alpona Bengal alpona, part 1 "The River by Jean Renoir" The Bengal I had been dreaming about since my adolescence is that of its villages and artistic creativity of its women, like in the opening scene of Jean Renoir’s The River, filmed in 1950 in Barrackpore, near Kolkata.
Chantal Jumel How it all began As a child I dreamed of becoming a dancer or an actress, a musician or a painter and my favourite book was “Contes et légendes de l’Inde”. The images showed black and white men in turbans, an assembly of bonzes, a man with an elephant face and characters with numerous arms and heads.