Do you know Padma?

Do you know Padma? Nah, not Padma Lakshmi, but Pad.ma the online digital video archive? To quote from their website

Pad.ma – short for Public Access Digital Media Archive – is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non-commercial use.

So, what’s there for us? Well, there are some Indian dance related videos that have not been seen before.

There are more than 200 Odissi related videos, among them include some amazing archival videos of the legendary Kelucharan Mohapatra teaching and performing.

Here is the link: https://pad.ma/grid/title/odissi&project==Odissi%20Archive

Among the Indian dance legends, there is

Kalpana – movie directed by the Uday Shankar (1948) which was recently digitally restored by World Cinema Foundation headed by movie director Martin Scorcese and was screened in Cannes Film Festival 2012.

Ram Gopal – a documentary movie about the dancer Ram Gopal

Tana Bana – 15 mins feature on dancer Chandralekha

Lilavati – Chandralekha’s dance production titled “Lilavati”, based on text on Indian mathematics, by Bhaskaracharya, addressed to his daughter Lilavati (UPDATED)

Glimpses of the documentary on Chandralekha’s “Lilavati”, a talk by Sadanand Menon

Watch out for this amazing website, more treasures are to come!!!

Further reading:

http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.in/2012/07/whats-next-for-kalpana-1948.html

http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.in/2013/01/film-dancesappearances-of-ram-gopal-and.html