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October 1991

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Subject:
From:
Carol Slingo <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 30 Oct 1991 11:37:08 CST
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There is a 1985 South Indian film about a woman who performs
classical dance with an artificial foot. The Telugu title is MAYURI
(name, means peacock, dir. Singeetham Srinivasa Rao); the
Bombay Hindi remake is NACHE MAYURI (1986, dir T. Rama
Rao from S.S.R.'s script). Both films star Sudha Chandran, upon
whose true story the fictional films are based.
Chandran spoke on Chicago TV about a year ago while on a
national dance tour. MAYURI is a dancer who loses her foot after
an auto accident. Her family wants her to accept the loss of her
career. Her fiance-manager deserts her. She gets an artificial foot
but finds it is not flexible enough for dancing. The inventor makes
one that is. She perseveres through (often bloody) pain to learn to
dance again. She becomes a star. Her old boyfriend, smelling
money, turns up and wants to start over. She shuts him out of her
house, window by window, and dances alone. Not a common story
for Indian film, it not only has a female protagonist who takes
charge of her life against great odds, but it shows the mechanics of
designing, manufacturing, fitting etc. artificial limbs and is
educational about the rights and aspirations of people with
handicaps. Sudha Chandran no longer plays ingenue leads but she
is quite visible in Hindi films. If anyone wants to see another
culture's point-of-view, the Tamil-dubbed version of MAYURI has
English subtitles--from Thomson Video (based in Dubai but has
U.S. distrib--the Telugu MAYURI and NACHE MAYURI do not.

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