rajeshnat]

I had a call last week with manakkAl sriram, infact I and gamakam wanted to meet rangarAjan sir in general to talk about his musical journey. We are planning to meet him this week end . Sriram indeed conveyed that his documentary director is in the early stages of documentary production .Sriram and I both felt that if there are any kerala based rasikas especially oldtimers , they can add lot of value to the documentary content as manakkAl rangarAjan sir was extremely popular in kerala . Anyway will post in manakkAl thread when I and gamakam meet him.

[kssr]

There is a documentary named Aaraar Aasaipadaar. Generally I would call it as an overview of south indian culture, with focus on CM with its hero(!) as Sanjay Subrahmanyan. Well made picture. The current producer can take a look. It is commercially available.

[smala]

A review from ramsabode.wordpress.com on Arar Asaippadar. Published December 24, 2006.

*****
Prasanna Ramaswamy’s “Arar Asaippadar“, a documentary on popular Carnatic singer Sri Sanjay Subramaniam, was screened at Sathyam Cinemas in Chennai today morning at 10.00AM. I walked into the hall at about 9:55AM and was greeted by an audio track of Sanjay’s rendition of Sri Subbaraya Sastri’s rItigOwLa composition “jananI ninnuvinA” being played before the film started. A nice idea I thought to build up the mood of the audience.

The documentary started with Sanjay’s rendition of Sri Muthu Tandavar’s nAdanAmakriyA composition “ArAr AsaippaDAr“. The initial part just dragged on and on and on, supported mainly by the audio track of Sanjay’s songs running in the background. I think the aim here was to show snippets from the daily life of Sri Sanjay but what resulted was a random collection of clippings depicting different things making it very unclear to judge what was being conveyed. The first words spoken by anyone came about 18-20 minutes into the movie.

Sri Sanjay was shown practising the kalyANi aTa tAla varnam “vanajAkshi” at his home with a tambura. He was shown drawing open the blinds at his house in the morning, taking a peep at the outside world from his balcony etc. Suddenly clippings from his performance at a venue came in. There were also clippings inbetween that showed temple architecture. He was also shown in the green room with Sri S. Varadarajan and Sri K. Arun Prakash explaining them the structure of the gambhIranATTai mallAri just before a concert.

There were glimpses of Sri Sanjay’s family life, Sanjay teaching his disciple Swarna Rethas, Sanjay’s wife preparing dosa(?) with copious amount of oil (like Jyothika in that idhayam nallennai ad), Sanjay reading out detective stories (Sambu stuff) to his children, Sanjay sharing memories of his grandmother telling him how to sing a verse in a song, Sanjay recollecting how Sri Calcutta K.S. Krishnamurthi taught him subtle differences in prayogas for different ragas etc. There was also a sequence where he was shown learning a few songs from nadaswaram vidwan Sri Vaidyanathan(?), primarily the Arunachala Kavi composition in suruTTi “kANa vEnDum laksham kaNgaL”. In another sequence Sri Neyveli Venkatesh, Sri Guruvayur Dorai and Sri Nagai Muralidharan were shown discussing and appreciating his music. There were also some good clippings of temple festivals with appropriate songs sung by Sri Sanjay played in the background.

I think overall the documentary is okay. What is however lacking is a theme and lack of clarity over what the maker of the documentary wanted to convey. Without Sri Sanjay’s songs playing in the background with some good accompaniment from Sri S. Varadarajan and Sri Arun Prakash, it became kind of difficult to sit through the dragging portions.

I think there need to be more such films documenting lives of musicians and carnatic music itself, at least for the benefit of future generations. I am sure people like Sri Rangaramanuja Iyengar, Smt Indira Menon etc would have faced a lot of hardships when they wrote their books without much of historical material available in codified form to readily support their works. Films like this can also help in spreading some knowledge of the art among the masses. That way I think this is a step in the right direction.

Some general information in case you are planning to watch the documentary: The duration of the film is supposed to be 85 minutes and there is an interval of about 10 minutes duration somewhere near the middle if you are watching the movie at Sathyam Cinemas...

[Rajani]

Kji, this is a very meaningful initiative and I think such documentation will prove invaluable for the future generations. My best wishes.

[preposterous]

Didn't want to throw more mud in the other thread...(having participated in the rasikas meet )

Sincere and good work does get appreciated - assuming the reference is to this initiative, even by !!!.
Inaugural function of Indian Fine Arts
Quote from Kutcheribuzz : "T. M. Krishna expressed happiness that a rasika was making a documentary on Manakkal Rangarajan and said there must be more documentation of the greats for posterity. He said, "Rangarajan sir's concerts in Kerala held decades ago are still popular and the audience compares any concert of today with that of his and says that nothing can match his concerts!""

Link: http://kutcheribuzz.com/decseason2010/news15.asp#1

I had stopped posting due to the same reasons as the current mudslinging. But I do take back a lot from the forum especially from people like Cool (not because he uploads music), Shivdasan, Arasi etc…
Also I want to give something back to CM and the artists…(see Artists’ plight: link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 135912.cms)
Hence this post….
To quote Arasi: "… and do not forget our intent in making CM a vibrant thing of the future..."

I feel the same when Karthikbala wrote and to quote: "It is consequently no surprise that we still don't have *one* world-class CM institution run on thoroughly professional and financially sound principles".

As Vasanthkokilam mentioned in the meet - we should make some efforts to make the site 'Artist friendly' (member friendly is a different topic) and I am personally interested in some efforts to increase the number of rasikas...

Efforts like making a documentary makes it artist friendly....

There is so much to be done by people like Cool,Rajeshnat, VK, Ponbhairavi etc and others in the forum...I am willing to support this in what ever fashion...for a larger cause than get side tracked by some pungent/penchant remarks or people who always ‘Shriek’

So a request from a 'new friend' - Cool - be cool and post...

P.S:
1. In the meet it was Cool who went around and met even new faces like me.
2. A suggestion to Mods/forum members: May be other topics like Spirituality/Lounge etc can be removed and the forum can only focus on CM… From my observation a lot of mud is thrown in those topics which gets deflected in to CM posts….