The Film Adi Shankaracharya

[Birgit Kellner]

Jonathan Silk wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I've just run across, entirely by accident, the feature film Adi
> Shankaracharya, which boasts that it is the first (maybe only?) feature film
> in Sanskrit. Has this film been discussed somewhere by indologists, or
> others especially from the point of view of the Sanskrit? I confess I only
> watched a few minutes of it, and while there's a lot of chanting of
> classical texts, there is also some speaking ("conversational Sanskrit?") as
> well (is this the place to confess?--thank goodness for the subtitles!). I
> am also curious whether the film-makers tried to get the cultural contexts
> right....
>
> Best regards, Jonathan Silk
>   
Jonathan,

the "Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema" (Willemen/Rajadhyaksha) also has 
this as the first Indian film made in Sanskrit.

The encyclopedia entry tells the plot, and continues:

"Continuing his effort after "Hamsa Geethe" (1975) towards a brahminical 
revivalism, Iyer claimed to have made the film in Sanskrit to do justice 
to the abstraction of Shankara's philosophical thought. The film does 
away with the miracle scenes typical of the genre and deploys several 
symbolic figures (e.g. death and wisdom are both personified). The 
extensive musical track consists of Vedic chants. Iyer went on to make 
two more Saint films featuring two of Shankara's main disciples, 
Madhavacharya (Kannada, 1986) and Shri Ramanujacharya (Tamil, 1989). The 
film did not get a commercial release in India but apparently did very 
well in foreign markets." (p. 425)

Best,

Birgit