From a 40 year-old VHS: glimpses of Indian village life without anybody telling you what to think! Made up from documentary out-takes, photographed on 16mm film by the great John McGlashan in Karnataka, Maharastra, and Haryana in 1980.
These scenes are extremely familiar to me.i grew up in a village in south karnataka.i was one among them.it was hardship to everyone but no misery ,no fun ,it was serious business of survival and living.i really thank the creators of this film, it is a price less piece of document.42 years down the lane india in general has changed a lot to a better one.todays India though still developing by world standard,has prospered so much so that youngsters cannot even imagine how india was poor and backward then.what ever changed it is all good,i never regret.it is good you cannot see such village scenes in today's india.
What is striking is the sheer amount of knowledge contained within a village - how to take care of cattle, how to attach a cart to a bullock, how and when to harvest, how to prepare fantastically tasty meals with few resources, pottery, weaving, masonry, cattle rearing, well-digging. All this knowledge contained in the microcosmos of the village, and passed down from generation to generation for hundreds and thousands of years.
The scenes were shot in and around the villages of Puri and Ungra in Karnataka, the village of Jamkhed in Maharastra, and Umri in Haryana. I'd love to see what they look like now...
