Thamp̄ (The Circus Tent). 1978. India. Directed by Aravindan Govindan. With Bharath Gopi, Nedumudi Venu, D. P. Nair, Sreedharan Chambad, Jalaja. Digital restoration by Film Heritage Foundation, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post Studios, Chennai and L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna in association with Producer K. Ravindranathan Nair of General Pictures and the family of Aravindan Govindan; restoration funding provided by Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd. and The Film Heritage Foundation. Courtesy Film Heritage Foundation. In Malayalam; English subtitles. 129 min.
An itinerant circus troupe comes to a small town in the southern Indian state of Kerala, puts on a show, touches some lives, and moves on in Aravindan Govindan’s groundbreaking feature, largely improvised and shot in a documentary style. Govindan’s experimental approach was an early, direct challenge to the primacy of the Bollywood template. “Images unfold like a Hindustani raga, a journey through a mystical world where the real and unreal merge seamlessly, where genre and form have no boundaries, a contemplative, meditative reverie in a unique visual language—that is Govindan” (Shivendra Singh Dungarpur).