Filmmaker focuses on Bishnupur’s lost art and craft
The Statesman | 11 November 2025
The scion of the Faujdar family in Bishnupur has lost all hopes of revival of the vanishing craft. With the struggling art on the verge of extinction, the last craftsman of the famous ‘Bishnupur Dashavatar Tash’ was reluctant to allow making a film on the dying tradition, claimed filmmaker Saurav Bhadra, who has made a short documentary on the Dashavatar Tash being screened at the ongoing 31 Kolkata International Film Festival.
The roots of the Dashavatar Tash, a traditional way of playing cards that have images of Lord Vishnu’s 10 avatars, dates back to the reign of the Mughal ruler, Akbar. “The then king of Bishnupur, during his visit to Akbar’s court noticed a few people playing cards. After returning to Bishnupur, the king summoned one of the people having good knowledge of art and asked him to draw the images of 10 avatars of Lord Vishnu on the cards. The art became popular this way and has existed for around 1,200 years since then,” informed the director of the film.
The filmmaker, who has his second documentary being screened at the ongoing film festival, lamented over the fact that despite being a cultural heritage of the famous Bishnupur Faujdar family and the place of its origin, the art is unknown to many people of Bengal even now. “What drove me to take the subject as a documentary was the fact that the art has been carried on by the members of the family for 87 generations. Despite the efforts of the last craftsman of the cards, who is a scion of the Faujdar family, Sital Faujdar, the art is dying a natural death,” rued the director. “Even the newer generations of the family have shifted to other professions.
Sital Faujdar was so hopeless about the revival of the Dashavatar Tash that initially he did not give much response to my idea of making a film or even talking about the subject. Given the sad situation, I decided to take up the subject in the form of a short documentary as I wanted the world to know about the dying art of Bishnupur,” reiterated the filmmaker.
The short documentary on Bishnupur’s lost Dashavatar Tash is a 19-minute film. The documentary is competing in the Indian Documentary Films section of the 31 edition of Kolkata International Film Festival.