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Action in jungle

ANOTHER FEATHER IN HIS CAP: Environment filmmaker Ajay Bedi whose film "The Policing Langur" won the Best Film Award at Vatavaran Environment and Wildlife Film Festival's Wildlife Conservation category recently. -- Photo: Anu Pushkarna

Wildlife filmmaking came naturally to Ajay Bedi, says Lakshmi B.Ghosh

The deep, dark secrets of the jungle never really scared him. He was after all one of those few boys in school who did not read about tigers and elephants in books or watch lion chases on television but saw it happen in real.

For Ajay Bedi the action began right at home, and strange as it may sound, right in the jungle. Coming as he does from a family that has literally lived out of the wilds, taking up wildlife filmmaking was perhaps what came naturally to him. And years after he first saw the glimpse of a wild animal through the lens, Ajay has finally managed to carve an identity of his own.

With his film "The Policing Langur" with brother Vijay Bedi winning the Best Film Award at the Vatavaran Environment and Wildlife Film Festival's Wildlife Conservation category recently, the brothers have added yet another feather to their cap.

The training began rather early for Ajay, with the young Bedi remembering spending most of his holidays in one national park or the other with his father, eminent wildlife filmmaker Naresh Bedi. "I have done a lot of workshops, but I think most of what I know is through practical experience. Specially from my father, who used to take us to national parks when we were small, giving us early exposure," reveals Ajay.

Working with his father's Bedi Films for the past five years, the journey has just about begun for this young filmmaker. "It is hard at times because we are likely to be compared to our father and his work, which is difficult to match. But then it is good too in a way," feels Ajay.

With the recent Vatavaran Film Festival once again exposing the difficulty faced by wildlife filmmakers in getting financers for their work and worse still buyers for the final work, the lure for the wild is not something that many aspiring filmmakers want to risk. "It is not easy. Wildlife filmmaking can be pursued here by only those who can afford it. It needs a lot of time and good equipment. When we started we were trying our luck too. Fortunately, we had PSBT coming forward to fund our film. But then, festivals like Vatavaran act as a great platform for young filmmakers as they help us showcase our work," notes Ajay.

Speaking on his latest work "The Policing Langur", Ajay, who dons the cap of both cameraman and editor, says it was the Capital's growing problem with monkey menace that led them to it. "We stumbled upon the idea of making the film after reading a couple of newspaper articles about monkey menace. There had been a couple of incidents around that time, and there was a lot of media hype. What made it interesting was that a langur was being used to scare away monkeys, which we thought was very interesting."

The challenge for the Bedi brothers was to ensure that that they did not target the monkeys as a problem. But presented the story through a unique angle - that of langurs protecting humans by scaring away one of their species. The PSBT production captured the "colourful vistas of man monkey relationship and how the policing langurs are used to control the monkey menace" in an interesting way.

"There were a couple of incidents happening around that time where people had got injured. One such incident happened in a Delhi school while we were working on the film. We managed to catch the family's emotions as well as the reaction of the schools and the arrangements made by them," he says.

As of now, Ajay is back to `hunting' for another subject. And with it, another `green' cause.

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