Boatman

Director: Gianfranco Rosi

1993 / 55min / DCP

Rosi’s first (almost) feature-length film documents the daily routine of Gopal, a no-longer-young man who earns his bread by rowing Western tourists eager to rubberneck at Hindu funeral rites in Benares from one bank of the Ganges to another in a canoe—his customers every bit as odd and exotic in Gopal’s eyes as the funeral pyres are to theirs. (Among their number is a dissolute Italian who discusses his attempts to make pasta with local Indian ingredients.) Languid in pace, operating according to a discursive logic all its own, shot in starkly beautiful black-and-white 35mm, and wholly eschewing instructive narration or scoring, the four-years-in-the-making Boatman announced the arrival of a towering new talent in nonfiction filmmaking.

Distributor: Stemal Entertainment

Part of Gianfranco Rosi: Firmament of the Real