Aravindan Govindan's film Thamp Selected For London Film Fest 2022

Filmmaker Aravindan Govindan's acclaimed film Thamp (1978) has been selected as the only Indian film to be screened in the Treasures Section of the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

Ramu Aravindam, son of the legendary filmmaker Govindan, said: "It's just wonderful that Aravindan's restored Thamp is getting screened at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival. Thamp was screened at the 1979 London Film Festival. And, his next film, Kummatty (1980), also recently restored, was screened at the 1980 edition. It's special that this film is getting screened again after 43 years at the same event. I think the restoration brings back to life a very specific kind of visual-poetic sensibility that the present generation of film viewers may have heard about but couldn't get to watch earlier."

Govindan said in an interview: "We did not have a script and we shot the incidents as they happened... There were a lot of people who had not seen a circus before. We shot their responses as they were watching. After the initial hesitation, they forgot the lights and the shooting and got completely involved in the circus."

Govindan's Thamp is a poetic, allegorical film, that gently explores the transience of human relationships and the rootlessness of the marginalised through the ripples created in the bucolic existence of a village on the banks of a river by the arrival of a roving circus troupe.