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A film that builds bridges
"Our industry needs to come of age," filmmaker Ashvin Kumar tells Anjali Dhal Samanta.
Bollywood and formulas are almost synonymous. But this filmmaker decided to deviate from the customary song and dance routine to create a 15-minute "moment'' for India. A moment that took India to the Oscars.
In tune with the mood of the season, filmmaker Ashvin Kumar decided to move away from the usual "Pakistan bashing'' that is often reflected in Bollywood productions and instead decided to build bridges. And so he created India's "Little Terrorist'' -- a short film that won a nomination for an Academy Award in the Best Live Action Short Film category.
Since its world screening at the Montreal World Film Screening Festival in September 2004, the film has travelled to numerous film festivals and is now heading for the International Indian Film Academy Festival to he held in Amsterdam later this week.
"I can't believe it! It's not even a year old and it has already touched the figure of 50 film festivals,'' says Ashvin, who wrote and directed the film that was inspired by a real life incident.
"I read this news item about a little Pakistani boy who had wandered into Indian territory by mistake. And former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided to send him back. I thought about capturing the political conflict through the untutored vision of a child. There has been a spate of movies from Bollywood on Pakistan bashing. That is as responsible as playing up on a religious sentiment. I wanted to do a film that would help in building bridges,'' explains the filmmaker.
But that's not all this relatively young filmmaker has to say about the world's largest film industry. Once on the roll, this filmmaker has a lot to suggest for the industry that he never wants to be a part of. "Bollywood is in for a rude shock. It is like a Brotherhood -- controlled by five families with monopolistic tendencies. There is just no space for fresh talent to come in. They refuse to see the writing on the wall. They are continuing with the usual song and dance routine and the formulas that they think will work. There is a tendency to treat the audience very condescendingly. Our industry needs to come of age. Why don't they compete with the rest of the world in terms of technology, high quality and cohesion," questions this filmmaker.
For someone who wanted to make a career in theatre, Ashvin instead decided to express himself through the medium of filmmaking. And as related as the two streams may be, it was a long journey to make the switch. Along the way Ashvin attended a media school, a theatre college in the United States, worked through several editing assignments, even dabbled in business by setting up a film editing studio in Delhi and finally dropped out of a filmmaking course in London to make his first film "Road to Ladakh" in 2002.
Since then, there's been no looking back and the second attempt at directing saw this filmmaker at the Academy Awards with his acclaimed short film "Little Terrorist''.
Now finally into the stream that he loves, Ashvin is here to stay. Already working on two more projects, Ashvin has more than enough on his hands for the moment. For his first feature film, he has planned a 90-minute thriller based on an Indian couple living in India. Interestingly, the film has been planned for the American market.
Explaining the concept, Ashvin says, "There is a market for such films. In India, this is a new concept. It is a commercial venture for the mainstream market. For instance, there is a great demand for Japanese horror film and even Chinese films all over the world. No one has used India for this. We are a very vibrant country with fast changing social dynamics. What happened in Europe over several decades happened in India in a very short span of time. There has been a galvanisation of the middle classes. This is a perfect place to do films about people."
Yet another film in the pipeline is a `remake' of "Road to Ladakh". However, this remake promises to be quite different from the usual Bollywood style. Concentrating on Indo-US relations, the main characters of the film would be drawn from the play of power on the international platform. For serious cinema lovers, after the "Little Terrorist'', this might be something worth waiting for.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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