On November 14 a telefilm of a different kind will screened. (DD 2, 10:30 p.m.) It presents the lifetime of Prabhupada, the founder of the worldwide institution - Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Don't groan. It is about Prabhupada the person and not a long drawn spiel about the mission and its guru.

Filmed by Gaurav Seth (no he isn't a sanyasin) whose debut film The Art Of Dying was selected for this year's Bombay International Film Festival is a must viewing for it's fresh treatment considering the subject which does not allow for dramatizing while avoiding the propaganda angle at the same time.

Seth, trained at the Russian Federation State Institute of Cinematography treats the film in a unique style of his own. The film traces the life and time of Prabhupada but nowhere does the film get laudatory and sermonizing. In fact it is a genre of documentary film making where the whole story is narrated, events recreated, emotions revealed, all without using any central character or protagonist. The film focuses on his life in India and ends with his departure to the west. Strangely, this gives the impression that the guru never returned to India which is not true. Though the institution is flourishing in the west and has a considerable following there, Prabhupada did return to India to take Samadhi. All along the viewer gets an insight of a span of seventy years which is done convincingly with the use of extremely old structures and sepia tone. Specifically the sequence depicting the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1909 shot with SteadyCam are memorable. So are the sequences which depict Calcutta nearly a hundred years ago.

Ask him about it and the 27-year-old Seth quips,"It was more of a challenge recreating that period while depicting Calcutta. Our production team went crazy looking for that vintage car you see in the foreground. Just when we convinced ourselves that we could do without it, that vintage car you see in the film just happened to pass by!" God sent, hmm?

Indian Express
November 4, 1996