Phantom India 1
1969-07-25 | Documentary | 7 episodes1 Season
Episode
Reflections in a Lens (1969)
How can you capture in the lens of a film camera the essence of a country so diverse, so variegated, and so paradoxical as India?
A Barbarian in Madras (1969)
Southern India pretends to know nothing about the North. Its language is different, its very nature too. In Madras Louis Malle discovers a striking example of that world of opposites to be found in traditional India: thousands cramming the streets at a strange ceremony centuries old, and a family planning clinic; a film studio making folk-lore musicals, and the famous Kalachetra dance school where dancing is itself a language, a prayer, an invocation to God.
Holy India (1969)
Louis Malle finds a devotion to a spiritual life that transcends the poverty of the material one and discovers that in a country as crowded as India, religion is the one way for the individual to be alone.
Shadow Without Substance (1969)
Drifting at random through the numberless villages of the South, Louis Malle finds himself in a timeless, fantastic, and to a western eye, almost surrealist world. Kerala is like a dream, with its exotic lagoons, game reserves and palm-fringed beaches - a species of tropical Paradise Lost. At the same time it's a battleground for the conflicting forces of Capitalism and Maoism, a land where even the Communists are split into three separate parties, and democracy and collectivism wrestle with the traditions of a country that by nature rejects them both.
Invisible Frontiers (1969)
Although officially abolished, the caste system has not ceased to exert a strong influence on Indian social life. It is not a problem of colour, race nor even of class. It is far subtler and harder to pin down, as Louis Malle discovers as soon as he starts to ask those awkward questions about caste that Indians are reluctant to answer. For the Hindu, division into castes is like a law of nature, a logical expression of his vision of the Universe. Castes are religious boundaries that run through heads and through hearts but not along the ground; they are those invisible frontiers of the mind that to India are so natural and to the West so incomprehensible.
