View source for Kanasemba Kudureyaneri (Riding The Dreams)

=Riding The Dreams (Kanasemba Kudureyaneri) =

[http://www.gautamanbhaskaran.com/gb/images/dreams.pdf By Gautaman Bhaskaran ] |5 November, 2010

Dir: Girish Kasaravalli. India. 2010. 110mins 

Girish Kasaravalli’s 
Riding the Dreams
(
Kanasemba Kudureyaneri
), screened at the Mumbai Film 
Festival, is part of India’s reality cinema savoure
d by a small, but devoted, audience. In fact, 
Bengaluru-based Kasaravalli’s films have never been
big crowd-pullers, and this movie is not likely to
be an exception.

The film is a brilliant study of how India’s poores
t of the poor struggle to survive in awfully degrad
ing 
conditions. 

Already part of the festival circuit, it was shot o
n the outskirts of Bijapur in the southern Indian S
tate of Karnataka, 
and follows the life of a grave-digger, Irya (Vaija
nath Biradar), and his wife,

Rudri (Umashree). Literally eking a living 
off the dead, Irya worships, Siddha, the messenger 
of death who appears in his dream every time someon
e in the 
village dies. 

Alerted about the death of the old landlord, Gowda 
(Akki Chennabasappa), Irya begins to prepare the gr
ave, but he 
is perplexed when Gowda’s caretaker, Mathadayya (Sa
dashiv Brahmavar), denies that his master is dead. 
Irya and 
 Rudri begin to worry about the dreams going wrong, 
and their
lives getting even more depressing.
The film is a brilliant study of how India’s poores
t of the poor struggle to survive in awfully degrad
ing conditions, 
going hungry to bed night after night. Kasaravalli 
draws a moving comparison between Irya’s righteous 
principles 
and those of the landlord’s rich son, Shivanna (Shi
varanajan), who callously leaves the father’s corps
e to rot while
he 
finishes a long business engagement. There is an un
mistakable message here, of how the urge to make mo
ney 
destroys values. 

Kasaravalli, one of the pioneers of the New Indian 
Cinema of the 1970s, and known for works such as 
The Ritual
(
Ghttashraddha
) and 
Tabara’s Story
(
Tabarana Kathe
), remains undaunted in the face of big slick-looki
ng 
productions, continuing to make movies that he stro
ngly believes in. 
And he has a set of dedicated actors. Engagingly co
nvincing, Biradar and Umashree are seen throughout 
the movie 
in tattered clothes, getting every inch into the ch
aracters. Manohar’s lilting background score is per
haps the only 
artifice here. 

Production company: Basant Productions 

Producers: Amrita Patil and Basant Kumar Patil 

Screenplay: Girish Kasaravalli 

Cinematography: H.M. Ramachandra Halkere 

Editor: M. N. Swamy 

Music: V. Manohar 

Main cast: Vaijanath Biradar, Umashree, Sadashiv Br
ahmavar, Akki Chennabasappa, Shivaranajan, Pavitra 
Lokesh