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Indradhanura Chhai'
aka The Shadows of the Rainbows 1993 112’ col Oriya d/co-s Sushant Misra pc Visual Link p Janapriya Debata co-s Devdas Chhotray c Jugal Debata m Vikas Das lp Robin Das, Vijaini Misra, Surya Mohanty, Muktabala Rautray, Bidyut Lata Devi
With hypnotic visual rhythms and a remarkable mise-en-scene of emotional tonalities, Mishra shows the lives of three women living in the modernising town of Bhubhaneshwar, its skyline still dominated by magnificent temple architecture. Vijaya’s husband died a few days after their wedding and she does not know how a woman in her situation can cope with her tender feelings for a kind local teacher. Her friend Sonia provides a graphic example of a woman desperately torn between modernity and traditional notions of female virtue, while Aunt Nila has difficulty facing up to the ageing process. The film tells its tale by way of meditative sequence shots and framings which constantly remind viewers of the conflictual existence of the forces of life (luscious trees, plants and other signs of irrepressible life) with the dry, decaying monuments of an outdated but still suffocatingly dominant premodern society, its oppressiveness as well as its achievements graphically represented by the ever-present temple spires.