Invincible

Just this past weekend, my sister shared with me one of my late father's reminiscences:  apparently when my father started out on his first job as a new college graduate all those many years ago in Chennai, India, he was so poor that he had no money to buy shoes.  He could afford a pair only when he drew his first salary.  For reasons that I still cannot explain, this anecdote moved me, and continues to evoke a range of emotions in me.  I had known that my father grew up poor--his father had been a prominent lawyer in Chennai, but gave up his legal practice when Mahatma Gandhi called on all Indians to quit their jobs so that the British would quit India.  When Indian independence was finally wrested from the British, my grandfather's fortunes had been so eroded that he never really recouped his losses.  My father and his siblings relied on scholarships for their education.  Education, then hard work, was my father's way out of poverty.  So the poverty that he had grown up in was not a surprise.  But the bare feet (so callused that, he told my sister, he could not feel nails and other street junk when they pierced his soles!) moved me.  Because of all that he attained and achieved in his life, despite his starting point.  Because of all the charity and good he did as his own success grew, perhaps in memory of those hard early days.  And because, as my sister told me, there was not an ounce of self-pity in him as he shared his recollections with her--he was joking about how awful and hard-as-wood his feet were, in those shoe-less days.  Typical of the man who gave pancreatic cancer a run for its money and withstood the worst that it unleashed on him, for 14 months, without a complaint or a whimper.   Dying, deprived of the ability to speak, the only thing he would whisper to my mother and sister is: "I am fine."

Could You Read My Script/TV Show/Article?

I get my share of requests--to please read and give feedback on someone's script or play or story or article.  To be very honest, I am never too thrilled to get these requests.  First, since so much of my own day is spent in writing (email queries, business emails, my own scripts, my book), when I read, I like to read for pleasure.  I like to pick and choose what I am going to read.  A friend/acquaintance's work almost always feels like yet another "to do" on my list.  Secondly, I am not a critic, and always refrain from saying negative things, even if a critic might deem such negative things to be richly deserved!  So my feedback is hardly likely to be constructive.  I have very vivid memories of my girlhood in India, when a classmate hounded me for "honest criticism" on her short story.  I said one mildly negative thing (after she pushed and persisted)--that the piece felt just a tad long.  That was the end of the friendship.  

On the flip side of the coin, I never pass my work around to my friends and acquaintances, asking for feedback.  Whether one wants it or not, one always gets more than enough "feedback" when one starts to circulate one's work to agents, representatives, book editors, publishers, producers, production companies, actors, etc.   I've found that if there are genuine cracks in one's work that need to be fixed, they make themselves known, with time.   Your own inner voice will nudge you, and, if you slow down enough to listen, tell how how to fix it!

CLASH OF THE TITANS--But Why Does the Villanous Lunatic Look Like a Hindu Sadhu?

I went to a screening of CLASH OF THE TITANS last night.  I'm curious why the filmmakers chose to portray the villainous lunatic gentleman (who towards the end becomes a worshiper of the Dark God Hades and rouses the rabble to sacrifice Andromeda) in the garb of a Hindu "sadhu" (a "sadhu" is a Hindu holy man, a man who has devoted his life to God).  The character is bare-chested, with a "tilak" mark on the spot where his third eye would be, with ashes smeared on his upper arms, and with what looks like a knee-length dhoti around his waist.  Symbols like a tilak and holy ash are sacred to Hindus; so are sadhus, by the way.  You could swap this character easily for any Hindu holy sadhu who prays in our temples in India--so close was the physical dress and depiction.  My husband, who is neither Indian nor Hindu, remarked about this character being made to look like a Hindu sadhu after the screening.  He said that the filmmakers would never have dared make the character look like an imam or mullah, a rabbi or priest.  Hindus make for easy targets because they are tolerant/apathetic to a fault, thanks to thousands of years of invasions--and conversions.

CLOSET LAND on DVD

I get a lot of queries from people who like my film, and I empathize with your frustration at not being able to readily find my film in digital format.  Unfortunately, I don't own the rights to my own film--when a writer-director such as myself makes a film, we sell the rights to our script and creation to the producing or distribution entity.   I am therefore not sure which entity now owns the digital distribution rights to my film--that entity is the one who can get it out on DVD.

Definition of Success

The late producer Ismail Merchant (A ROOM WITH A VIEW, HOWARD'S END) once said that we tend to lump all forms of success in one grab-all bag.  So a film's commercial success is often the barometer used to determine its success as art.   And Mr. Merchant warned against these easy lumping together of things that do not necessarily belong together.

I cannot agree more.   A film that has top numbers in the box office charts is not necessarily a good film.  A festival hit does not translate to money at the box office--and sometimes, does not even mean a film is a good film, leave alone a great one!  Critics rave about works that fail to meet the test of time, and time pushes to the surface works that were deemed commercial or critical failures...The list is endless.  But time is a fair arbiter of these things, and in him/her, I trust.  (Let's not forget that the mighty Hitchcock never won an Academy award for Best Director.  But PSYCHO, and REAR WINDOW, and VERTIGO, and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH are and will be evergreen.)

It's crucial for not only filmmakers, but for everyone with a project, a mission, a goal, to define what success means, for themselves.  Do you want your work to reach millions?  Do you want it to make millions?  Are  you looking for a calling card, to fuel your next deal?  Do you want to win over the critics?  Or get into a festival/festivals?   Is it pure self-expression--with the belief that your best thoughts, expressed to the best of your skills and abilities, will in turn spark a reciprocal response in your ideal viewer?

Have a clear idea of what it is you hope to gain, by doing your work.  If you are not clear on what constitutes success to you, it will be defined for you by other forces, by default.   And you may not like what you end up with.

Women in Film

A friend of mine told me that she had recently seen a clip of an interview with director Jane Campion (SWEETIE, PIANO).  Ms. Campion talked about how film schools usually contain an equal mix of male and female film students, but once these students are released into the industry, the percentage shifts alarmingly, and very few female directors actually get their films made.  

Statistics bear her out, and I agree that the female of the species has a tougher time in the feature filmmaking world.  Women with bold and original visions rarely find support, be it with opinion-makers or execs in the business.  Which is why the phrase "girl wonder" sees very little usage--it is not as if there are no wonderful and original girl feature filmmakers; it is just that the odds of them getting acclaim and recognition are steep.

I said steep--not impossible.  Not impossible, because (a) the younger generation--the future movie-goers--gives me huge reasons for hope.  They, incidentally, are the strongest fan-base for my own CLOSET LAND.  They don't care that I am female or Indian--they have no preconceived notions as to what sort of films a "Third World female filmmaker" is supposed to make, and they therefore have been receptive to my work with an openness that unfortunately eluded some older critics and savants. (b) Free media, like the one I am using now, allow female filmmakers equal access to their public, and the ability to speak directly to their audience; to build such an audience, to tend it and grow it.  (c) I am essentially an optimist.  I believe that what's good and decent will have its day.

That said, one still has to do the work.  And part of the work, for ANY filmmaker--male or female--is to be endlessly creative.  This was the hardest lesson for me to learn: to not focus exclusively on one project, but to create a whole slate of projects.  The more arrows in your quiver, the more your chances of one of them hitting the mark. 

So while you take your meetings and do your networking and research and everything else you need to do to take your scripts to screen, use the lull (waiting for the phone call/email; the empty hours that face you when the meeting is suddenly cancelled; the doldrums forced upon you when you discover that the financier you were banking on has no financing that can be banked) to create.  Create more projects.  Create stories and novels, graphic books and webisodes, TV series and documentaries.  But create.  Do the work.   Make your quiver full of strong arrows.

Closet Land

If you've found this page, it is probably because you have seen (and hopefully liked!) my 1991 film, CLOSET LAND.  If the film has currency today, it is because of viewers like you.  You have kept my film alive.  You had the ingenuity to put it up on YouTube.  You have engaged in chats and discussions about it.  So the fact that the film is alive, and its influence is growing, is very much a testimony to what you can do.  More power to you!

I have always been a private person, and one of my earliest beliefs has been that one's work speaks for oneself, and one need do no further than do the work itself.  However, my journey with CLOSET LAND and the years that followed the film's release have brought home to me, in ways too numerous to be counted, that my belief was erroneous.  I wrote in CLOSET LAND that "children make easy victims."  I would now add that those who wish to remain anonymous and recede into the background (like myself), make for even easier sitting ducks!  Something that happened very recently was a potent wake-up call to shake free of that belief and to reach out--like with this blog.  More on my painful but necessary lesson in the coming weeks.  

Here are my updates:  I hope to be able to upload both CLOSET LAND and my cut of my second film, BASIL, on my website in the next month or so.  Stay tuned.

I currently have three feature projects in the works, as well as a TV series I'm developing.  Plus I am 2/3 into my novel--a Victorian gothic piece with which I am hugely pleased. 

I look forward to building a community with you!

With my gratitude and good wishes,

Radha Bharadwaj