ABSTRACT
Keralam's encounter with Shakespeare begins in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the first Malayalam translations of his plays began to appear. The first play to be translated into Malayalam was Ummen Philippose's translation of The Comedy of Errors. N. Krishna Pillai, there were as many as forty-two Malayalam translations of several Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare was popularised through performative art forms like kathaprasangam–an indigenous storytelling form that originally dealt with mythical stories and puranas, and was later used by progressive movements, like communist parties, to propagate secular narratives. Malayalam cinema, though it was inaugurated in 1928 with Vigathakumaran, found its own footing as an industry and art form only in the 1950s, when local productions and studios came up. What makes Kaliyattam an interesting Shakespeare film is the way in which it is able to work its way through the local milieu-specific cultural and social elements to capture the resonances of the play.
