Yamustafa!

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is one of India's greatest filmmakers. He has scripted and directed eleven feature films and several shorts and documentaries. Adoor is the pioneer of the New Cinema movement in Kerala . According to an account of the British Film Institute only two filmmakers from India have won the BFI’s Sutherland Trophy for most original and imaginative film — Satyajit Ray and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Adoor has won the International Film Critics Prize six times, and in 2002 the Smithsonian Institution honoured him with a complete retrospective of his work. Adoor pioneered the film society movement in Kerala and formed India’s first film co-operative for production, distribution and exhibition. In the clip below he answers questions from Twitter, Facebook and email, as part of the BFI's Ask an Expert series. Thanks to BFI for making this possible!   Click for a Short List of Movies of A. Gopalakrishnan     Interview Why are your films n...

Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Nizhalkkuthu or Shadow Kill 2003 Boy what a job! To be a hangman! Ironically it is a privileged job that can only be inherited! And guess what? You could get a promotion and retirement benefits and be  the only licensed hangman in the state or maybe one of only three in the country! After all, according to Canadian poet Margaret Atwood in her poem “ Marrying the Hangman”: The hangman is not such a bad fellow. The hangman is not such a bad fellow.The hangman is not such a bad fellow.The hangman is not such a bad fellow.The hangman is not such a bad fellow. Let's examine some of what these horrible professionals had to say. The hangman who wrongfully executed a man in Liverpool in 1950 (his story was also made into a 2005 movie) has been quoted as stating that the hanging took longer than `it should have', raising the question: how did you (manage) to kill him, then? Modern research in countries that banned this tool for effecting capital ...