Alliance Française of Hyderabad invites you to meet the director of the documentary ” Around the River”, Arnaud Mandagaran. The talk will be moderated by Aparajita Sinha, daughter of Bimal Roy, a pioneer of Indian cinema, director of classics including Bandini, Sujata and Do Bigha Zamin, and Manobina Roy, one of the earliest women photographers of India.
About “Around the River” (Documentary | 52 minutes)
“Around the River” is a documentary about the making of Jean Renoir’s film The River (1951).
After The Rules of the Game’s failure, Jean Renoir emigrated to America where he lived nine continuous years and made six films. His relationship with Hollywood studios became very difficult.
In 1949, he flew to India with the intention to make an extraordinary film, The River: six months of shooting, a neophyte producer, non professional actors…Jean Renoir’s last “American” film became so internationally popular that Hollywood studios regretted not having produced it.
Fifty years later, from Calcutta to Los Angeles, Arnaud Mandagaran searched for unpublished exceptional documents and people who witnessed this adventure. These stories and documents allowed him to understand the genesis of a masterpiece of world cinema, and to tell us how The River became Jean Renoir’s resurrection.
“Beyond the pleasure to see how Renoir shared my passion for India, I think I was mostly touched by the discovery of his humaneness.” Arnaud Mandagarann
About Arnaud Mandagaran:
Arnaud Mandagaran was born in Paris in1949. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris at Nanterre (1968/1971) and discovered the Indian sub-continent in the early 1970s, a part of the world that has remained for him a subject of interest. Indeed most of his documentary films have been on South Asian subjects.
About Aparajita Sinha:
Daughter of Bimal Roy, a pioneer of Indian cinema, director of classics including Bandini, Sujata and Do Bigha Zamin, and Manobina Roy, one of the earliest women photographers of India, Aparajita has been a freelance journalist in Bombay, Calcutta, and Hyderabad. In Calcutta she imbibed a love for the arts and cinema. She and her family moved to Hyderabad in 1986. She is a cultural activist, passionate about films ad cinema. She has subtitled films for NFDC and was in London as part of a team making a multicultural chat show with Shekhar Kapur as host. She has made some short films, which were telecast on television (DD national) and Britain’s Channel. She is also currently Vice President of the Society to Save Rocks, an environmental body working to save the rockscapes of Hyderabad.