Rhythm of a Flower (Phul Ka Chhand), animated feature-film, 2024, 1 hour 25 minutes
Synopsis:
Kumar Gandharav, a child prodigy who subsequently became one of the finest and most original geniuses of Indian classical music, was struck by tuberculosis at the height of his abilities. For years, he lay in bed, barred from using his lungs, unsure if he would ever be able to rise or sing again. Meanwhile, his senses were gathering sounds from nature, from distant folk melodies, and from every vibration of life. Sometimes he practiced, singing so softly that it was hardly audible beyond his bed. This film takes this single moment of him lying on his sick bed and expands it, where his life of music and contemplation moves like a dream. When he rises after six years in bed, with only one lung spared, he writes, sings, and teaches again, giving voice to the six long years of silence and bridging the old and new with visionary insights.
Winner of the Golden Gateway Award MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, 2024
Director’s Note:
To capture the interiority of his mind, I used animation and collaborated with Allen Shaw, a children’s book illustrator because I wanted to engage with the complexity of his life and ideas while maintaining the simplicity and innocence of his being; to give form to that delicate moment between the simple and the sublime.
On the Film:
Amit Dutta, arguably the greatest living Indian avant-garde filmmaker, has worked with animation since his earliest shorts. Over the last decade animation has taken centre stage in his practice and now reaches its zenith with his first feature-length essay in the realm.
Like many of his films, Amit Dutta’s latest is also dedicated to an artist. Here he directs his attention to Kumar Gandharav, a singer with a unique and in many ways, incomparable style. A child prodigy who gave his first performances at the age of ten, Gandharav’s career seemed all but finished when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in his mid-twenties. This period of illness became the source of many stories and myths of a man lying in his bed listening to the sounds of the world around him.
This is where Dutta anchors Rhythm of a Flower: in the limbo that Gandharav’s existence became. It is a transformative space, in which we are enthralled by Dutta’s vision of the way Gandharav re-imagined the world and rethought his art through this period. The style Dutta chose for this endeavour is figurative, and surprisingly gentle thanks to the visual design created by children’s books illustrator Allen Shaw. The result is one of the most astonishing and enchanting essays on creation ever made in animation.
– Olaf Möller, IFFR 2025
This is an unusual portrait of an artist; more than a portrait, it is an interpretation of Kumar Gandharva and his understanding of bandish. I entered the theatre expecting the film to cover the life and times of Kumarji. Instead, it opened new possibilities of looking at Kumar Gandharva. The questions that arise when thinking about an artist like Kumarji became unimportant, and the line between documentary and spiritual quest blurred, as if a devotee were searching for an abstract idea of the divine.
– Eshan Sharma, The Tribune
In a swarm of biopics that are all about the hero saving the day, Rhythm of a Flower, through its peacefulness, tells the journey of an artist who, one day, bloomed into a flower.
– Aishwarya Srinivasan, Social Ketchup