Nagabharana's Allama among seven vying for Gandhi medal at IFFI

Filmmaker T S Nagabharana’s Allama has been nominated for this year’s prestigious International Council for Film, Television and Audio-visual Communication (ICFT)-Unesco Gandhi Medal.

Allama, which features in the Indian Panorama Section, at the 47th International Film Festival of India, at Goa, which will be flagged off Sunday, has seven other films in contention for coveted award. They are the Dutch film A Real Vermeer by Rudolph van de Berg, Iranian film Beluga by Mehdi Jafri, Turkey-Hungarian film Cold of Kalandar by Mustafa Kara, Latvian film Exiled by Davis Simanis Jr, Israeli feature Harmonia by Ori Sivan, Canadian-Chinese-Korean film The Apology by Tiffany Hsiung and French-Spain-German film The Family: Dementia by Giovanna Ribes.

The medal is awarded to a film which best reflects Gandhian ideals of peace, tolerance and non-violence.  

Nagabharana’s Allama is period-musical biopic on 12th C philosopher Allama Prabhu, famed for his vachanas and teachings and whose quest for knowledge helps him question social practices and overcome his weakness.

How Allama, who is born to a temple dancer, embarks on an inner quest for knowledge seeking answers to his core constituents towards self-realisation, his evolution to attaining the stature of Prabhu, forms the film’s fulcrum.

According to Nagabharana, if one were to pay tribute to one’s culture and language, one needs to draw inspiration from treasures of one’s rich history. 

Nagabharana has researched Allama for over two years and fine-tuned the script 23 times. Cinematographer G S Bhaskar has given it visual conception with Shashidhar Hadappa and Appayya as art directors and Bapu Padmanabha, disciple of Hariprasad Chauraisa, providing its music. The story is written by Siddagangaiah Kambal with M S Sridhar Murthy and Sripathi Manjanabail chipping in. Meghana Raj plays Maya Devi, a beautiful and strongwilled woman.