I have always believed in fighting back
NATIONAL AWARD WINNING DIRECTOR RAJEEV KUMAR, WHOSE LATEST FILM, CHAMM, HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR CANNES REVEALS HIS SOLITARY SIDE
He enters quietly and takes a table at the café. This is our maiden meeting. A hello is mumbled. Coffees are ordered. He never finishes his. After a comfortable silence straight out of a Beckettian play, in the perfect setting of a small café lit up by balmy yellow light, this 47-year-old director, son of a police constable from a Mullanpur Dakha, a small village in Punjab, admits that things changed drastically after he won the National Award for his film Nabar in 2014. “And it’s not just about how people started looking at me but also the expectations. The latter shot up drastically, it was almost scary,” he remembers.
Not that all career decisions he made after the award were great. After all, there was the very forgettable film 47 to 84 that came out in 2014. “It was a wrong choice. I didn’t do well at all. The film got lost in the maze between mainstream and realism,” he admits. Now that his latest short-film Chamm will be screened at Cannes, Kumar feels that such festivals, if nothing else, provide an opportunity to meet like-minded filmmakers and potential producers/collaborators. “They may not guarantee a theatrical release as assumed by many people,” he says. Talking about this self-funded film that was completed in Rs 12 lakhs and is the first independent Dalit film from Punjab. “How can we forget the way the Dalit community has always been alienated, including by the Leftists, who refused to acknowledge them? Not to mention how the so-called upper caste jats have been treating them, despite the fact that Sikhism has always been against casteism. There was no other way. This is the time of a new discourse, something that paves a path for new dialogues,” he adds.
Preferring to write his own scripts and not derive from Punjabi literature, the filmmaker feels that contemporary times demand a new narrative in order to break free from the pre-conceived notions of the psyche of people in this part of the country and show a mirror. “And that’s what you see in most mainstream Punjabi films. Either they are talking about the past or some imagined present where everything is perfect. There is not even a hint of hollowness that has crept in,” he laments.
Talking about his next film Saavi, which will be released in May this year, Kumar is optimistic that the movie will be received well by critics and audiences alike. “I don’t make films for the festival circuit but want them to reach as many people as possible.” The film revolves around the Muslim Gujjar families of Chamba and Jammu where women are still bartered. Saavi is about an 18-year-old woman who is forced to marry a fouryear-old boy and how her affection for him slowly turns into sexual desire. As the conversation veers towards the kind of person he is and the direction his films takes, Kumar admits that in his sub-conscious world, sadness and loneliness occupy an indispensable space.
“My whole personality is very close to these characteristics. However, in my conscious state, I have always believed in fighting back. .”
All for a film festival in Punjab that showcases films made in other Indian and foreign languages, the filmmaker feels that the same would be instrumental in opening new horizons. “Not just for the audience members, such a festival can go a long way in encouraging younger filmmakers.”
Kumar, insists that it would be unfair to say that people here are not ready to consume good cinema. "Look at the ticket prices in multiplexes. Do you think the majority can afford to pay that? I am trying to build an alternate distribution system. Maybe, I will succeed,” he says.
IN MAINSTREAM PUNJABI CINEMA, ESCAPISM RULES. THERE IS NOT EVEN A HINT OF HOLLOWNESS THAT HAS CREPT IN THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY RAJEEV KUMAR