A LEGACY COMES ALIVE

A website wholly dedicated to Bharat Gopy will be launched on January 28

A website dedicated to actor Bharat Gopy, www.bharatgopy.com, goes live on January 28 at 10 a.m. The website is the fruition of his son Murali Gopy’s desire to create a digital legacy showcasing his father’s work.

For Murali this website is a major responsibility he has fulfilled, as “my father did not believe in awards and foundations. A website like this would be suitable.” He sifted through his father’s works and handed them over to Bangalore-based digital agency *Conditionsapply.

Film aficionado Biju Ebenezer, content head *Conditionsapply, helped collate the information on the late thespian who passed away on January 29, 2008. Information on his body of work, including the 80-odd films that he worked in, will be available at a click of the mouse.

The website is not only a digital catalogue just of Gopy’s work in cinema as actor, director and producer but also features his work as a writer – playwright, essayist and poet. “Anything he did, he got national recognition. Besides acting awards, he directed five films out which three won national awards, he produced one and that got a national award too. His book on acting Abhinayam Anubhavam won the National Award for the best book on cinema, while Nataka Niyogam won the State Award for the best book on dramatics and theatre…his body of work is astounding,” says Biju, a Bharat Gopy fan.

Most of his writings will be available online. “Murali did not want to put all his father’s poems on the website but there are quiet a few of them, some of which are amazing.”

It was a collaboration that started with Biju’s Facebook page dedicated to the actor, as a private project, upon realising that there was very little information available about him online. “Murali was amused by it and we got talking. At the time he had started work on launching a website dedicated to his father.”

Close to a year’s work went into content research and consolidation. “The website has been designed keeping in line with what I had in mind,” says Murali. *Conditionsapply provided the technical expertise and design. All the information that will be available on the site will be about his father’s career, there will be no personal content. “This will not be a celebration of personality rather it will present my father’s work as a creative artist,” Murali emphasises.

On the website all Gopy’s films will have dedicated profile pages with exhaustive lists of the cast, crew, songs, movie clipping and even what has appeared in the press. The actor’s filmography has been divided into two – Spring of the Maestro and Autumn of the Maestro. There will be links to where the movie (VCD or DVD), screenplay or the novel in case of adapted films is available online, and legally. There will also be a gallery of never seen before archival photographs of the actor. Biju adds, “Every aspect of the films will be put out there in the public domain.”

The device agnostic website has been presented in such as way it can be accessed on any medium.