Utsav (उत्सव) 1984

Published on November 20, 2012 in Cinema

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Banner	Film-Valas
Director	Girish Karnad
Writer	Krishna Basrur,Girish Karnad,Sharad Joshi
Producer	Shashi Kapoor
Orginal music	Laxmikant- Pyarelal
Cinematography	Ashok Mehta
Film Editing	Bhanudas Divakar
Art Director	Jayoo Patwardhan,Nachiket Patwardhan
Camera Operator	Rajesh Joshi
Assistant Cameramen	Prakash Ghimiraj,Hari Roy,
Playback Singers	Lata Mangeshkar, Aarti Mukherjee, Anuradha Paudwal, Asha Bhosle, Suresh Wadkar

Character	Actor / Actress
	Rekha
Vasantsena	Amjad Khan
Vatsyayan	Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Anonymous revolutionary	Shankar Nag
Sajjal	Kunal Kapoor
Aryak	Anuradha Patel
Aditi	Anupam Kher
Sansthanak's friend	Neena Gupta
Mandolika	Annu Kapoor
Masseur	Harish Patel
Maitrey	Gopi Desai
	Lakshmi Krishnamurthy
	Shashi Kapoor
Samsthanak	Shekhar Suman
Charudatta	Rajesh Puri
	Nandita Aras
	Haneef Zahoor
	Vivek Upadhyay
	Deepak Kejriwal
	G.V. Hiremath
	Sanjana Kapoor
Sanjna Kapoor	Neelu Arora
Neilu Arora	Yunus Parvez
Masseur's owner	Nimesh Desai
	Satish Kaushik
	Mohan Baggan
	Vidya Patvardhan
Vidya Parwardhan	S.P. Dubey
	Manjushree
Manjushri	Yusuf Mehta
	Prithviraj Kapoor

An exuberant but unsuccessful picaresque film set in the 4th C. when Sudraka is supposed to have written one of the most famous plays in Indian history, a love story between the Brahmin merchant Charudatta (Suman) and the beautiful courtsean Vasantsena (Rekha). Karnad also introduced Vatsyayana (Amjad Khan) as a voyeuristic lecher peeking into various brothel chambers to write his famous Kama Sutra. Vasantsena, a beautiful prostitute of Ujjain, runs away from the villain Samasthanaka (S. Kapoor), the libidinous brother-in-law of the king, and hides in the house of Charudatta, a music-lover, with whom she falls in love. She loses her golden necklace in Charudattas house and when it is stolen, Charudattas affair with prostitute is exposed. Samasthanaka, who believes he killed Vasantsena when her tried to rape her, accuses Charudatta of the deed. When Charudatta is sentenced to hang for Vasantsenas murder, she turns up, alive and well, to try to save her lovers life. Just then, a horseman arrives to declare that a new king has been crowned and has pardoned all prisoners. Charudatta is reunited with his wife while the populace turns on the villanious samasthanaka. He drags himself to Vasantsena house who, this time, accepts him. Karnad uses the conventions of performance is based, and intended the film as a celebration of life and love. The location scenes, filmed in Karnataka and Bharatpur because of the traditional architectural styles avialable there, were completed by studio scenes shot in Bombay. Apparently a more explicity erotic version of the film was created for the Western market. This expensive film was producer Shashi Kapoors last effort at an art-house production.