Shooting Technology-2

The final piece of the lithium ion batteries was that the jib that the unit was using, had had its controller  adapted to use the same battery. Typically jib controllers use external power sources, but somebody had applied a bit of electrical engineering to adapt the jib controller to lithium ion batteries. So again the same chargers, no diesel generators, and the unit used just one kind of batteries.
The jib itself was a revelation, in the hands of a skilled operator it could give you absolutely delightful camera movements so very quickly. Once it was set up, you could move it around far faster than you’d move your camera tripod. Add to that the sheer flexibility of camera movements, and you could liven up the dullest moments with a clever camera movement.
I suppose that could lead to a lot of unnecessary camera movement, or camera movement unjustified by the narrative’s demands, but the jib is a wonderful instrument. If only one could afford to have it around all the time.
In this unit they owned the jib so its rental cost wasn’t much of an issue. But otherwise you’d need to budget carefully so that you could have the jib around all the time. though using LED lights, the savings from not hiring a generator alone could get you the jib. which is great, all filmmakers would choose the jib over a generator.
But the jib is only as good as its operator and his skill. I guess that’s where India scores, plenty of young people with the passion and drive to master these crafts.
Again  different world from my static camera universe of East Africa, where you didn’t take a trolley shot due to the time it took to set up.

Shooting Technology-1

Took part in a shooting recently. Nothing extraordinary, a simple television serial shooting for a small channel, without any TV Stars. What I mean to say is that it was a low budget kind of situation, being filmed on DVCAM to save costs.
Having come from Kenya recently, where I was working in low budget situations almost all the time, I was immediately struck by how organised the shooting technology had become in India. Or maybe it was just this unit, I am in no position to generalise really.
Let me begin by explaining  what I mean by using the word ‘organised’. I have to begin with the lights-they were LED lights made in China, with dimmers attached to them, no facility to switch off rows but just dim the whole thing. As is usual with LED lights, the dimming causes no change of colour temperature, unlike conventional movie lights. The interesting part was that these were lights running off batteries, not any ordinary batteries but lithium ion ones.
I noticed that the lithium ion batteries looked similar to the ones powering the camera (a standard high-end Sony DVCAM one). It turned out that the lights had been adapted to use these lithium ion batteries, identical to the long-life ones that power video cameras. So now the unit could use the same chargers as the one for the camera and have more batteries available all around.
As LED lights typically use very little power, the batteries were enough to power a six hundred watt output light for eight hours, or an entire working day. The unit used four lights in typical set-ups, but due to the LED lights did not need to use any diesel generator or rely on external power sources. They were ‘independent’ in the best sense of the word.
Of course you still had to charge the batteries at night and that needed electrical power. But you’d need that anyway to charge your camera batteries. Added plus to the no diesel generator was no cables running anywhere, no noise worries so ‘cleaner’ sound.
Then I noticed that the guys had adapted their camera monitor to run on the same size lithium ion batteries. So no electrical power or other power source required there, again saving on diesel generators which are standard to our business in India as much as overseas.
I was left dumbstruck by the efficiency of the whole set-up and how much it eased life, beside giving the unit a lot more flexibility to adapt to location shooting.
A lesson in technology learnt.

The ‘real world’ of filmmaking

I’ve been wanting to write for a while now, about the sessions on documentary and other things, but can’t seem to find the time anymore.

Helping a friend with location scouting, discovering all over again how you actually get official approval and police help in North India. Luckily it’s a fairly well laid out process, but very laborious- you go to the Additional District Magistrate in charge of the City, fill out the forms which they provide- basic information about the dates of shooting, locations etc..

Then you put it all down on Stamp Paper, the list and schedule, with both the local agent and the production company swearing and signing to it, with copies of your IDs attached. After that an No Objection Certificate is issued (the speed with which it is issued depending on various factors).

You take this NOC to the local Police Head Quarters, who then guide you to the relevant Police Stations to help out.

Then you negotiate with the local property owner about the facilitation fee for using their property.

If the property is the Cantonment, you talk to the Cantonment Board and the local Army Commander to get their NOC. Legally all property in the Cantonment belongs to the Army, so they have the final word.

I suppose you can by-pass all this and just shoot and get away before anyone realising. But that’s a big chance when you have fictions- actors, lights, costumes, generators, it’s a whole big movement, which can’t really be hidden. And if you have a problem of any kind, its always better to have the administration with you.

This is the ‘real’ world of filmmaking, that no one taught you at film school.

Chennai Express

I can safely say that the class voted to see the movie.

I was taking a joint class of the Direction and Acting students at the IFTI, the film school in Meerut. We’d spent a day improvising a script, then a second day shooting the script. But on the day of the editing we suddenly found ourselves ‘free’ as the editors were pre-occupied. So what do we do, the classes voted to watch a movie and I said fine, so long as you agree to analyse the movie later.

The Directors wanted to see ‘Gravity’, but apparently its print was not good- being downloaded from a Bit Torrent site. So the Acting students won, they had wanted to see ‘Chennai Express’.

Personally I didn’t mind it at all, having seen bits of the movie on TV and enjoyed it thoroughly. So a chance to see it whole, even though it was on a video projector, off an MP4 downloaded print.

The movie was as the bits seen earlier had promised- thoroughly enjoyable. A bit thin on narrative logic here and there, but it pulled it off with  the sheer momentum of the narrative and ‘star power’.

What came as a full on surprise to me was the sheer volume of visual effects that the movie contained, and this was not a science-fiction or imaginary world movie. If anything this was a comparatively ‘rooted’ movie set in the present day India, most of the time taking care to identify its geography. But here literally every scene was being enhanced by visual effects, compositing and matte work, along with occasional completely CGI shots. I pointed this out to the students, comparing it to our ‘classical’ movie texts of ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ and ‘Sholay’, which are practically devoid of visual effects, living off the skills of the director for their effect upon the audience.

Visual effects are nothing new in cinema, even in India they are as old as Dadasaheb Phalke. But visual effects to enhance a realistic movie are the new norm in Hollywood and elsewhere, especially when shooting on digital formats. I hadn’t realised how developed this was in Indian movies until Chennai Express. But it’s a great way of adding the extra visual ‘oomph’ to stories. Especially stories that rely on ‘situations’ rather than narrative movements to make their mark.

But I could be totally wrong about this as my knowledge of contemporary Indian cinema is poor and there is a lot happening in different ways in the movies. But this use of VFX to enhance stories can only be good for movies.

I only wish they’d pay more attention to the ‘craft’ of cinema and not just the techniques. I mean its all very well to use a telephoto lens to enhance the close-ups of your lead stars, but can we do a bit more with the ‘cuts’ too.

Having said the above, I must admit to being thoroughly impressed by the movie’s use of background music and sound effects. Hats off to the makers for that.

A Second Week of Teaching

Finally a long and exhausting week of teaching at the local film school came to an end.

I was teaching  an introduction to television, tracing it from history to future prospects to the present day forms and how they have evolved. Its not a terribly tough job. The problem came up because of the usual issues of the level of the students knowledge.

I may have written this before, but it’s a surprising issue for me- the poor level of teaching is something I understand, but the sheer lack of curiosity and a drive for learning is the one troubling me.  I seem to think I spend more time than these guys on learning each day.

OK, all of the students did not enjoy internet access or indeed access to personal computers. Which in itself is a big handicap, but when you don’t have an adequate library with books and magazines at your institution the problems get compounded. I sort of felt sad for the students- they were almost doomed before they began.

But you learn in life that learning and knowledge can become pretty useless in real life when faced with people of sheer talent and an ability to tell stories with visuals that’s instinctive. So maybe some of these guys will have the ability and instincts to create interesting movies and television programming.

I guess that’s their hope too, because on the level of learning they know that the race is already lost.

I tried my level best to help, throwing aside the prepared class notes and just teaching whatever the students needed to learn at that moment. Of course the teaching is in Hindi, with a mix of a few English terminology. Not as bad as my sister teaching Shakespeare in Hindi, but still bad enough for someone like me who has done all his education in English.

At a film school, final learning is making movies- telling stories with visuals. So somehow a shooting was rustled up, but the equipment let us down. Still, the students got a hands-on feel of a shooting, which was a good thing.

I couldn’t help but feel more sad for the students, I think they sensed that and started feeling sad for themselves. It was not a situation I wanted them to be in, but I couldn’t avoid it.

 

The Masters of Cinema

Re-looked at Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, with my old teacher, specifically with reference to an adaptation of the story that I’m trying to do (more on that separately).

The point of interest, and the point to learn was how the masters did things with elegance and simplicity. When I’m writing the same story (OK I did lose focus somewhere down the line), I’m worrying more about the logic of the story than the story itself! Looking at the masters again helps to focus you back to the story, to the human beings and their emotions as they unfold. Because eventually that is all that matters in a story. As the script writing teachers put it ‘Character=Plot’.

As Kurosawa’s film is now fifty years old, it should look a bit dated with this or that detail, especially as its not a ‘period’ film but a contemporary film from its day. But really speaking, nothing dates in the story, even if you were to remake it today as a period film set in 1963, you’ll do the same.

Then I guess that’s what makes it ‘classic’ and timeless.

My teacher remembered the details of character- his getting in touch with the elements, the wind from the window and water on his face. I remembered the character’s arrogance and bullish confidence in the beginning and gradual humanisation. That transformation of the main character is the story and the plot of Kurosawa’s story.

Looking at Kurosawa’s film, I realised that was the missing link in my story, its more or less where I was stumbling in the story.

That’s the tough part of re-telling classic stories- they force you into plumbing depths of storytelling and filmmaking that you  never knew existed inside you! OK, its tough work reaching there, but you can try.

I had always imagined that even if one were to make mistakes re-telling a classic story, you’d get somewhere- as the depth of humanism in these stories is immense. But when you start thinking in terms of actually re-telling the stories doing justice to them, the possibility exists that you can come damn near to them. Is that scary or exciting?

Lessons from a week

The week long session with the Direction students of the Indian Film and Television Institute of India in Meerut ended on Friday.

I was rather physically exhausted by the end of the week, and feeling a bit drained in my mind too. But the students were more than excited, they were like energised by the last few days. When we finished, one of them came running to the car, no not to say bye but to say what will happen to us now, you can’t go. I had to speak like Arnold and say I will be back.

The management had much the same attitude- you can’t leave until you finalise when you’re coming next. I was paid promptly, quite unlike the reputation that private institutions enjoy.

So let me try and understand why all this was happening. OK, I was an alien out there- quite literally coming from another planet in terms of knowledge and exposure. But at another level, I was my parent’s son, repeating what they had done in other contexts- help students understand new concepts in my line of work.

I actually taught in the most un-classroom like situation- with only five students and bad accoustics, I opted to have all of us sit together in an informal sort of circle, with seating altering when we were screening something. This sort of eased my life- didn’t have to stand or speak loudly. To the students an easy conversational manner made them understand subjects a bit more easily. I guess that was important as I mostly ended up teaching/ talking about areas that we hadn’t planned on having in class. But once you see a knowledge gap, you have to help to fill it! Or at least that’s the position I take.

The basics of the course was anyway laid out in my course structure and notes. I was using the classes to help the students understand the concepts laid out in those notes.

Then came the highlight of the course, for the students- the filmmaking. On the last two days, they wrote, directed and edited little sketches on one outdoor and one indoor location. I realised how much of a revision it had been for me, to go back to my roots in classical filmmaking, not merely the just-do-it style we practised in Kenya. I kind of feel refreshed with my filmmaking basics once again.

Will I do it again- for a while yes, but I yearn for filmmaking far too quickly, so maybe have to work out ways to integrate it all in my working life.

The Art Direction classes: mid way thru

I suppose it was in the fitness of things that one of the Direction students did not have an email ID. In my case it simply meant that I couldn’t send him notes via email, but for his own sake- I mean here was a young man who was studying in English for a course in Film Direction and yet had no access to the internet.

In a way that’s the way its been these past two days, discovering how little this tiny bunch of Film Director aspirants actually knew, whether due to the teaching or due to their own interests. Finally I had to just say OK, if they do not know this, its fine, lets fill in that gap too.

So I’ve ended up watching bits and pieces of movies with the guys, telling them as much the skills of the scriptwriters and directors as of  art directors and production design. But the important concern, from my perspective was that they must have a ‘take-home’ value after every class, learn some little bit that they did not know before.

Once I narrowed my perspective to the levels of the students, things kind of started moving in the class- I could talk of whatever, but they understood it all, as I assumed nothing, just sought to explain things from a very rudimentary level.

I did stumble at times because the classes are in Hindi, even the DVD copies they brought had been dubbed into Hindi or Urdu (and I did not even know you could get ‘Titantic’ and ‘Avatar’ dubbed in Urdu). They will give the final exams in English, most of the terminology used is also in English, but I explain in Hindi. Our discussion too are in Hindi, though at times I stumble and go into English there too. I keep wondering how they’ll answer questions in the exams, but it appears that this is the way it is in North India- for medicine, law, all other subjects- you teach in English, but text books and exams are in English.

Amongst the movies we saw, ‘Vicky Donor’ was obviously the audience choice- when the principles they had been learning were discovered to be applicable there too, the guys understood it all. In ‘Titanic’ or ‘Day After Tomorrow’ it had been a bit remote. They’d understood ‘Mother India’ all right, but it just felt old fashioned to them- though a fantastically written and directed movie.

Now lets see how the class proceeds from here. 

The place in Rohtak

The first thing that strikes you about that four-in-one place (film institute, school of architecture, fine arts and theatre) is the sheer ambition of the place. Of course the synergies of these things are known to any half way serious artist, but to actually set up a place like that in a place without a history in the arts is ambition itself.

I can’t claim to know much about the place’s history (of at least the past few years that it has been in existence), but to have thought of such a place and then to actually get that fabulous building designed and now built. This in itself constitutes an achievement.

Now to sustain it needs a vision, a vision of culture, of the place of the arts in modern day human society and how such a place will actually go about integrating itself to life and society around. Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal was set up by people with a background in literature in Hindi, which gave them a direct link into people’s lives. Can the Rohtak place do the same?

Realistically, the people running the place will have no option but to do something very drastically new. Otherwise you run the danger of FTII-NFDC-IFFI brigade of just becoming a club of irrelevance. Popular culture has developed its own cinema of independence when the distributors and cinema halls wanted smaller movies. No one really needs governments for that.

I would have stayed away from such a place given my misplaced aversion to academics ( born out of FTII I think), but my friends are pushing me to try out something new,to possibly help this ambitious place survive and maybe thrive. After all visions are simply commonly held beliefs and if we can help to bring that to this institution, why not.

So lets see, I might be involved if they want me in! I’m an unknown, middle aged and a person without a history of one discipline- not the most attractive of customers for a government run institution.

Working on a course

Am invited/asked/ barged-in-through-the-door into the local film school.

Had recommended to them the topics that I’d like to handle in their directing syllabus. So we had a meeting, which included the sole current faculty member, who of course claimed that he’d covered this and that and everything. And I’m given the topics that no one wishes to tackle, not their regular faculty nor their guest faculty.

And so I’m to talk about Art Direction, the work of an Art Director,  for a full five days. I’m OK about beginning at the bottom of things and believe in Alec Guinness’s famous words ‘there are no small roles, only small actors’.

So off I go to work, searching the internet for definitions and notes. And ransacking my own experience of working with Art Directors.

Finally start putting it all down on paper, and slowly but steadily it emerges-  twelve page outline of the course, including practical sessions.

Send off the course outline to my wife and a friend, encouraging responses.

Then comes the matter of pulling it all off! Easier said than done as the course is to be done in Hindi, using only big popular Hindi films as the reference points. Still, I have a while to digest the course and then take off from there.

Lets see how it goes, I’m going about it with my usual diligence.

Sending off scripts

It was one of those unusual weeks where suddenly I had to send off two scripts.

One was scheduled, a competition thing where I had hung on till the last minute to actually begin writing. Classical procrastination story where I had done the preparation for writing, but just never got around to doing it. Always found something else to do!

Finally buckled down to writing, finished off the draft in about a week, printed it after some adventure and shipped it out.

Then I pulled out an old project, one whose  collapse earlier had rocked my marriage quite a bit. I just knew I had to do a bit of re-writing to the script, did it, re-formatted lots of it. Almost on cue the person asked if I could send him the new draft, which I did having completed my new draft the night before.

Lots of dreams attached to the project, it is a potential life-changer still.

Then looking back I realised both these were Kenya based stories, maybe the final ones I’ll be writing about the country. It sort of cleared my mind to chase ideas in India finally, which I guess I’ll do now.

But is Kenya really out of my system? No, one can never really put out the past entirely. It may fade a bit, one’s memories may grow out of touch with the reality there, but it’s pretty much indelibly there.

As was Meerut/ India when we were based in Kenya, I couldn’t just hit a delete button and erase it all from my being.

I guess that’s what I’m now trying to do, to reconcile different parts of my life into a coherent whole.

Finishing a script

An outline got into the next stage of a competition/workshop. Was given three weeks to send the script, which of course I did not have!

So for the last week or so I was looking at reasons to avoid writing- too scared that what I was going to write would turn out to be nonsense.

Finally bit the bullet as they say in English, buckled down to writing. Then the story revealed itself, modifying itself as we went along. Gathering its own momentum, much like ice or butter melting, or ghee on a warm fluffy chapati-to use an Indian image.

Finally finished it last night, feels quite good. at least to me on a first read.

A very different movie from the one I had set out to make, but at the same time a well worked out one. A sort of ‘universe in a grain of sand’ movie, where in a short easy story you see a whole range of emotions and the universe.

Otherwise, the usual end of script emotions- elation and fatigue –are very much there. Plus the overall feeling of an empty mind.

At least the script is done and shipping in time!

On location scouting

A friend came along, after promising to visit for a long time, to my hometown. He’s producing a TV Series based on some short stories of Munshi Premchand, who is one of the ‘big’ writers in Hindi.

I had no clue of what he wanted and his perspective on the subject. But we kind of felt our way along, starting with bungalows of the army, a army club and moving onto older Islamic buildings scattered over Meerut. In between cropped up my granny’s place, the good old ‘59 The Mall’. That created a bit of a sensation as one of my uncle’s thought it was some house breakers- but overall it helped to make them understand what I do for a living.

Then came the afternoon’s secret, uncovering a bit of local history that had been unknown to me and to most of the others around too. Must check with my local historians how much of it is true.

Finally we came to the classic Indian situations- government offices kept in ramshackle shape in old buildings. But the buildings and their shapes and walls stay in tact- perfect for period re-creation.

Once again the great difference between cinematic space and ‘real’ space became clearly stated, with the trained eyes of technicians trained in cinema ‘seeing’ aspects in a ‘real’ situation and how they would get depicted on screen. I guess I am beginning to realise where the small time film schools are faltering- they don’t have the people to teach what constitutes an image of ‘reality in cinema, how cinematic reality is an illusion constructed from so many bits and pieces of various elements. This is not something you are going to grasp on your own or work your way into through experience.

Location scouting is the beginning of the image building, the foundation on which cinematic images are created.

That was the magic lesson yesterday.

Teaching ‘Sholay’

I suppose it must have been done before, considering that Sholay was released in 1975,  has several texts written about the movie and my overall lack of awareness about the happenings of the film education world.

But I took a shot at ‘teaching’ Sholay yesterday the local Indian Film and Television Institute of India. We screened the 204 minute long ‘Director’s Cut’ of Sholay to the freshman’s class in Film Direction. Its an interesting version that even I hadn’t seen before. The Jaya flashback and Amitabh’s funeral pyre added a lot more to the movie.

It’s a classic, so in a short while the students were pretty much enveloped by the movie. We took a short break at the film’s interval point, where I told them about the uniqueness of the Indian convention of the interval.

We completed the screening, broke for lunch and then resumed to discuss the movie in detail.

I sort of had a free-wheeling class- it overlapped conventional notions of film appreciation, scriptwriting and directing. Hopefully giving an insight to the students about the creative processes, the thinking and the decision making that went into the making of the movie. Rather than confine myself by subject, I simply let the discussion  ‘flow’ into the direction of the students’ curiosity, helping them understand how movies work.

It ended up being an interesting session as we discovered newer nuances of the movie as they came up in the course of the discussion. I think we all ended up learning a bit more than we bargained for.

Remembered Eisenstein at the end who used to say ‘I can’t teach but you can learn’.

A Screening in New Delhi

Finally, the dates for the Tiger Paw Sports Film Festival dawned.

The screening already built up up a bit of a buzz within the festival due to the presence of Aasif Karim, who is the main protagonist of my documentary.

Then my long-lost school friends turned up, including two colonels from the Indian Army. So we were kind of getting set for the screening.

I drove to Delhi, found the venue easily, thought it was a good sign.

The screening began with a near full house, and the audience sat quietly, very occasional laughs and twitters(as in mini-laughs not internet service). I paced outside the auditorium for the entire two hours, much too nervous to sit with the audience.

When the two Colonels walked out, I thought this was it-more would follow. But they had to reach an official function and apologised for not being able to stay.

Then I went into the auditorium and saw how much of a hold the documentary had on the audience. It felt good to move people with your creation.

Finally the documentary ended, big rounds of applause followed.

A panel discussion followed, moderated by TV Personality-Arup Mitra, featuring Aasif Karim, Saba Karim (former India player and current selector), and myself. I clarified on my intention in doing the documentary, the three generational time-span and details of work.

Best comment for both Aasif and myself was when we were asked why such documentaries were not made in India. And here we thought were the rustics from Nairobi coming to the India Shining, land of great cricket and a greater passion for cricket.  It sort of made our day.

Luckily the panel discussion ended before the AC on the stage could turn us into ice-cream!

Getting reactions, doing a bit of press interviews made us realise that we had actually done something. Showing a documentary about cricket, in India, with other Indian documentaries as the benchmark, to stand out meant a lot.

A Screening in Delhi

Finally, the dates for the Tiger Paw Sports Film Festival dawned.

The screening already built up up a bit of a buzz within the festival due to the presence of Aasif Karim, who is the main protagonist of my documentary.

Then my long-lost school friends turned up, including two colonels from the Indian Army. So we were kind of getting set for the screening.

I drove to Delhi, found the venue easily, thought it was a good sign.

The screening began with a near full house, and the audience sat quietly, very occasional laughs and twitters(as in mini-laughs not internet service). I paced outside the auditorium for the entire two hours, much too nervous to sit with the audience.

When the two Colonels walked out, I thought this was it-more would follow. But they had to reach an official function and apologised for not being able to stay.

Then I went into the auditorium and saw how much of a hold the documentary had on the audience. It felt good to move people with your creation.

Finally the documentary ended, big rounds of applause followed.

A panel discussion followed, moderated by TV Personality-Arup Mitra, featuring Aasif Karim, Saba Karim (former India player and current selector), and myself. I clarified on my intention in doing the documentary, the three generational time-span and details of work.

Best comment for both Aasif and myself was when we were asked why such documentaries were not made in India. And here we thought were the rustics from Nairobi coming to the India Shining, land of great cricket and a greater passion for cricket.  It sort of made our day.

Luckily the panel discussion ended before the AC on the stage could turn us into ice-cream!

Getting reactions, doing a bit of press interviews made us realise that we had actually done something. Showing a documentary about cricket, in India, with other Indian documentaries as the benchmark, to stand out meant a lot.

A job

Trying a local job in Meerut after a long time.

In typical fashion, it’s an inside job that some guys were trying to get for a while, but weren’t getting. So I was roped in.

Met the people, explained what I was all about and then appear to have gotten the job.

It’s a funny kind of thing where people are ready to value the equipment more than the people’s skills. But I guess that’s the level of expertise that they’re used to.

The newspaper ads kind of give it all away- a Canon 5d Mk 2 rents for 2000/- per day, but an operator with it is only 1000/-. OK, that’ll really be an ‘operator’ only, but still there should be some respect for a person’s talents and skills.

I’m doing the job to get an entry into this market, because it is potentially as big as the broadcast market or the one for religious stuff. So I’m doing the job cheaper than market rates, hoping that I might be able to make a breakthrough somewhere.

I feel like my father did when he lost that election and had to re-build his life, starting as a lawyer, then lecturer and then trade unions once again. I’m rebuilding too, lets see how it all shapes up.

Besides we’ve been hit by age of abundance in equipment, which means prices of the lower end productions have gone completely down. The good part is that the same tools are available as the higher end guys and you can do fairly high quality stuff at reasonable prices.

Sounds confusing, but that’s my state of mind right now.

A Festival

Recently I was sent a link by Withoutabox, the online film festival submission service.

I’d used it to enter my documentary ‘the Karims: A Sporting Dynasty’ in a festival, so I was already linked to website. What caught my eye was that this festival was in New Delhi, the first ever sports film festival in India. Purely on an impulse, I called up the contact given on Withoutabox. He said send the documentary, I had a DVD lying around so I sent it off.

About ten days back a reply came- the documentary has been selected for the festival. My first thought was- so what! See I’m a die hard ‘small’ movie person who awaits to be ‘discovered’ by a prestigious European Film Festival, not this small thing in Delhi.

Anyway I informed Aasif Karim about the festival, and he immediately offered to come for the festival. I advised him against it assuming it was a small festival. I wrote to the festival organiser, who turned out to be a ‘fan’ of Aasif’s, having seen him bowl in the Cricket World Cup of 2003, in Durban- the world record performance. So the festival got excited about having Aasif present, and my advice to Aasif was gladly by -passed.

Slowly, events started unfolding- Aasif Karim’s personal presence made it a ‘big’ festival- which other festival could boast of that- a sportsman coming to show his own documentary. Lets see how the festival shapes up but its already a ‘big’ film festival, media coverage guaranteed.

What was it- the documentary’s destiny? Mutual needs of the sports person and the festival? or simply my old fashioned thinking that needed to be dropped?

Maybe a combination of all of this.

The Historian’s House

Went to meet a local historian yesterday, with a family friend. It turned out that the historian too was a family friend- he had known my father for many years and had even attended my wedding long years ago.

Then we got talking of history, which of course was the reason I had gone there. I learnt lots and lots in the space of an hour. But more fascinating to me were the artifacts that he had gathered.

I was interested in the stone figure of a dancing girl that he had, I assumed it was a replica done by a modern artisan. But it turned out to be an original figurine from the Gupta period, well over twelve hundred years old! It appears that someone found it while digging the foundation of his house in Delhi and passed it on to the historian.

Then there were the remnants of a Buddhist pillar, clearly Buddhist in their design and stylistics. Except that they had been found at the Jama Masjid in Meerut, India’s second oldest mosque. It seems that there are still remnants of a Buddhist wall in the mosque- suggesting that it was possibly a Buddhist monastery before being converted into a mosque.

The historian’s house was painted white, with spot lights over artifacts rather than the usual flat illumination of an urban middle class house. Sort of gave it an air of tranquility with beauty, without the aesthetic elements dragging attention to themselves. The man himself was so simple he got a plastic chair for himself to sit near us, rather than drag the sofa seats.

It will be fun interacting with such characters if that series takes off.

Anurag Kashyap’s GULAAL

I seem to have missed out on the Anurag Kashyap phenomenon almost entirely, partly because his movies were difficult to obtain in Nairobi, where I was based in the last fourteen years.

Finally saw GULAAL at my nephew’s insistence (yes, he’s a movie buff). It can’t be called a proper ‘movie’ viewing as I saw the movie on my laptop over two sessions.

Terrific movie, pretty much a movie unlike any other. With characters that ranged from the familiar to totally outlandish, a plot that mixed in familiar and unfamiliar elements in equal quantities, and a totally outlandish, unconventional musical score. There’s bad language in the dialogues, as seems to be the rule in smaller movies nowadays. The actors and technical qualities ranged from bad to good, but I’m judging as a ‘classicist’ in cinema.

Godard and Tarantino are obvious inspirations, but using the angle of Rajputs as a sort of ‘old world’ mafia in India, equating them with Nazism or the Italian mafia, was certainly a novelty. (Or at least so it seemed to me, an ‘outlier’ to the world of Indian cinema right now). In terms of the script that was the novelty I thought the movie would follow, but it moved more onto the youngsters and their confusions before eventually re-uniting with the main theme.

The young people, urban youngsters in small town India seemed totally devoid of any independence of thought or action, seemed totally at the mercy of more cynical powers. This is by and large true of urban youth in North India today, but I’m sure there is more to the youngsters- they have to have their dreams and ideals.

The other odd part of the movie was the use of song, it seemed to be totally out of control element with a mind of its own- much like the musician character in the movie. Parts reminded you or other overseas movies, but definitely there must be no other movie in India using music like this. I think this was because the music seemed to refer to nuances that weren’t there in the script, but here the story did manage to hold it all together.

That’s what makes Anurag Kashyap’s world unique in Indian cinema. Which is a good position to be in as a filmmaker. 

The DVD guy

Looking for a DVD in my hometown, in my usual manner asked all the known people, got quite a few different answers.

Finally, just drove down a road I know, where I’d gotten DVD copies made earlier.  Stopped at an interesting looking shop- it was full of vintage electronics, VHS players, cassette decks etc. Parked on the street outside and went in.

It was a treasure house, full of movies, both local and foreign- not exotica like the newest Iranian or East European movies, but plenty of stuff. Surely the only time in my life that I’ve actually seen a Mani Kaul movie’s DVD being sold, that too of ‘Uski Roti’!

Turned out the owner was a young guy, very passionate about cinema- he had Ray’s Charulata as well. And of course in typical fashion he had all the latest technology too- when I wanted DVD copies he said take it on a SD card and buy a card reader, all of which is cheaper than a pen drive or DVD disc.

To me, all the movies turned me into a kid in a sweet shop, in much the same way bookshops or music shops or even art galleries do. They are like a treasure trove of creation.

In typical fashion, the guy dubbing my DVDs had come to this chap and he had made a copy of my movie too. But at this point, more circulation for my movie can surely do no harm.

I suspect I’m going to build up a movie library of my own faster than I thought I would.

Munshi Premchand’s Garib Ki Hai

I am from North India, speak Hindi as my mother tongue, so I have  a certain amount of familiarity with Hindi Literature. When that happens, chances are that you will be familiar with the name of Munshi Premchand. Great writer, especially of short stories. Possibly one of the greatest short story writers that ever lived, though that’s a generalisation I’d be hard put to justify.

Towards the end of my stint at FTII, I had a chance to read a collection of Premchand’s work- short stories, excerpts from novels, etc- that the late Mani Kaul had put together as a script for a movie about Premchand. This was shortly after Mani had made ‘Satah Se Uththa AAdmi’ based on the life and work of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, another eminent Hindi writer. I had seen the bound script of that movie too- and yes that too was a collection of stories, poems and anecdotes. I do not know if that was the way Mani Kaul regularly worked or prepared for his movies, but it gave me a chance to read the story ‘Garib Ki Hai’.

I must confess that I was entranced, loved the story- it was so brilliantly cinematic. Nothing came of Mani Kaul’s Premchand project, I asked him about the story years later and he said ‘Do it by all means, I won’t get a chance to do it’. For the first time I quivered in my boots at the prospect of stepping where Mani Kaul had failed.

After FTII the move to Bombay came, along with domestic concerns and the need to earn a living and I kind of lost touch with my inner dreams. I did look for the story at various points, I even forgot the name but the story was etched in my being.

Now, years later I said I must look for that story and asked the local Hindi Literature knowing people to help me locate the story(and drew blanks). A bit desperate after local book shops drew a blank, I finally ventured onto Google, and sure enough a blog cropped up in Hindi that had all of Premchand’s stories. A few minutes later, I found the story- I knew from it beginning that this was it. Downloaded it, though it was a job to make the computer ‘read’ the story. Finally saved it as a ‘picture’.

Heart beating with trepidation, read the story again- oh yes it was all that I’d remembered and more.

So now I have the story, just need to write a script, find the money and make it- if only it was that simple!

A movie-‘Vicky Donor’

My nephew, who loves movies, finally got totally flustered by my sheer ignorance of contemporary Indian movies. So he gave me a pile of DVDs of movies to watch. I’ve just managed one in the past two weeks- Vicky Donor.

Lovely movie, enjoyed every moment of it. Beautifully written, effortlessly directed- keeping the focus on moving the story forward. No its not a masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, but its not a movie to be wished away either.

What strikes me, as the ‘outsider’ to movie world is the change in the way characters talk- they use a lot of English now, no one’s scared of the movie and its story belonging to a place and using local nuance. 

Of course because of its subject, this is a movie where sex and sexuality is ever present but in a pleasant straight forward manner. Its an enjoyable movie so it drives home the issues surrounding sperm donation pretty well, without getting squeamish about it.

Then there’s the cast where the seniors steal the show- Annu Kapoor and Dolly Ahluwalia are lovely to watch. Having worked with Dolly in the first short I ever made at FTII, it was great to see her mature as an actor.

I’m no judge of young actors, but the boy looked very good, hope he goes far.

Great to hear that the movie did superb business- so there’s hope for smaller movies. That’s the direction we’d take- scripted sensible movies.

More on watching TV

I sort of promised myself that I wouldn’t write about TV as that’s the source my livelihood. And it seems a bit unfair to talk about other people’s work as you are always talking from the standpoint of your own mode of working- which I would obviously think is the best!

Watched bits of fiction TV- the ‘soaps’ it must be said, not the ‘dramas’ or ‘reality shows’. The predominantly ‘family’ setting seems fine as it is so in India, but what’s fascinating is that despite the millions of different ways in which the power structures of families work, the chosen model on TV is the patriarchal one. The father or even more often the grandfather is the source of all power. Haven’t chanced upon one where the son or the daughter were the source of power, or a soap that portrayed as the power struggle as power transitions between generations. All you seem to get are fairly petty sounding rivalries between the ‘bahus’ of a household, or at best a saas-bahu situation.

Due to the predominantly female audience demographic, I guess the female domination of these long form dramas is to be expected. But what surprises is the almost sidelining of the male characters, or maybe the audience for these does not really want to see complex male characters. Much like male audiences of ‘action’ movies don’t appreciate complex female characters.

Interestingly the setting of all the serials seem to be lavish palatial houses- demanded by the audience the TV programmers will proclaim- the aspirational target of their audience. But to me, possibly as a filmmaker- all settings look like they’ve had a fresh coat of paint, everyone’s dressed like they’re going to a wedding- hair all set and un-creased clothes- a world that is very different from the human beings that populate our lives.

But maybe that’s the point of it all, every moment must live the ‘dream’, perhaps even more than movies.

Maybe I need to see a few more movies before passing comments on them- some of the new ones look very interesting- like ‘Barfi’.

Watching TV

In my mother’s place, where I’m currently parked, her care givers monopolise the TV. Which is fine as they are the ones who are,  there all the time, and since my mother can’t watch TV anymore, the caregivers are the ones making the choice of channels to watch.

The male caregivers want to watch news, mainly the Hindi news channels. I kind of find the channels a pain, their predominant tone of voice is shrill and their attitudes strident. Let me explain this a bit- there have to be more ‘tones’ in narrating news than ‘shrill’ and desperately urgent. It makes everything high-octane and results in you, the audience, eventually, not being able to distinguish between what is relevant and important and what is not. In the age of instant communications, this ability to ‘sort’ or prioritise the news for an audience is what a news channel or news source has to offer. Then you can decide for yourself whether to trust the news source or not. But out here, it appears that they’re all in the same mode! It’s the classic syndrome of more of the same.

And the talk shows, which seem to dominate the non-news programming, it sort of degenerates into shouting at each other within a few minutes, with the anchor/ presenter as a part of the whole thing. Its in the questions asked and the manner in which they are asked- its like they all know the issues are the same, so how do we present them in a manner so as to catch your attention.

More on this soon, have to log off for now.

Screening the Karim documentary

Screened the Karim documentary yesterday at the local film school.

First public screening for me. In India, for an audience of young students that prefers Hindi as their medium of instruction. And have no clue on Kenya or cricket or the Indians in Kenya (OK, now they've seen MUIGWITHANIA, so they know a bit about Indians in Kenya).

Screening off a laptop with poor sound and uneven video projection.

I was pretty convinced it wouldn't be appreciated at all.

Luckily, the documentary holds itself pretty well. Despite the obvious lack of visuals.

So a big relief to have the screening go off well. A question and answer session followed, I commented and told stories, much more than the questions that were asked.

I don't know about others, but these first screenings are big events to a filmmaker like me- where the work cuts across culture and information zones a lot. Having screened my work in Kenya and India a bit now, the cultural differences in audience reactions are quite a bit.

Having said that, the underlying humanity of the characters and events always comes across quite strongly.

Which is a relief, that's what we hope and live for as filmmakers.

Writing is re-writing

Its an old saying: all writing is rewriting. But you never learn it until you actually experience its magic.

Sending a proposal, looking at the story synopsis I was submitting, I was feeling that this was not it- this was not my story. So I began to tinker around and rewrite what I thought was my story.

Almost magically, the story transformed, it became what I was always trying to write. At the end of it I was left wondering if it was really me that had done the writing.

And of course accepting the old truth: all writing is rewriting.

Somehow, rewriting is like plumbing deeper into yourself, to find the 'real' story. Which of course will be further transformed by your collaborators- financiers and actors and cameramen and editors and sound-men. You will and stay on top of the situation, its your job as writer- director, but somehow by then the story has its own life. As has each project.

But still, a pleasure to find a story and then an old saying.

Writing about your own work

One of the most difficult things to do (for me) is to write/talk about my own work.

Doing mainly commissioned work, its not an issue that comes up very often. But now, as I'm trying to move towards doing my own kind of work, the matter comes up every now and then.

A simple thing like writing out a page full of 'Artistic Intent' for an application for funds becomes a mountain to climb. Is it one's orientation in an old world where you only created and others wrote about your work, or something else? I honestly do not have any answers.

What happens is that I feel my story is a story, almost self explanatory, complete in itself, the 'audience' or reader is supposed to 'get it'/ understand it. I think there lies the problem- the vanity of a creator assuming that his work is perfect and he has an ideal audience that appreciates every nuance of its meaning. Yes, I'm exhibiting all the symptoms of a creator's vanity.

The reality of audiences or readers (as the case may be) is very different- where you see a story of a grand conflict of the races, the reader/ audience sees a one night thriller. You do a story of conflict between classes and the audience sees it as a light comedy.  The audience/reader sort of bring their own experience of life and movies and that influences their decisions on your work, as much as your intentions as a 'creator'.

I guess what has to alter is one's notion of an audience, and it has to be said that one can't get everything right about what an audience really 'sees' in a story or a movie.When you're writing/ creating a movie, you try and guess the audience's reaction at each stage, but it actually remains a mystery until the work meets the audience.

And then something magical happens- people laugh, get tense, get excited, exhibit emotions that you only imagined. And in a way the work gets complete with an audience.

I guess this is the problem I have, I need to learn to describe my work simply and clearly to readers, just like the eventual work communicates to an audience. No real answers as to how to do it, but at least I've managed to describe my problem.

A local TV Channel

Went to meet a local TV Channel, out here in North India, in my hometown to which I've relocated.

Never seen the channel before so when I saw it for the first time, it was in the office of the channel's owners. As I'd gone to the TV Channel looking for work, this was obviously not the place or the time to open the mouth.

But I suppose one can jot down a few thoughts in a blog, and hope they don't sound terribly offensive!

Basically, nothing wrong with the content, I don't think I'm the right person to comment on that anyway but the technical and aesthetic 'finish' of the work was amazing- almost all the camera angles appeared wrong, the framing brought out people's bad sides. The lighting was completely 'flat'- not bring out any quality of the content of an image.

But then I came home and the people here were watching a 'national' TV Channel, one of the biggest in fact. And guess what, the technical qualities were barely ten per cent better. Yes, the national channel was shot on HD, probably HDCAM, while the local one stuck to DV for shooting and MP4 for output, so there was visible visual difference. But not a difference you'd pay millions for.

What's happenning seems to be a crisis of 'exposure', the people running the big TV Shows or channels seem to have no idea of how to create a better, world class show. Maybe from a lack of watching and analysing enough movies or TV Shows. So their TV Shows remain at a slightly 'lower' level of finish.

Then when the smaller channels, who've grown up watching the national ones, create their own stuff, it suffers from a similar lack of quality in its 'finish'.

There's nothing that can't really be sorted out, giving a much better finish at almost the same costs.

But is the talent capable of this 'sorting out' still available in the small towns or has it all gone to the bigget cities and bigger channels? I don't really know, am going to discover in the days to come.

Never stop learning!

Went to get DVD copies made of my movie, thought it'd be one of those DVD duplicator in a few minutes kind of thing. Surprisingly difficult to find one of those duplicators, finally cyber cafe and one by one duplication.

Then, seeing the DVD had more information than the standard 4.7 GB (the movie plus making-of-the movie), the duplicating person asked me to wait. Got another bunch of DVDs, hey these seemed to do 5.3 GB of info. Never heard of them before. Or maybe working in Kenya blunts your technical edge, you kind of follow the routines there.

Anyway, learnt a lesson.

Screening MUIGWITHANIA in Meerut

The much awaited screening came about on a hot afternoon, driving there the AC didn't seem to have any impact!

The screening venue turned out to be a classroom with an improvised projector running off a laptop. Except that the laptop didn't play DVDs! So the kids transferred the DVD's contents onto a pen drive and then ran it. I thought the screening venue was a disaster for a film school. The audio, running off the laptop was a near complete disaster.

Luckily, or maybe its just a sign of changing India, the classroom was air-conditioned- with not one but two units.

The screening was all right, got stuck a couple of times, but overall pretty acceptable.

Then came the Q&A session, OK a bit of comedy with the direction teacher feeling insecure and running up to speak before me, after making a nuisance of himself earlier!

The questions were perceptive, technical ones as well as aesthetic ones. The history ignorance part was pretty much to be expected.

But overall it became clear to me why this movie's having a hard time- it falls between two areas: its an African film but simultaneously an Indian one and it seems clear that its better to be one or the other. Or else both disown you and you sort of get into a no-man's land- remaining lost and ignored despite the qualities of the story and the overall narrative.

So we have to go with one culture, one set of ideas as the core, not two.

Of course that has to wait until the next movie!

Long time on the road to MUIGWITHANIA

I suppose somewhere I must have known that MUIGWITHANIA (a Gikuyu word from the Kikuyu people of Kenya, variously translated as 'reconciliation' or bringing two opposing points of view together), my first feature 'film' was always going to be a difficult project to 'sell' or 'market'.

You have to be realistic: its a story about an Asian shopkeeper caught in the midst of the Mau Mau freedom struggle in Kenya. It was marketed purely to the Asian market in Kenya by my producers-the market they knew. But that ended up hurting its prospects and the movie never really got its due (at least according to me).

The Indian markets were never explored by my producer, so that's a new territory.

The Western markets were interested, but the overall inferior quality of the movie's 'finish' let it down. For Western markets, the technical finish is a 'must'. Add to that the subject- no 'great white man come to rescue the natives' narrative!

All that was then.

Now, suddenly, on Madaraka Day (June 1st), Kenyan TV Station NTV showed the movie across Kenya, reaching far more people than it had ever done.

And today, I embark on the Indian leg of the journey- with a screening in Meerut at the Indian Institute of Film and Television. So sudden excitement.

Long tail or just a movie that refused to die?

A movie with a universal story, a multi-cultural narrative deserved more and now it seems to be slowly coming along. Google for MUIGWITHANIA the movie, see the results for yourself.

A few movies in India

In the midst of all the chaos and upheavals of my life at the moment, managed to find the time to see a few newer Indian movies (OK, not quite Indian but Hindi movies). As could be expected, these are of the smaller, not so mainstream type: Delhi Belly, Jolly LLB & Mathru Ki Bijlee Ka Hindola, besides Kai Po Che. Let me go over them one by one.

Kai Po Che is obviously the 'star' movie of this group, based on a popular book, easy to follow coming-of-age kind of story. OK in India coming of age seems to be after studies taking up jobs/working. The movie seems poorly scripted, taking a long time to come to the point of any sequence and then launching into sequences that do not go anywhere. The point in a movie with a powerful subject like this one is to integrate the lyrical and the dramatic and the historical into one frame- that's where the script fails. Purely personally, I felt the movie was technically poor- bad camerawork and selection of camera angles led to poor editing decisions. Needed a better script and then better directing.

Delhi Belly is self consciously in the manner of Quentin Tarantino, and that is both its strength and weakness- to combine humour and crime and young people's lives is interesting but the manner of doing it leaves a lot to be desired. I thought the plot became better as the movie went along, but its setting was much too casually done to inspire confidence that all this could happen. The elements are there, but maybe the script was too long or the shot material wasn't powerful enough. Coming from an advertising person, the visuals were surprisingly poor quality. As was the sound, though the background music was good. Overall, a movie of promise rather than delivery. The actors and casting were excellent.

Mathru is Vishal Bharadwaj's movie, I saw it only for Pankaj Kapoor and he did not disappoint. Otherwise the script is very poor, the movie packed with good actors not knowing what to do. Technically gimmicky rather than having an aesthetic. So I finally gave up on watching it!

Jolly LLB is a crazy kind of movie- funny and dramatic, a wonderful hero's journey, excellent casting and acting. Maybe I would change this or that in the shot taking or locations, but otherwise a lovely movie to watch. OK I'm biased- its about my hometown, the lead character shares my family name.

Conclusions, generalisations- no I'll do that separately.

Watching your own work

On Monday I was in this position- watching my long documentary while showing it to someone who might do our commentary voice. The documentary has been more or less ready since last November, just awaiting the final sign off while the producers quibble over each comma.
Anyway, the point was watching your own work after a while puts you in a unique position of both 'owning' it as the creator and yet somehow developing a distance from it- seeing it almost from a distance. Strange emotions, the usual rush of excitement over your work being seen and appreciated has lessened, and yet its a work that's not been seen publicly, so you do await the response to it eagerly.
Hopefully it will all be over and I'll be able to point to the work and say this is it- love it, hate it, ignore it- whatever.
This is merely to document my emotions now, not what they will finally be about the documentary.

Driving in the mud in Uganda

Watching BBC's 'Top Gear' on TV, the presenters driving in the slushy mud of Uganda brought back memories of our days at Nakigalala in Uganda.
Driving any vehicle used to be an adventure, everything seemed to get stuck on rainy days. It was faster to take a 'boda-boda' (motor cycle taxi) up to our place on top of the hill than the 'matatu'(14 seat van) which we had as our only transport for a long time. The coming of the 4x4 Maruti Gypsy eased life a lot, though even that was 'too light' to cope with the mud on really 'bad' days.
The beauty of it was that in a few hours of sunshine, it would all dry up and you'd wonder what the fuss was all about.
I never really thought the mud driving of Uganda would be seen on international TV, but there it was- on 'Top Gear'. Is the world becoming small to the media?
There was a flip side to the whole East African adventure of course, which made it all feel very unreal to us living in East Africa. But that's the nature of television I guess- its fictional premises 'filmed' on real locations with 'real' people.
Reality TV? Is that the name for these new fictions/works ?
Seems the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction are no longer as they were (do I say good old days?). But were there boundaries ever or is it only a way of naming one's work? Don't really know.

Watching 'The Hurricane'

Had seen the movie many years ago, been very impressed with Denzel Washington's performance, didn't remember anything else.

Then recently, while waiting for a kitchen event- soaking 'dal' or waiting for the pressure cooker to cool, and switch on the TV- somehow reach a movie channel and 'The Hurricane' was beginning. 

This time around, its the sheer elegance of Norman Jewison's directing that caught my eye- the economy of effort and yet keeping your focus as a viewer exactly where it should be. There's nothing to say there's a Norman Jewison 'style' and yet there is clearly the guiding hand or presence of the director.

Its my kind of style, where you sort of get out of the way of the story being told and yet concentrate on telling the story very very intensely. Yes, it has less flourishes than some of the recognised 'autuers' of cinema, but its enormously effective in its story-telling.

Will someone see my work like that, don't know- I've right now been working in areas of content with a very narrow appeal- Asians in East Africa. Yes, I try like hell to see the 'universality' of the subjects, but does it work with audiences?  

Who knows. 

Me and the diary

I can't remember when I first began writing a diary, must have been a long time ago, almost as soon as I could write sentences on my own.
It began with writing in the back of old note books, then graduated to formal printed 'diaries'- the kind that medical reps and insurance agents distribute for free- and my parents would pass on to me.  Much later I began to buy diaries to write in.
But, you wrote to clarify your own thoughts, never to share them with another person- more for yourself.
The only diary I ever shared in public was a film school (FTII, Pune, India), where we used to have to write about the movies we saw for the Film Appreciation course. Dear old Professor Satish Bahadur would glance at them, never really read but only make sure that we have had our share of the course work.
I did use Prof Bahadur's words of knowledge when writing on twitter- he said use the 'film diary ' to record your growth- I did that with twitter, recording the making of a documentary. Of course its a commissioned work, so one needs to be discreet.
Nowadays it seem the moment we write, its assumed that its meant to be public. I suppose that's why we use different words for this form- its a 'blog' not a 'diary'.
All of the public writing is a novelty to me, as much as 'sharing' your 'likes' on the multitude of social media that envelop our lives these days.
But this is the new way of life, like it or not.
So lets flow along and write and and hope for the best- that you won't become the laughing stock for friends and family.

Death and the documentary

When you make a long duration documentary (like I've been doing for over a year now), you know that a certain amount of changes will take place in the lives of the people you interview. But when that becomes death, it really shakes you and shocks you.
One of the key interviews in my documentary was a brother of the senior protagonist, uncle and granduncle to the other protagonists. He was not just an interviewee, he was my guide to the family's past in another town- the old houses they had lived in, the old shops the family members had run- only he knew it all. He was seventy years old, but had applied hair dye for his hair for the interview, put on his best clothes and lovingly spent a day helping me with the documentary. In fact the last shots we took of him and with him were in the corner of the family's graves at the local cemetry.
When we started putting together the documentary, he naturally featured in a prominent role, providing information and even humour with his old world comments.
Now suddenly he is no more, before the documentary is out in public.
Aside of purely personal emotions (he had become close to my wife and myself in that shooting spell), I was left wondering about how to handle the whole issue of death in the documentary.
In this particular project, at least I had his interview- for another person I met him, spent time with him discussed the interview and the next day he was no more. That was pretty devastating.
Another person I met after he declined to be interviewed (saying he was nervous), but we chatted along and I realised how much he would have enriched the documentary.  A few days later he was gone.
Yes, I've read those quotes of Andre Gide: Cinema records death at work. But to actually experience it is a deeply moving and humbling experience.
You realise that its a privilege to do a documentary, to do interviews where people talk- they're never going to be the same again.
The very switching on of the camera is a transcendental act- you're transcending the moment as it exists in time.
If that's not a very very big privilege, I don't know what is.

The First One

After many many years, trying the discipline of writing a bit regularly. Maybe add in pictures etc later. For now, words will have to do.
At a cross-roads now, another of those that keep turning up in life, but one has to hope this one will lead to something/ somewhere better than where I am at right now.
For now, running a small household, trying to keep oneself financially solvent is a job enough. (I am not even trying to think of all of one's responsibilities as an individual.)
Writing in the middle of all this is a job, but I think its time to start doing it regularly.
But, this is the first one- no its isn't like the first step of a toddler, rather its the first step when you start walking after a sickness or injury- tentative, exploring, and then soon you wonder what the fuss was all about.