Fragmented Memory and Personal History: On Reena Mohan’s ‘Kamlabai’

The film Kamlabai (1992), directed by Reena Mohan, was screened at the NFDC-National Film Archives of India (as a part of the Film Circle screenings) on 8 March 2025. Mohan’s conversations with Kamlabai Gokhale, considered the first lady of Indian cinema, form the basis of this documentary. Mohan first met Gokhale while researching a book on silent cinema, and the 47-minute film—considered a groundbreaking work in terms of its style and structure—tries to paint a lively picture of the actress’s personal and professional life and the times she was living in. 

Consisting of footage shot at Gokhale’s home, some archival footage and photographs, the film is not a biographical or chronological documentation of the actor’s life and work. Rather, this cinematic portrait draws on Gokhale’s memories as it tries to capture the spirit and essence of its subject in a non-linear format. As Gokhale recalls her experiences as a pioneering Marathi stage actor and her personal life, there is neither nostalgia nor bitterness. Rather, her blunt responses and mischievous character come across through the film. 

Gokhale starred in Dadasaheb Phalke’s 1913 film Mohini Bhasmasur, along with her mother Durgabai Kamat. This was  an era when it was rather uncommon for women to play parts on the theatrical stage, let alone in the moving pictures, which was an emergent form, having developed in the 1880s. Even in theatre, men would play the women’s parts, as women were expected to do only “Chul ani mul” (household chores and childcare), as Gokhale explains. The same practice continued in films. For instance,  if one were to take a look at Phalke’s filmography itself, Anna Salunke, one of his frequent collaborators, portrayed Queen Taramati in Raja Harishchandra (1913) and later went on to play the roles of Ram and Seeta in Lanka Dahan (1917). Even after women began to appear in films, there was resistance to their participation due to deep-seated societal norms. 

Kamat and Gokhale, the mother-daughter duo, belonged to the Brahmin caste and were expected to follow Brahamanical rituals and customs. Social anxieties around women entering the workforce meant that working as a stage actor could result in a woman being labelled ‘promiscuous.’ However, Kamat’s failed marriage—her husband was engaged in extramarital sexual activities—and critical financial situation were such that she had to work to earn a living. As women were not permitted to work, the only other plausible option was to have become a sex worker. Her mother Durgabai thought that it would be “better to work in the arts and culture than as a prostitute”, says Gokhale. Following her mother, Gokhale joined the film industry at an early age. 

It was perhaps due to her caste location that Kamat got the opportunity to work as an actor on stage and later in a film (as people offering work to the duo were mostly Brahmin men including Phalke). Folk theatre forms such as tamasha, which was, as Shailaja Paik explains, “categorised as ‘ashlil’ (vulgar) due to some of its sringarik (erotic) elements by the elites and colonial government”, were performed predominantly by Dalit women. In contrast, Kamat was in a position where she could opt for working in Marathi musical plays and films. Nonetheless, she faced criticism. 

For instance, Gokhale mentions that her “mother had learnt Kathak and used to play veena, sitar and tabla.” However, India has a very complex relationship with Kathak. With the advent of the Mughal era, it transitioned from temple courtyards to royal courts, evolving into a sophisticated art form patronised by Muslim rulers. However, during the British colonial period, it was discouraged as a result of Victorian moral values. The British administration associated Kathak with nautch girls and deemed it to be “morally questionable.” Yet, Kamat and her daughter Gokhale challenged existing socio-cultural stigmas to become pioneers for women in cinema and the Marathi stage. Not only did this serve to question notions of vulgarity associated with the performing arts but also about social norms regarding women’s work. 

The film, just like its central subject, does not give in to nostalgia. Nor does it glorify the struggles of its subject. Archival photographs in the film are bolstered by Gokhale’s voice, as she remembers something or the other. Classical music often accompanies the images as well. The film unfolds akin to the way we remember things—we see or hear something, and we start remembering in a fragmented manner. Gokhale sees a photograph and remembers an anecdote. History and memory get intertwined. The filmmaker does not question or examine memory. In an interview, Mohan shares that she once cross-checked an anecdote told by Kamlabai. While it turned out to be true, Mohan soon realised the insignificance of questioning memory. After all, history is but an interpretation of the past. 

Mohan has admitted in her interviews that the structure of the film was almost accidental and that she did not intentionally start working towards the goal of breaking the form so we get an intricate perspective of memory and personal history. When the documentary was made in 1991, Gokhale was already ninety-two-years old. Due to her advanced age and ailing physical condition, she could not move around the home. Mohan and her team (cinematographer Ranjan Palit, additional work KU Mohanan) worked with this limitation to lay out the visual grammar of their film. The filmmaker uses static shots with a bit of zooming in and out now and then. Similarly, the film slowly delves into Gokhale's life. The camera work and the style of the film might be static, but the overall impact is a dynamic exploration of fragmented memory. 

In one of the earliest scenes in the film, for instance, Gokhale is sitting on a chair on the balcony. The shot starts in a way that we can see her as well as the person standing next to her. She is reciting dialogues from an old Marathi play. She seems somewhat dissatisfied with the way she is doing it, and the camera continues to zoom in on her. In the meantime, a mic and the person holding it are also visible and interact with Gokhale in this two-and-a-half-minute-long scene. This sets the ground for the way the film unfolds: long static shots, close-ups and the breaking of the fourth wall as Gokhale speaks—candidly and dominatingly—with her interviewers. Throughout the film, the actress interacts with the crew. The lines are blurred. The equipment is visible. 

Similarly, in the last scene, Gokhale speaks to the crew, unaware that the camera and sound are still running. The interviewer points this out, and as Gokhale looks straight into the camera, the credits start rolling. A fitting end to the film on the lady who dared to stare into a camera way back in 1913. The filmic life draws to a full circle. 

To learn more about films exploring women’s work and lived experiences, read Anoushka Antonette Mathews’s essay on Nishtha Jain’s Gulabi Gang (2014), Sucheta Chakraborty’s review of Jayant Somalkar’s Sthal (2023) and Ria De and Koonal Duggal’s reflections on Payal Kapadia’s All We Image As Light (2024).

To learn more about early cinema histories, read Ankan Kazi’s reflections on the book Indian Cinema: A Visual Voyage (1998) published by NFDC, Ketaki Varma’s two-part conversation with Debashree Mukherjee on her book Bombay Hustle Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020) and Arundhati Chauhan’s curated album of Josef Wirsching’s archive.

All images are stills from Kamlabai (1992) by Reena Mohan. Images courtesy of the artist.