Aruna Vasudev: A Tribute

I first met Aruna Vasudev at the International Film Festival (IFFI) in Delhi at the 1988 Film Festival. I was introduced by G Ramachandran, editor and proprietor of a serious film magazine called Cinema-India International. Mr Ramachandran introduced me not only to film journalism but also to the annual film festival in India. I began to write for him and started my yearly journey to IFFI with its Hyderabad edition held in 1986. My contributions to Cinema India-International helped me get my press accreditation. From then on, I went to each edition of IFFI held in a different Indian city each time till it finally shifted to Goa permanently.

I was in complete awe of Aruna, always dressed impeccably, well-groomed and a confessed extrovert whose circle of friends extended right across the globe including cub journalists like me. She smoked in great style and was very fond of her drink. But her head was firmly placed on her sturdy shoulders and she never wore her international aura around her head. She would socialize as freely with eminent filmmakers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shaji Karun, Mrinal Sen and international masters as easily as she did with small timers like yours truly.

To tell the truth, I remained in complete admiration of Aruna though we were on first-name terms from when I was introduced to her right till the last time we met at Kerala for the IFFK some years ago. This is because compared to her, I felt very small because of my almost complete ignorance of International cinema except for catching up with the cinema of some masters like Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kwan, Mohsen Makhmalbaf or Bert Haanstra at the retros held in those times at annual film festivals.

She threw lovely parties at her beautiful bungalow at 90 Defence Colony in New Delhi and I happened to be a guest a couple of times. It was for cocktails and dinner and everyone but everyone from a small-time actor in a Marathi film to a new filmmaker, Zoya Akhtar, were present. The parties went on till the wee hours of the morning. At one of them, I remember her serving aloo chaat for vegetarians but all of us non-vegetarians devoured it as well.

Aruna soon caught up with my passion for writing on Indian cinema and it was she who was instrumental in pushing me to write for the brilliant film journal, Cinemaya: The Asian Film Quarterly, founded in 1988. She also made me the Founder-Secretary of the Indian chapter of FIPRESCI when it was launched around 1988. Chidananda Dasgupta was President, Aruna was Vice President and Maithili Rao was the Treasurer. Today, FIPRESCI-India has become an organization to reckon with which bestows prestigious awards to film journalists for their contribution to writing on cinema.

Over time, Cinemaya became a brilliant magazine of international width and depth and for the first time, drew the attention of international filmmakers, critics and cine buffs not just to Indian cinema in general but also South Asian cinema in particular. I tried to write more regularly for the magazine but Aruna gave me some select assignments only when she felt I would do justice to the brief given to me.

At the same time, she also grew to become extremely well-known in the world of cinema as a curator of film festivals and as the founder of NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) in 1991. It was an organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian cinema. NETPAC introduced awards for Asian films at international festivals and organized the Cinefan festival in New Delhi. Today, the NETPAC Award is given to the Best Asian Film as chosen by a jury in 30 International Film Festivals across the world.

She was appointed Cavaliere della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana in 2004 and honored with France’s Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2019. She was also bestowed the First Satyajit Ray Memorial Award by FIPRESCI-India. An award named after Aruna  has been installed by the Tripoli International Film Festival to be conferred on the Best Woman Film Journalist of any given year. In 2022, Supriya Suri, nurtured in journalism and filmmaking, filmed a documentary named Aruna Vasudev, The Mother Of Asian Cinema. “Having grown up in New Delhi, Aruna Vasudev deeply impacted many budding film journalists, writers and filmmakers across Asia. She became a legend in her lifetime for creating and sustaining a lasting connection between and among the cinema of India and other South Asian countries on the world map,” said Surekha. She went on to add that going through old issues of Cinemaya meant reading about the history of the many new waves such as the Iranian New Wave, the Taiwanese New Wave or gaining knowledge on the history of Hong Kong Cinema or the cinema of other countries, which Cinemaya alone was documenting through in-depth interviews, serious reviews and insightful essays in English.

Aruna was fluent in French and perhaps, is the first Indian journalist, writer, curator, editor, author and painter to have done her PhD in cinema which was later published as a book Liberty and Licence in Indian Cinema in 1979. I still refer to her Frames of Mind as a basic reference alongside other books such as The New Indian Cinema and Being & Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia.

In her late eighties, Aruna turned to Japanese painting and excelled in that as well. Had she been alive, I’m sure she might have gone ahead with a one-woman painting exhibition, who knows? Tragically for her, she had Alzheimer’s towards the end of her life and passed away on September 5, 2024, less than two months short of turning 88.

I remember we were once together at the Cairo International Film Festival where she was on the international jury. I had stopped over in Cairo for three days for the festival. We shared the cab when going to the airport and she taught me one golden lesson. She told me to ask for posters of any film festival I visited as they would become beautiful antiques in the future. I lamented not having done that before and I began in great earnest. But not being perhaps as committed as Aruna Vasudev, I could collect just a few. That is one of my biggest regrets.

Rest in Peace, Aruna. You were truly one of a kind.