Artconcerns.com,july2007

Paris Autumn: Pushpamala Speaks

Internationally acclaimed artist Pushpamala N recently presented her 2006 film Paris Autumn at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore. Rollie Mukherjee and Divakar catch up with the artist to know more about her film project. Excerpts from the interview:

Rollie Mukherjee and Divakar: The title Paris Autumn reminds us of R.B.Kitaja’s famous painting titled ‘The Autumn of Central Paris’ (1972-74), in which he generates a narrative out of fragments and randomness and also refers to the 17th century authority and has a sense of historical catastrophe. Did you in any case refer to this painting?

Pushpamala N: Of course my work is about Paris but I didn’t think at all about Kitaj’s work. It’s a coincidence. Since I was in Paris in the autumn I thought the title would suit.

RM&D: The way you end the movie clearly shows that your focus was more on psychological exposition or description rather than on crime solving and so the narrative has a sense of incompleteness. The angst remains…


The First Visitation-video still by Pushpamala

PN: My work doesn’t have a pessimistic ending. It has an upbeat ending. It might be an existential thriller but structurally I based my work on a quote by Walter Benjamin, where he says that Paris is like Mt Vesuvius. As it is fertilized constantly by volcanic eruptions in the same way the city of Paris is fertilized by constant revolutions and out of its lava artists are born.

RM&D: In your earlier photo-performances like Phantom lady, Dard-e- Dil, Native Woman or Kismet you were talking about the stereotypes by getting into the skin of the characters by masquerading or imitating the characters which have shaped the psyche of the people in the subcontinent. Now what role do you play in this video?

PN: In this video I am myself as a character for the first time. Some people said my work is very nostalgic. But I don’t think so. I used varied styles and merged histories. The film is actually very contemporary though it talks about 16th century history. Initially I wanted to recreate the ghost exactly like the character Gabrielle who was 25 years of age. I had a friend who was willing to do the role but she was double the age of Gabrielle. It would be ridiculous if she had to dress up like the painting and I felt it’s not necessary. I insisted her to dress normally and because she was also fashionable and a typical Parisian, she looked elegant in the contemporary dress. So it has nothing to do with 16th century look at all.

I have used a lot from my earlier work Phantom lady. Lot of people told me that the chapel scene is like the film Da Vinci Code. I myself have not seen it.
In this work history keeps coming. Like the Louvre building was erected by Henri IV and the chapel in which I shot by was his first wife Margo. Like in the film Phantom Lady you get simultaneously a grandeur and humble setting this work also if you see the chapel everything over there is fake. There were copies of Michelangelo. Everything was copy. You get a sense of kitsch and grandiose at the same time. Everything is put together, its looks very funny.

RM&D: Past is something which comes and goes. Interestingly your film has a quasi documentary mode and you simultaneously sway between the 16th century and contemporary time/space.

PN: Actually it’s a very complex film. I wanted to use history in the work very carefully, in the sense that I wanted to be very brief but meaningful at the same time. This is of course not a fiction. It has a documentary sense as well. During my stay in Paris there were lot of tension and hostile atmosphere. I didn’t shoot the riots directly. It couldn’t happen. We were even attacked. So I got most of my images from Google.
The film has different textures. Most people asked why I used images from Google, when everything was so personalized. Why this particular history? I feel this because it is so much to do with my culture and from where I come. Moreover this particular history has been forgotten in France. Louis XIV, Louis XVI who belongs to the same family is remembered but not Henry IV. This part has become like prehistory.

RM&D: In almost all your earlier works you have talked about a stereotypical representation of Indian women. Even your first video talks about a perfect /ideal domestic mother fulfilling her maternal duties without questioning the culturally assigned roles. In this video how do you perceive feminity? Particularly a character like Gabrielle who on the one hand was regarded as an icon of love and intellectually reputed women and on the other hand known as “the dutchess of filth”?

PN: I don’t want to directly deal with feminity as such in this film. Gabrielle’s history was very complex. It was said that she and her sister was society beauties and their father pushed his daughters to become mistresses of powerful men. Henry IV was childless from his first marriage and his relation with Gabrielle was very famous love affair. She was in her early 20’s and was intelligent and very powerful woman. She was very complex character. Whether she was poisoned or she died of miscarriage is still a mystery. Even this period can’t be seen in black and white. That was a very complex structure, moralistic men patronized prostitutes. It was nothing like Victorian period. There was no king for 30 years in Paris. It was a very turbulent period. There was continuous warfare. The king of Spain was trying to control France.
So she cannot be a stereotype. She is a very specific historical character. She can’t be this or that. She is very complex.

RM&D: How do you categorize your recent work? Is it a feature or video or something in-between? Away from Gothic thriller did you have any inspiration from film Noirs or neo-noirs which invite the viewers in its game?

PN: Noir, I have used only as a style. I don’t want my movie to be this or that. It’s so boring if you fit into types. The footage of the riots was available in black and white. I like noir style, fast thriller form. I didn’t want slowly pace history narrative. I like the book “In the Name of Rose”. It’s not a very usual detective story. It talks about crime, murder at the same time also about knowledge, religion, moral and social material. It’s about investigation. It’s a thriller but serious.
Lot people found a strong influence of Da Vinci code in my work. I was more affected more by “In the name of rose”.

RM&D: Are you voicing any subjective position?

PN: I don’t want to. I was conscious of it. I didn’t want to talk about “gaze”. It has become cliché now. Men look women, women look…
Western filmmakers come here and without working much or having much knowledge about our culture they comment about it. I am going from a non- western country and commenting on the social problem there. Most reviews which came about my work felt that the riot part is unimportant or something added up.
In fact I was concerned about it from the very beginning. The movie starts by focusing on the painting of Caravaggio “Fortune teller” in Louvre. I start with an Egyptian woman reading the palm of a French man. It started with that, as I wanted to give some warning about the future.
More and More the French Government kept the racial problem under the carpet. Nothing is done about it. The riots actually happened at the suburbs of the city. In the 70’s workers quarters were erected all around the factories outside Paris. Slowly the factories got closed down. These quarters are having very inhuman conditions of living. These congested building blocks were made like beehives.

RM&D: why did you make the movie out of still photographs?

PN: In the past I had already worked with still photographs. So I felt it would be a further extension of it. The way I have used headings before each chapters so that there is no mystery, everything is announced before the things are happening. Initially I wanted to use voiceover but for this I needed a very continuous narrative with a beginning and an end. But my materials were very disjunctive and there were lots of facts. I needed to explain a lot of things. Here in Paris Autumn I wanted to use text as “Rastriya Kir”. I didn’t want to use the scroll pattern; rather I wanted to explore the text in different ways by abbreviating it. I used the comic book format and also google information format. Google format has different scripts. Speaking is far more conversation. I wanted to use different tones/ voices.

RM&D: What were the problems you encountered while editing or montage?

PN: The editing and sound design in my movie is done by a trained photographer Sankalp Meshram. He himself is a filmmaker, a FTII product. I do my creative work on the editing table. It’s not a technical thing at all for me. Actually we worked on sound and image simultaneously. Generally we do a rough cut and give it to a sound designer but for this film we were creating sound/visual and script together which is usually not done. We put all the materials together and made chapters separately according to the narration. We segregated the chapel scene from that of house and café. Made the narrative visual and sound together. It took one and a half month for editing this 35minutes film. Normally a three hours commercial movie editing is done within one month because they have a set story. In this case we developed the form and editing simultaneously. The editing was done in two sessions. First we put all photos in sequential order and try to figure it out what that was all about. It can’t be a linear narrative I thought. First I wanted to use the material as a diary or travelogue. There was a need of a huge structure which can directly be connected as my project was to use Euro- French visual culture/cinema/popular art/theatre. Actually I didn’t have a movie camera, so I started working with a still camera.

RM&D: How did you frame your subplots to create different layers of meaning within the otherwise historical ghost narrative that is allusion to riot (Godhra) by images of riots in Europe or the subtext of your cultural position by means of music and sound?

PN: I stayed in a very beautiful building in Paris but didn’t know anything about the story of Gabrielle. Fortunately, I met a young photographer named Cedric Sartore who showed his keenness to work with me. I rented the room from a gallery owner who stayed downstairs and he told me about Gabrielle’s tragic death. I saw the original painting in Louvre. Initially I want to recreate the painting. Finally I changed the idea. It is the shot of ghost. I edited in India. I took black and white photographs in contact prints. The ghost in the film is not a real ghost. It’s an omen. Whenever I see her she directs me to violence first to 16th century religious war or the second time I encounter her in the chapel she directs me to the recent riots. I don’t want to directly talk about anything. The 16th century was religious; the present day is both religious and racial. I don’t want both to be connected very directly. They are like different chapters of book but formally different.

RM&D: Your move we feel is from a very parody/ comic mode to a very serious one.

PN: No, I don’t think so. Some people consider my Paris Autumn in fact to be very funny. Even in my earlier photo stills “Phantom Lady” or “Sunhere Sapne” there is an undercurrent of sadness or melancholy. So what I am trying to say is that there is not one thing but different things happening.



RM&D: in your earlier interview you have stated that your works are primarily oriented towards the audience of the Indian Subcontinent. Now with this video where would you place your audience?

PN: Why not people of vernacular background understand my work? Why are you seeing my work as a commercial movie? My movies are not shown in theatres like commercial movies. In Heggodu, which is a cultural centre in Sagar, Karnataka, they have their own cultural village theatre centre. Every year they have cultural workshops and international film screenings. The synopsis or a longer explanation of the film is given to the people before the screening. Since my childhood I saw movies of different languages without knowing anything about the language even without subtitles. I don’t generally use dialogues because I am not a professional actor nor are the people I ask to act in my movies know anything about acting. Moreover I need to work with low resources. I love Indian silent films with titles in 3 languages, local/ national/ international.

I am directing at some audience who have seen my photographs earlier. Also there are certain practical things, I can’t act. Its very difficult to mug up the lines. Problem is also to work with computers. Most people also prefer English. I am planning to do movies in 3 languages but I want to show to the same audience. In my Paris autumn I have no dialogue or speech. I use only text. Moreover I am talking to the people who know English. You cannot contain the whole world. I am of course talking to specific people. I am showing my work in both art shows and film festivals sometimes in the form of installation also. Paris Autumn was in fact screened in Bangalore film festival, also as a solo show in Milan film festival. Film Societies are screening my movies.

RM&D: what are your future projects are you thinking of returning to your earlier conventional ways of sculpting sometime?

PN: I keep on improvising. I don’t know. I generally work from one work to next. I take a long time to work. I want to do one more movie on recipe. I have to work out how to make use of visuals and text differently. You have to wait and see!
Even if I return to sculpture it would not be conventional!



Paris Autumn
Video made from Black and White photographs
35minutes, English
Production: Pushpamala. N
Script and Direction: Pushpamala.N
Photography: Cedric Sartore, Pushpamala. N
Editing and sound: Sankalp Meshram
Cast: Pushpamala, Ghost: Gabrielle Soyer, Cedric: Cedric Vincent.
Friends: Bernard and Gwenolee Zurcher, Galeristes.
Computer Friend: Cedric Sartore.