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.