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The Photographs of Chachaji: The Making of a Documentary Film
by Mehta, Ved
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 019503063X
- ISBN 13
- 9780195030631
- Seller
-
New Castle, Colorado, United States
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About This Item
Oxford University Press, 1993. Softcover. Very Good. 7x5x0. There can seldom have been a more unpromising subject for a film or a book than Chachaji, and yet he became the hero of a celebrated documentary film, CHACHAJI, MY POOR RELATION: A MEMOIR BY VED MEHTA. He also became the hero of this book, which is, among other things, an account of the making of that film. Indeed, he has become, in a sense, a metaphor for the whole of India in all its splendid contradictions. Mr. Mehta and an Anglo-American filming teamâled by a Tasmanian-born Canadian producerâtravelled to India, where they were soon joined by the producerâs wife, a great-great-grandniece of William Wordsworth. The team spent a month filming Chachaji, an eighty-three-year-old man who weighed eighty-nine pounds and was a messenger-clerk for the Pharmacy of Prosperity in New Delhi. (He was the authorâs second cousin; the nickname Chachaji means respected uncle.) They recorded the doings of Chachaji: how he lived by his wits, working eight hours a day for sixty cents, and cadging meals, money, and (to preserve his dignity as a clean-shaven gentleman) razor blades from his better-off relations. They followed Chachaji through his typical dayâperforming his ablutions, waiting in queues, battling bazaar crowds, and bucking bureaucracy. They were also able to capture on film Chachajiâs red-letter days of attending a family wedding, of going on a journey to his village, of bathing in the Gangesâa penitential act of salvation for Hindus. Chachaji, as the object of all this attention, was nothing if not unconcerned; even when throngs were frantically showing off in front of the camera or threatening to destroy it in some burst of pious indignation, he stoically trudged on with a dead-pan expression worthy of Buster Keaton, at most saying, Never mind. Let it be. Chachaji never caught on to what a moving picture wasâhe had never seen oneâand throughout the filming he talked about the shots as the photographs. The documentary film that the team eventually made was broadcast, among other places, on PBS and the BBC, and was awarded the duPont Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalismâthe citation commending the film for its delicacy, its humor, its reflection of a whole nation. It was acclaimed an extraordinary memoir by the Christian Science Monitor and a classic by the New York Times. Since this book is both about the making of a documentary film and about Chachaji, it depicts a confrontation, by turns poignant, frenzied, and funny, between two utterly different ways of lifeâthe Western and the Eastern, the modern and the traditional. Writing with ironic detachment, Mr. Mehta brings his distinctive skill as a storyteller to this saga while further exploring themes that have preoccupied him for most of his life.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- SKU2010027593
- Title
- The Photographs of Chachaji: The Making of a Documentary Film
- Author
- Mehta, Ved
- Format/Binding
- Softcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 019503063X
- ISBN 13
- 9780195030631
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Place of Publication
- Ny
- Date Published
- 1993
- Size
- 7x5x0
- X weight
- 12 oz
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Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller
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About the Seller
Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller
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New Castle, Colorado
About Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller
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