Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Kamaleswar Mukherjee’s 2013 film, Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain), on Tuesday July 5 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427). The screening is part of the course Genre and Modern South Asian Literatures at LMU. Anyone interested in genre, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.
Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain), a beloved Bengali adventure novel written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay in 1937, is not an easy book to bring to the big screen. Key plot points include an erupting volcano and a prehistoric-looking beast, not to mention deadly spiders, snakes and lions. The story follows Shankar (Dev), a young Indian man beset with wanderlust. He can hardly believe his good fortune when he lands a job as a station manager along a Ugandan railroad, which means he’ll be living alone in the wilderness of Africa visited by people only when the train makes its brief daily stop. The latter half of the movie involves Shankar’s friendship with another adventurer, Diego Alvarez (Gerard Rudolf), and their journey to find riches in the Richtersveld, a mountainous desert region in South Africa. Director Kamaleswar Mukherjee shot the film primarily in South Africa, and the vistas and animals are breathtaking. – Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post
Rita Banerjee 