Korla (2015) [N/A]
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Featuring:
Korla Pandit, Scott Alexander, Harry Edwards
Written by:
Eric Christensen
John Turner
Directed by:
John Turner
Release Date:
September 29, 2015
Original Title:
Korla
Genres:
Documentary
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 78
Organist Korla Pandit was an alluring enigma, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. He never spoke a word on 900 episodes of his groundbreaking 1950s TV program but captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives with his soulful, hypnotic gaze and theatrical performance of popular tunes and East Indian compositions on the newly developed Hammond B3 organ. In the ’90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados and ended up immortalized in the film Ed Wood. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998—one that is finally revealed in KORLA.
Korla is a documentary about a television pioneer, a spiritual seeker, and the godfather of exotica music, organist Korla Pandit. This is also a story that mixes Hollywood in the 1950's with racial reinvention, as it looks at the career of Korla Pandit, who successfully passed as an Indian from New Delhi, when in fact he was the son of an African American minister from Columbia, Missouri. The film covers the arc of Korla's career, from having his own music show on television in the 1950's to years later where he developed a cut following playing tiki bars and lounges. The secret of his true identity, he carried to his grave and was revealed only after his death in 1998.
