Director: Kamal Swaroop; Writer: Kamal Swaroop; Producer: Pravesh Bhardwaj, Pankaj Kapoor, Manu Kumaran, Shilpa Mittal, K. Venkatraman; Cinematographer: Riju Das; Editor: Shweta Rai
Duration: 02:13:30; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 28.663; Saturation: 0.045; Lightness: 0.359; Volume: 0.223; Cuts per Minute: 5.521
Summary: Kamal Swaroop's classic documentary on the 2014 electoral battle between Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal. Swaroop is there, in the thick of the heat and dust, trying to make sense of what he sees, in terms of epic structures drawn from the Mahabharata, modern politics, absurd theatre and documentary evidence. The voice of reason is that of the journalist Suresh Pratap Singh, with whom Swaroop is in conversation in different locales. Apart from the two main contenders, several players on Swaroop's stage include politicians of diverse ideological hues, their bodyguards and their spokespersons. The film is inspired by Elias Canetti's book, 'Crowds and Power' as it captures the excitement, the madness and the noise behind the high- octane poll battle in the holy city. Many of the mythic elements, including tadpoles, fish and the moon walk remind viewers of his cult debut Om Dar-b-dar.
The determination whether a crowd was a mob or the people results from political struggle. Resisting for a while the urge to classify crowds in terms of a pre-given political content enables us to consider crowds in terms of their dynamics. Crowds are more than large numbers of people concentrated in a location - Jodi Dean, Crowds and Party (2016).
Kamal Swaroop was able to put his experience of crowds in Gandhi, and his interest in Elias Canetti's book Crowds and Power, to mount his extraordinary political inquiry into crowds in his Battle for Banaras.
Crowds and Power 3
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