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Product Detail |
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Audio Format: DD 1.0 Mono Video Format: Standard 1.33:1 Languages: English Subtitles: English Region Code: 1 Year Made: 1983 / 1994 Running Time: 73 / 52
 After completing Quartet, Merchant and Ivory returned to India, where they prepared two movies during 1981-82. The more modestly scaled, and the first to be released (in January 1983), was the 73-minute documentary (or "docudrama," as Merchant refers to it) The Courtesans of Bombay, which was both produced and directed by Merchant. (The other was Heat and Dust).
Merchant first knew of the courtesans at an early age, he says, "from the visits from them we used to have during weddings at home, celebrations of childbirth, and other festivities. They provided the entertainment of singing and dancing, and I used to watch them." Then at the age of sixteen he was taken by school friends to Pavan Pool, an enclosed area of Bombay where the courtesans performed before a male audience, an experience that remained vividly in his memory and that he now wished to record on film.
Intriguing, colorful, and revealing, The Courtesans of Bombay is Merchant Ivory??s docu-drama about Pavan Pool, the enclosed area where Bombay??s singing and dancing courtesans ply their trade. It presents a portrait of the unique location, both exotic and tawdry: crammed tenements housing thousands of men playing up to the camera as they seek out forbidden pleasures?and the courtesans themselves, who appear more as entertainers than sex-workers.
Neither sensationalist nor prurient, the film is about a tradition with a special place in Indian society: the entertainment of paying customers?always men?by songstresses and dancers who perform in the classical Hindustani styles of the ancient ??nautch?? girls, India??s version of the Japanese geisha.
Special Features:
- New digital transfer
- The Street Musicians of Bombay, an hour-long documentary by frequent Merchant Ivory composer Richard Robbins about the varied street performers and personalities in this bustling city
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