G. Aravindan is recognized in India and abroad as one of the leaders of the New Indian Cinema. His films have shown at PFA, both with subtitles and without, and always to a fascinated and enthusiastic audience. (They include Throne of Capricorn, Golden Sita, Thampu, Kumatty, and Esthappan.) Aravindan's latest film is presented tonight in its premiere without subtitles but with translation provided by Satti Khanna of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. As do his previous films, however, Aravindan's latest film tells its story more through precisely chosen visual images than through dialogue. Satti Khanna provides this note:
“The film opens with shots of inmates in a lunatic asylum in South India. A young man is led in by attendants to join these mentally ill and convalescing people. Aravindan's new film is a deep meditation on the twilight (‘pokkuveyil' means twilight in Malayalam) between sanity and insanity. The sensitive young man loses his father; his best friend with athletic ambitions is injured severely; his girlfriend's family moves to another town. The young man must contemplate how days and seasons continue even when he is hopelessly bereaved. Around him the trees stir and the waters of the Arabian sea lap against beaches.
“The sound track consists principally of a full classical raga played on the flute by Hari Prasad Chaurasia. Most of the film was shot during twilight and Shaji's camera presents to us that aspect of nature in which even the stones seem about to speak.”