Single-channel video (5 minutes) and C-Type prints
2018 | 59.4 cm x 42.0cm
In 1936, while gathering footage in a maharajah’s palace in India, documentary filmmaker Robert J Flaherty came across 12-year old Sabu Dastagir (born Selar Sheik Sabu), the son of a mahout (elephant rider) from Mysore. Mirroring his life, Flaherty cast Sabu in Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy, based on the short story Toomai of the Elephants from Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894). The adaptation earned Korda’s brother Zoltan the Best Director award at the 1937 Venice Film Festival.
Sabu went on to major roles such as Abu in The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell & Ludwig Berger, 1940) and Mowgli in The Jungle Book (Zoltan Korda, 1942) a meteoric rise that meant the studios took full advantage of their new child star. Sabu became a household name, appearing on stamps, endorsing cereals, opening the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair and featuring in lifestyle magazines in the UK and US.
My introduction to Sabu came through Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947). The British Studio System, like its American counterpart, looked to the colonies to provide the exotic backdrops audiences demanded. But paradoxically they commonly did so by constructing sets, which offered a controlled colonial vision of the British Raj and its people, including the casting of white British actors in the roles of Indians. Sabu in effect became the go-to actor for such films: the studios now had someone ‘authentic’ who didn’t need to be ‘blacked up’. Following on from my films House of Women (2017) and The Fruit is There to be Eaten (2018) based on Black Narcissus, The Eternal Return is the final film in a trilogy that explores the historical sidelining of actors of colour.
The Eternal Return explores the phenomenon of how a performer of colour might be treated and thought of in a way analogous to the animals with whom he appears. In Sabu’s case this was the conflation of his background as mahout’s son with his career as actor that imposed a seemingly inescapable relationship with elephants: the animals recur throughout his filmography. It also highlights how, in spite of his extraordinary fame Sabu was always the sidekick and never the leading man or love interest.
While looking at images of Sabu, you could say that I became somewhat protective over his image. I have developed an admittedly obsessive habit of collecting all paraphernalia connected to him (including Sabu-inspired pottery, film stills and signed photographs). I have also made a pilgrimage to his grave in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Performing by his grave, I realised I had taken a leap into fandom; most notably by declaring that I was a ‘distant relative’ when the security guards came to ask what I was doing. I could hardly say that I was in commune with the dead film star:
All Sabu wanted, he said, was to play the lead... I said that the art world similarly uses brown artists and drops them when we're not curatorially "in vogue".
We shared our thoughts on our mutual "brownness" and how this is paradoxically joyful and a burden.
I even shed some tears in confronting our reality, but Sabu said he worked hard to be remembered after death, and I said I want to be remembered while I'm still alive...
Sabu said no more, leaving me a moment to be silent and place a rose on his grave.
2018 | 59.4 cm x 42.0cm
In 1936, while gathering footage in a maharajah’s palace in India, documentary filmmaker Robert J Flaherty came across 12-year old Sabu Dastagir (born Selar Sheik Sabu), the son of a mahout (elephant rider) from Mysore. Mirroring his life, Flaherty cast Sabu in Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy, based on the short story Toomai of the Elephants from Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894). The adaptation earned Korda’s brother Zoltan the Best Director award at the 1937 Venice Film Festival.
Sabu went on to major roles such as Abu in The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell & Ludwig Berger, 1940) and Mowgli in The Jungle Book (Zoltan Korda, 1942) a meteoric rise that meant the studios took full advantage of their new child star. Sabu became a household name, appearing on stamps, endorsing cereals, opening the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair and featuring in lifestyle magazines in the UK and US.
My introduction to Sabu came through Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947). The British Studio System, like its American counterpart, looked to the colonies to provide the exotic backdrops audiences demanded. But paradoxically they commonly did so by constructing sets, which offered a controlled colonial vision of the British Raj and its people, including the casting of white British actors in the roles of Indians. Sabu in effect became the go-to actor for such films: the studios now had someone ‘authentic’ who didn’t need to be ‘blacked up’. Following on from my films House of Women (2017) and The Fruit is There to be Eaten (2018) based on Black Narcissus, The Eternal Return is the final film in a trilogy that explores the historical sidelining of actors of colour.
The Eternal Return explores the phenomenon of how a performer of colour might be treated and thought of in a way analogous to the animals with whom he appears. In Sabu’s case this was the conflation of his background as mahout’s son with his career as actor that imposed a seemingly inescapable relationship with elephants: the animals recur throughout his filmography. It also highlights how, in spite of his extraordinary fame Sabu was always the sidekick and never the leading man or love interest.
While looking at images of Sabu, you could say that I became somewhat protective over his image. I have developed an admittedly obsessive habit of collecting all paraphernalia connected to him (including Sabu-inspired pottery, film stills and signed photographs). I have also made a pilgrimage to his grave in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Performing by his grave, I realised I had taken a leap into fandom; most notably by declaring that I was a ‘distant relative’ when the security guards came to ask what I was doing. I could hardly say that I was in commune with the dead film star:
All Sabu wanted, he said, was to play the lead... I said that the art world similarly uses brown artists and drops them when we're not curatorially "in vogue".
We shared our thoughts on our mutual "brownness" and how this is paradoxically joyful and a burden.
I even shed some tears in confronting our reality, but Sabu said he worked hard to be remembered after death, and I said I want to be remembered while I'm still alive...
Sabu said no more, leaving me a moment to be silent and place a rose on his grave.