“Put my name as D. I am sending you Rs 1,500 from my pocket money. I have been abused for six years. And now I feel liberated with the film.” This is just one email out of the hundreds that flooded Onir’s inbox.
This Indian film-maker has made a movie - the ‘I Am’ series, a collection of four short films - with nearly 400 people from 35 cities across the world contributing in the form of money or talent. Thanks to Facebook!
He resorted to the step, when he found ‘’no one wanted to back meaningful cinema. It had to be either comedy or star-backed. ‘My Brother Nikil’ (his first film, a real-life story of an AIDS victim) happened because of friends and family. So, in 2009, I just put up a post on my Facebook account saying I want to make this film and if you believe in this subject, either volunteer or help. And within one-and-a-half months, we started shooting,” said Onir who is in the city to be part of the 15th IFFK where ‘I Am’ is included in the competition section.
He collected nearly Rs one crore and the film is ready for release in February, 2011. “It is a huge thing that the audience are a part of this venture,” said Onir. And he hits out at the NGO which asked him to make a film on malnutrition and not on child abuse because it was not on their agenda. “What kind of bureaucracy is this when the statistics say that 53 percent of children in India are abused? And I plan to share profits with the NGOs and agencies who have contributed.”
Reality disturbs me and he loves to present it as such. The ‘I Am’ series- ‘I Am Omar’, ‘I Am Megha’, ‘I Am Abhimanyu’ and ‘I Am Afia’ - too has real-life incidents. ‘Abhimanyu’ tells about child abuse survivors Ganesh Nallari and Harish Iyer (cast has Sanjay Suri, Anurag Kashyap, Radhika Apte); ‘Omar’ is inspired by stories provided by Gay Bombay with Rahul Bose, Arjun Mathur in the cast; ‘Afia’ is inspired by the experiences of Rima Kohli (cast has Nandita Das, director Anurag Basu and Purab Kohli) and ‘Megha’ from the stories of many Kashmiri Pandits with cast comprising Juhi Chawla and Manisha Koirala.
Thus the film has three directors- Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Basu and Nandita Das - in the cast. “Actually, all of them had come to become actors, once upon a time. I was absolutely comfortable working with them,” Onir said.
Anurag Kashyap, himself a victim of child abuse for nearly 11 years, who wanted to make a film on the topic, had admitted elsewhere that it was tough for him playing the role of an abuser for it had brought back old memories.
It was sheer coincidence that got him Anurag Basu. Onir happened to help Basu pay the bill at a coffee shop for he had forgotten his wallet at home and didn’t hesitate in casting Basu as the doctor in ‘Afia’.
Born and brought up in Bhutan, Onir (Onirban Dhar) came to Kolkata for higher education and chose to live in India. “My mother Manjusree inspired me to become a film-maker. She took me to see Shyam Benegal’s ‘Junoon’ when I was just a kid, and though I understood only part of it, the visuals stayed with me,” he said.
He directed his first independent documentary in 1992, was into producing music albums for sometime, and worked in Kalpana Lajmi’s ‘Daman’. It was on the sets of the movie that he met Sanjay Suri, with whom he launched the production company Anticlock Films. Post ‘My Brother..’, they came out with ‘Bas Ek Pal’ and ‘Sorry Bhai’.
“I think independent cinema is dying, owing to many things, including the ticket rates. The corporate houses are willing to lose crores in a big budget film. There are enough underhand dealings and cinema is losing out. I am not against big budget films, but what I am asking for is a balance between the two kinds of cinema. And the Censor Board often perplexes me with its double-standards. They have made love into something dirty and gives U/A certificate for a violent film.” At the same time, he is grateful to mainstream industry for having helped him release ‘My Brother Nikhil’.
Onir is now scripting ‘Shab’ and the other upcoming project is ‘The Face’, which will be a political thriller set in Kashmir. “I am a film-maker who loves to explore new kinds of relationships, not something regressive. And I have a camp out there, of friends, which has its doors open. Honestly, I don’t crib about the lack of support. And I will give it up the day I will stop respecting myself as a film-maker.”
‘I Am’ will be screened at Kalabhavan theatre on December 14 at 9 p.m.
m_athira@expressbuzz.com