Interview: Bipuljit Basu
Interview with the film-maker Bipuljit Basu.
THE film-maker and musician Bipuljit Basu has tried a unique experiment by making a “participatory film” for the first time in a red-light area of Kolkata. He discovered a group of young amateur film-makers, all children of sex workers, and roped them in as line producers for his upcoming short film, Midnight Blues. In an exclusive interview with Frontline, Basu talks of his experience working with the youth from Kalighat. “They have the capability to go a long way. Now what they need is recognition from the Indian mainstream film industry,” he says. Excerpts:
Tell us something about “Midnight Blues”. Where do you plan to go with the film?
Before starting my career in film, I used to work as a music composer. In 2008, I got in touch with the brothel children through a media project in Kolkata, and soon I developed bonhomie with them. I saw there the women receive “customers” in their tiny rooms to earn a living; the little children have no space to stay till midnight. Be it monsoon or winter, they roam around the roadside, and so many untold stories are born there every night.
It affected me so much that I scored a song for the children in 2008. It was recorded in 2013. You can find it on Youtube as “Tor mukh” [Your face]. That song had been lingering in my ears for years. In August 2019, I conceptualised the film project on the red-light area children in Kalighat and started writing the screenplay. If I hadn’t written the song, the film Midnight Blues wouldn’t have happened.
I am planning to float the film on every conventional and non-conventional film domain, including the international film festival circuit, national and foreign universities, film institutes, chambers of commerce, social clubs and consulates and finally on OTT [over-thetop media services]. I have entered into a partnership with Independent Film Circle [United States]. I have spoken to Surjyodoy Chatterjee, Film Division, Goethe-institut, so that the film can reach audiences in the U.S. and European film circuits. The French actress Tiphaine Mayran has acted in this film. I don’t want to leave any stone unturned to let the audience know the children’s story, which is unknown to the rest of the world, and the unique film production process that happened in India for the first time.
How did you come across Cam-on (the group of young amateur filmmakers)?
I wanted to make it a completely participatory film. Otherwise, there was no point in making it. My young, energetic producer, Abhijit Dutta, and I agreed on this. But we couldn’t find a way [to do this]. Because it [the red-light area] is an overtly sensitive area, and we hardly got a chance to enter there with my unit. With a small team, we started spending time in the Kalighat redlight area from October and started speaking to various people, local clubs and NGOS. But we were not getting any response from them. Then, an unprecedented incident took place. During our meetings with various people in Kalighat, we identified a group of young people who happened to be sex workers’ children, and all of them are creative amateur short-film makers who upload their videos on Youtube. I started motivating them to collaborate with us as a technician team. Soon, their mothers also joined them. They belong to a vulnerable group, and keeping them motivated and focussed to join a mainstream film was my initial challenge. Abhijit Dutta supported me wholeheartedly to form the group, giving every effort and resource.
What was it like working with these young people from Kalighat?
Let me tell you an interesting incident. I always found the deconstruction theory of Jacques Derrida very difficult to understand. I am not ashamed of admitting it.
In a script-reading session, I read the screenplay to the sex workers, mothers and children, and asked them to get back to me with their perspective. One week later, when they got back to me, what a transformation they had made! On that day, I understood what “deconstruction” is! What I couldn’t understand from reading hundreds of pages for years, they taught me in just an hour.
They have groomed and trained the actors to act like them. The actors—manosree, Sylvia, Prabal Bhadra, Sania and Deep Sarkar [child actor]—themselves spent week after week with the sex worker community, and I thank them for it.
The women worked on the costume and make-up, sharing their knowledge and the way they dress up every day. The Cam-on team and the community have been involved from location hunting, art
setting and production controlling to acting, casting finalisation, assisting in direction and editing. They are also making a documentary on the entire process of how they have emerged as a film production house, the first from a red-light area in India. My entire team is astonished with their performance. I must thank my team: My producer Abhijit Dutta, DOP [director of photography] Pravatendu Mondal, art director Ranajit Garai, editor Anirban Maity, sound designer Partha Burman, associate director Mousumi Bilkis. Without their spontaneous support, the Cam-on formation wouldn’t have been possible.
Working on this film with you has given the youngsters a lot of hope. Where do you think they can go from here?
It’s a mainstream film, and they have designed a mainstream film’s production. So, it shows they have the capability to go a long way. Now, what they need is recognition from the Indian mainstream film industry. They need to get a technician card from the cine employees’ association so that they can work on other film productions.
Do you plan to work with Camon again?
My next feature film will be based on 10 tribal Muslim girls who challenged religious patriarchy in their mohalla . I am looking for collaboration for it, and I will want the Cam-on team working as a line producer unit. I want to see a marginal group like them designing another sublime story creatively on the screen. In Indian cinema, this approach has also never been experimented with. Only mainstream cinema can bring about such a social impact.
Cam-on, we want to help other children do the same. Most important is that Cam-on allows us to express our problems. Through our films we express our pain, our hurt, our little victories and defeats. It is all our creation,” said 22-year-old Mousumi Shaw, who is studying mass communication.
EARLY DAYS
Initially, before the idea of forming a group came into being, the boys and girls mostly amused themselves by shooting images using their mobile phones. Their common passion for cinema brought them together, and they decided to take up film-making seriously. The Cam-on group came into being even though they had not yet named themselves. They pooled their resources to buy a second-hand video camera for Rs.11,000 and, with the new equipment, made their most successful film (in terms of viewership) to date, Poltu’s Life, which is a short film on the travails of a young boy growing up in the red-light area of Kalighat. The role was played by the 12-year-old son of a sex worker. “Our biggest encouragement was the popularity of Poltu’s Life on Youtube [uploaded on February 5, 2017]. Till date it has received around 18,000 views. This was a huge thing for us and strengthened our resolve to not give up,” said Rabin Bag, who is a graduate in education. So far Cam-on has uploaded six films, made between 2017 and 2019, on Youtube: Poltu’s Life, Ancient Ring, Speechless, Love Decision, Amader Chhoke Elaakar Khobor (“The news of the neighbourhood from our eyes”, which is a documentary) and Wish. “All our films have a social message and are not more than 20 minutes long,” said 26-year-old Rupesh Chaturvedi, who is interested in the editing aspect of cinema.
It was not just love for cinema that was the driving force behind the formation of Cam-on; it was also a desperate need to project the reality of their lives. “We grew up here and faced all the usual problems a child can face growing up in a red-light area: the abuse, the drunks, being kept down, and so on. When we started watching movies, particularly Bollywood films, we realised that what was being shown was not the reality that we face. So we resolved to depict our reality through the films we made with Cam-on,” Chaturvedi added.
The youth of the Kalighat redlight area realise that their participation in Midnight Blues may be a huge step towards their social inclusion, so when the local political goons initially created problems for Basu and his crew, Cam-on stepped in and, with the support of the red-light community, forced the hoodlums to back off. “We told them clearly that we would not allow them to interfere as the future of the children of this community was at stake,” said Raju Mondal.
One of the main problems that children of red-light areas face in the outside world is the stigma attached to their background. The exposure and recognition Midnight Blues will give them will be a crucial step in the long struggle for social acceptance for the children of Kalighat. “We hope to make people understand that the children here are like all other children. We do not want the children of today to face the same problems we faced when we were growing up here. Getting an opportunity to work on this film is a huge learning experience for us,” said 26year-old Ranajit Majumder.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
If the community of the red-light area was initially reluctant to be a part of the project, under Cam-on’s influence it too began to get involved in different ways. For example, Shampa Saha and Kalpana Jana are overseeing the make-up of the actresses. “There is a particular way in which we girls do our make-up when we go out. We ensure that the makeup of the actresses remains authentic,” said Shampa. Kalpana pointed out that it was Cam-on’s presence in the project that drew her to it. “My son acted as Poltu in Cam-on’s film Poltu’s Life. It was one of the proudest moments of my life to realise he had so much talent. It gave me hope that with Cam-on’s help my boy will be able to find his way in the world. Cam-on helps us and we help Cam-on. These are all our children, our little brothers and sisters,” she said.
Such was the cooperation and involvement of the sex workers’ community that on some nights the actresses themselves stood in “the line” on the road, with the sex workers dropping to the background but keeping a protective eye on them. They had trained their wards so well that even local residents were fooled. “They allowed us to shoot the film at night and even enter the most interior parts of the area,” said Basu, acknowledging their help at the cost of their business.
One unique thing about the Kalighat red-light area is that the criminal elements there do not control the sex workers and hence cannot always exert their influence. “The women of the area are independent and self-contained, which is the reason they can stand up to the hoodlums and the political bullies. Their sense of empowerment allowed me to film there.” Their independence is why something like Cam-on could come into existence. The level of education is also considerably higher in Kalighat compared with other redlight areas.
With Midnight Blues, Cam-on no longer remains just a medium of self-expression for the youth of Kalighat but is a vehicle of progress and emancipation. The members have recently applied for the outfit to be registered as a “society” and have big plans for the future. “We may in the future make it a private trust or a private limited company working on film production,” said Raju Mondal.
Subhojit Maity, who is studying philosophy at Jadavpur University, said that one idea is to venture into theatre. “Doing theatre is also an exercise for mental health. In our community, we see many children suffering from depression. We are thinking of forming a theatre group and doing workshops,” he said. Also, the group does not wish to restrict itself to the red-light community but wants to coordinate with other marginalised, poor people, particularly in rural areas. “For so long we worked without any support. Even our equipment was bought secondhand. With Midnight Blues, we are getting paid for our work for the first time. Through Cam-on we want to reach out and extend the kind of help we never got,” said Mousumi Shaw.
Basu also has big plans for the film after it is completed. He will be taking it to international film festivals and plans to screen it in universities, chambers of commerce and consulates. Whether the film wins critical acclaim or not, it has already achieved something very special: it has given recognition to talent that would otherwise have remained unnoticed; it has opened a window of opportunity for those who have been banging on closed doors all their lives; and, most important, it has injected hope and enthusiasm in a community that has always been shrouded in darkness and despair. $