Ayodhya Ram Mandir
Two documentaries for the Government of Uttar Pradesh around the temple's inauguration — one on the city, one on the Gorakhnath Math's role in its reclamation.
The Films
Around the inauguration of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the Government of Uttar Pradesh commissioned two documentary films.
The first documents the transformation of Ayodhya itself — what the city was, and what a period of concentrated development made of it. The second documents the role of Yogi Adityanath and the Gorakhnath Math in the temple's reclamation, a lineage of involvement that runs back well before the present government.
Both were research-backed productions rather than commemorative films.
How We Made Them
Both films were built on archival material rather than reconstruction. The Gorakhnath Math's involvement is a historical claim spanning decades, so the archive had to be found, cleared and verified before anything was written. As on Silent Invasion, the research pass came first and the films were written from what it established.
The city and the institution are different subjects and needed different treatments, but shooting, research and post ran as a single production, against a delivery date fixed by the inauguration.
