Schio Film Festival 2026 - Exhibitions & Performances

The second edition of international film festival of Schio - ISFF, was held from 30 July to 2 August 2026. Among the side-events of the festival were three interesting exhibitions and a couple of performances. This post is about them.

These included an incredible performance by the theatre group Teatro 80 (in the image below - click on the pictures for a bigger view)

If you wish, you can also read my article on the ISFF 2026 side-events about "Art and Cinema".

Story-Telling of Leonardo Ottoni Through His Art

Leonardo Ottoni was born with autism and he is an artist. He lives in Castel San Pietro Terme, not far from Bologna. 

His art was first noted by his teachers in the high school, when they saw him doodling on his notebook and felt that he was a very good artist. Thus, they suggested that he should try making art. (In the image on the left, Leo is showing the walk of a mechanical toy)

This happened around ten years ago. Since then he has been experimenting with oil paintings and his first art exhibition was held in 2017. Over the years, his art work has been shown in many art exhibitions and is used on notebooks, diaries and bookmarks, sold through local stores and cooperatives.

The first thing which Leonardo said to me when I tried to interview him was, "Keep your distance, don't come too close to me." He was not very expressive and articulate when I asked him questions about his artistic journey and his father, Emanuele helped him in this. 

However, sometime later, when Leonardo started explaining his artworks to the public, with the support of his mother Katia, he was transformed as a performer - making sounds, moving around, gesturing and dancing, explaining the ideas that inspire his artworks. (The artworks below were inspired by the music of The Blues Brothers, and talking about them Leo sang the words of a song).

 

He mostly draws animals and birds and uses bright colours. The kitchen in their home is his preferred environment for making art. Many of his works are inspired by music, as he sits in the kitchen listening to the music and ideas about the forms he wants to make come to him. In his presentation of his artworks, he often hums that music and start moving around while explaining the feelings and ideas that music had provoked in him.

Another way his inspiration comes is through visits, such as his visit to the Biosfera in Rome, and through stories and books. Katia explained that initially he full the full stories through his art, but more recently, he can even start from the middle or the end of the story, without needing to express it from the beginning to the end.

I loved Leonardo's artworks and my favourite is the one shown below (made after the visit to the Biosfera in Rome), in which the two cats or lions in the bottom-right are supposed to be Robinhood and Marian. (click on the picture for a bigger view)

The Costumes of Stefano Nicolao

Atlier Nicolao of costume designer Stefano Nicolao is based in Venice. It is famous for his costumes, especially for historical films. Maestro Stefano has done costume-design for many famous films including Marco Polo, Pirates of the Caraibi, Elizabeth, Casanova and Farinelli.

Stefano was unable to be there for the inauguration of his exhibition at ISFF and his friend and collaborator, well-known photographer Attilio Bruni was there to present the costumes from some of his films and serials.

While presenting the costumes, Attilio recounted many stories about the challenges a costume designer faces for films. For example, while shooting for the serial Marco Polo in high mountains, they needed furs and when they asked where to get them, they were brought hundreds of live rams and sheep, which had to be butchered to get their fur.

Attilio also said that Stefano is very particular about perfection and realism in his costumes. For example, if the scene has a hundred Buddhist monks, he wants that each of them is dressed authentically, even if some of them will be at the back and not fully visible.

Apart from costumes for films and serials, Atelier Nicolao in Venice can rent costumes, take your picture in a historical costume, organise guided tours or even organise costume-events for you, naturally all for a fee.

Stefano Nicolao is originally from Venice and started his carrier as an actor, but then found that he preferred backstage and especially costumes. His carrier took off after he assisted Enrico Sabbatini for the costumes of the TV serial Marco Polo in 1980, where he designed costumes and sets for the unit shooting in Tibet. In that same year he founded Atelier Nicolao, which is considered as one of the most important global sources for historical costumes. 

The Dresses of Banco Lotto N. 10 - Costumes by Prisoner Women

This exhibition presented the costumes made by the women inmates of Giudecca prison in Venice. Banco Lotto N. 10 is a social cooperative. 

This project was started in 2001 by the Cooperative Il Cerchio to teach an earning skill to the women inmates of the prison, and was funded by European Union and others. That project had concluded with a fashion show by the women prisoners and jail officers.

The success of the initial project, prompted the continuation of this activity in the prison and a boutique was opened in 2003 where people could buy their costumes.

Some famous local dressmakers and weavers of Venice such as Rubelli and Tessitura Bevilacqua collaborate with them to ensure high quality work. They also make the costumes for the famous Fenice theatre of Venice. They also get a space at the art biennale of Venice to showcase their products.

Teatro 80 Presents the Poems of Alda Merini

Alda Merini (1931-2009) was an Italian poet and writer. She is an iconic figure in the Italian literary scene. Among her life's experiences was a bipolar disturbance which led her to a psychiatric hospital for a period and this experience inspired some of her most famous works about madness.

Teatro 80 is a local theatre group in Schio, which was formed in 1980 and continues to be active. For ISFF, persons from Teatro 80, made an open-air theatre and dance performance on the streets in the city centre of Schio, based on some of the poems of Alda Merini.

Dressed in black and having a white muslin cloth as a prop, the actors-dancers created emotionally charged choreographies in the different parts of the city, supported by 3 musicians. On the guitar was my friend Roberto Rizzato. Alda Merini's daughter, Emanuela Carniti was also present during this performance.

It was an absolutely amazing performance, expressing the anguish and strong emotions of the poet. It was even more incredible because it was an afternoon of one of the hottest day of this season in Schio.

Some years ago, I had participated in a workshop on Theatre and Photography organised by Teatro 80. If you wish, you can read that as well. 

In The End

With ISFF - International Scledum Film Festival, Schio has one more important cultural activity in its already rich calendar of events. Considering that it is just a tiny little town, it is absolutely amazing that we can enjoy so many cultural events and a especial joy for me, as I can meet so many interesting persons for my blog.

If I have to choose one favourite side-event of ISFF, it would be the performance by Teatro 80 on the poems of Alda Merini. I liked it also because it was not an aseptic performance. As you can see from the image below, with children running between the performers, it was a performance in which the city was an active participant.

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Read the first part of the article on ISFF 2026

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Schio Film Festival 2026 - Art & Cinema

The second edition of Schio's film festival called ISFF - International Scledum Film Festival 2026 concluded yesterday (2 August). ISFF has a competitive section for the short and experimental films and there is a non-competitive section for other films. All the events of ISFF, including film projections are free and open to public.

In this post I want to touch on some of the side-events of ISFF which looked at the role of art in cinema.

"The Colours Behind the Windows" Art Exhibition

This exhibition was created by students of the Art Institute Arturo Martini of Schio. Inspired by the film "Rear Window" (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock, the students recreated some of this film's scenes in oil paintings and terracotta sculptures.

Some of the scenes were recreated in both, paintings and terracotta sculptures, so it was possible to compare the two and understand how the medium affected the art expression. For example, look at the images below and compare how that same scene is rendered in oil painting and in terracotta. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

 

I felt that the painting was better able to express emotions, and it could be a little abstract, giving the spectator the freedom to give it a meaning. It could also represent the physical reality better, for example, the transparency of the window panes. The terracotta was more defined, more physical and made it easier to identify objects, but IMO it was not able to express the emotions of the film.

However, I also feel that the level of terracotta work by the students was a little gross and perhaps, a better terracotta work, as done by some master artisans, could have been more impactful.

The terracotta sculptures were coordinated by prof. Alice Leoni and the paintings by prof. Francesca dal Santo. The art works were made by the students of different classes of the institute. 

History of Italian Cinema Through Posters of Some Iconic Films

This was an exhibition of posters. I was lucky that the organiser of this exhibition, Elena Tenga, was accompanying me and thus I was able to briefly talk to her.

Elena said that she is a film critic and a film historian. She has been collecting posters of Italian films and in her collection she has posters for the period 1930-1980. Some of the posters, which have handwritten dedications of the actors and directors. For example, one of the posters in the exhibition had a handwritten dedication by well-known Italian actor, Ornella Muti.

About the evolution of the film posters, Elena said that initially these posters were hand-painted and there were some well-known poster making artists such as Anselmo Ballester. Then came the posters using the photographs.

Many film directors took great interest in the design of their films and their posters. Some like Federico Fellini, used to design the full story-board for their films and thus decided the visual look of his films.

Dressing the Film-Characters - A Masterclass by Catherine Buyse

Catherine Buyse is a film costume designer based in Venice. With a Belgian father and an Italian mother, Catherine grew up in Belgium. She studied dress design and initially started in the area of fashion designing.

Her first experiences in film-costume designing were with friends who asked for her help for the costumes of videos and short films. She liked this experience so much, also because it was not related to commercialisation of her costumes and gave greater artistic satisfaction, that she decided to pursue it.

She started as someone in the costume designing team and made her way to costume supervision and then finally to becoming the costume designer. She works with the different films which are shot in Venice.

Over the years, she explained, that the work has changed. In the nineties, when there was no internet, when a team arrived from outside to shoot a film in Venice, they did not know local artisans and shops for buying clothes, stitching and preparing costumes for the local actors involved in the shoots, so she had all the contacts. Today with internet, it is easier to come from outside and shoot.

She presented a few films from her portfolio and showed how designing costumes for different kinds of films is different. For example, for a historical film, for different ages of the characters, for different scenes like bombings or water immersion, can create specific artistic challenges for costume design, which can be very different from those faced in a fantasy film. From issues like continuity to wear and tear of costumes during shootings, she gave different examples from her image-archives.

The image below is from her website showing the historical photographs of women from the second world war period, that she chose to design costumes for the heroine of the Italian TV serial "La Storia". This serial was directed by Francesca Archibugi, based on a book by Elsa Morante. It was based during the second world war. She explained that everything, including the underwear, worn by the actors was based on historical research, using materials from that era.

She also explained how the scenes of the world war in Africa and the soldiers dying of intense cold in Siberia, were all shot in Italy on days when the outside temperatures were hovering around 40 degrees. This also helped to understand how actors may need to wear heavy costumes even when it is hot.

For the uniforms of the different armies, it was important to ensure that there were no mistakes and thus, they had an additional consultant for this. About recreating intense cold during an intensely hot summer, she explained the use of artificial snow, salt and paraffin wax over the lips, clothes and shoes. Persons having gangrenes in their toes and noses were recreated through make-up.   

There were some technical glitches during her presentation, so it was delayed and since I had another engagement, I had to miss part of her presentation, but I had found it very fascinating, even if a bit unstructured. It gave a vivid overview of costume designing as a challenging but fulfilling team-work.

Dive e Motori - Parade of Vintage Cars

The rally of beautifully maintained vintage cars was organised by the Historic Club of Schio. Most of the cars for this show and rally came from Schio and surrounding areas.

The vintage car rally, required the cars to go to the Rossi park in Sant'Orso and come back to Schio. While some of the vintage cars were also put on show in Schio's city centre.

Some of the vintage cars are absolutely wonderful, they make me think of Casablanca and James Bond.

Celebrities in Schio

There are a number of celebrities going around the town because of the festival. I noticed the French actor Mark Grosy along with the directors Camille Tello and Leslie Crocquefere and the intimacy coordinator, Rachel Zekri in an exhibition. They are here for their short film "Tria Fata".

Mark Grosy became better known in Italy recently for his role in the serial Sandokan (2025, a remake of the old serial).

In another exhibition, I saw the young Italian actor Sofia d'Elia and didn't recognise her till I later saw her poster! 

In the End

Over the past few years, I prefer books to films. Thus, when Catherine Buys was talking about the costumes of the serial "La Storia", I liked what she told about it and thought that I will read Elsa Morante's book on which this serial is based. So I am not the best person to talk about film festivals.

However, as you can see from my post, even if I don't watch films, there is so much to talk about the art of film-making.

It also makes me feel proud about our tiny little town in the foothills of Alps, that it is so much culturally alive with so many events which give me opportunities to talk to so many different kinds of persons!

Let me close this post with a beautiful blue vintage car. 

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Read the second part of my post on ISFF focusing on exhibitions and performances

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Looking for Aditya Bhattacharya

Aditya Bhattacharya, son of the film-director Basu Bhattacharya (1934-97) and grandson of film-director Bimal Roy (1909-66) is known in India mainly for his first film as a director, Raakh (1989), which had Pankaj Kapoor, Aamir Khan and Supriya Pathak (image below).

Recently, I was searching for him for my book on Sonali Senroy Dasgupta (1928-2014), known for her love-story with the Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini in the 1950s.

This post presents an overview about Aditya's life and works. Let me start by explaining why I started searching for him. (All the images are from internet)

Aditya's Sonali Connection

There was a big scandal in the 1950s when Sonali, wife of film-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, had left her husband and gone to live in Europe with Rossellini. Many books have been written about Rossellini.

However, Sonali was a very private person and conceded only few interviews during her life in the 1960s and 70s. Harisadhan lived in India and was not interviewed for the European books. Thus, both Sonali and Harisadhan are almost missing from those books.

Last year, I started to put together a book which could look at this story from the point of view of Sonali and Harisadhan, and their families. For this, I am looking for information about the texture of her days during 1980s-2000s, when the spotlights had moved away from her, leaving her to live in relative anonymity in Rome.

Thus, I thought that Aditya could have provided some information about this period since he had lived in Italy in the early 1990s. Sonali was his mother's cousin and I thought that while in Rome, he must have spent some time with his aunt and her family.

Through my search, I found Aditya and did write to him about Sonali but he did not reply to my message. However, since I had collected information about him, I felt that this would make for an interesting blogpost.

Aditya and His Family

He was born in Bombay in 1965. In a Times of India interview in 2001, he said that "an unstable home environment made him independent early in his life." He was referring to the troubled marriage between his parents, Basu Bhattacharya and Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, which had ended in a divorce. Aditya has two sisters, Chimmu and Anvesha. 

About the film-makers in his family, in an interview in 2007 he said: "I never got a chance to spend time with my grandfather. In fact, my first childhood memory is my grandfather’s death. I was three years old. I have few memories with my father too, as I’ve travelled a lot. I did not expect him to die in 1997. That’s the only regret I have, that I wasn’t there when he needed me and didn’t spend enough time with him. ... My father never shot his films on sets. He would shoot on real locations. Which means, he shot at home. So I would be in the middle of the shoot all the time. Anubhav, Avishkaar, Griha Pravesh and Aastha were shot inside our homes. I have worked with him in only on one film called Panchvati. It was shot in Nepal." (Something does not match here. If he was born in 1965, he would have been one year old in 1966 when Bimal Roy had died; perhaps, he was born earlier, may be in 1963)

In 1997, when his father had died, Aditya was busy with his first Italian film 'Senso Unico'. The film's editing and music were completed in India. He told in the 2021 interview: "Just 2 days earlier I had spoken to him on telephone while he was in the hospital. Finish your work before coming back to see me, he had told me categorically. After his death when I returned, I was unable to think of anything else."

Aditya's Early Works in Bombay

After finishing high school, Aditya decided that he did not wish university education and decided to become a photo-journalist.

In that period, Shyam Benegal asked him to play a role in his film 'Mandi' (1983), and film-magazines hailed him as "the most handsome actor". In the image below, he is on the left in the film's poster, behind Shabana Azmi.

Apart from a few small roles as an actor, he came out with his first film as a director (Raakh) in 1989, when he was only 25. About Aamir Khan, the hero of Raakh, he said: "Aamir and me were classmates in school. In 1983, we had done a short film called Paranoia. We, along with Mansoor Khan, also had a band together. So we were good friends. He did not want to be an actor, he was quite confused about what he wanted to do in life." In the image at the top, he is with Pankaj Kapoor on the sets of this film - Pankaj received a national award for it (the film had received 3 national awards).

During those early years, he was also visiting Prithvi Theatre, where he met Sanjana Kapoor, daughter of well-known Hindi film actor and producer, Shashi Kapoor. Aditya and Sanjana lived together for a few years, before getting married. The marriage lasted a few months and the couple divorced.

About this marriage, in his 2001 interview to ToI, he said: "I was around 18 or 19 when I started hanging around Prithvi (Theatre). Once Sanjana was asked to help with something, we hit it off, and that was the start, he reminisces. The initial spark led to a long term live-in relationship (six years) and later a relatively short-lived marriage. We were very young. We realised we were better a friends and decided to go our separate ways. But we never lost the respect, that caring for each other, at any time."

Aditya's family has many links to other well-known Bollywood film-families. For example, in 2023, his sister Chimmu Acharya's daughter Drisha married well-known actor Dharmendra's grandson and Sunny Deol's son Karan. (Dharmendra has always been close to the Bimal Roy family - his first film Bandini was with Roy and after Roy's death in 1966, he had helped the family by working free in a film called Chaitali). 

Aditya Leaves India and Arrives in Italy

Aditya came to Rome (Italy) in 1990. About his shift to Europe, he said in an interview: "Different people want different things in life. I never dreamt of being famous in Bollywood. I wanted to make films that would make my father and grandfather proud. ... It may sound strange but I wanted to make life difficult for myself ... So I went to Italy the next year and did odd jobs like being a waiter and later, a chef. I also did live editing of television shows in Sicily, a music video for an Italian band, ramp photography… I never called home for help. ... I always feared that I would become a useless guy if I did not struggle and earned things myself. It took me seven years to raise money to make a film. Going through everything there was important for me to become a fuller human being and a better film-maker."

In that same interview, he gave another possible reason for leaving India: "After Raakh, I did a film called Tapori with Mahendra Joshi (a person from Gujarati theatre background who was married to Aamir’s sister Nikhat). He died of a heart attack midway. He was a brilliant theatre person. I didn’t want to do anything for a while, and maybe that’s why I left India." 

About why did he settle in Italy, he said: "I was on my way to London, when I had a stopover in Italy for a week. I really liked the place and the people. So I thought it would be nice to write a story there. After making some money, I made a Italian film called Senso Unico in a place called Messina in Italy. No one had ever shot a film there. I fell in love with that place. To make a film in Italian language, in a place I didn’t know, to raise a lot of money and get a producer from London was a big thing for me. I was 31 years old then."

In another interview for an Italian newspaper in 2021, he had talked about watching Fellini's film '8 1/2' at the Film Institute in India and the huge impact that film had had on him and how he had managed to have a coffee with Fellini many years later while he was shooting his own film, 'Senso Unico'. In this interview he also spoke of leaving India: "In spite of the success of my first film, I was unhappy. I didn't want to follow the dictates of Bollywood and I didn't like the attention of some magazines ..."

Aditya in Messina, Sicily (Italy)

Soon after his Rome experience, in 1991 he shifted to the city of Messina in Sicily. Here, he married Maria Giovanna, a Sicilian, and they have two children. 

In 1995, after shifting to Messina, his name appeared in the programme of the Messina Film Festival as the director of a 1994 short-film "Fannan", about a local music band called Kunsertu. The festival booklet cites the following other works by him -  Indio (1991), Chootey Noì (1992), Contro (1993), Kunsertu Live Acireale (1994) and Mokorto (1994). Probably, these were all short films.

His Italian interview in 2021, also mentions a story about his connection to Messina: "Raakh was shown in a film-festival in Russia. In the festival he met a girl from Messina. Some months later, while in London for discussing some project, he had a stop-over in Rome, and he decided to visit Messina to meet her and some other local persons he had known. He was there for only one week but he knew that he was going to come back to that city. ... He lived there for seven years, working as a video-editor for a local TV station. Since then he goes back to Messina regularly." 

Aditya's Films & Work in Europe 

In 1995, he started working on the screen-play of an Indo-Italian film called Senso Unico (One Way), which was shot and released in 1997. Though this film was presented in some film festivals in 1999 and later became available on Amazon Prime in UK, it was never released in Italy due to some problems among its producers. This film was about Francesco (Lothaire Bluteau), the illustrator of comic books, who also repairs stolen bicycles, and who falls in love with Yasmin (Laila Rouass), an actress shooting a film in the city. The still from a meeting about the film shows Aditya in the left.

In 2005, he directed a Hindi film, Dubai Returned with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta.

In 2007, he was involved as a producer in an Indo-Italian film, The Chase, with Vidyut Jammwal and Sidharth Malhotra. Some shooting for this film was done in Italy and it was being directed by Anubhav Sinha, but this film was stalled.

In 2009, he was planning to direct a film called Sandokan in Sicily but probably it was also stalled or the project did not take off.  

In 2012, he directed Bombay's Most Wanted (BMW) with Sarita Chaudhury, Jaaved Jafri, Samrat Chakrabarty, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The film was about a New York journalist, making a film in Mumbai about 3 characters - an encounter specialist policeman, an informer and a bar dancer.

In 2012, he was also planning to make an English film with the actor Rana Daggubati, based in Los Angles titled A Momentary Lapse of Reason but this film did not work out.

It seems that BMW was his last film though recently (2025) he has been seen in UP in India, acting in a serial for his friend Sudhir Mishra, with whom he has already worked a few times. 

Conclusions

In 2025 Aditya is is 60-62 years old, his children are grown up. He continues to be active. For example, this year he is supposed to run a film-making course between October to December 2025 at the Catalunya School of Film-making in Spain, focusing on the South Asian diaspora.

Every time, persons make a decision which completely changes the direction of their lives, such as Aditya's decision to leave India and to start afresh in Italy and Spain, it is natural to wonder if they occasionally look back and ask themselves if they had taken another path in that moment, then how would be their life today.

Perhaps, Aditya also has such moments of "what if". However, in the 2007 interview, he had said, "I have no regrets. I have made films which have been appreciated. I have two beautiful kids. I have two homes in two parts of the world. And I have respect from my contemporaries."  

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Searching For Lila

I came across the story of Lila Lakshmanan Biro by chance. Half-Indian and half French, she has worked as a film-editor with many of the famous French film-directors like Godard and Truffaut in the 1960s.

Born in 1935, Lila will be ninety years old this year. She lives in an old age home in a suburb near Paris. My artist friend Samit Das, whom I have found on the journey to find Lila, has confirmed to me that she is fine and keeping well.

I first met Lila in a book when she was called Lila Herman. Finding her reincarnations into other names was an exciting search. This is the story of that journey.

 My First Encounter With Lila

I came across her first when she was known as Lila Herman, while doing research about the Roberto Rossellini - Sonali Dasgupta story.

In December 1956, Roberto, well-known Italian director, famous for his neo-realistic films like Rome, Open City and Paisà, came to India to shoot a film. Sonali Dasgupta, wife of Indian producer-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, was supposed to collaborate with Roberto. The two fell in love and this created a huge scandal in India. Hounded by journalists and an upset family, Sonali looked for support. She found some support in Lila Herman.

At that time, Lila was married to Jean Herman, an aspiring film-director. Jean was teaching French in Bombay in those days, was one of Rossellini's assistants for his film. They had a son in Paris in 1955 and then come to Bombay, where they had stayed for 2 years.

That is how I started my search to learn more about Lila Herman, but I found very little. She edited some films in early 1960s and then disappeared. 

Lila Herman to Lila Lakshmanan

The search for Lila Herman was a little complicated because her husband film-director Jean Herman had also disappeared and had become famous as Jean Veutrin, a well-known French mystery-writer. 

She had disappeared because she and Jean had divorced. After the divorce, she had become Lila Lakshmanan and had continued to work as film-editor. However, after a few years, even the trail of Lila Lakshmanan also turned cold.

Lila & Atila Biro

Searching for Lila Lakshmanan brought me to her second marriage to the well-known French architect and artist of Hungarian origins, Atila Biro. She had become Lila Biro.

Her husband Atila was born as Attila in Hungary in 1931, studied in Germany and settled in Paris. As a painter, he chose to write his name as Atila. Many of his works are part of different European art museums.

Atila and Lila married in 1963. Together, Atila and Lila, travelled to Italy, Marocco and many times to India. Atila had a large number of exhibitions in different European countries and the two often travelled together for those events. I don't know if Atila and Lila had any children. Atila Biro died in 1987. You can check some of his works on the Facebook page of Atila Biro foundation.

Lila Biro's Book

In 2012, Lila Atila Biro wrote a book called "Atila, Le soleil des métamorphoses" (Atila, the Sun of Metamorphosis).

The preface of this book was written by Lila's first husband Jean Vautrin (Herman), who wrote about his admiration for Atila's paintings.

I think that Jean and Lila had separated because she was in love in Atila. She married Atila, soon after her divorce while Jean had his second marriage a few years later. However, the three of them, Jean, Lila and Atila, probably continued to be good friends. 

Lila Biro Interview in 2017

In 2017, an event was organised in Paris on visual mapping of modernism in Indian art. In that connection, some art exhibitions and talks were organised, in which clips from some of Lila's films were also included. On that occasion, in an interview to Bombay Mirror by Sumesh Sharma, Lila had shared some information about her life:

"Lila was born in Jabalpur in 1935, where her father Lakshmanan was the director of All India Radio, while her mother was French. As a child, she had lived in Delhi, Lucknow and Bombay. Then her parents separated and 12 years old Lila arrived in a boarding school in England.

She went to Sorbonne to study English Literature when she was 17. Lila successfully graduated and went to study at the French film school ID’HEC, where she met her first husband, Jean Herman, now better known as the French writer Jean Vautrin. She was studying editing as she didn’t think she was creative enough to be a director.

During her last year at the film school in Paris in 1955, she gave birth to her son. Lila’s mother, found a job for Jean Herman teaching French Literature at the Wilson College in Bombay, thus, they lived there for 2 years until the end of 1957.

Regarding the Roberto-Sonali story she said: “I was with Rossellini, when he met Sonali Das Gupta. He was a man who had the accomplishment of perusal; he would be convincing and would get his way with people. When Sonali’s affair became public, she came and lived with me on Carmichael Road."

In the End

In late 1960s, Lila Biro continued to work as editor for different well-known French film directors. Thus, in the films she edited, her name appears as 3 different persons - Lila Herman, Lila Lakshmanan and Lila Biro. I think that she stopped working as film-editor in early 1970s.

About the impact of her work, in 2023, film producer Daniel Bird said: "Lila Biro is a remarkable character who witnessed Rossellini in India, played a key role in the cutting of key titles of the French New Wave, and was a close collaborator of the Hungarian émigré painter, Atila Biro. For me, however, she’s also the star witness in a crime against film grammar: the jump cut. The editing style of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is now legendary, but I’ve always wondered what it must have been like in the cutting room when that revolutionary editorial decision was made. Thanks to Lila, that moment is vividly brought to life."

There was another Indo-French woman connected to the films - Leela Naidu. Leela was 5 years younger to Lila. In 1955, when Lila and Jean had come to Bombay, Leela was crowned Miss Femina. I wonder if the two had met and had been in contact in India or in France.

I am also curious about Lila and Jean Herman's connections with the films in Bombay, as the two had just come out of the cinema institute in Paris and must have been very interested to collaborate with Indian film-makers. It was the time when films like Mughle Azam and Devdas were being made.

To conclude this article, here is a romantic picture of a dedication of a painting by Atila to his "ma Lila cherie" (my dear Lila) from 1969 (click on the picture for a bigger view).

I wish I could talk to her and do a long oral-history chat to explore her memories.

***** 

Note: The first image of Lila presented above has been made from 2 images I found on internet. However, I could not find any picture of Lila and Atila together. The second image of Atila's dedication of a painting is taken from the facebook page of Atila Biro foundation.

Sonali SenRoy's Book

I had first heard about the Sonali - Rossellini story in 2008, when Dilip Padgaonkar's book, "Under Her Spell: Roberto Rossellini in India" had come out. 

Over the past 17 years, I have spent numerous days in libraries and archives, collecting information in English, Italian and French about their story. For example, you can (1) read my article about this story written in 2008, (2) the second article written in 2010, and, (3) another article from 2025 about Lila Herman who had played a role in this story. You can say that I am obsessed with it.

Today I received a book written by Sonali in 1961, that I had ordered. There was a surprise hidden in it. This post is about her book and the surprise. The image below shows Sonali from the back-cover of her book.

Let me start with a brief background about the Sonali-Rossellini story.

Brief Background About Sonali-Rossellini Story

The 1945 film, "Rome, Open City" created the legend of Italian film director Roberto Rossellini. At the end of 1956, Rossellini arrived in India to shoot a film. At that time, he was married to the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman.

In India, he fell in love with Sonali Dasgupta, wife of film director Hari Dasgupta. There was a huge scandal. In October 1957, Rossellini and Sonali escaped to Paris with her younger son.

4 years later, in June 1961, Sonali wrote a book in French & Italian titled, Altro Mondo (the Other World).

Sonali's Book

I had heard about this book, but had not managed to lay hands on it. After so many years, a few days ago, while re-reading my old notes, I was reminded of this book and thought that now it might be possible to find it on internet. I found it straight away, and ordered a used-copy for a little more than three Euro.

Today morning that book arrived. It says that it was originally published in French and translated into Italian by Sonali herself, with the help of Dominique Aubier. It was published by Longanesi & C., Milan in June 1961. The cover has the picture of a woman from the Ajanta caves.

On the book, the author's name is Sonali Dasgupta. The first question in my mind was - why did she use this name for her book?

Sonali's maiden name was Senroy, and after her marriage to H. Dasgupta, she had become Sonali Dasgupta. When she had reached Paris in the beginning of October 1957, Roberto was still married to his second wife, Ingrid Bergman, and their legal separation was ratified in Rome in early November 1957. At the end of November 1957, their daughter Raffaella was born.

Thus, her choice of publishing her book as "Sonali Dasgupta" in 1961, probably meant that she and Roberto were not yet formally married. May be, at that time, her divorce with Hari Dasgupta was not formalised and thus she was forced to use that name, because it was on her official documents?

Surprise in the Book

I was surprised that the used copy of the book I have received, has a hand-written note in Italian by Sonali (click on the picture for a larger view): 

 "Questo libro non è l'opera di uno scrittore ma l'esperienza di una donna. La sincerità in esso racchiusa è la prova della simpatia e amicizia per tutto e tutti. Maggio 1961, Roma, Sonali Dasgupta."

(Trans.: This book is not the work of a writer but the experience of a woman. The sincerity in it, is the proof of my goodwill and friendship for everything and everyone. May 1961, Rome, Sonali Dasgupta)

Sonali and her elder son Raja

The book is dedicated to Ragia (Raja), her elder son. In the book, the spellings of Raja are "Ragia", because Italian does not have J and it uses "gi" for the J sound. It is possible that she had given verbal instructions about the dedication and the person transcribing it had used the Italian spellings of the word. I feel that she must have been disappointed that her son's name was not spelled properly.

When I had first read about the Sonali and Roberto story, I had been greatly struck by her leaving of her elder son, Raja, in India, who was around 5 years old at that time. It had seemed to me like a "Sophie's Choice" kind of situation because a mother had been forced to take one child and to leave behind her other child.

I think that by dedicating this book to Raja Dasgupta, she was expressing her regret and pain at that separation.

Contents of the Book

The book is composed of 13 chapters. The first chapter starts with her days in Bombay immediately preceding her departure from India for Paris, with her young son Arjun (later he changed name and became Gil Rossellini). A couple of chapters have brief glimpses of her life in India such as about her birth in Banaras/Varanasi and her father's work as a doctor and about her journey to Europe.

Rest of the book is about her encounters with Europe, first with Paris and Saint Remy in France and then about her life in Italy. These encounters include linguistic difficulties, challenges of adapting to the western clothes, and the curiosity of people about the sari-wearing woman. In the parts about Italy, there are also different episodes of dealing with journalists and other curious persons.

The book does not touch on her love-story with Roberto and her life with her first husband. It reads like a series of vignettes, as if she was talking to someone about what it means for her to be an exotic Indian in Europe and to explain the peculiarities of India to the Europeans. The first draft of the book was probably written by that interviewer (Dominique Aubier), at a time when she didn't have a good command over French or Italian.

The book also shows her desire for dignity and privacy, for not giving in to journalists looking for melodramatic stories and scandals.

Conclusions

To find this book with her handwritten words in my hands was an incredible sensation. Suddenly, I could touch the words she had written and imagine her sitting at a table in a bookshop, writing dedications.

It seemed to me, as if across time and space, she has decided to extend her finger towards me, daring me to touch her.

I had written to her once to ask for an interview, but it was a time of bereavement and she had withdrawn from all public contacts at that time. She died in 2014.

I have been obsessed with this story for almost 2 decades. I have already written about it a few times and have been in contact with Raja Dasgupta, her elder son, as well as with a few other persons who knew her.

With all the material that I have collected about this story, I know that one day I will write a book about it. When I saw her handwriting today, I felt as if she is herself asking me to do it.

***

Mantra Photo Exhibition in Schio

During a recent evening walk, I visited a photo-exhibition at the beautiful Toaldi-Capra palace of Schio. The exhibition was titled Nel Mantra (In the Mantra) and it had stills from a short film made by a film-maker from Schio, Rocco Zaupa.

Photo-Exhibition

Many of the images in the exhibition were blurred, expressing motions and emotions, though from them it was difficult to make a rational idea about the film. At the beginning of the exhibition, a note explained that the underlying theme of the exhibition (and the film) was repetition, and thus the title, Nel Mantra, because a Mantra has to be repeated many times.

The images were from a short film about a film-shooting, in which a director named Gerda is directing two actresses. He makes them do the same scene again and again, till they are too tired to go on. This day of repetitions creates a kind of deep relationship between the director Gerda and one of the actresses called Anna.

Rocco Zaupa and Aurora Verducci

I had a brief interaction with Rocco and Aurora, two members of the team associated with the short film and this exhibition.

Rocco is from Schio, while Aurora is from Tuscany. They both met at the film school in Lucca (Tuscany).

They explained the basic idea of the film about repetition and how they can lead to the discovery of deeper meanings and connections. The images presented in the exhibition have been created from the videos they had shot for the film.

Comments

I can understand the idea of repetitions, by making you think and rethink of something, can lead you to see it from different angles and understand it better. It is a tiny idea and I am curious to see how they have translated this into an understanding of the relationship between two persons.

I think that even a decade ago, making a short-film on such a "tiny-sliver" of an idea and making an exhibition out of stills made from the video, would have been much more difficult, but today the technology helps to simplify everything and it is possible to take a wisp or a whisper, and make it germinate into something more substantial.

However, I am not sure if Mantra is the right word to express the act of repetitions leading to deeper or a different understanding, since Mantras are more about the sounds and not so much about meanings.

Credits

Photography & Post-Production: Federica Galiero

Graphics & Poster: Aurora Verducci

Photo Backstage: Federico di Malta

Video footage: Same Studio

Sound designer: Leonardo Santini

Text & Direction: Rocco Zaupa

***

The Kashmir Story

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading about the film “The Kashmir Files”, its box-office success, its impact and the heated discussions it has generated. Perhaps, after a few weeks, it might become available on some streaming platform and then I will be able to watch it, though I am not sure that I will – from what I have read, it has some very graphic violence and I have no stomach for watching violence.

However, reading about “The Kashmir Files” has reminded me of another film about Kashmir and the Kashmiri Pandits – the film was “I Am” (2010), and it was directed by Onir. I think that it was a good film that merited greater attention. I had translated its subtitles into Italian, when it was shown at the River-to-River film festival in Florence.

The Kashmir Story in “I Am”

“I Am” was an anthology of four short films, loosely connected with each other. Among those four stories, the Kashmir short film was the second story of the film. It had beautiful performances by Juhi Chawla as Megha, a Kashmiri Pandit, and Manisha Koirala as Rubina, as her childhood Kashmiri Muslim friend.

This part of the film started with Megha’s journey to Srinagar to sell her house. Rubina comes to the airport to pick her up and is happy to see her old friend. Megha is by turns, angry and anguished, at the memories the return has brought back. She is unwilling to give in to romantic nostalgia about the city, and maintains some distance from her friend.

During the 24 hours of Megha’s stay in Srinagar, there are only a few scattered moments of nostalgia for her childhood home. A visit to the ruins of her uncle’s home who was killed by neighbours, brings back the memories of her terror of those days when they had abandoned their home and ran away to the refugee camp.

An encounter with a group of youth on the road, brings out that the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has been changed and retold by the locals. In this new retelling, they were the cowards and villains, who had run away from the valley.

At the same time, Megha’s dispersion of her father’s ashes in the river, brings out the attachment of older generations for Kashmir and their dreams about the day when they will return to their original homes.

Those 24 hours also show Rubina’s changed life in the Kashmir valley – she is lonely, living closed at home and is unmarried, while the guy she used to love has left India. Her brother, who had become a militant, has repented and come home, but is disabled and a shell of his former self. Police comes to their home frequently to check because they are a militant family. The city is divided by barbed wires and check-points, which gets deserted as the evening falls and people rush to their homes.

Megha’s righteous anger and resentment at the fate of Kashmiri Pandits, has one final moment of push back from Rubina. A brief exchange between the two friends, brings out the tragedy of changed lives of Kashmiri Muslims, especially those of the women and youth. The awareness that in the end there were no victors among the ordinary persons on the two sides plants a little seed of mutual understanding.

Impact of “I Am”

“I Am” was a film dealing with other difficult themes along with the Kashmir story. Perhaps that is why its Kashmiri section did not receive proper attention. It had a strong impact on me because in the process of doing its Italian subtitles, I had spent a lot of time with each of its scenes.

This part of the film gave precedence to the view-point a Kashmiri Pandit. It was shot in dark and drab colours. It showed a Srinagar of barbed wires, road-blocks and sad people, and not the romantic town of lake and gardens from 1980’s Bollywood.

The whole sequence of Megha visiting the ruins of her killed uncle’s house, had a very strong impact on me. Its background score was filled with the shouts of slogans by angry people asking all kaffirs to leave Kashmir or be killed. I could identify with her refusal of Rubina’s sympathy, when she responds, “Don’t worry, I am not going to cry”.

The film also shows the impact of the events on the other side, through Rubina’s family. They have also suffered and continue to suffer due to the militants on one hand and Indian army on the other. However, I felt that it was more difficult to empathise with them, because their pain was closely linked to issues related to militancy and its violence.

For example, there was a sequence when Megha is accompanied by Rubina’s mother to a neighbourhood shop for buying saffron. The elderly shop-owner remembers that he had accompanied Megha’s pregnant mother to the hospital when she was born. However, their discussion also brings out that it was that same person’s son who had killed Megha’s uncle and later, died as a militant. Megha comes back from the shop full of indignation – “You only had that shop to take me, whose son had killed my uncle?” she asks bitterly.

While I could see the dismay, regret and frustration on the faces of the local Kashmiris, I also had a feeling at the back of my mind that “it was their sons and families who did it”! I think that is the biggest difficulty when we look at victims of Islamic terror, that we are less willing to acknowledge the pain of its Muslim victims.

The Elephant in the Room

I remember talking to Onir in Florence about the Kashmir portion of the film, expressing my appreciation and saying that it was a great pity that this episode of our recent history had been allowed to be forgotten.

To write this post, I watched again the Kashmir portion of “I Am”. I think that there is an aspect of the Kashmir situation which had remained untouched in the film – the rise of more conservative Islam which was linked with militancy. Traditionally, the Kashmiri Islam has been moderate and open, and it had a history of a peaceful co-existence with Hinduism. Over the past couple of decades, the more conservative version of Islam has become more common, but its role and significance in the Kashmiri Pandits' exodus was never mentioned in the film.

Whose sufferings need acknowledgement?

As far as I understand about the events in Kashmir, the problems worsened with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. To counter that the Americans started supplying money and arms to Mujahideen through Pakistan, which contributed to strengthening of the more conservative ideas of Islam in the region and reached Kashmir through Pakistani militants in the 1980s. Apart from the militants, it impacted different groups of persons, such as -Militants from Pakistan along with radicalised Kashmiri youth killed many Kashmiri Pandits and provoked their mass exodus in late 1980s and early 1990s.

Militants and hardliners from Pakistan along with their companions in Kashmir started killing moderate Kashmiri Muslims and those seen as sympathetic or collaborating with India, starting from early 1990s and continuing even now. Around 7000 Kashmiri “political opponents” have been killed, though some say that the Kashmiri victims have been many times more. They specifically target the intellectuals and they can abduct or rape their families.

Since the 1990s, Indian army has been fighting the Kashmiri separatists and militants and once again, a large number of victims have been reported, not only among the militants, but also among the civilians. The army rule has also affected general life.

Each of these groups have their own stories to share. I have read of Kashmiri Pandit families weeping at the shows of The Kashmir File - they are happy that finally their sufferings have been acknowledged through cinema. Onir’s film “I Am” did not show that violence directly, it focused on its aftermath.

I think that one of the good films about the impact of army in Kashmir was Shaurya (2008), which touched upon the human right abuses.

Stories about the situation in Kashmir involve different and complex issues. The views of the Islamic hardliners and militants may not be acceptable or understandable for most of us. However, I think that our cinema needs to explore these different areas and view-points so much more. For example, little is known about the violence against moderate Muslims in Kashmir and it would also benefit from a greater exploration in literature and cinema.

*****