Rabindranath Tagore, Victoria Ocampo to Close IFFI
RBN Web Desk: Thinking of Him, an Indo-Argentine coproduction directed by Pablo Cesar, will be the closing film of the International Film Festival of India which begins on 20 November at Goa. The film explores the relationship between India’s first Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore and Argentine activist and author Victoria Ocampo, when he visited Buenos Aires in 1924.
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Victor Banerjee plays Rabindranath Tagore in the film while Eleonora Wexler fits into the role of Ocampo. Thinking of Him also has Raima Sen and Hector Bordoni in major roles.
Ocampo was the first woman member of Argentine Academy of Letters. She is believed to have taken care of Rabindranath Tagore when he fell ill during his Buenos Aires visit. Ocampo, then 34, had read the French translation of Gitanjali—the anthology of poems that won Tagore the Nobel—and had begun to idolise him.
The two authors, it is said, had developed a very emotional but platonic relationship. Ocampo was fondly addressed as Bijoya by Tagore and he dedicated her some of his poems in the 1925 book Purabi. Ocampo and Tagore exchanged letters until he died in 1941.
The film flits between present day and 1924.
Banerjee had said in an interview to BBC last year that the film is not what the common people in India think of Tagore. It’s about what Ocampo, and what the people in Argentina think about him, the actor said.
