Revisiting 'Garam Hawa'

I lived through the 'Garam Hawa' era as an adolescent. Saw it in the final year of school. Learnt that it had been filmed in Agra at an area where a grand uncle was the top cop, so we got to hear a few of the 'war stories' of the making of the movie.
There was all the noise about it getting banned, then cleared by 'higher ups'. I seem to remember it doing reasonably at the box office, though I was an adolescent in North India, so I could be wrong on this.
The movie itself was good, it engrossed you in ways that the 'commercial cinema' regulars didn't.
By a pure fluke I located a digital file of the movie with a friend who runs a video library. I took it to my filmmaking class in Meerut, and we planned a screening.
Seeing the movie now was a revelation. The subject and the storyline were as interesting as ever, the performances mostly pretty good. The sound, especially the dialogues recorded by RK veteran Allauddin Khan, is especially noteworthy. Ishan Arya's 16mm-blown-up-to-35mm camerawork is outstanding. But the movie's basic premise and the ending seemed totally at odds with the rest of the movie, purely dramatically.
Younger audiences, who have grown up in the liberalised, highly 'capitalist' worlds of mobile n malls, and mostly have no clue that alternative ideologies exist, just couldn't relate to the movie. The young people aren't dumb kids but like most ordinary people, fairly centrist in their views, so the dreamy left-wing ideas at the end of the movie were just out of place.
Of course with Garam Hawa being a movie put together by the people from the Indian People's Theatre Association, (IPTA of Mumbai, an old Communist Party of India outreach program), a left wing slant to storyline was almost inevitable. But all the wonderful humanist ideas and situations that the characters portrayed were just wiped out by the almost imposed nature of the movie's ending.
The contrast with the Ray classics that we had seen earlier were stark. The Rays looked 'modern' as their storylines contained human truths that are eternal, the stylistics were wonderfully self contained and self referenced, so the movies don't 'age'.
'Garam Hawa' fell apart on all these counts. Its visuals are poor in terms of their cinematic value. Often the angles miss the important part of the action. Sometimes the key story element is missing from the visuals- certain points you can understand as lack of budget but others are just glaring mistakes.
One has to only see the other 'New Wave'/ FFC financed films- Mani Kaul or Kumar Shahani or Adoor Gopalakrishnan's work provides examples. You may not agree with the movies, but you cannot help appreciating them. With 'Garam Hawa' its the opposite- you love the movie but its faults are glaring.
To me, 'Garam Hawa' has always been the best example of a North Indian regional cinema. it still remains that- being far better than 'Tessri Kasam' or the newer Mumbai filmmakers-shooting-in-exotic-location feel of 'Mashaan'.
But one can why M.S. Sathyu's work collapses after 'Garam Hawa', the discipline and finesse of a filmmaker are just not there. Don't get me wrong on this, I like M.S.Sathyu as a person, but his filmmaking just collapsed and now I can see why.

Introducing Satyajit Ray

I have written earlier about my fears of introducing my students at Meerut to Satyajit Ray.
As it turned out, the first viewing of a Ray film happened with one of personal favourite films; Aranyer Diner Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest).
In a motif of the times we live in, a student downloaded the movie onto his phone, and then we saw it on a laptop.
A film made in 1968, in Black and White and Bengali. For its times, it was a multi-starrer, but to modern day kids, Soumitra Chatterjee or Simi Grewal or Sharmila Tagore mean very little. So for me, the movie started with the fear, how are these kids going to react to it?
I need not have worried at all, as the movie was a hit with the audience. The kids loved it.
Of course I knew it was a superb piece of cinema, each nuance beautifully worked out by a master filmmaker. But to see it look fresh and wonderful after all these years, ahhh, that's a wonderful moment. I can only compare it to my emotions when my son watched 81/2 and loved Marcello Mastronioni. You feel you have passed on a part of your heritage to another generation.
The real magic came in re-discovering Ray for myself, how wonderfully a great filmmaker works. The simplicity, the sheer elegance of the narrative moments, in the business of living one forgets what a great filmmaker does to his audience.
If this is classical filmmaking, why on earth does one need to go against these classical rules?
I guess at a certain level you feel relief that the classics are still valid, have a value.
As it turned out, the next day we saw Satyajit Ray's Charulata, to me one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever made.
What a pleasure to see the students loving it, and saying how does Ray make the movies so close to our lives. This in 2016 is a testimony to Ray's greatness as a filmmaker.

Low Budget-Small Unit Productions

We all know the story: there isn't enough of a budget so the main people on the unit- you and your family do more than one job.

The result- a few sloppy things remain on-screen, a few mistakes here and there. In a bigger unit, with more assistants who tend to not get very emotional with those dreams playing out on-screen, there are typically lesser 'tiny' mistakes. Why, because those assistants who aren't passionate about the project catch minor errors better than you and me, the ones who are emotionally involved with the project.

I went back to work on a documentary recently and ran it through once, to just bring myself up to speeed so to say. Hey, it was embarassing to watch the screen- mistakes had crept in of a totally starter kind.

Why? I am a reasonably experienced filmmaker, usually pretty meticulous in my work.

But then I realised what I stated above- its the too many job syndrome.

The problem is that what do you do? You don't have money enough to pay an assistant, in any case then you may be relying on someone who may not be trained for the job you are giving them. So you opt to do things yourself. And make mistakes.

OK, the point is to not make mistakes, to do everything yourself perfectly. Rid yourself of all emotions and do the job.

As we all know easier said than done.

Why am I stating all this? This project that was recently revived had a roaring reception, but a few tiny errors had crept in, and I wondered why.

Life being what it is, I got a chance to correct all the errors on this project.

And what the hell when you get to see the project I won't tell you where the problems were, so it will look like a perfect project to you.

The 'Craft' in filmmaking

Traditionally, we were taught that filmmaking has three broad components:

1. The Technology
2. the Aesthetics
3. The Business

These are pretty much well known parts of filmmaking. The technology was one used for image capturing and later the exhibition and distribution of the images. The aesthetics was what provided the backbone to the way your filmmaking project was structured and generally your guide as you went about structuring your project. the business side governed who financed your project and who determined where it was finally exhibited and got a chance to recover the money invested in the project.

The part that one actually learned most about filmmaking was the fouth part- the craft of filmmaking. This was all about making sure your pictures were decently exposed, your sounds were clear to hear and your storyline remained 'legible' to viewing audiences. These were more or less the 'basics' of filmmaking, that you had to maintain in any situation.

The point was driven home to me all over again on a recent documentary project. The owner of the post-production house where I work assigned me a bunch of newcomers with sub-standard equipment to handle the job at hand. The boys and I toiled but the documentary remained scratchy, uneven and muddled looking. I protested about it but the other machines and manpower were occupied elsewhere. The project was eventually turned down by the client and we stopped working on it completely.

After three months, the client decided to pick up the project again. So I got a friend who has an edit system to work on the project. We just sat and did all the common sense- craft -things, placed the subtitles in the correct place, smoothed and leveled the sounds, matched the colours a bit so that shot-to-shot transitions became 'smoother', re-did the cuts so that the basics of cutting on motion were followed. 

Then I showed the documentary to the client again, and he actually clapped, thumped the desk in joy. Suddenly there was a documentary that he could show to the world.

It was the same documentary, same technology, same aesthetics, same budget, but a better application of the craft had changed everything.

When we learn cinema in film school, this is all that we learn- what is the story we are telling, what is the point of each scene, the shot and the cuts that we made. In the hurly-burly of shooting small budget projects (where everyone plays multiple roles) we sometimes overlook the basics. And when you come to the post production stage, well, we're kind of stuck and have to sort matters bit by bit, applying good old classical 'craft'. 

The class distinctions in technology

From the title itself you know that this blog post has an obvious point: there is a distiction between the image making that happens with an Arri Alexa and your mobile phone.
The difference is related to the money you have at hand for any project.
That statement above is the bottom line for everything that we image makers do.
I've spent the bulk of my career doing commissioned projects that are on tight budgets. So the equipment you use and the crew you hire are what you can afford. Occasionally, friends (technicians/ actors) have chipped in to lift projects above their budget levels, but usually the narrative is that the budget dictates everything- the style of the project to its technicians.
For a while I was doing projects in Kenya, Africa, and there the divisions were even more stark. Their were people who worked with overseas crews, on projects designed for international markets, and they did have budgets that were up to those marks. There were projects designed for local markets with budgets that were of a very different order, often less than ten percent of the 'international budget' projects. So quite obviously the equipment and crew were of a different level. We could compete on the 'ideas' or the 'creative' fronts, but often due to the expertise level of the crew, even the technical standards with which we operated were quite different.
Right now, I live and work in Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh. The work that I do here is mainly local documentaries, with the once a year bigger 'national' project. With local documentaries, the budgets are 'local'/low, so the same principles operate again. With the  'national' projects you can access better equipment and technicians, but these are smaller budgets than the still bigger projects with a corporate or international broadcaster backing.
All this was driven home to me when I went to a friend's place and new equipment was being demonstrated there. Yes, the equipment was great, the controls on those cameras were worth dying for, but the issue was where could we afford that gear? In my situation, on very few projects.
but of course my projects were going to look second grade compared to stuff shot on these new cameras and lenses. But my backers do not have the budgets to afford this equipment.
I suppose I could hike up my budget so that I get better gear to shoot. But I'm trying to create a market for low budget but high concept documentaries that can in budgets that are possible for the local businesses. Am I right? Who knows.
Will I get the time to be proven right? Or will I too move away to bigger cities in search of bigger, better projects. Again, I don't know.
This is all the truth today.

Connections in today's world

Its a bit of a cliche to say that the world is getting smaller. But some days it really hits you!

I've seen the trailers and excerpts of an American 'indie' filmmaker called Whit Stillman. I liked the sensibility of the filmmaker in what I saw. So recently, when I found an interesting article about Whit Stillman's work, I tweeted the link. Don't know how people do these things but a few hours later I had a message from Twitter that Whit Stillman retweeted my tweet and is now following me on Twitter. I got a bit dazed by that. I mean we are separated by a few thousand kilometers of land and sea, by all counts I should barely register on an American filmmaker's consiousness. But here it was!

A second example happened yesterday. A college classmate forwarded a junk mail about a French lady who was married to the present Aga Khan's grandfather (the previous Aga Khan). Nice story, so I forwarded it to a friend in Nairobi, who happens to be a follower of the Aga Khan. In a few hours, he sends me a reply that he has forwarded it to a friend in Canada who actually knew the lady (once upon a time!).  Again I was left wondering about how far are we from the most obscure things.

Yes, I too have heard of the concept and the play 'Six Degrees of Separation', loved the idea. But as I said, its another experience when it happens to you.

Studying Indian Cinema at FTII

From the time I have known film studies (not much!), Indian Cinema has never really been taken seriously in FTII or film teaching institutions in India. You studied Satyajit Ray, saw and appreciated Ritwik Ghatak, and that was it. Yes you saw Indian movies of all shapes and sizes- afterall like Indian culture, Indian cinema too has a huge diversity in its output. But that wasn't discussed with the seriousness reserved for Bergman or Kurosawa.
There was of course the issue that Indian cinema was not one whole but consisted of diverse regional cinemas. And there was the permanent problem of Hindi Cinema that it did not belong to anywhere, despite representing a huge number of people with different cultures spread across a large geographic area.
Given the scope of these issues it made a lot of sense to brush Indian Cinema under the carpet, and to go on treating cinema as an international language. The fact that such an attitude denied the cinema going experience with which students began to study cinema; the fact that most, if not all, students were going to practice their filmmaking craft in India; both of these were convineiently overlooked. And we pretended that Indian Cinema was all Ray and Ghatak, perhaps a bit of the FFC/NFDC supported cinema-Mani Kaul/ Kumar Shahani.
The problem was really bad for people from the Hindi speaking regions, as nothing in the film viewing experience of a student featured in what you studied. Indeed the most unique aspect of Hindi Cinema- its music became the point that was just not bothered with, indeed it was looked down upon. So you had a problem- internally, in your mind as an artist, how did you reconcile all that you studied with what you enjoyed and had learned from. Its difficult to reconcile a Miklos Jansco or Tarkovosky with Raj Kapoor or Vijay Anand, but you had to do it on your own- the teaching or the staff were not going to be able to help you with this.
To me, this was a central problem with FTII's traditional teaching model of Indian Cinema- it just treated a student's mind with a lot of violence and created deep chasms in the minds. Its not a technical problem of lighting or camera, its a gut root issue of creation. Unless we treated the movies that students had seen seriously, their minds were never going to be in balance.
This week, talking to a few friends who teach filmmaking I was surprised to note that we were all now using Hindi Cinema in our teaching. Gurudutt, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and others featured in our teaching.
In a way it had to happen, we had to start being less violent in our teaching and point our new facets in what the students already knew. I have been encouraging students to study commercials in cricket matches to understand structure and film language.
Are we doing the right thing? Indeed is there a right path to teaching Indian Cinema?
I honestly do not know, am just moving on. Passing on the teachings of my teachers to my students.

Teaching Cinema with Gurudutt

 Amongst other things, I teach Film Direction, in my hometown.

The place where I teach had sprouted up at some point in the 2000s, when most of the mushrooming of private education seems to have happened in Western Uttar Pradesh (though I can't be too sure of this). Which means that while this is not a coaching class kind of scenario, it is not quite the Film and Television Institute of India, my alma mater.

One of the problems I have had in the past is that the students just don't have much exposure to cinema of any kind. Up to now I used to let them choose a few movies that they thought were 'good' or 'interesting' and then analyse them and discuss them with the students to help them grow some knowledge of cinema. The method did work as the students did come to appreciate a bit of cinema.
This year I thought I needed to stop this and just go straight into classical cinema, begining with Satyajit Ray.

As it happened I got a bright bunch of students this year, so they grasped  the classical bits of cinema very well. And I got bold enough to try another experiment- I started teaching them using Gurudutt.
I showed 'Pyaasa' and 'Sahab, Bibi aur Ghulam'. We went over the structure, pointed out details from VK Murthy's incredible camerawork, analysed Gurudutt's shot taking and editing choices. Then I turned to teaching them about misc-en-scene and art direction pointing out the details from Gurudutt's work. Oh, it was all very clear, clearly Gurudutt's magic had implanted images in their mind and that helped them understand aspects of cinema.

I realised that my students here belong to the Hindi speaking areas, so their appreciation of the nuances of a movie is that much greater with a Hindi movie. That really helped with Gurudutt.In addition to this, all the students had a knowledge of Gurudutt prior to coming to study filmmaking, they were already 'fans' of the movie- Gurudutt is a part of Hindi cinema's folklore. So I was able to build on a body of knowledge that they already had, which has given them enormous confidence in themselves and their knowledge of cinema.

Now we move to Satyajit Ray, but I want to show them more Hindi cinema first- I want them to get more confident with their own movies. I believe that this way the students can place themselves much better within the traditions of their own cinema.

I think my students agree with this, so we're onto something. Afterall most of these people want to work with what we from FTII have always termed 'mainstream cinema'. So its best that we learn to appreciate the traditions of this cinema. And those traditions have a lot to do with Gurudutt.

Screening Akira Kurosawa 's Rashomon

I had first seen 'Rashomon' as a student in Delhi in the 1970s. It was the year Akira Kurosawa and Michelangelo Antonioni had come visiting the Indian Film Festival in Delhi and all of Kurosawa's films were being screened at the festival venues across the city. The tickets were expensive, or so they seemed to me as a student, I bought the cheapest ones, and saw the film in widescreen straining my neck on the first row of a cinema hall.
I had heard of 'Rashomon' before I saw it: my father had seen it in Meerut. I can't remember now how it had reached Meerut in the 1950's but it had and my father had seen and loved the movie. So I was aware of the cult of Rashomon and Kurosawa by the time I grew up and actually saw the film.
Like most people who have had the chance to see 'Rashomon', my mind blew up when I saw the movie. It's a film that opens your mind about what is possible in cinema,inspires you as a filmmaker.
Years later, Rashomon continued to intrude upon my life.
In Nairobi, in the year 2009, my son was in University and brought home a book of Japanese short stories. Can't remember the name of the author but the book did state that Rashomon was actually a combination of two short stories from this collection. The story of the three men stuck in the rain is one story and the court case was a second story. Kurosawa had combined them in his masterly screenplay.
Now, here I was showing Rashomon to my students, only to find that my copy had no subtitles in English.
So here were my students, reasonably intelligent young people, hence reasonably ill informed about cinema, stuck with a film made in 1952, in black and white, in Japanese; on a summer afternoon in a hot room with a non functioning AC. I was holding my breath, would the magic of Akira Kurosawa hold?
In retrospect I need not have worried, Kurosawa's magic had my students in awe. They had their eyes popping out by the time the screening finished. They admitted they had never seen anything like it or indeed even imagined that such work existed. I thought of the Europeans who had been overawed by Kurosawa at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. Overnight Akira Kurosawa had become one of the emperors of cinema.
And here in a small Indian town, Kurosawa had done it again.
Honestly, I can't stop applauding the film...
PS: Rashomon is available for streaming on Youtube, in a version with English subtitles.

The Fan Encounter

I have a friend who runs a music and movie selling business. He's a movie buff and has tons of rare stuff. Not too many people know about his business or so I thought.
I happened to be at his shop the other day and a man on a cycle stopped by. He was dressed in attire that is typical of a 'kabadi' (typical Indian concept, difficult to explain to non-Indians, but let's say someone who buys old newspapers and beer bottles off you to sell to others). Typically, lower end 'kabadis' from the Muslim community will be seen in a 'tehmad'(a North Indian Muslim version of the South Indian lungi, except this is in checked patterns) and white kurta. He had a slight beard, I thought he had shaved and was growing back his beard hair. Other than this, nothing very remarkable, a slim wiry kind of build, typical of men who work with their hands and bodies.
He entered and asked my friend if he had 'Aan Milo Sajna', an obscure early seventies movie with Asha Parekh and Shashi Kapoor. My friend said yes he did. They discussed the technical modalities- would he take it on a DVD or a chip, all the while the man kept missing the days of his old VHS tapes.
As my work was still going on, my friend went to his VCD collection, it's arranged alphabetically so the movie starting with 'A' turned up fairly soon. It was in a 2 VCD set, clearly produced a while back- eighties, when VCD were the devices to have.
My friend showed it to me first, afterall I am a filmmaker, so by education and profession possessing a greater love and knowledge of cinema. I held the VCD set for a moment, noticed the man looking at me, so I passed it onto him to have a look.
The man's eyes lit up, yes indeed it was the movie. I don't really know what he remembered- a first date, a forgotten love, or simply love for the stars of the movie that symbolised his youth perhaps.
Now the man got a little frantic about when he could collect the movie, my friend and he started to have a skirmish where my friend said he was busy and the man said he couldn't come back, he lived in another part of the town.
I began to think about fans and their relationship with movies. How that's a part of cinema we never learnt about and yet it was the basic reality of cinema.
How this man had gone to the trouble of finding this rare shop to find a movie that he needed and wanted.
My friend peeped up to say my job was done, I collected my DVD and moved out of the shop.

Top Ten City films: India

Instinctively, I dislike these top ten lists of any and everything. Especially when related to the arts, maybe related to a sporting event in athletics it makes sense. So it was with a bit of scepticism that I opened a list of Top Ten City Films in an architecture magazine. The list was interesting in that it added Godard's work to the usual Hollywood films, but nothing else. It was one of those lists that 'pretend' to be international, but are actually very Hollywood oriented. I mean can you really talk of city films without the Italian Neo-Realists (or Antonioni's work even later on- I am thinking of 'Red Desert' ).
But it did set me thinking. Could I try to compile a list of top ten city films from India.  My list would be from my area of knowledge, where my limited knowledge of Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu cinemas would be very evident. But let's try it anyway.
My Top Ten city Films from India would be:

1. 'Neecha Nagar': 1948, Chetan Anand. Hindi. Pretty spectacular script and bits of inspired direction.
2. 'Do Bigha Zameen': 1950, Bimal Roy. Pretty much 'the' film of rural migration in India.
3. ' Apur Sansar': Satyajit Ray. Doesn't need any comment. Still stunning.
4. 'Mahanagar': Satyajit Ray. Good but not a 'great' Ray film.
5. 'Megha Dhaka Tara': Ritwik Ghatak. The greatest Indian family story ever told.
6. 'Subarnarekha': Ritwik Ghatak: the 'big' idea film in India. Matches Godard or any European.
7. 'Sheher aur Sapna': KA Abbas: Not a great film but a damn good city story.
8. 'Footpath' : Zia Sarhadi; Dilip Kumar in a Neo-Realist film set in Mumbai. 
9. 'Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan': Saed Mirza: great film, rarely seen. 
10. 'Chakra': Rabindra Dharamraj: a great story, messed up filmmaking, but it still has the city in it.

I would love to include many others- 'Deewar' and 'Dharavi' come to mind, but the list has ten only. Mrinal Sen's 'Calcutta 71' and 'Ek Din Pratidin' are great city films. As is probably 'Delhi 6', Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's lovely film. And then there is 'Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron'....

Maybe you see only my biases here: I do like the work of the IPTA oriented communist filmmakers, I do like the Neo Realists and I do like structured films that have a clear structure underlying there stories.

What about you? What do you think of this list?

The Life of a Film/Movie

Writing this title became a bit of an adventure: are we talking of films when made on celluloid film? Is it the correct description to apply to projects that are produced and consumed digitally- are they 'films'? If the projects never reach a cinema hall, are they movies?
To anyone who creates or consumes audio visual media, this is a familiar linguistic dilemma.
Traditionally, films- both negatives and prints of celluloid based products, ended up in the bangle making industry. It appears that the 'traditional'/ industrial age use for movies that no one wanted to see anymore or the prints were damaged beyond repair with age was the bangle industry. Of course if your movie was a hit, you protected its prints with your life, as even old ones could be milked in the cinema halls. Some of the movies and their prints did end up in the National Film Archives, but I am sure the number of prints there does not compare with the number of movies produced in India.
If you ask me where are the negatives of my 'film' products: Diploma Film at FTII or short work at Children's Film Society, I would honestly have to say I don't know. (Not that I've tried looking for them, as I do have digital copies).
Then came the age of video, when we did TV and documentary work on various formats of video tape. Work that I had produced on my own had to be finally thrown away as I couldn't find video tape recorders that could play them. A few VHS tapes remain, for the moment I have a friend in Meerut who sells antiques and has a few working VHS machines, so some hope there.
With the internet age I guess everything gets dumped onto youtube/vimeo or some such website where we hope it shall survive for a while. I was reading about the use of Blu Ray DVDs by google for youtube, to archive material that doesn't get seen very often.
But the reason I am writing is not to describe the social phenomenon listed above. I want to ask a more immediate question: when does a filmmaker like me, working on commissioned work, actually stop paying attention to a product, stop updating its facebook page or twitter feed or whatever I do to promote a documentary?
The question came to me as my documentary for PSBT-DD The Caregivers, made over a year and a half ago is generating lots of interest still amongst audiences. Someone showed it in Tirupati (details on the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/documentarythecaregivers), where audiences loved it.  I was again tempted to pay more attention to the exhibition of this project. But I have to earn a living and perforce have to move onto other projects.
What do I do? I honestly don't know. I do know that the documentary is far from dead-the producers have not even put it online.
But to devote time here means I have to cut myself off from other activities.
That is why I'm wondering is there a time when one detaches oneself from a project?
I don't know. Do you have an answer?

Satyajit Ray's Aaranyer Din Raatri

I was saw Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri at FTII, must have been in first year. I thought it was one of the most magical films I'd ever seen. But Ray was not 'fashionable' amongst FTII students in those days, so this was one of those hidden passions- it existed but you never discussed it in public. I am anyway not the kind of person that discusses favorite films with anyone.
Years passed, passions got covered in layers of dust in one's heart, while the mind and body worked away to earn a living.
Last year, looking for something else, I found the script of Aranyer Din Raatri. It was in a blog, can't say if it was transcribed or written by the author. Downloaded the script, kept it on my computer but never read it, planned to do it one fine day.
This week I suddenly opened the script, read it -and found it to be incomplete. So I started looking around on the internet, but no I couldn't find the script anywhere now.
But the movie itself is up on youtube for all to watch.
Watching it now, the magic comes rushing back. Ray's impeccable control over script, actors, camera and sound, is so unusual it's haunting.
To remember that its made in 1969, the same year as 'Bhuvan Shome' and 'Uski Roti', is to wonder why this film is not more highly rated. Ray in his writing seemed to rate it highly. It seems to have recieved the usual dazling reviews Ray garnered worldwide.
But really, its a film to rated very near to the magic of the Apu Triology, the film where Ray steps out elegantly into a more 'modern' structure. Though of course there's Tagore in there-Ghare Bhaire was Tagore's stepping out into a new world.
The film also led me into reading more of Ray's writings on cinema. The way he diagnosed the situation of cinema in India and his own place is crazily relevant even today. Even for small time aspirant's like me.
That's why I seem to go into Satyajit Ray and Aranyer di Raatri. Its inspiration at its purest.
And courtesy of the internet, instantly accessible.

RIP: PK Nair

Another icon of Indian Cinema passed away this week: PK Nair.

 Founder Director of the National Film Archives of India, the pioneer of film preservation in India. There isn't much that I can add about Nair Sahab that is not already well known.

In our days at FTII (in another era!), Nair Sahab was the quiet figure sitting in the back seats, with a torch mounted pen and a pad in hand, silently making notes in every screening. It was the first time a lot of us had seen the device- a torch with a ball point pen. when I asked he said it was given to him somewhere and was useful, and easier to use than the separate devices (torch & pen) that he used till that time.

To the students of FTII, Nair Sahab and the NFAI were of course magic. Every film opened our eyes and minds into new directions, new cultures, new ways of using film language. Before you knew it, we had drifted away from the worlds of Hindi Cinema and Hollywood that we had grown up with.

In the eighties, (the pre VHS, DVD & online days of cinema), NFAI used to get a fair amount of visitors from the cinema industry, some wanting to catch up on movies, others benchmarking themselves against classics. At those times, you got to see the respect that Nair Sahab really commanded. I guess he must have needed that respected, otherwise the producers would never agree to give him film prints for preservation.

If you spoke to him Nair Sahab could tell you fascinating stories of how each print in the archives had been procured. Though to be fair, at that time we were too young to appreciate the value of those stories.

I did see him in Pune in recent years, the physical decline was there but the spirit was there for all to see. I guess the going away of the body was a matter of time.

Like Prof Satish Bahadur before him, PK Nair started a new path. Now that he is no more, we as his students, have to follow on that road.

Can't let the flame die out!

All in a week

I finally got back to working with a momentum.

Dashed off two proposals- one non fiction and the other for fiction. Which gets a bit tough in a week, but if you're in the business of creativity, you've got to be able to do this sort of thing. Add in the winding up for an earlier project - that's my working week.

The Non-Fiction thing was actually more interesting to work out, as it was an area that I had always want to work in, but never had a chance. My work has mostly been commissioned documentaries and slowly a desire to do more was building. But you've got to earn a living, and as mine happens to be documentaries, I just keep doing them.

Once in a way I get an opportunity like THE CAREGIVERS where the producers (PSBT) backed my vision of things. End result was what I thought is an interesting documentary. So when this opportunity came to pitch a proposal, (very late, as I had all of five days to do the proposal), I thought I must stretch myself and do the proposal. Afterall without a proposal you're not in the race. Anyway its gone now.

The Fiction thing has been more interesting to work on, its a script I have wanted to write all my working life, but never managed to do so. I seemed to lack the motivation and the necessary skills to do. After days of thinking, I finally just buckled down and wrote it all down. Yes I was modifying it, tinkering till the last minute of submission, but now can proudly say I have script, well technically its only a treatment, but its there. Again, its an old story, set in a village in a feudal environment, might not go down well in the world of malls, mobiles and cynicism. But one has to try.

Do I have hopes for the proposals? Of course I do, but in a sense its beyond all that. You strive, create and submit your work to other people to judge. From here on, its up to those who sit in judgement.

Will the competitions change anything? Yes, they have already pushed me into changing my perception of myself.

I guess that's what its all about, not winning but participating.

Still Photography and Documentary

I have working on a few proposals. You want to do your best with each proposal, so the proposal writing was taking up all my time.

One of the proposals was for a documentary, and it ran parallel to a still photography contest that the organisers were also running. As a long time creator of commissioned works, I was eyeing the liberties allowed to the still photographers longingly. They were being treated at par with painters and other artists, while we filmmakers are at best treated as artisans, executing a commission that is thought out and handed to us. It's almost like filmmaker can't really be trusted to think for themselves!

I guess filmmakers have themselves to blame for this state of affairs. We don't take our art and ourselves as artists too seriously. You are always taught/told that your sponsor/commissioning person is right to fool around with your structure (I am not even talking of what distributors and broadcasters do to our works). Hardly anyone would dare to talk to a still photographer the same way, leave alone painters or sculptors.

Do senior/established filmmakers have a better time in this matter? Do they get more of a free-hand from sponsors and other commissioning people? I don't really know, I'm neither a 'senior' nor an 'established' filmmaker.

Am I right with this? Don't really know, but this is what I really feel at the moment.

Satyajit Ray, Pather Panchali and film teaching

Two things happened to inspire this post:

1. My teacher Surender Chaudhary started writing a new blog about Satyajit Ray and Pather Panchali, which triggered a ton of memories of my FTII days.
2. I am about to begin teaching a new batch of students in Meerut, at the IFTI. 

How do these connect? That's my blog.

When I went to FTII, Satyajit Ray was still alive and making films. Pather Panchali and Apu Triology were the texts to study, partly because of Prof Satish Bahadur's presence. Despite all the youthful rebellion amonst FTII students towards Prof Bahadur, none of us could really miss his immense learning and openess to new ideas, movies and perspectives. Of course very soon we grew up to love Ray by ourselves (I think usually when we began to do oour exercise films seriously, though this couls be my experience alone). Ray and his work stayed with all FTII students over the years, it was a 'branding' in the very literal sense of the word. 

All this came back to me when I returned to India and my hometown of Meerut and found a film school there. I went there out of curiosity and no one, quite literally no one, had ever heard of Satyajit Ray. I came home after showing two of my films there, saying this place is too disgusting for me (it was a fast food joint for someone brought up on fine dining). Then I thought about it a bit more and said either I am part of the problem or I am part of the solution. So I started teaching there whenever I was free. 

Now I am about to begin a new batch of students at the IFTI and for the first time, hope to unleash Satyajit Ray upon them. I use the word 'unleash' in full knowledge of its meaning, Ray's work will bite and haunt the students in a manner that they do not realise. It will change them in certain fundamental ways if they want to make films in India.

But therein lies a problem.

In the past students here at IFTI are not inclined to be filmmakers! The moment the reality of the world of filmmaking and its complexities dawn upon them,  40% of the students want to quit filmmaking, the rest want to be Assistant Directors or TV Producers (and shift to journalism). 

That's a very different world from our days at FTII (and even now ) where we slept dreamt and woke up be filmmakers and pursued that with a lot of determination. Watching films, learning how to make them, discussing them occupied our days.

Clearly a lot has changed.

But now I'm going to try another foolhardy step to educate students in cinema, in a non-conducive milieu.

Why am I doing that?

Because I believe there is a fundamental value to appreciating art in our development as human beings. My teaching cinema is a way of propogating that basic value.

 

A few secrets of Digital Post-Production

I have just finished post-production on a documentary.
Before I go further, let me explain this a bit. I'm a trained professional filmmaker, which in India meant that I was based in a big filmmaking centre (Mumbai in my case), where I did have access to quality technicans and hardware for most of my working life. When we were based in East Africa, my wife had acquired a DV set-up based on Apple computers and Final Cut Pro. A few hiccups aside, the set up worked smoothly.
Then, a couple of years back, I shifted base to my native town of Meerut in UP. When I had documentaries to make here, the option was to go to my known territory- the big centres of film production. The budgets on the projects at hand did not allow for my staying in a big city and paying for the editing, so I really had no option but to find post-production options in Meerut.
There is a reasonable amount of video production in Meerut, as in most smaller towns I assume. The biggest guys are the wedding people, in their off season they rent out their equipment, are your best friends, but at that time its a no-go zone. The wedding crowd mostly edits on Adobe Premiere Pro, though Sony Vegas and Grass Valley Edius are also around. There maybe a few Final Cut Pros somewhere, but I haven't met them.
There are cable TV Channels that do local programming, they work with Sony Vegas mostly.
There is a local film school that has Apple Macs and Final Cut Pro, but they do not have the time to let outsiders edit.
So I went back to my friends, Gaurav and Snigdh Bhatnagar of the local Arena Animation franchise. Yes, they were ready to help but their machines were all busy with their own productions, but they said they would organise something.
The 'something' turned out to be two of their recent students armed with laptops loaded with Adobe Premiere Pro.
We began in earnest, organising the footage into bins. Interestingly, we did this using VLC player with the clips still on the desktop. This was because the footage had been shot on MTS,a Sony patented AVCHD format that currently no non-linear edit systems appear to read. We were using older, pirated versions of Adobe Premiere Pro, so all the footage had to be converted to MPEG-4 before editing.
The first step going into the editing was to convert the footage without losing much visual and audio quality. This was an adventure as all kinds of format convertors turn up on the internet, but the free ones would kill almost all picture quality. Finally, we settled down to a video format convertor and used it bit by bit, as it just took so much time to convert.
The edit itself was an absolute nightmare as due to the smaller RAM of the consumer level laptop you could not playback what you had edited. You could playback only the last two shots before the machine 'hung'. Then you waited, let the machine sort itself  or sometimes re-start it before moving further with the edit. by which you'd lost the rhythm of the whole thing.
Reminded me of film editing days, when you marked on the Moviola or Steenbeck, went back to the editing table and did the physical 'cut'. And then returned to the Moviola or Steenbeck to play and check your cut. If it meant a change, ahhh, a long story began.
It was a broadly parallel process in the days of video tape, where you couldn't go back and change a cut without dislocating all the cuts that were further up.
After all that non-linear edit systems, especially our smoothly running Final Cut Pro were like a dream. You could cut in a few seconds, move on with your thought process and sense of rhythm intact.
But here I was, at the end of 2015 struggling with a system where I couldn't see more than a few cuts at a time.
Somehow, we reached a 'cut', using all my patience and skills as a teacher of filmmaking.
Now, just have to see how audiences react to it all.

Re-Writing a script

When writing the first draft of a script, it is for me a quick process of doing the right kind of preparatory work(writing the scene outline, the character sketches etc).  With a first draft in hand, you proclaim that you've written a script, but its actually a first draft of a script.
Then you kind of leave it for a while, maybe get reactions to it from other people if you're brave enough. (Really, the early stages of writing seem to require enormous courage-to overcome your fear of other people's reactions- or is it simply the fear of rejection?).
Anyway, at some point the reactions have sunk in and you need to now change your script to incorporate all of them. Where do you begin?
I've have usually been lost at this stage of the script. I hold on to my first drafts as long as I can, maybe hoping that I won't have to re-write them.
Somewhere, reality bites: you will have to do the re-write, you owe it to the idea, to the characters and story that you want to tell. If you aren't motivated enough to want to spend time re-writing, why will audiences care about these characters and their story?
As you may have guessed, I'm in the midst of a re-write and am only recounting my struggles with the process. Scott Myers, an American who writes a wonderful scriptwriting blog GO INTO THE STORY, has lots to say about re-writing. So if you're trying to re-write your script, please follow his sage advice, not mine.
I come to re-writing from a background of documentary filmmaking, where I often shoot without a detailed script, then do a first version in the edit, which is mostly pretty 'rotten'. Then using the reactions to the first version, I take into consideration all reactions, no matter how negative they feel at the time. Slowly, I build up a second and often 'good enough' version. We fine-tune that with the client and hey you've got a documentary.
So I am following the same process here in re-writing, no one really has issues with the first draft, but I kind of know that something here needs more attention, or a character needs a bit more in their backstory. I've made my notes and now need to implement them in the re-write.
The only change is that I am now doing my re-write with dialogues in Hindi. Having lived in East Africa I used to write everything in English. Then I was introduced to the whole world of writing Hindi in the Latin script, mainly by young people over the phone (SMS and other messages). Now I feel confident enough of the process to try it on a full script- descriptions in English but dialogues in Hindi.
Now, on with the re-write.

A Lost Documentary: Santhara

While writing the last post on my diploma film GHERAO, I remembered a time when the sole film print of GHERAO was lost. FTII wouldn't make a new print unless I was prepared to buy it, which at that point was too much money for a struggling filmmaker like me. Technically, FTII 'lent' the filmmaker a print of his diploma against a deposit, which was returned when you returned the diploma film. So you borrowed your film whenever you needed to screen it. But now, with print 'lost' you couldn't borrow it anymore, couldn't show it to prospective clients/producers.

All that got sorted when the print was found at the NFDC later, and matters went back to normal.

All those memories led to my 'lost documentary'.

It was 1991 when a friend asked if I wanted to do any documentaries with a background of the Jain religion and culture, as he was part of a group starting a new TV Channel on that segment. As it happened, the next day the newspapers (still a source of 'news' in those days) had a small item about a Jain gentleman who was going into the state called 'Santhara'. Legally in India 'Santhara' means a person depriving himself of food (fasting) until death. Socially its a very different thing as you can only go for ' Santhara' if your family and your religious guru approves. Which means you can't compare 'Santhara' with suicide, they are very different things.

I asked my friend if I could do a documentary on this, and got a go-ahead. I found the family and the person, met them and go their approval too. The gentleman was over eighty years old, had had his third heart attack and was expected to survive perhaps a day or two. I interviewed the family, their doctor, the gentleman himself and their religious guru (a young Jain nun).

My old friend Ashwini Kaul did the camerawork, my wife edited the film, my old friend Chand did the voice-over. The completion of the documentary kept getting delayed for odd technical reasons. It was completed the day the gentleman passed away, almost like he didn't want the documentary to turn him into a hero.

The documentary was seen by a the family, the producers and a few other people. My friend and the financiers had some kind of a fall out, down to video-tapes exchanging hands. In the process, both assumed the other had a tape of the documentary. I had no copy as a VHS had been promised but never given to me.

I moved on to other jobs, where I did get a few queries from people about the documentary, which I passed on to my friend.

Years later I was head hunted by a company for a TV Channel job, went for the interview and it was with the people who had produced this documentary. In the interview we ended up only trying to figure out where the documentary could be and unfortunately came to no conclusions.

I went overseas shortly afterwards, concluding clearly that this was a 'lost' documentary.

I do talk about it to friends, but it remains one of those niggling lossses that irritates me no end.

Again one of those 'ifs' and 'buts' of life.

A Time to Write

After a long time, I'm settling down to write.

Writing is one of those things- when you do it regularly you have the time for it, when you get a break in the routine, then you can't seem to find the time.

This year I made a resolution- I must try and write a blog post a week. Its good practice, helps you trace where your time and your mind went in the year.

You could say the year is still new, so I can very well afford to make these proclaimations. The proof is in the writing.

So let's begin for the first blog post of the year.

GHERAO

My Diploma Film at FTII, made in 1984.

Technically, its my Post-Diploma Film as I already had a Diploma Film made as a part of my Diploma in Film Editing. That was a documentary called 'A FILM ABOUT COMPUTERS', but the year was 1982 and computers weren't talking points yet (Pre- PC days).

I got hold hold of a DVD copy of GHERAO recently. A friend got it smuggled out of FTII, no one really knows if any film print or video copy exist there anymore.

This copy is incomplete- the first reel is missing from a three reel film. So it's really a copy that can be viewed by people who already know the story.

The reason GHERAO was known a bit in 1984 was that it was one of the early student films to have a known Mumbai actor in it- Dr Sreeram Lagoo. For reasons that remain unknown to me to date, I wrote a script that was pretty uncastable by student film standards. Typically, as students we do films about young people and cast our friends, this one needed an elderly college principal as the central character.

Dr Lagoo, as a Puneite and a bilingual actor (Marathi and Hindi), used to come to Pune to do plays. I went to see after a show at Bal Gandharwa Theatre one Saturday, he asked me to meet him with the script the next day. So I went on a Sunday morning to his family home, he agreed to read the script and called me the next Sunday to meet him.

When I met him next week, he simply said when do you want to shoot, he gave me four days, one for outdoors and two for the indoors, plus a morning at Pune Station for the climax. I was thrilled, only that I didn't have a crew! Unlike the regular courses, this Post Diploma Course had only Directors, so we had to find our crew. Luckily FTII is always full of recent alumni who are avoiding being termed unemployed by sitting under the wisdom tree. So I got my old friends Niranjan Thade to do the camerawork and Sanjeev Punj to do the sound. My then fiancee, now long suffering wife, Sonal, was also around to edit and generally help with the production.

Casting the other actors was a problem, but finally Pune theatre actors stepped in and helped out. I think the opportunity to act alongside a legend and star like Dr Lagoo was the attraction.

The production was uneventful except that I learned how to direct different actors differently. The story in my mind was how Dr Lagoo would only work out the physicality of the role in the rehearsal and perform full on in the first take. This would rattle the other actors who assumed he would act as he had done in the rehearsals. After the first few shots, I took the others aside and told them to just watch Dr Lagoo in the first take, I would call it NG (No Good) and claim a technical problem. Then in the second take Dr Lagoo would act like the first one, but the others would pick up the tempo.

Incidentally, Ketan Mehta was shooting his film HOLI on the FTII campus in those days. Based on Mahesh Enkulchwar's play, the subject of HOLI was very near to GHERAO. To add to that there was a student strike at FTII in the middle of our production. And I got engaged shortly after completing shooting, so eventful times.

In those days we used to shoot with the Arri 3 cameras in 35mm, which made a royal racket at the time of shooting, but you dubbed the dialogues so all would be well eventually. I was given dates from October31-November 2 by Dr Lagoo for dubbing. As it happened October 31, 1984, was the date when our then Prime Minister was assassinated, throwing the country into turmoil. Dr Lagoo couldn't travel to Pune to dub.

We began looking at alternate dates for dubbing, but there was a crackdown on students due to another of our failed strikes. I had to finish the film by the end of December 1984, couldn't get Dr Lagoo's dates to dub within that. Reasoning that a finished film is better than no film at all, I finished GHERAO with camera noise in it.

Before that dear old Rajat Dholakia managed to compose background music for the film.

But the film remained a sort of half way house between complete and incomplete. A few friends and well wishers appreciated the film, but it wasn't really ready for prime-time. Would it have changed anything if it had been allowed to be finished? I don't know, its one of those 'ifs' of my life.

Now, watching the film after a long time (close to thirty years later), I can see its strengths- the storyline and my adaptation to the screen make a gripping narrative. Bits of shot taking and cutting are as good as any other film, even in black and white, non colour corrected video downgraded to DVD. Makes me proud of my work even today.

Isn't that an achievement?