The Circus Tent (Aravindan, 1978): Barbican Cinema, 3.45pm
This film is part of the 'Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970' season at Barbican Cinema. Full details here.
Barbican introduction:
A visually stunning and poetic exploration of the inner lives of a
travelling circus trope in which old age, loneliness and regret becomes
magnified through Govindan Aravindan’s salient observation. In the dialogue-free opening to The Circus Tent, we
follow a truck as it meanders its way through the costal landscape of
Kerala, coming to a stop at a local town where the children come running
excitedly to greet the travelling circus. The arrival of the
circus feels ritualistic, celebratory, but more importantly an outlet
for the local people, an enthralling spectacle they can escape into for a
short time. The Circus Tent is hailed by many as Keralan filmmaker Govindan Aravindan’s masterpiece. The restoration of The Circus Tent in 2021 by the Film Heritage Foundation, India,
brings to life the extraordinary pictorial sensibilities of a film that
has thankfully been reclaimed and is now being rediscovered by a new
generation of filmgoers.
Here (and above) is an extract.
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