Indian film is not just Bollywood

SFU screens Rang Rasiya, a look at revered, but controversial, painter Raja Ravi Varma

Rang Rasiya Sunday at 3 p. m. Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Tickets: $ 10, or $ 8 for students, at the door

Thanks to SFU’s India Scholars Fund, two filmmakers will be in Vancouver this weekend to present the North American premiere of their movie about a groundbreaking Indian painter.

But Ketan Mehta, the director and screenwriter, and producer Deepa Sahi are also effectively furthering the cause of Indo- Canadian co- productions.

“Canada has co- production treaties with more than 50 countries now,” SFU film professor Patricia Gruben said.

“We’ve been trying to develop one with India for at least 12 years. It was finally signed in July. There are a lot of Canadian filmmakers who have become interested in working with India, both before the treaty and since.”

The treaty will ease filming and access to financing for production companies in each of the two countries.

“In Canada, you can only spend a small percentage of government financing in the other country,” Gruben said. “This just helps even out the playing field. It also helps people get financing from the other country, which is important to us here in Canada, with such a small domestic audience.”

Sahi and Mehta have two films screening in India. But they’re also working on two productions in Canada.

“They’re working with a producer in Vancouver on an animated feature,” Gruben said. “They’re also working on a live- action feature with a producer in Toronto that will be filmed in Toronto.”

The film the pair is bringing to Vancouver is Rang Rasiya, an Indian production made in 2008 but just now being released. The delay may have something to do with a nude scene that ran into trouble with Indian censors, as well as objections from one of the family members of the subject.

Rang Rasiya, which means Colours of Passion, is about painter Raja Ravi Varma. Revered now, Varma, who died in 1906, was a controversial figure in his day because he rendered Indian goddesses and mythological characters with recognizably human faces.

“As I understand it, one of his descendants objected to the film, because she said it shows him cheating on his wife with a servant girl, which diminishes his halo a little bit,” Gruben said.

Gruben, who is also the director of the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters and an organizer of a national screenwriting lab at this year’s Whistler Film Festival — which runs until Sunday — is a fan of Indian cinema. For the last 12 years, she’s been going back and forth to India and writing about Indian films. She also helped to start a film society that shows South Asian films in Vancouver.

“The film culture in India has really diversified,” Gruben said.

“They’ve always been the most prolific filmmaking country in the world. They’ve always had not only their large domestic audience, but large audiences in other parts of South Asia, in Africa, in Russia, and then of course all the South Asians living around the world. Now there’s more interest in making films that will appeal to Western audiences that don’t have that cultural background.”

The popular perception of Indian film in the West is of lavish Bollywood- style musicals. Mehta’s films “are a kind of hybrid,” Gruben said.

Mehta started out working in what is called the Parallel Cinema movement, pioneered by directors like Satyajit Ray. It was a more realistic style that represented an alternative to the mainstream commercial Indian cinema. But since then the director has moved into making movies with bigger budgets, Gruben said.

Mehta founded his own visual effects studio when he

Now there’s more interest in making films that will appeal to Western audiences.

PATRICIA GRUBEN

SFU FILM PROFESSOR

couldn’t find one in India to render an effect he envisioned for his 1992 film Maya Memsaab, and will give a class in special effects before the screening. ( To reserve a seat, email praxis@ sfu. ca.)

“Now, there are a lot of special effects and animation companies, but when ( Mehta and Sahi) started their animation company in the mid-’ 90s there weren’t,” Gruben said.

“This is something that’s really changed in the Indian film industry in the last 15 years or so.”

SEE A RANG RASIYA TRAILER AT VANCOUVERSUN. COM

AFP/ GETTY IMAGES Above, director Ketan Mehta with his wife Deepa Mehta at the premiere of Rang Rasiya in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 6. The film, seen at right, is about painter Raja Ravi Varma, who died in 1906. His love life depicted in the film has upset some descendants.