Intermedial aesthetics as the new language of cinema - Special reference to Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani

Indian art and aesthetics has a rich and interlinked history with philosophy,  which found currency in  both – epistemology as well as way of life (lifestyle, habits, rituals). One of the major aspects of Indian Cinema ( as propagated by the early proponents, like Phalke) has been rooted in this accumulated culture of perspective-less miniature paintings, micro tonal musicality, which permeated all aspects of life – be it food, clothes, social protocols, or even stories.  The over arching aesthetics has been inseparable from the overarching philosophy – human body and mind being only a vessel for consciousness,  knowledge, hyper imagination to unfold an ongoing play of life. Although, there is no specific Indian theory of film, most of it has derived from the western canonical writings, I am going to attempt a study of placing Classical Sanskrit texts and aesthetic theories (of Bharat Muni, Coomaraswamy, Abhinavgupta) next to films of Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, who have been, admittedly, influenced by Deleuze, Heideggar as much as by the classical Sanskrit poetics and classical music. Space, time, figure, movement, static, exponential time-frame, interiority, emotions and sensations, sonic image – all of these form the essential vocabulary of Kaul’s and Shahani’s films. Instead of specific films, I propose to extracts shots and sequences from their entire repertoire to effect this study.