FILMS OF THE SPIRIT

Curated by Rajiv Mehrotra

 

Kummatty (The Bogeyman; Malayalam)

(90 min; 1979; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: G. Aravindan

 

Based on a Pied Piper like figure in Malabari folklore about a partly mythic and partly real magician called Kummatty. Kummatty travels from place to place and entertains children with dancing, singing and performing magic. At one such performance at a village, Kummatty starts to mingle with and weave a spell of carefree abandon around the children of the village. He turns a group of children into animals. But one boy, who was changed into a dog, is chased away and misses the moment Kummatty changed the children back to their human form. The dog-boy has to wait a year until Kummatty returns to the village to get back his human form

 

(Collaboration: Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness The Dalai Lama)