One Day Before the Rainy Season
(Ashad ka ek din)

A student of Ghatak, breaking with convention, Mani Kaul invents a formalist cinema whose radicality produces some astonishing results. This is certainly the case of the filmmaker’s second film which recounts the love be- tween Mallika and the poet, Kalidasa, who is summoned to the royal court. The entire action unfolds in Mallika’s home, before and after Kalidasa’s departure. In this simple hut, the young woman’s solitude takes root, as does the nostalgia of the writer, who finds his poetic calling in this mountainous region. Faces and words, out of sync, recount the intensity of their emotions, while the land- scapes convey the pulse of outside world, the filmstrip at times burnt by the sun, the suggested sounds – surprising inflexions that sweep away an apparent hieratism. FM