'''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the dry, decaying monuments of an outdated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.

[[Film]]