Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
Positive negatives
|
Filmmaker Yousuf Saeed refuses to toe the stereotyped line
|
TOWARDS HEAVEN? A poster of “Jannat Ki Rail”
Amid countless documentary filmmakers in India, there is one name that always manages to catch the attention of the viewers. The reason is simple. Unlike other documentary makers including Shyam Benegal and Vivan Sundaram, this filmmaker’s w
orks are not only animated, but also have short, crisp dialogues, quick shots, ever-changing scenes and interestingly, a lot of humour – qualities that most such films lack. Meet Yousuf Saeed, an alumnus of Delhi’s AJK Mass Communications and Research Centre. Saeed showed his film Jannat Ki Rail (A Train to Heaven) at the 2nd National Short and Documentary Film Festival on Art and Artists organised by JDCA, which recently concluded at Bhubaneswar.
This seven minute film portrays the popular version of the Islamic faith through posters being sold on pavements near shrines, mosques and roadside stalls. He uses the allegory of a train, enhancing it with a devotional song “Chhuk Chhuk Rail Chali Hai Jannat Ki”, a ditty that is sold through T-Series cassettes. This sonorous, quick witted song invites Muslims to board the train to heaven (by doing good deeds) where they would find Prophet Mohammad, the Karbala martyrs and many pious souls. It warns that they might miss the train if they don’t book immediately.
On singers
Saeed, who at last year’s festival showed the lively, humorous, yet serious film Khayal Darpan, scanning the history of Indian and Pakistani classical music singers, says, “I found these poster sellers at several places in Delhi, Bareilly, Kanpur and other places, who entice the passers-by to buy them by running these cassettes. It gave me the idea of documenting them. We tend to ignore these posters and songs but they actually symbolise the popular devotion and religious aspirations of Indian Muslims.”
Earlier, Saeed co-produced and edited a popular series on science, Turning Point, for Doordarshan in the late 1980s, and also worked on “Students’ Britannica in India”, “Britannica on Indian History” and “Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema”. He has been making films for 17 years on varied personalities such as Professor Yashpal and issues like communal prejudices. He has also penned two trilingual books.
On why documentaries often turn out dry and insipid, he says, “It’s because if you make one with government funds, you have to fill up a form that has strange columns. You have to make films according to what you fill in them. But I never went with the format. When I made a film on Ladakh with Iffat Fatima (filmmaker), we had to fight a lot with DD. There are fixed producers who don’t care for creativity. So, now I make independent films.”
Incidentally, Jannat Ki Rail has just been screened at the ongoing the Mumbai International Film Festival 2008.
RANA SIDDIQUI
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
|
