A Far Afternoon – A painted saga by Krishen Khanna

National Award Winner 2016, A Far Afternoon – A painted saga by Krishen Khanna @ 14th Chennai International Film Festival.

After travelling to various international  film festivals and winning 2 national awards, A Far Afternoon is finally being screened at home grounds at the 14th Chennai International Film Festival.

Date: 11th Jan

Venue: The Russian Culture.

Time: 11.30am

Please follow: http://chennaifilmfest.com/schedule/ for the final schedule timing which may be subject to a last minute change.

Filmmaker Sruti Harihara will be available for interaction with audience .

A Far Afternoon – A painted saga by Krishen Khanna is a feature documentary directed by Sruti Harihara Subramanian ( Film maker ) & produced by Piramal Art Foundation Mumbai.

It has recently won in the following categories below:

National Award for Best Art /Cultural Film

National Award for Best Music (Non-Feature)

Festivals/Awards:

1. 63rd National Film Awards – Best Art/Cultural film
2. 63rd National Film Awards – Best music (non feature film category)

      3.13.Indian Film Festival, Stuttgart – Nominated for Best Documentary – July 2016

4. New York Indian Film Festival – Nominated for Best Documentary – May 2016
5. 3rd Cinema Indien, Stockholm – Official selection – April 2016
6. All Lights India International Film Festival – Official Selection

Krishnen Khanna

Krishnen Khanna is one of India’s most prolific and influential artists. Born in Faislabad (Pakistan) in 1925, and raised in Lahore, the artist and his family moved to Shimla in India during the partition in 1947, a fact that deeply impacted his view on the world. Atypical of artists in the 1940s and 50s, Mr. Khanna was a full-time banker and a part-time artist; his job brought him to Mumbai and into the fold of India’s Progressive Artists Group, giving him the impetus to relinquish banking and give into the all-encompassing life of an artist.

In a career spanning over fifty years, Krishen Khanna(90) has established himself as one of the most prolific and influential painters in the Indian art landscape. The film delves into those influences that eventually rendered themselves on canvas Art freezes a series of moments in time. To hear Krishnen Khanna describe the influences behind A Far Afternoon, it is obvious that the piece has been influenced by memories collected over time, discrete images lodged in the artist’s mind and more nascent, less visible thoughts and ideas that dictate the choice of figures and colours. A film in five parts, A Far Afternoon, delves into those influences that eventually rendered themselves on canvas. A Far Afternoon is a filmmaker’s attempt to memorialize the artistic process involved in the creation of the eponymous art work.

Sruti Harihara Subramanian

Sruti Harihara Subramanian is a graduate in Visual Communication from the University of Madras.

Sruti has worked as assistant to actor/director Revathy in the tele film ‘Verrukku Neer’. She later assisted director Vikram K Kumar on the bilingual feature film Yaavarum Nalam (Tamil) and 13B (Hindi). She assisted director Vishnu Vardhan on a Telugu film ‘Panjaa’. She was the assistant director for British pop icon MIA’s music video ‘Bird flu’ and in Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music video ‘I’ll be there for you’.

Sruti is also the founder trustee of The Cinema Resource Centre (TCRC) which is a not-for-profit public archive of Indian cinema designed to enable research on the audio-visual cultural artifacts produced by Indian films, especially those made in the regional languages of South India.

Sruti is an active member in her city’s theatre group.

Sruti has acted in Mega Serial ‘Sahana’ directed by veteran K.Balachandran. She also acted in the serial ‘Chidambara Rahasyam .

She has won the title Ms.Chennai, runner up along with the titles of Ms.Talent and Ms. Cyber princess. Ever since she has modelled for over 100 brands.

‘A Far Afternoon’ is Sruti’s debut feature film.

Director’s Speaks: When the producers of the film approached me to make a documentary on Krishen Khanna it seemed straight forward at first. Krishen, is a legendary Indian artist who came out of the post independence group of Moderns called the Progressive Artists Group. From the 1940’s till present, he has been working and growing. Today he is one of the strongest pillars of Modern Indian Art.

I was also told that at the age of 90, Krishen was attempting to paint the largest canvas of his career, I immediately started to think of what to do. What the outcome of the painting would be was still not known as the painting was in progress. So at first we just started to film the artist working in his studio. He was so engaging as a person that we decided to spend a lot of time with him at his home, studio and on his occasional travel from Delhi to Mumbai.

To see a work of art grow in front of our eyes is fascinating. Krishen’s method of painting is very meditative not just for him as a painter but also for us as the viewer. As the director of the film my challenge was to communicate that meditative process to my audience.

When documenting a creative process it is inevitable that your own creative processes grow and combine with that of the subject. During our time spent with the artist he had mentioned several times that ‘he grows along with his paintings’. As my team progressed with our own work we realized that we too grew with our own creative thoughts with every schedule. So it was inevitable that members of each department, the cinematographer, the sound team or editor, were imbibing the thoughts and ideas that the artist was sharing and in return they too adapted the language of their profession to best capture what was being spoken and created in front of us.

After six months of filming Mr. Krishen Khanna we finally went to edit. After a lot of thinking I decided that the journey of the film will be the journey of the painting which in turn will tell us the journey of this great artist. By the end of the edit I felt I became one with the artist. This meant that I was literally learning every word that the artist spoke, every movement of his brush and every little nuance that made him.

Krishen’s painting is very simple and it reaches out to a large demographic of people. But the thought behind his paintings are intense and with a lot of sensitivity. Krishen once told me that ‘if I am not sensitive to a lot of things then I am not an artist’. Unaware I believe my film too is simple and communicates to a wide demographic of people while I have become a more sensitive film maker through my journey of making this film over ten months.

SRUTI HARIHARA SUBRAMANIAN