Argentine film to spotlight Tagore and his muse

L-R: Tagore exchanged a series of letters
with Ocampo. Pablo Cesar

Argentine director Pablo Cesar's new film project is about the iconic Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore's "intimate but platonic" relationship with Argentine feminist writer, literary magazine editor and cultural activist, Victoria Ocampo.
The crux of the film, Thinking of Him, hinges on Tagore's 1924 Argentine sojourn during which he forged a deep emotional bond with Ocampo.
"The film will be set partly in present times and partly in the 1920s," says Cesar.
"The idea is to emphasise the continuing relevance of Tagore.
"I began pre-production in 2008 following a suggestion made by India's ambassador to Argentina. But I could not wrap up the film in time for Tagore's 150th birth anniversary as the research and funding process took longer than expected," says Cesar.
Cesar hopes to have Thinking of Him ready for global distribution in 2012.
"The resonance of Tagore's poetry and world view is still very fresh and absolutely relevant. So it really doesn't matter that the film won't hit the screens in the 150th year of his birth," says the director.
Ocampo idolised Tagore ever since she read Andre Gide's French translation of Gitanjali in 1914, a year after Tagore won the Nobel Prize.
The illustrious poet had a huge influence on the Argentine writer, who was then in her mid-30s and lived to be 88.
For his part, Tagore, who was 63 years old in 1924, not only dedicated his 1925 book of poems, Purabi, to his Argentine muse but was also inspired by her to take up painting.
In 1930, Ocampo organised the poet's first art exhibition in Paris, where they met in person for the second and last time.
However, until he passed away in 1941, Tagore exchanged a series of letters with Ocampo.
Ocampo was legally separated from her husband - divorce wasn't possible in Catholic Argentina of the day - in the wake of an affair with his cousin but she never remarried.
Tagore's stay in Argentina was unscheduled. He was on the way from Europe to Peru when he was forced by illness to disembark in Buenos Aires.
He went on to spend two months recuperating in a garden villa overlooking the River Plate in San Isidro, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.
Ocampo, whom Tagore addressed in his letters as Bijoya, looked after the poet with the diligence of a devoted admirer.
Tagore recovered and wrote as many as 30 poems while in San Isidro.
One of them-- Atithi (The Guest)-- opens with the lines, "The days of my sojourn overseas, you filled to the fullest, woman, with the nectar of your sweetness".
Thinking of Him will be an English-Bengali-Spanish film to be shot on location in Santiniketan, Bolpur, Buenos Aires and Paris.
Cesar's association with India goes back to 1996, when he shot Unicornio-- Garden of Fruits, the first-ever Indo-Argentine co-production, in Rajasthan.
"I filmed in and around Jaisalmer and Jodhpur," he recalls. "On the soundtrack, we used poems of Kabir and Omar Khayyam as well as traditional qawwalis and Sufi songs."
Cesar says he hopes Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan will play Tagore.

Source: BBC