Shyam Benegal made Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Amrish Puri wear same clothes for 45 days in blistering heat: Making of Manthan

Here’s a quick look at the other Indian entries. Sandhya Suri’s ‘Santosh’, starring Shahana Goswami is in Un Certain Regard. Karan Kandhari’s ‘Sister Midnight’, with Radhika Apte, is in the Director’s Fortnight, which runs parallel to the festival. Kapadia’s FTII batchmate Maisam Ali’s ‘In Retreat’ with Harish Khanna is in the Cannes sidebar ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) programme; yet another FTII production, the short film, Chidananda Naik’s ‘Sunflowers Were The First To Know’ is in the La Cinef competition. And Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s set-in-India ‘The Shameless’ has been programmed in the Un Certain Regard. ‘Sauna Day’, a short directed by Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash, is in Critics’ Week.

Outside of the screenings, whizz cinematographer Santosh Sivan is being honoured with the Pierre Angenieux award. He will also hold a master-class. Clearly, this time around more talent on the red carpet will be walking for their films, holding the flag aloft for independent India cinema, not just as brand clotheshorses from mainstream Bollywood. And about time, too.

Also Read | How Shyam Benegal’s Manthan, to be screened at Cannes, was one of the earliest examples of a crowdfunded film

A poster of Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)

‘Manthan’, Benegal’s third film (fourth if you count ‘Charandas Chor), after the ground-breaking ‘Ankur’ and ‘Nishant’, is a lightly-fictionalised account of India’s most successful co-operative movement which revolutionised the collection and production of milk. The feature was commissioned by Dr Verghese Kurien, the pioneer who set up Amul, the nodal agency which connected dairy farmers directly with consumers: so massive was the impact of this radical move, with its illustrious linkages going back to Sardar Patel and his close associate Tribhuvan Das Patel, that it facilitated what became known as Operation Flood and the ‘White Revolution’, fulfilling India’s founding fathers’ dream of making potable milk easily available in every home.

The 1976 film, written by Benegal and Vijay Tendulkar, came after two documentaries on the same subject. “Dr Kurien felt that the story of Amul and the tremendous work done on the ground by the farmers’ co-operative, and that’s how ‘Manthan’ was made,” says Benegal, 89. It won National Awards for the Best Feature Film, and Best Screenplay (for Vijay Tendulkar) in 1977, and was India’s Oscar submission that year.

And now it’s set for a grand revival, with a screening in the Classics Section of the festival, in a sparkling restored version. Benegal tells me over the phone from Mumbai how ‘absolutely delighted’ he is at ‘Manthan’s second coming. “This restored version looks like the film I wanted to shoot,” he said. The film’s cinematographer Govind Nihalani, Benegal’s constant collaborator, is equally satisfied with the way the film looks now. “The negative was in a terrible condition when we got it in 2014 from Shyam Babu asking if we could do something with it, and I’m so happy that it is now the film it was meant to be,” says Shivendra Dungarpur, who has restored the 35 mm print beset by green moulds and fading flicker problems.

Benegal won’t be present at the Cannes screening because of health reasons, but Nira, his wife, will be there. So will Naseeruddin Shah, in his first Cannes foray, as well as Prateik Babbar, the late Smita Patil’s son, and her sisters Anita and Manya. Nirmala Kurien, the daughter of Dr Verghese Kurien, who has very clear memories of ‘watching the film’s first cut’ as a little girl, is also looking forward to the screening. “We are also trying to get a few farmers, now in their 70s, on the red carpet,” says Dungarpur. Now that will be a sight. And once back from Cannes, plans are underway to release the film in 40 cities across India.

Shyam Benegal and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur at Film Heritage Foundation.

Dungarpur, whose Film Heritage Foundation works tirelessly in discovering and preserving forgotten prints of old classics, may safely be dubbed as India’s Cannes darling. He will be back on the Croisette the third year running (‘Thamp’ and ‘Ishanou’ were screened respectively 2022 and 2023 in the Classics section; his first foray was with ‘Kalpana’ in 2012) with the Benegal classic which is India’s first crowd-funded film: each farmer of Kheda district contributed Rs 2, and the opening credit reads, ‘Produced by 500, 000 farmers’.

“My father was such a stickler for discipline, so he couldn’t understand the lax ways of these film folks’, laughs the Chennai-based Nirmala, 66. She remembers a ‘shy, unassuming, dusky’ young woman in ‘torn jeans’ standing quietly by herself on the day of that first cut, and then discovering what a powerhouse performer Smita Patil was, unforgettable as the feisty village woman Bindu, who persuades the other womenfolk to become part of the collective. ‘I will be there to bask in the reflected glory of my father, who really was the man who saw tomorrow,” she says.

Girish Karnad and Smita Patil in Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)For someone who claims he doesn’t remember much — the film was made nearly 50 years back– Benegal has great memories of the shoot. The cast stayed in the only circuit house, ‘whitewashed the walls, cleaned up the place, and created toilet blocks (the villagers went into the fields in the morning). The cooks they had brought along from Bombay didn’t last long, so ‘it all was a bit rough, but I loved it,’ laughs Benegal. “Amrish Puri would wake up at 5.30 and make everyone do PT! So we stayed in good health. And everyone became part of the village. And now I can sit back as an old man, and say we did that.”