 I just make films the way I like. Adhoor graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India in 1965. He went back to Kerala and in the same year was one of the key players in the setting up of a film cooperative in Trivandrum. Adhoor had already written and directed more than 20 plays. He was clear about the kind of films he wanted to make. Suambaram, Adhoor's first film, was a direct product of the film cooperative. Not just in terms of finance but a theme. Suambaram went on to win four national awards. Yet it was a gap of five years before Adhoor found the money to make a second film. Kudiyatam. It is his most lyrical film. With rare, poetic realism, Ellipathayam was also Adhoor's first film in colour. I told myself that I had to use colour very, very carefully because each element of colour had to be to mean something. It had to promote a traumatic purpose. How much of film is cheating? Well, as long as you are driving at the reality, you want to give the impression it is justified. Actually it's not cheating. It's just playing on their gullibility. It's not really cheating. I wouldn't want to cheat the audience. From the social to the political dimension of change was a small step. Mukhamukham is divided into two parts. The first deals with the period just before the 1957 victory of the Communist Party in the state. When you make a film in Kerala, you have to necessarily have the politics as at least the background of what is going on because unless you show that interaction between political ideology and the lives lived here, you will be making some very untrue statements. My political ideology can be explained as a certain kind of humanism, not beyond that. Adhoor's next quest was that of the psychological. He drew on his memories of childhood adolescence and young adulthood. The profound influences from these three stages of his life in the cultural milieu of Kerala play their part in Anandaram. His films seemed deceptively simple in narrative and structure as each one probes his serious concern, striking universal resonances. Inspired by Gandhi, there is an economy and a simplicity in both his lifestyle and in his work. Women have always been portrayed with strong character in other films, sometimes even stronger than men. There is also a degree of repressed sexuality in the man-woman relationship. I grew up in a single parent situation. There are so many families in Kerala where women take the lead and then bring up their children. They may suffer themselves, but then they see that their children get good education. And in Kerala, particularly households can really stand on its own even when a woman of the house is the head of the family. It is not merely human characters in other films that hold center stage, but the spaces he uses as well. Time and history play an important role in other films. An overtly metaphorical film, Kathapurushan, is a culmination of many of other's lifelong concerns about politics, culture, social status, love and individual freedom. It weaves a historical perspective into the personal. So you become another person, even without the change of present order. Only in your bhava, in your expression, you become the other person. Kodiathu is very well known for that. Structurally, the film is a projection of the past into the present. A present which is continuous. Because the real incident of his having hanged somebody who was innocent, happened in the past. He lives in a romance area. So it is possible for him to imagine each character of the story being narrated, to transverse them into his own people. You give and also you take away things. So you are the sin and also the sinner. This film is about the stories of different women. Here, there is a scene where the four women stand in the stories. That is when the woman sees her own self. Who is that? I am Keshavan. Open the door. What is it? Nothing. It is a scene of the four stories of the four women who are trying to make a special period of time. Here, in the story, there is no connection between the characters and the characters. But it is not. There is a connection between the characters and the characters. Who is that? My father. I just do what I believe in. I don't compare myself with anybody else or anywhere else.