Jag Mandir (film)

Jag Mandir, sometimes known by its subtitle, The Eccentric Private Theatre of the Maharaja of Udaipur (German: Das excentrische Privattheater des Maharadscha von Udaipur), is a 1991 documentary film directed for television by Werner Herzog. The bulk of the film consists of footage of an elaborate theatrical performance for the Maharaj Arvind Singh Mewar at the City Palace of Udaipur, Rajasthan staged by André Heller.

Jag Mandir
Directed byWerner Herzog
Produced byWerner Herzog
Written byWerner Herzog
Starring
Narrated byWerner Herzog
Cinematography
  • Rainer Klausmann
  • Wolfgang Dickmann
  • Anton Peschke
Edited byMichou Hutter
Release date
1991
Running time
85 minutes
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

Production

The film was made at Heller's request.[1] Heller explains in the film that he sent several colleagues throughout India to find performers for the show, including dancers, musicians, contortionists, and magicians. About 10,000 performers were located, and of these about 2,000 were chosen to appear in the show, which lasted several hours on a single day. Herzog's footage was filmed at the actual show, with some segments filmed in the rehearsals in the previous days.[1]

Herzog's narration explains that the event was requested of the Maharana by a local wise man who saw the sinking of the city's palaces into the Pichola Lake as a sign that the local culture was deteriorating, and that the Maharana needed to stage the performance to reinvigorate interest in the various cultures represented. This story was invented by Herzog for the film, to "put it all into some context."[1] The city's palaces are not actually sinking into the lake.

gollark: Maybe it's just a really bad conspirach.
gollark: Surely vast conspiracies with access to resources beyond what we could dream of would *not* be going around genociding people in a ridiculously inefficient way.
gollark: Major population centres.
gollark: If some global conspiracy wanted to reduce the population lots they would be better off using nuclear weapons or something.
gollark: Especially given that the various vaccines use fairly different techologies.

References
  1. Herzog, Werner (2001). Herzog on Herzog. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-20708-4.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.