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The Flying Bird'
1989 90’ col English d/co-s Vishnu Mathur p/co-s C.S. Lakshmi c K.K. Mahajan lp Savithri Rajan
A beautifully crafted and meditative documentary portrait shot on 16mm of the 80- year-old Madras-based Savithri Rajan, a virtuoso veena player who never performed in public. She was the disciple of the legendary musicians Tiger Varadachari and Veenai Dhanammal. The film is built around her music and family memories with K.K. Mahajan’s sensuous camera gliding through the spaces of her life or simply recording the aged but lively Rajan’s voice and music. Savithri Rajan’s extraordinary presence is the film’s focus, but Mathur manages to convey the complex interrelations between personal, familial, artistic and social rhythms of change, achieving the rare feat of doing justice to the accomplishments of the individual artist while at the same time suggesting how social elements constrained as well as nourished her life and her art.