cremaster 1, kunku, kaliya mardan, other phalke shorts

the first of the cremaster cycle has two blimps like breasts floating over a football field and a woman under a table guarded by four stern air hostesses stealing grapes and making pretty patterns with them. these patterns are replicated by saucer clad women on the fiel below. overplayed american cheerleader camp- femininity on the football ground. a tense erotic play without men as the contortions of the girl below the table are followed in careful detail over an entire hour. 

in shantaram’s incredible ‘kunku’ all melodrama is played out in the house of the older lawyer who marries a much younger woman to recapture his passing youth. in the house the girl strains at the tradition that has constrained her- but unable to recognise that it is the chain- even when the husband forces her to wipe the indoor off her forehead she resists that freedom. she is asked to step into the light- she is terrified of it as much as fascinated by it. along the way there are songs in english with no subtitles for its marathi viewers, the maar dala original that led to bhansali’s reference; and the easy turn of the archetypical relationship like the strangely incestuous moments when the stepson flirts with his new mother or the stepdaughter becomes the comforting mother to her father’s new wife when she cradles her in her arms; or that last scene when the husband adopts his wife as his daughter. this was 1937?

like filming a child's theater production, phalke films his daughter as krishna and stages shenanigans like stealing butter, seducing villagers with his music and other mischief- until he falls into the river and emerges dancing on the hood of the black snake. the other shorts that accompanied were more interesting- if only in the number of special effects- whether it was bhakt parched when the elephant stops in his tracks when faced with devotion; or the birth of krishna in which the head of kansa flies up and returns and later multiple krishna dance around him or sant tukaram in which we did not see tuna rise into the sky. however, the most interesting was what seemed like documentary footage of people making bricks.