Ashvin Kumar | Bare Thoughts | Golden Podium

While we feel great about Slumdog Millionaire and Life Of Pi doing good at Academy Awards, we forget about a brilliant little short getting a nomination. Little Terrorist got nomination in Best Live Action Short Film in year 2005. TRM got a chance to chat with the director – Ashvin Kumar – who unfortunately is more known for controversies than his admirable films.

 

Q: Ashvin, you are a film school dropout. What prompted you take that decision? Did you regret it at any point?

AK: Not at all. I attended two semesters before that I was working for 4 years in a post-production house. The two semesters were enough I thought to help me make the transition from being a business-man to film-maker. I saved two years of course fees and that was the finance for Road To Ladakh, my first film.

 

Q: Little Terrorist got accolades across the globe. It inspired many short film enthusiasts in this country including me. How do you see the current scenario in this segment?

AK: I am very happy to be the catalyst of this movement. It is a huge pity that no other Indian short film has been nominated since then even though there are thousands of short film makers in the country. The Government must take up the onus of celebrating these film makers and encouraging their efforts. The mainstream industry is a business can can't be expected to do so. Films add to the culture of a country and are valuable as an artistic medium. The government can do a lot, they have the institutions to do so as well.

 

Governments of all European countries, Canada, Australia etc. recognize the soft-power of cinema. It is treated at par with all other artistic and cultural activities. Our own government has the NFDC, Films Division, Doordarshan, the IFFI festival in Goa and so many other regional film festivals supported by the government, excellent institutions with the mandate to place us right on top of the global film making pile. Between them they own cinema theatres in all cities of the country, in which our films can be released and earn box-office revenues. I want the government to recognize cinema as a cultural activity the same way dance, theatre, visual arts, handlooms, crafts and folk arts are recognized and supported. It is a tragedy that to see regional films from my own country I have to travel to international festivals. Hundreds of films are made in India but there is only one kind of cinema that is shown in our theatres or our satellite channels. It is because of this apathy that Indian culture is routinely expressed (and financed) through Bollywood item-numbers, the same that have faced criticism recently for their misogeny. Independent films from India either languish in cans or do the international film festival circuit and are never shown in India. I have made eight films - none of them have had a proper release in India.

 

Secondly, there is no reason why a public service broadcaster like Doordarshan should purchase satellite rights to mainstream Bollywood cinema for twenty-thirty crores, and allow national award winning films (that they are mandated to show in primetime slots and pay money for) to languish after a hand-shake with the president of the country. If DD wishes to compete with private channels why is tax-payers money going into subsidize this activity? Doesn’t it have a responsibility towards the alternative / independent film making community who despite such odds go back to making films again and again?

 

Governments around the world have found innovative ways to fund and distribute their film-makers. There are innovative tax-structures, incentives to film makers to build businesses around independent cinemas, government owned channels and theatres that pay for such cinema in the interest of the larger good of the public. Film makers in these countries are treated like national art treasures, they are felicitated, encouraged and celebrated. In our country film makers are treated with disdain and at best tolerated unless you are part of the 100 cr group. Those of that club are celebrated for their commercial success rather than for their contribution to the diversity of Indian culture and civilization.

 

Cinema is THE art form  of the 21st century. Countries that have recognized the soft-power of this cultural powerhouse, have greatly enhanced their independent industries. Even a highly restricted country like Iran year-after-year produces outstanding works of cinema, at the forefront of global film-culture, regularly winning awards in top festivals and the Oscars.

 

There is a petition at www.change.org/saveindiecinema that has been signed by 20,000 people of which 60 are award winning film makers from across the country. It is our petition to the government to take our craft and contribution seriously and help us continue the work that we are doing.

 

Meanwhile, I am going to use YouTube to broadcast my work, I’ve given the URL above. At least it will get seen.

 

Q: Little Terrorist was an emotional take on the fact that most of the people hardly see others as Indian or Pakistani. Their humanity overpowers hatred. Where did you got the inspiration for Little Terrorist?

AK: From real life. IT is the reality on the ground isn't it?

 

Q: Your struggle with censorship has become sort of a case study. Don't you think that somewhere censorship should be there, especially in a volatile country like ours where maturity of common audience cannot be an example for others?

AK: Not at all. Films don't produce riots, lack of economic opportunities and social inequalities do. There should be certification not censorship. Cinema is an art form. Artists, by their very definition, are to be provocative and counter-cultural. That is how art grows and develops. If you censor, even things that are clearly in bad-taste and bad-form such as Honey Singh's lyrics, you reduce the potential of art to challenge established norms. Once you remove that then you are making propaganda which only reiterates establishment views.

 

Certification is important because you don't want to have kids watching adult content. Other than that there should be no censorship.

 

Remember there is no censorship on TV and the internet - how come we have not seen riots after the 26/11 attacks bloody images (many in bad taste) put on the screen in our living rooms to watch. Why is cinema singled out for censorship? It’s an obsolete rule inherited from the British Telegraphic Act which was there to control their colony. We are no longer a colony we are a democratic country. It needs to go.

 

Q: Inshallah, Football and Inshallah, Kashmir speaks a lot about the valley and armed forces. We always see the problem on big screen. Not the solution. What according to you should be the best way to bring Kashmir and North East in the mainstream India?

AK: For any reconciliation to take firm root, we have to first acknowledge that a problem exists.  The intention of Inshallah, Kashmir was to add a small voice to correct the gross distortion, bias and hostility in Indian mainstream discourse towards the people of Kashmir and locate a cross-section of voices within Kashmiri history, present humanitarian crusts and contextualize the Kashmiri aspiration for self-determination. It is a matter of great shame that we, the largest democracy in the world, are running a police state in Kashmir for over two decades in the name of the Indian citizen and national security. The collateral damage to the next generation, the youth of Kashmir, who I am particularly concerned about in my film, is unfathomable. A twenty-two year old Kashmiri has not seen a single day of ‘normalcy’ that which we take for granted in the ‘rest-of-India’.

 

There is a deep sense of alienation and victimhood. The Indian nation is personified by a soldier carrying an assault weapon, who can barge into homes, humiliate or assassinate at any time of day or night, with full legal impunity. The result of this is an easy radicalization of a new generation of Kashmiris - an otherwise temperamentally gentle people whose history and culture goes back thousands of years, who had produced a sophisticated, syncretic, temperate version of Sufi Islam – more influenced and with greater affinity to Buddhism and Hinduism than the Wahabi, Deobandi and other radical sects of Islam. The syncretic fiber of Kashmir has been altered for good. Meanwhile, the Indian nation continues to use Fear as a tool of administration. Fear, that is institutionalized. People resort to radical religious formations for a sense of purpose and belonging.

 

By sustaining the occupation of J&K with armed force, by not repealing the draconian AFSPA and PSA, by not allowing democratic freedoms to take any significant form in the valley, by not acknowledging gross human rights violations over the past two decades or providing compensation for those affected, by not providing employment or opportunities to the disaffected youth of Kashmir and by treating those Kashmiris who try to eke out a livelihood in the rest of India as terrorists, the government of India is allowing a deadly and potentially catastrophic fermentation of radicalism.

 

We, in India, talk about GDP and growth, emerging as a global superpower. And we are sanctimonious when comparing ourselves to China and its appalling human rights record. We say that we are a democracy and China is not. We conveniently omit that we’re running a police state in several of our insurgency affected states. People in glass-houses shouldn’t throw stones.

 

I am glad the national award has recognized the intention behind ‘Inshallah, Kashmir’ – I hope it’s a sign that things can and will change for the better. So that anyone who wants to watch this film can do so, I have uploaded the film for free on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoy5926-D1A

 

 

Team TRM wishes best for Ashvin. We stand with him because his opinion deserves support and has earned our admiration.