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People I have photographed

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Work and travel in India
Wolfgang Suschitzky Film-maker
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In India I had several jobs. One of the most interesting was a film about the electrification of India. The director was an Indian who had worked for the Shell film unit in London, and whom I got to know there. His brother was a famous actor in India, who had a film studio and made feature films, very interesting ones, not the usual film with dance and... and signing. And the brother’s wife was a very beautiful woman who was one of the eight women who provided all the songs for the Indian films. Anyway we went up to Kashmir to see where the snow melts and provides water down, and gathers in rivers, and then in dams provides enough force for electricity... generating of electricity. So we travelled from right up north in Kashmir to... down to Madras, and further south, and from east to west. And I was the only European in an Indian crew, so I could ask questions all the time and they knew the answers. It was for me very interesting, and even the people I worked with like the electrician, who told me that he lives in an extended family... that the mother really ruled the house. The married offspring brought her the wages... wages they earned, and got some pocket money every week. And the women had to do the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning as requested by the mother. And there lived 16 people in one small house. And that’s how this family worked, something which quite new to me, an extended family. The Indian technicians were excellent, very good, well trained and hard working. I got on very well with them.

Born in Austria, Wolfgang Suschitzky (1912-2016) trained as a photographer and became one of the first in his field to take portraits of animals. After coming to England he worked with Paul Rotha as the cameraman on various documentaries and films such as “No Resting Place”, “Ulysses” and “Get Carter”.

Listeners: Misha Donat

Misha Donat is the son of Wolfgang Suschitzky. He has composed music for the theatre and the cinema (including films directed by Lindsay Anderson, and by Albert Finney). For more than 25 years he was a senior music producer for BBC Radio 3, where he planned and produced the prestigious lunchtime concerts at St John’s, Smith Square, at which many of the world’s leading artists appeared on a regular basis, and also instigated a Young Artists’ Forum as a showcase for musicians of the coming generation. As a broadcaster himself, he has given many radio talks. Misha Donat has contributed a large number of programme notes to the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, South Bank, Aldeburgh Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Brighton Festival and other venues, and he has written CD booklets for such labels as Decca, DG, RCA, Philips and Hyperion. He has been a regular contributor to BBC Music Magazine since its inception more than 10 years ago, and has written articles for The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Musical Times, The Listener, Opera, and other publications. He has taught at the University of California in Los Angeles, and has given lectures and seminars at Vassar College and Bard College in New York State, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), and in the UK at Durham University, the Barbican Centre, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Norwich Music festival. He is currently working as a producer for the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Tags: India, Kashmir, Madras

Duration: 2 minutes, 58 seconds

Date story recorded: March 2008

Date story went live: 06 August 2009