Govindan Aravindan
1935 - 1991He won the national award for the best director three times and was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India for his services to cinema.
Apart from film direction, Aravindan was also a well established cartoonist and painter. He also composed music for a handful of movies.
മാറാട്ടം
Govindan Aravindan
Sadanam Krishnankutty, Kalamandalam Kesavan
Panicker's one-act play deals with the relation of identification between an actor and his or her role. The action takes place on the eve of the last act of the Kathakali piece Keechakavadham (The Killing of Keechaka). The events surrounding the performance uncannily echo events in the play. One character even claims to have killed the lead actor of the play because he detested the character the man portrayed. However, the three different accounts that are presented of the same plot are never resolved or reconciled with each other. Each version is accompanied by a different style of folk music: the tune and rhythm of southern Kerala’s thampuran pattu, the pulluvan pattu and the ayappan pattu. The performers were drawn from the theatre and from Kathakali. In southern India, with its plethora of politicians using their film images to acquire inordinate wealth and power, Aravindan’s TV film bears on an eminently sensitive political as well as aesthetic issue.
Masquerade
ഒരിടത്ത്
Govindan Aravindan
Nedumudi Venu, Sreenivasan
In the 1950s a village in Kerala is preparing itself to be included in the nation's electric grid. Things are looking up for villagers and everyone is optimistic about the progress that electrification will bring. However soon some trouble brews starting with petty quarrels on trees being felled for the power lines. A series of unfortunate events follow the electrification as the village comes into terms with rapid modernization.
And There Was A Village
തമ്പു്
Govindan Aravindan
Jalaja, Nedumudi Venu
Across a dirt road, the circus truck comes to a village. The tent goes up. Schoolboys run to the tent. Village women come and watch an acrobat roll a hoop across a tightrope. A lion leaps from the edge of one stool - across darkness - on to another stool. A gap-toothed old woman gazes at a goat on a tight rope; her eyes are wide with curiosity. For three days the circus makes small ripples in the life of this village. Municipal permits are required. At a toddy shop, a soldier befriends the circus strongman; a pump attendant sits on a rock each day watching a village girl bathe and dry her hair. The dwarf brings back to the circus a watermelon larger than his head. In the film's three days, we, the viewers, learn the geography of the village: the banyan treewith leaves like transparent film, the shining water, the light on the sand at sunset. When the circus leaves the village, it leaves us. The narrative says: The circus comes and leaves; life goes on.
Thampu
കാഞ്ചനസീത
Govindan Aravindan
Ramdas, Keshav Panicker
The film interprets a story from the Uttara Kanda of the epic poem Ramayana, where Rama sends his wife, Sita, to the jungle to satisfy his subjects. Sita is never actually seen in the film, but her virtual presence is compellingly evoked in the moods of the forest and the elements. The film retells the epic from a womens' liberationist perspective, and is about the tragedy of power and the sacrifices that adherence to dharma demands, including abandoning a chaste wife.
Kanchana Sita
എസ്തപ്പാൻ
Govindan Aravindan
Rajan Kakkanadan, N L Balakrishnan
Esthappan is a fisherman, who lives in a seashore colony. His story unfolds through narrations by other fishermen about his miraculous acts. Through the contradictory statements of these people, a mystical figure of Esthappan unfolds.
Esthappan
Anadi-Dhara
Govindan Aravindan
A film about folk dances of India that deals with their broad classification with an assumption that these folk dances are governed by the moods and methods of their own with unlimited capacity to assimilate, improvise and vibrate with vitality.
The Unending Flow
പോക്കുവെയിൽ
Govindan Aravindan
Balachandran Chullikkadu, Kalpana
A young artist lives with his father, a radical friend, a sportsman and a music-loving young woman. His world collapses when his father dies, the radical friend leaves him, the sportsman gets injured in an accident and has to give up sports, and the woman is taken away by her parents to another city.
Pokkuveyil
