Kalpana 1948

Kalpana is a 1948 Indian Bollywood musical film released on 1948. The film is directed by Uday Shankar.
A dance spectacular, four years in the making, orchestrated by Indias most famous modern dancer (and brother of Ravi Shankar). The narrative of the surrela fantasy is embedded within a framing story of a writer telling a story to a film producer, who eventually declines to make the movie. The writer tells of Udayan (Shankar) and Kamini (Kanta) and the yong mans dream of establishing an art centre, Kalakendra (a fictional equivalent of Shankars India Cultural Centre at Almora) in the Himalayas. Shot in the Gemini Studios in Madras, this ode to creative imagination mobilises the voculabury of traditional dancing, which doubles as a metaphor for the dreams invested in the newly independent India. The choreography was specifically designed for the camera, with semiexpressionist angles and chiaroscuro effects, and became a model for later dance spectaculars like Chandralekha (also made at Gemini and shot by Ramnoth, 1948) and the dream sequence in Raj Kapoors Awara (1951). For many years, the unusual film was seen as exemplifying a successful fusion of Indian modernism and the cinema. Shankar, who had danced with Pavlova, was lauded by James Joyce in a letter to his daughter: He moves on the stage like a semi-divine being. Believe me, there are still some beautiful things left in this poor old world. A 122 version was shown in the US although one reviewer noted that the Indian government seemed reluctant to let it be seen abroad. Check out this page for more updates on Kalpana.