09 April,2017 09:10 AM IST | | Sumedha Raikar Mhatre
A Mumbai filmmaking start-up has engineers pick up cameras and travel miles across the country in search of people whose stories haven't been told
Two locals caught on camera in one of the journeys at Pashan, Kavadi-Pat, located in a small village about 20 km from Pune, a scrubland, a wetland and a paradise for birds
(From left) Omkar Divekar, Ashay Gangwar, Joelle Fernandes, Vivian Anthony, Shivajee Biswanath and Chirag Beri from Camera and Shorts at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli. Pic/ Satej Shinde
Journeys have been central to Camera and Shorts - founded in July 2014 with over eight core members - especially to unfrequented corners of India where hidden stories are waiting to be told. As Samarth Mahajan, one of the core members who brainstormed on the pani puri concept, says, "All of us like pani puri, but we don't necessarily think of the human face behind it - the voices of those who sell them to earn a livelihood. What strikes me most is the intelligent way in which these sellers guard their space in a congested city." Mahajan, currently based in Sonepat (Haryana) on a Young India fellowship, is a mechanical engineer from IIT Kharagpur, from where most members of Camera and Shorts - including cinematographer Abhineet Chute who shot Mumbai's pani puri vendors - hail. Chute works as a summer intern while pursuing BTech in Kharagpur. He says meeting the vendors was like "entering intriguing worlds". Interestingly, Chute first faced resistance from the vendors because they thought it was a sting operation against a suspected malpractice. But things ended well with sookha puris.
A crowded compartment seen in the film The Unreserved. The mass that travels without reserving a seat is the focus of the film
For Camera and Shorts, travelling connotes conversations with people, and necessarily those who have not been previously available. For instance, the latest release, In Search of Rhythm (18 mins) is a chat with four Tibetan refugees living in the McLeodganj suburb of Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, who speak about their definition of home, country, freedom and the need for creative mobility. Director Vaibhav Jadhav, 27, another engineer who has chosen film making as his vocation after pursuing the full term in IIT Madras), recalls the initial difficulties in getting the right voices. Lhasang Tsering, a poet-author-former president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, a guerrilla warrior during the 1962 Tibet-China war, had a confrontation with their unit because of a logistical error about the shoot's location. As he refused to speak, the team halted outside his house, hoping for a change of decision. "We thought our trip was wasted and the project doomed. But he called us in as he cooled down and asked why we wanted to make the film. I garnered all the courage to speak about our core philosophy of understanding India, and later the world, by meeting people. After a while he got us some tea and turned out to be the warmest soul we'd met."
Jadhav feels good films are those that focus on an individual's expression. "If you make one genuine connection with your subject, your product has achieved its prime goal - the pace, the format and the duration come second." Such a connection was made in another film made by the group titled Theyyam Saga (19 mins). It focuses on Kerala's ritual art form in which Gods are called upon to inhabit the bodies of the lower castes. It is an inquiry into human relations which Jadhav and Ashay Gangwar, 26, (founder of Camera and Shorts and BTech alumni from IIT Kharagpur) jointly thought of. It speaks of gender and caste equality in a setting where untouchability is practiced in the name of religion. Jadhav says in a blog of his experience of filming the artists who performed Theyyam, "Trance is not the electronic music that you hear on those expensive headsets, it's the state you find yourself in while experiencing Theyyam⦠To truly experience the life that breathes in Theyyam is to know the lives of artists that shape this form. You will be amazed to know how closely they are linked to our lives, yet so far away."
Founder Gangwar feels it is the right time for them to fight prejudice and ignorance. "As young people who want to know their country well, we have to travel with the purpose of appreciating new places, voices and sensibilities. That is why we are necessarily going to those locales that help us expand our bandwidth. We see this as engineering beyond the taught syllabi."
All journeys do not result in films. The trek to the Mahuli fort, a biker route to the Bhuleshwar hill temple on Pune-Satara road, a drive to the unfrequented peacock bay near the Khadakwasala dam had no 'result'. Yet, the journeys must be made.
One such chase has won substantial admiration. Kazwa - A Million Lanterns (nominated at BFI Future Film Festival 2016, London; Best Film at 16IFF 2015 Jaipur; Best Cinematography at Tyre International Short Film Festival put the spotlight on the little known Purushwadi village, 180 km from Mumbai 'electrified' by fireflies. It was a great visual treat that evoked nature's cosmic elemental power in just nine minutes. Similarly, the journey in to the Arabian Sea with the fishermen of Malpe (Karnataka) is also notable in A Fish Tale, where the daily activity of catching fish attains an industrious layer.
The CNS engine runs on ad films and sponsorships of travel sector companies. For instance, the Udaipur journey was uploaded in the hope of a sponsor from Rajasthan. It was picked up by India Holiday Options. Similarly, the Theyyam saga got a sponsor in Kerala Tourism, whereas Kazwa enjoys support by Grassroutes Tourism. The idea is to marry the content with niche associations.
The CNS team, which has since inception produced 10 films, prides on a talent pool of young aspiring filmmakers, often picked from campus searches across communications' institutes in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. One key member, Joelle Fernandes, who hails from the XIC (Mumbai), leads their Travel Babble podcast series where she engages with travellers with transformative experiences. In fact, it was the Goan in her who gave the seed idea for the film on Sao Joao festivity celebrated in Siolim. In yet another project, students of the Delhi School of Communication have contributed to the documentation of the Kathputli Colony in Delhi where conventional puppetry is either dying or evolving into alternative body art skills.
Camera and Shorts was lately embroiled in a different kind of exploration. They were in search of a book seller in Mumbai's Fort area, whose whereabouts were untraceable for a while, but whom they had followed and filmed for five continuous days in December 2016. The subject's track record of collecting books for six decades and reading each tome before selling it was the theme of the film, which couldn't have been released without his return to the spot. The latest update shows viewers can now be treated to seven minutes of Zen and the Art of Book Selling, now that the bookseller has returned from his holiday travel!
Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. You can reach her at sumedha.raikar@gmail.com
