| Ashvin Kumar | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ashvin Kumar 1973 Kolkata |
| Occupation | Director, producer, editor, screenwriter |
| Website | |
| http://www.ashvinkumar.com | |
Ashvin Kumar is an independent Indian filmmaker who has produced and directed several films and documentaries, including Inshallah, football (2010); Dazed in Doon (2010); The Forest (2008); Little Terrorist (2005) and Road to Ladakh (2003).[1] His recent films have attracted controversy as the Indian censor board has denied him the certifications necessary for the films to be shown publicly in Indian cinemas.
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Ashvin Kumar was born in Kolkata and educated at La Martiniere Calcutta, Modern School and The Doon School.[2] He described his experience as a student at Doon as "overall pretty miserable".[2] His mother is the fashion designer Ritu Kumar.
After leaving Doon, he studied at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, India in New Delhi, where he was a member of the Stephen's Shakespeare Society;[3] at Goldsmith's College in London, where he received a bachelor's degree in media and communications; and briefly at the London Film School. He has described himself as a "resounding dropout. The institutionalization of cinema was suffocating. I wanted to learn on the job. I wanted to be adventurous".[4] The lack of opportunity to make short films persuaded him to move from New Delhi to London.[4]
Kumar's first film was Road to Ladakh, which took 9 months to make, although the actual filming was done in 16 days.[2] The film is 48 minutes long, and was released in 2004. Kumar has described this film as his "film school", in reference to the fact that he dropped out of the London Film School[4] and invested the course fees into the making of this film. Kumar learnt production and post production by immersing himself into various roles and learning the craft on-the-fly while putting his own film through the various stages of production. He describes it as a process of trial and error from which he emerged with a completed film. For starters, "Road to Ladakh was a disaster of a film shoot, we were lucky to get the film done" [5] "Out of a ten-day shoot, it was raining on 5 days. So, we had to finish the shoot in half the time. There was just one petrol pump (in Spiti valley where the film was shot) - we had 7 cars and 2 trucks and a cast and crew of 40 people (who were staying in camping tents that later got flooded) looking at me for directions at every step. There I was - my first film, in Ladakh, and I thought to myself - what the hell have I got myself into?" The experiences of this shoot are captured in the making-of documentary called 'The near un-making of Road To Ladakh' which accompanies the film on a DVD released for the first time in India in 2009 through Junglee Video (the DVD label of Times Music) in a double bill with Little Terrorist. The DVD also contains an entertaining and informative making-of documentary of Little Terrorist. The DVD is available at music and DVD shops all over India. Says the Mid-Day newspaper review 'an elaborate tease that takes you into the minds of two lonely people who can scarce afford to trust each other. One's an enigma while the other snorts coke like it was a meal.' [6]
Irrfan Khan (The Warrior / Slumdog Millionaire / Mighty Heart / Namesake / Spiderman / Life of Pi) and Koel Purie (Everybody Says I'm Fine) lead this surreal rites of passage encounter between a dysfunctional, coke-snorting fashion model and an ultra-focussed, strong-silent stranger who are thrown together by chance. Set in the magnificent wilderness moon-scape of Ladakh, India, the road journey and the strange encounters that follow provide a dramatic backdrop for the relationship that develops.
Both are outsiders, both are lonely, both crave the human contact that their roles in society deny them. Tentatively they search each other out in a film that is poised between elusiveness and engagement, suspicion and tenderness - at once hilarious and sinister, bizarre and moving, psychedelic and intensely real, Road to Ladakh is an original story scripted, edited and produced by director Ashvin Kumar. [7]
Road To Ladakh is a suspenseful tale of falling in love with the wrong kind of mysterious stranger near the borders of India and Pakistan. A road-movie that drew the talents of multi-national European crew...overly ambitious Himalayan adventure so fraught with disasters that it nearly didn't get finished; as documented in The Making Of Road To Ladakh. [8]
See main article: Little Terrorist
His second film, Little Terrorist (2005),[5] was substantially more successful, winning an Oscar nomination, a nomination for the European Film Awards as well top prizes at the Tehran International Short Film Festival, Flanders International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Manhattan International Short Film Festival and the São Paulo International Short Film Festival. The film has been invited to over 120 film festivals around the world.
The film was based upon a real-life incident in the year 2000 where a young goatherd crossed the Indian-Pakistan border and was subsequently imprisoned by the Indian police. Sri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister of India, freed the boy as a peace gesture indented to improve Indian-Pakistan relations.
In the film, a 12-year old Pakistani boy named Jamal mistakenly crosses the border into Indian territory while attempting to retrieve a cricket ball.[6] While Indian soldiers search the village for the Pakistani "terrorist", the boy is given shelter by an elderly Brahmin schoolteacher named Bhola, despite the latter's deep-rooted prejudice against Muslims, and the objections of Bhola's niece, Rani .[7]
The story is set near the Gujarat border between India and Pakistan, but the film was made in five days in a village outside Jaipur. Kumar's mother, the fashion designer Ritu Kumar, designed the clothes for the actors.[3]
The film is a "live action short", just 15 minutes in length. It has been described as the first short film to get a commercial release in India.[8]
The film was crewed through the Shooting People organization; members who liked the script paid their own fares to travel to India to film it.[9] Kumar became the only Indian to be nominated for an Oscar in the short film category.[10]
The Forest was loosely based upon the writings and exploits of Jim Corbett and uses the tale of a man-eating leopard to address environmental concerns.[4] The film is feature-length (86 minutes), and was released in 2009.
The plot concerns a married couple who arrive at a wildlife sanctuary in the Kumaon Hills to attempt to mend a faltering marriage. An unforeseen threat takes the form of an ex-lover turned wildlife warden. While the husband and lover quarrel, a man-eating leopard is on the prowl, and both men must unite in order to outwit the predator and survive the night.
While The Forest is a conventional action film, Kumar intended the film to convey a strong pro-environmental message.[11]
The film was produced by Judith James and the music recorded at the Abbey Road Studios. Much of the filming was done at the Corbett National Park and the Bandhavgarh National Park. The film stars Jaaved Jaaferi, Nandana Sen and Ankur Vikal.
Kumar himself an old boy of The Doon School was invited by The Doon School to create a film, subsequently named Dazed in Doon, that has since become controversial as the School authorities have moved to suppress the distribution of the film, on the grounds that it "doesn't give the School a good name".[12][13] The film runs to 55 minutes and was made in just four months, from the start of pre-production on 20 June 2010 to the first screening on 23 October 2010.
An international crew contributed to the making of the film: post-production was completed in Goa (editing), Italy (picture color correction) and London (sound mixing) with Kumar simultaneously completing post-production on Inshallah, Football . Most crew members worked for a fraction of their usual fees: Kumar persuaded them to participate in the making of film by highlighting the opportunity of teaching young children film-making in a participatory film project that would result in film of their own. Kumar sings the Doon School song 'Lap Pe Aati Hai' [9] in the soundtrack as well as Howly is Krishna which was improvised during a music recording session in Goa.
Imaginox an 'online film school' were the sponsors of the video 'making of Dazed in Doon'. Two British film makers were sent by Imaginox from the UK to join Kumar's crew on The Doon School campus where they, simultaneously with Kumar's filming, shot a behind- the-scenes documentary film which can be viewed on www.imaginox.com [10]
The film is a coming of age story about a boy nicknamed "Howly"(Sookrit Malik) with an active imagination who is trying to make sense of life at The Doon School, a prestigious public school located in Dehra Dun in India.
Howly's friend, nicknamed "Boozy"(Aseem Kumar), is an excellent sportsman who is about to win the most coveted award for sports at Doon: the "games blazer". Seeing his friend’s determination to win, Howly cheats on Boozy’s behalf at a high jump qualifier, giving him the points Boozy needs to win the games blazer.
Despite Howly's loyalty and hero-worship of Boozy, Boozy refuses to associate with Howly in front of others, effectively relegating Howly to the role of a sidekick. After a particularly bad bullying episode that is witnessed by a School master, Howly is encouraged to audition for a part in the theatrical version of the Mahabharata. Howly discovers a natural talent for acting, and is cast in the lead role of the god Krishna.
Thereafter, the mythic world of the Mahabharata, with the philosophical and ethical choices forced upon its characters, merges with Howly's own real-life dilemmas: Boozy discovers that Howly had cheated on his behalf, and that his games blazer had been won unfairly.
Kumar attempted to demonstrate a number of positive qualities that he believed Doon instilled in its pupils: a sense of values, ethics, friendship, loyalty, the ability to correct moral choices, and to form independent judgments and decisions. The storyline of the film uses a classic text of ethics (the Mahabharata) to link the growing pains of a schoolboy with the subtleties of Dharma, as outlined in classical Indian philosophy, by linking these concepts to the ethical choices that the characters have to make in their day-to-day lives.
Kumar and his crew spent several months on the campus making the film in a consultative and participatory process that included both teachers and students. The film was shot over 25 days, and included a cast and crew of 40 boys and more than 500 extras. As a consequence of dealing with these logistics, which included training a large number of young boys as actors and crew-members and dealing with a heavy monsoon that upset the shooting schedule, Kumar improvised some of the acting and settings of the film, yet keeping to the original story and script. It is perhaps the first time in India that a near full feature length film of this nature has been made with school boys taking key roles both behind and in front of the camera.
The present controversy between Kumar and the School authorities has the School complaining that the film does not conform with a version alleged to have been shown to the Headmaster before its presentation at the School, and Kumar asserting that the School should have asked for changes at the time the script was being drafted in close consultation with the School's representative, Ratna Pathak Shah, over a period of six months, since January 2010. The script had been submitted and approved, and funding was approved before shooting commenced.[12]
Kumar's view is that "Making changes to the film after it is shot rendered the story incomprehensible and damaged the cinematic values of the film, nonetheless, I hacked fifteen minutes of the film in deference to the wishes of the headmaster. His objections now boil down to the removal of the character of a teacher who watches a boy being bullied but does not intervene - it is fifteen seconds of screen-time but entails the removal of a supporting character".[14] As a consequence of this controversy, the School authorities have obtained an injunction from the district court in Dehra Dun to stop the film's release [11], and the dispute between director and School continues unabated.[15]
The Headmaster of the Doon School asked the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's censor board to withhold a censor certificate for the film on the grounds that the film is defamatory. The censor board upheld the Headmaster's concerns and awarded the film a U/A certificate, asking Kumar to produce a "no objection certificate" from the School.
Further complicating the dispute is the question of ownership of the film: the School asserts that it owns the film; Kumar asserts that the School is contracted to become one of three copyright holders, once the terms of the contract between Kumar and the School have been fulfilled. Kumar asserts, further, that since the School has not yet paid him in full under the terms of his contract, they cannot yet claim their one-third share of the copyright.
The dispute has polarized the alumni community of the School (known popularly as Doscos, with the more conservative alumni expressing concern about the School's reputation getting damaged as a result of the film depiction of bullying, etc., and the more liberal alumni expressing concern that the attempt to censor an artist's output is not in keeping with Doon's founding traditions or ethos.
The film was originally shown to about 3,000 people who attended Doon's 75th Anniversary celebrations in October 2010, while it received a standing ovation from some it also received an adverse reaction from a segment of the alumni community appears to have resulted in the School abruptly withdrawing the sale of the film's DVDs and banning any further screening or even discussion of the film among the students.[15]
Kumar's latest film, Inshallah, football, is a feature documentary about an aspiring footballer who was denied the right to travel abroad on the pretext that father was a militant in the 1990s. The film was completed in 2010, and has faced difficulties getting released in India. The film's first screening in India at the India Habitat Center received this review from Tehelka magazine, 'Kumar’s camera catches the irony of Kashmir’s physical beauty, the claustrophobia of militarisation, the dread and hopelessness of children born into war and the nuances of relationships. It also filters the inherent joie-de-vivre of youth, even if that flows uneasily with Kashmir’s collective memory of unmitigated grief...There is no better way to understand Kashmir right now.' [12]. The film was shot by Kumar himself using five different camera formats "There is a rough, almost unpolished, feel to Inshallah, Football. The narrative runs unfettered, with an energy of its own." says Tehelka, "We shot with five different cameras, from DSLRs to the best equipment. The idea was to watch life unfold and get under the skin of the audience.” adds Kumar. [13]
Inshallah, Football is about 18-year-old Basharat Baba, known as "Basha". His father, Bashir, was a much-wanted leader of the armed group Hizbul Mujahideen. When he left his home in Kashmir to join the training camps in Pakistan in the early 1990s, his son Basharat was barely two months old.
Basharat belongs to a new generation of Kashmiris, having grown up under the shadow of a protracted conflict. His passion is football, and he has been coached by Juan Marcos Troia, an Argentinean national and FIFA accredited football coach by profession. Marcos aspires to breed world class players from Kashmir; he and his wife, being attached to both Basha and Kashmir, migrate to Srinagar with their three daughters to take up Basha's cause.[16]
Marcos runs a football academy called International Sports Academy Trust; and an exchange program for his most talented players to train at Santos FC, Pele's old club in Brazil. Basharat was one of chosen few, but was denied a passport by the Government of India. The passport in question did come through after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah intervened.[17]
Inshallah, Football tells this story through Bashir's recollections and travails.[18] Kumar describes the film as "the story of three remarkable men — one is his father who fought for his beliefs, another about the football coach who's come all the way from Argentina to start this football academy, and this young man who is struggling to play football."[19]
The film has been critically acclaimed and played in competition part of the wide-angle documentary section at the Pusan Film Festival where it also received the Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund [14], and Winner of Muhr Asia Africa / Documentary /Special Mention : Ashvin Kumar (Director) at the Dubai International Film Festival [15]
This film has face considerable difficulties in getting the necessary censor certificate, without which it cannot be shown publicly in India. The main stumbling block appears to be the content of the film itself, since it deals with the sensitive and highly political subject of how the Indian armed forces have conducted themselves in Kashmir.
The series and timing of events by which this film's review by the censor has proceeded is unusual, and suggestive of political considerations playing a part in the award of a censor's certificate:
The award of an "Adult" certificate for a documentary is very unusual, since an Adult certificate is normally awarded to feature films that include graphic violence and nudity. Such films can be shown only to audiences over the age of 18, and most movie theaters in India will not ordinarily agree to screen such films since it is very difficult to for them to make money in the circumstances. (This is not the case, however, with India's burgeoning soft-porn industry, which relies upon the "A" certificates to attracts its particular audience.)
The explanation for awarding Inshallah, Football was that the film has "characters talking about graphic details of physical and mental torture they had to undergo. The theme of the film is mature and some dialogues can be psychologically damaging for non adult audience." Kumar, however, asserts that the real purpose of this censorship is to avoid causing embarrassment to the Indian government, with regard to the conduct of the Indian armed forces in Kashmir.[22]
Mrs. Tagore made further comments on the 16th anniversary of the women's press corps that were reported by the online version of Outlook Magazine [16] to which Kumar has responded in an open letter to Mrs. Tagore taking on the wider issue of censorship, the relevance of the censor board using Inshallah, Football as an illustration saying that her comments "...would be mildly amusing if they didn't also cast a shadow on the average Indian citizen's freedoms to produce and receive messages, and if they didn’t potentially compromise the livelihood of members of my (and your) fraternity–those troublesome film-makers who don't toe the line and whose discomfiting messages the nation needs to hear." [17] A separate report of Mrs. Tagore's comments is more direct, calling Kumar's comments 'untrue' [18]. Kumar has responded to this in the aforementioned open letter saying 'You said that my statement about being denied a certification for my film Inshallah, Football was 'untrue'. I was hurt; after all, it is not often that I am called a liar in public.' [19]. Mrs. Tagore has also said in the same interview that Inshallah, Football "(is) a beautiful film and I want everyone to see it," but Kumar counters, "Let me speak plainly. I think you have been used to stamp a sense of 'reasonableness' on the sordid affair of restricting freedom of speech. The decisions of the body you head need to be, or need to be seen to be, more moral, more conservative, more risk-averse, more politically correct and more circumspect (thus, in common parlance, more anal-retentive) than is natural or necessary, even if basic principles of natural justice need to be given a go-by from time to time." [20]. The same open letter also appears on Kumar's blog where it is has attracted a fair share of attention by way of adverse comments not only concerning censorship but the Kashmir issue as well [21]
The timing of this award of an Adult certificate to Inshallah, Football is curious, since it coincided with the award of an Adult certificate for a No One Killed Jessica, a film based upon the murder of Jessica Lall by Manu Sharma, a wealthy man with strong political ties to the ruling Indian National Congress. In both cases, there is an appearance of the Indian censor board having taken political considerations into account in their award of Adult certificates. Kumar says that he will now appeal to the CBFC tribunal [22]
Kumar was the curator and artistic director of Ibermumbai09, which was organized by the Spanish Embassy in India to promote dialog between filmmakers from Spain, Latin America and India.
Kumar is currently working on a project called "Routeless", which revisits his video diaries documenting his travels between Thiruvanthapuram in South India and New Delhi in North India. The project attempts to chronicle the changes that have taken place in India in the decade since his original trip in 1999.