Shyam Benegal To Present `Making Of The Mahatma'

Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning 1982 epic, "Gandhi," didn't gloss over Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's 21 years in South Africa, but it was mostly concerned with his later political impact on India.

Now there's a film that deals only with the South African years and the development of Gandhi's ideas about nonviolence. Co-produced by India and South Africa, Shyam Benegal's "The Making of the Mahatma" will be shown at 1 p.m. Sunday at the King Cat Theater.

Rajit Kapur, a theater and film veteran who appeared in two other Benegal films, plays Gandhi in this account, which at 147 minutes is not that much shorter than Attenborough's picture. It was filmed in many of the locations where Gandhi worked, taught and organized at the turn of the century.

A lawyer educated in England, Gandhi left India in 1893 for South Africa, where he had planned to stay no longer than a year. He witnessed the racist repression of Indians in the country and stayed to lead the "satyagraha" movement. He was 45 when he left in 1914.

"He was there between the ages of 24 and 45 years, which are the most important years of anybody's life," said Benegal, speaking by phone from Chicago. "It was during that period that all his ideas got crystallized, his philosophy, his political strategies. That was the crucible for him. When he came to India he was already the great soul, the Mahatma."

Benegal, who directed and co-wrote the film, is best-known in this country for "The Churning" (which was shown here in 1976) and a documentary about his mentor, Satyajit Ray. He began thinking about a Gandhi film in 1991, after reading Fatima Meer's book, "Apprenticeship of a Mahatma," which had been published in 1969 - and promptly banned in South Africa.

"I wasn't at all planning to make a Gandhi movie when Attenborough's film came out," he said. "He'd been wanting to make it since 1962, and the government of India financed much of that film. I remember helping him with locations and so forth." But gradually he began to see that there was another side to Gandhi, particularly in his youth.

"You see him as a human being this time," said Benegal. "The Attenborough Gandhi was in many ways the icon we all recognize, which was fine for the purposes of his film. In this film, you see him warts and all, which helps to make him so extraordinary."

Film critic Peter Culley wrote that the movie presents Gandhi as "sometimes paternalistic and insensitive to the feelings of those closest to him, but possessed of a single-minded passion for justice."

When it was shown last year in South Africa, Nelson Mandela recommended it because "so many young people think that the struggle began in 1976 when they protested against the government's decision to force Afrikaans down our throats. This film will show them the depth from which our struggle grew and the sacrifices that were made by people protesting against what was done to us in the past."

The previous government of South Africa offered to help finance the picture, but Benegal turned them down because "that was the government that started apartheid." Only after Mandela was elected did Benegal decide to accept co-financing and shoot the entire movie in South Africa. In the end, the Indian government put up about two-thirds of the budget; South Africa contributed the rest.

Benegal, who visited Seattle several times in the 1970s and 1980s, will attend the screening, which is a benefit for People for Progress in India (PPI), a non-profit organization that is celebrating its 20th year in Seattle. The film has no U.S. distributor. Tickets are $10. Information: 206-523-9224 or 206-232-8619.

Around town

The Casbah Cinema is showing Robert Aldrich's 1955 film-noir classic "Kiss Me Deadly" tonight through Sunday. Jean-Luc Godard's "Masculine-Feminine" opens Thursday for a four-day run. . . . Soundtrack Cinema, at 9 p.m. tomorrow on KING-FM (98.1), will feature Jerry Goldsmith's score from "The Edge" and Michael Kamen's music for "Event Horizon." . . . At midnight tomorrow, KCTS-TV (Channel 9) has the fourth installment of "Midnight Theater: A Pacific Northwest Film and Video Showcase," featuring Seattle filmmaker Edward Rey's "After" and two shorts from British Columbia: Phil Kieran's "Henry's Cafe" and Kevin Speckmaier's "August Winds." . . . The Grand Illusion is showing a new 35mm CinemaScope print of Richard Brooks' chilling 1967 crime drama, "In Cold Blood," which earned Academy Award nominations for Brooks' script and direction and Conrad Hall's cinematography (his artful compositions for the film were later celebrated in the documentary, "Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography"). The theater is also showing two of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price movies based on Edgar Allan Poe stories: "The Masque of the Red Death" at 11:30 tonight and "The Pit and the Pendulum" at 11:30 p.m. tomorrow. . . . Another Corman/Price/Poe collaboration, "House of Usher," plays at 8 p.m. tonight through Sunday at the Sanctuary Theater (upstairs at Scarecrow Video). Even better is the short playing with it: the Oscar-nominated 1953 cartoon version of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," featuring an inspired narration/characterization by James Mason. In addition, Scarecrow is sponsoring a screening of William Castle's clever 1961 "Psycho" rip-off, "Homicidal," complete with "fright break," at 8 p.m. Monday at the OK Hotel in Pioneer Square. . . . The Varsity has another of Frank Capra's early-1930s rarities, "Platinum Blonde," starring Jean Harlow, Loretta Young and Robert Williams, at noon tomorrow and Sunday. . . . This month's Seattle media salon, a get-together for "important players in Seattle's media industry," will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Bexel Video/Modular Video Systems, 3314 Fourth Ave. S. . . . "Real to Reel: Poetry and Cinema," a multimedia program of readings and poetry film shorts from San Francisco-based Literary Television, will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Speakeasy Cafe in Belltown. Tickets are $5. . . . "She Speaks: Videos By and About Women and Girls" will be screened at 8 p.m. Thursday at 911 Media Arts Center. Tickets are $3 for 911 members, $4 for others.

Sony, Cineplex Odeon merge

After several months of negotiations, Cineplex Odeon has merged with Sony Corp.'s Loews Theatres Exhibition Group, which sent out its representatives to check Cineplex's Seattle theaters this summer. The two companies, which now control 2,600 screens in North America, will be called Loews Cineplex Entertainment. According to Variety, "because Sony's screens are more profitable than those owned by Cineplex, Sony will have control."