Indian cinema is renowned for its diverse, multi-ethnic filmmaking that tells powerful stories, from large-scale extravaganzas to socially conscious art films. One such movie is Manthan which means churning. The 134-minute 1976 film was a transposed narrative of the origins of a dairy cooperative movement that transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world’s leading milk producer. The story drew inspiration from Verghese Kurien who is known as the “Milkman of India” for revolutionising milk production in the country. Amul is born out the revolution.
The greatest fact about this movie is that the movie Manthan was crowdfunded by farmers. Each of the 500,000 farmers contributed ₹2 from the sale of their milk, becoming both the film’s financiers and producers of their own story. This unique funding model was conceived by Verghese Kurien, to support the creation of a film about the cooperative movement that he championed. Crowdfunding is the use of small amounts of capital from many individuals to finance a project.
Manthan boasted an excellent star cast, featuring Girish Karnad, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Mohan Agashe in key roles. Vijay Tendulkar, a prominent Indian scriptwriter, contributed multiple scripts. Director Shyam Benegal was a leading Indian director of nonmainstream Hindi cinema and one of its most prolific filmmakers, he selected one of the scripts given by Vijay Tendulkar for the film. Renowned music composer Vanraj Bhatia best known for his work in Indian New Wave cinema and was also one of the leading composers of Western classical music in India.
In the film, a city-bred government veterinary doctor and his team arrive in a deeply divided village in Gujarat with plans to start a dairy cooperative. As he starts his work, the vet is caught in the violent politics of change and faces challenges from a private dairy owner, the village head and a volatile local milkman. The film focuses on the caste conflicts and social injustices that arise in a rural village when a veterinarian, Dr. Rao, tries to start a milk cooperative.
Director Shyam Benegal instructed the lead actors of the movie to wear the same clothes for the 45-day duration of the shoot. The movie was made in just 45 days’ time. He did this to achieve maximum realism for the movie, which was set in a drought-affected village in Gujarat. The film was shot on location in the village of Sanganva, which had a severe water shortage at the time. Benegal felt it was important for the actors’ appearances to reflect the villagers’ reality, who rarely had water for bathing or laundry. While actor Naseeruddin Shah took the instruction literally and did not change his clothes for the entire shoot, his co-star Smita Patil would wear the same outfit but washed it regularly. It seems director Shyam Benegal told the cast, which included Girish Karnad and Amrish Puri, “If they stank, they would stink jointly”.
What made the film a superhit? The proposal by Dr. Kurien to the farmers to accept a lower payment for their milk, with the difference going towards the film’s production. The funding was intended to empower farmers and an effort to break economic inequality and caste discrimination through a cooperative movement. Farmers saw a hope for positive change in their lives. The film itself was distributed for free to hundreds of villages to spread the idea of milk cooperatives and inspire more farmers to start them. Manthan became a legacy and a symbol of the cooperative movement and its significant impact in transforming India into the world’s largest milk producer. Half a million farmers felt inspired because they produced their own story. The result was the unique approach resulted in the world’s first crowdfunded feature film.
The 1976 Indian classic film Manthan received a red-carpet premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in May 2024, nearly 50 years after its original release. This was for a meticulously restored 4K version of the film. A 4K version of a movie offers a significantly sharper image with four times the resolution of Full HD, resulting in greater detail and clarity. The restoration was undertaken by the Film Heritage Foundation, with funding from the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (Amul).
The restorers recovered the negative and one of the prints. They borrowed and digitised the sound from the print and repaired the film. The scanning and digital clean-up were conducted at a Chennai lab under the supervision of a renowned Bologna-based film restoration lab, with both Benegal and his long-time cinematographer Govind Nihalani overseeing the project. The film’s sound was fixed and improved at the Bologna lab. Some 17 months later, Manthan was reborn in ultra-high definition of 4K. Benegal, one of the doyens of Indian cinema, said the film remains very close to his heart.
The movie was featured in the Cannes Classics section of the festival. At the Cannes red carpet was graced by the film’s cast and crew, including actor Naseeruddin Shah, who starred in the film. He was accompanied by his wife, Ratna Pathak Shah, as well as Prateik Babbar, the son of the late co-star Smita Patil. The screening received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience, affirming the film’s timeless relevance and impact. Naseeruddin Shah one of veteran actors of India described the experience as deeply emotional and touching, stating he never imagined a red-carpet appearance for the film decades later.
Manthan was a classy movie which created its own legacy in Indian cinema forever.