Content area
Full Text
DOCUMENTATION OF KOODIYATTAM. Produced by Margi. Thiruvananthapuram, India, 2000. 3 DVDs/NTSC: each one hour. Subtitled in English. $150.00. Web site: <www.margitheatre.org>.
In 1998 UNESCO created an international distinction, "Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity," and invited member states to nominate one form of cultural expression for this honor. India selected kutiyaltam, the Sanskrit theatre of Kerala State. Margi became the nodal arts institution for preparing the candidature file. The acclaimed filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan agreed to direct the documentary needed for the UNESCO application-if he could shoot in a kuttampalam, a theatre within a temple compound where kutiyattam was traditionally presented. Strings were pulled to use the sixteenth-century temple theatre at Kitangur, the oldest of the surviving kuttampalam. A special camera was flown in from Mumbai. Round-the-clock shooting produced eleven hours of film that were edited, subtitled, and submitted to UNESCO. I understand the adjudication committee that met in Paris in 2001 needed to watch only fourteen minutes of the documentary before unanimously proclaiming kutiyattam part of the world's intangible cultural heritage. As a fund-raising project, Margi is making three NTSC/DVDs of Adoor's documentation available for purchase.