Aruna Vasudev was a woman of many talents. She was filmmaker, editor, writer, curator. She was founder-editor of Cinemaya, the world’s first journal on Asian cinema (1988), founder of NETPAC, the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (1990) and founder-director of Cinefan the festival of Asian films (1999). She was an institution-builder and institution-nurturer once it was established. Too often, publications and organisations are set up only to be derailed for lack of care. Aruna made sure that what she set up survived and thrived for several years at least. She received several accolades and awards in recognition of her work. She was widely acknowledged as the ‘Grande Dame of Asian Cinema’ for her promotion of the cinemas of Asia, the big as well as the small industries.
The phase of Aruna’s life where she set up Cinemaya, NETPAC and Cinefan, was a specific moment in the last decade of the last century, just before the digital age and new media took over, ushering in new forms of connectivity and access to information with the click of the mouse. Till the 1980s, Asian cinema was not known much, beyond the names of Akira Kurosawa or Satyajit Ray. We knew of Western cinema, their masters and movements in great detail but very little about the films from our own neighbourhood. Aruna was determined to make a change and turn the spotlight on Asian cinema, which she did in many ways.
Aruna Vasudev at Cannes. Photo: By arrangement.
The first issue of Cinemaya came out in October 1988 with four issues coming out on time every year. She wanted the magazine to compare well with the best in the world. Designers Satish Sud and Ashma Singh gave it its distinctive look: a large format, good paper to reproduce film stills well and ‘breathing space’ on the page with a Japanese feel (the films of Yasujiro Ozu come to mind) so that the magazine never looked ‘crammed’ with printed matter. Country profiles, ‘Director’s Column’, reviews of new Asian films, ‘Spotlight’ – which comprised a series of articles on Asian masters long gone, dossiers on well-known directors and actors, newsreel and festival reports… these were the many sections in the quarterly. The special issues of Cinemaya on censorship in Asian countries, diasporic Asian filmmakers, the West’s gaze on Asia, women filmmakers in Asian countries, the continent’s documentary films – are all collector’s items.
Left: The first issue of Cinemaya. Right: the special issue on censorship in Asia. Photo courtesy: Raman Chawla
Publishing a quarterly on films people had not seen made little sense. Aruna slowly and steadily expanded the range of activities from screening single films of Indian parallel cinema, to organising film weeks of Asian films (among the first were a focus on South Korean and Iranian cinema and a tribute to the Sri Lankan actress Anoja Weerasinghe), to programming Asian cinema sections at international film festivals in India and abroad (the first was a ‘Special Tribute to Jahnu Barua’ at Brussels), organising film appreciation courses in collaboration with the Alliance Française (including a scriptwriting workshop with the eminent French writer Jean Claude Carriere in 2001), and finally setting up Cinemaya’s own festival in Delhi of Asian films, the popular, annually-held Cinefan. Under Aruna’s indefatigable drive, Cinemaya had this ‘ripple effect’ of creating ever widening circles of activity to spread awareness of the myriad cinemas of our continent.
The New Waves in cinema, not just in India, but Kazakhstan, Hong Kong, Iran; the ‘Leftist Cinema’ of the 1930s or the ‘Fifth Generation’ in China; the little-known master Sadao Yamanaka or the images of the elderly in Japanese cinema; radical cinema from Philippines; the erotic and the exotic in Indonesian cinema; film posters in Thailand; documentary filmmakers in Pakistan; women in Turkish cinema; interviews and profiles of directors and actors – Mohammad Malas (Syria), Christopher Doyle (Hong Kong), Im Kwon-Taek (South Korea), Dang Nhat Minh (Vietnam); Michel Khleifi (Palestine), Bayram Bayzai (Iran); musings on France’s gaze on Indochina and Russia’s on Inner Asia…. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the large spectrum of themes Cinemaya covered.
All this required not just knowledge of cinema, but the ability to constantly raise funds, and keep abreast of all the latest news and happenings and Aruna was uniquely placed to do so. She was awarded her PhD degree at the University of Paris, Sorbonne and her thesis on censorship laws was published later as Liberty and License in Indian Cinema. She had been an assistant to the avant-garde French filmmaker Alain Resnais on one of his films. Through her travels in the ’80s to film festivals around the world, and her meetings with well-known Asian critics, Aruna had realised that there was much cinema to discover on this continent.
From left, Girish Kasaravalli, Shaji Karun, Aruna Vasudev, Mani Ratnam and Jahnu Barua. Photo: By arrangement.
She put together an Advisory Board for Cinemaya of some of the most eminent Asian cinema experts of the time. She had this huge network of critics writing for the quarterly from across Asia: Tadao Sato (Japan),Wong Ain-Ling (Hong Kong), Peggy Chiao Hsuing-Ping (Taiwan), Mohammad Attebai and Houshang Golmakani (Iran), Noel Vera and Clodualdo Del Mundo (Philippines), Ngo Phuong Lan (Vietnam), Zakir Husain Raju (Bangladesh), Ashley Ratnavibhushana (Sri Lanka), Atilla Dorsay and Mehmet Basutcu (Turkey), Gulnara Abikeeva from Kazakhstan, Jocelyn Saab (Lebanon)… The list was endless. She had equally well-known writers from the West who were experts on Asian cinema writing for Cinemaya: Tony Rayns, Ron Holloway, Jeannete Paulson, Max Tessier, Yves Thoraval, Donald Richie, Berenice Reynaud, Andrei Plakhov, Chris Berry, Paul Clark to name just a few.
Vietnam and its cinema were Aruna’s special love. The industries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Singapore were all covered with the socio-political context the films were made in.
Aruna was thorough in everything she did. A smattering of a few Asian countries would not pass muster nor could the coverage of Indian cinema ever overshadow the rest of the continent. Her vision was truly pan-Asian.
To raise funds for all these varied activities, Aruna put what Pierre Bourdieu called ‘social capital’ to good use. Her network in this too was formidable and she convinced several organisations such as the NFDC (the National Film Development Corporation) to fund the inaugural issue of Cinemaya, UNESCO for the first conference on the promotion of Asian cinema and the Delhi Government for several editions of the Cinefan International Film Festival along with advertisements and sponsorships from her friends. That Cinemaya was published regularly four times a year with no core funding, was a feat in itself.
Kim Dong Ho at the NETPAC Conference in Delhi. Photo: By arrangement.
Kim Dong-Ho from South Korea, who attended the first NETPAC conference in 1990 and was later the founder-director of one of the most important film festivals in the world, the Busan Film Festival, has stated that “My interest in films from other countries in Asia really started when I participated in the international seminar organised by Cinemaya in Delhi in 1990. It was a very good meeting because it was a great occasion to establish links. I met many film professionals and heads of institutions in Asia and have kept in touch with them”.
Cinemaya, Cinefan and NETPAC were born from Aruna’s warm and hospitable home, a ‘cottage industry complex’ that had global reach only because of Aruna, her vision and her networks.
Aruna Vasudev receiving the Medal of Honor from the city of Vesoul. Photo: FICA
Alongside all this, Aruna published books: her own edited volume Frames of Mind: Reflections on Indian Cinema; the co-edited Indian Cinema Superbazaar and Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia and a six-volume set on ‘The Legends of Indian Cinema’ of which she was the series editor, to mention a few. Of these, Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia, which is now out of print, remains the most authoritative compilation of articles on the film industries of our continent. She was also, along with the eminent Indian film writer, Chidananda Dasgupta, the founder of the Indian chapter of FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics).
Gregarious by nature, Aruna loved to have people around her. The Cinemaya office with its film posters, photographs, her wonderful collection of books, the art objects picked up from different places in the world had filmmakers, artists and writers from the East and West dropping by. There was never a dull moment around her. After a lot of hectic activity, she would suddenly say, “Oof, I’m exhausted” and retire to her bedroom, not for a siesta but to recharge by playing Nintendo!
Aruna saw to it that her own ideas were realized, but she was also alert and attentive to the ideas of others. When I suggested we should cover Central Asian and Caucasian countries (which were still republics of the Soviet Union when we started the journal), she agreed. I had the privilege then to travel to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and see some of the interesting films that were being made towards the end of perestroika under Gorbachev and after 1991 by the newly independent countries. The articles I wrote for Cinemaya on Tajik and Georgian cinema, were later republished by Peter Cowie at Variety International Film Guide, London.
It was in the nature of Aruna’s energy that she had to keep moving forward. She was incredibly talented and dynamic. Once she was done with Cinemaya and Cinefan, she started painting in the Japanese style. Lately, she had moved on to clay sculpture. She also organised Buddhist film festivals. When I saw her lying with a smile on her face on September 5 in her beautiful home, I had this uncanny feeling that she had not ‘passed away’, but had once again just moved on, in her characteristic way…
Dr Rashmi Doraiswamy was honorary executive editor of Cinemaya, the Asian Film Quarterly. She is Professor of International Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia.
