In 1989, the visionar Indian director G. Aravindan made the 86 minute feature film UNNI, written and produced (with additional funds from the National Film Development Corporation of India) in the state of Kerala by me and me wife Kitty Morgan, who based the story on experiences of some of our students in the International Honors Program on Film, Television and Social Change, whom Aravindan had gotten to know the previous year. When Aravindan died, UNNI was broadcast nationwide on Doordarshan, the Indian equivalent of the BBC, and the film was featured at a number of international film festivals, but no print or negative is known to survive. We have uploaded to KZfaq a copy we made from a PAL video cassette. It's watchable, but ne can't really tell from this copy the beauty of ever shot as Aravindan filmed. it.
In this 45-minute video, I discuss UNNI and the experience of working with Aravindan. The video includes an 18-minute tribute to Aravindan I made for an event in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, honoring Aravindan on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his untimely death in 1991.