At first sight, Prashant Ingale is a throwback to the non-professional actors used by iconic neo-realists like Vittorio de Sica and Roberto Rossellini in their films ‘The Bicycle Thief’ and ‘Germany Year Zero’ (both 1948).
Ingale recently starred in the National Award-winning ‘Khwada’ (Obstacle), which starkly chronicles the humanity of the dispossessed in its depiction of forced migration in the neo-realist mould.
So, when he attempted to take his own life by consuming a bottle of fungicide in December last year, it was a macabre case of cinema verite, with the eerie blurring of lines between reality and his celluloid role.
According to his brother Anil, Prashant was unable to repay a Rs. 3.5-lakh loan that he had taken from local moneylenders to build a house. While he was discharged last week after undergoing treatment at two hospitals in Pune, Prashant today is a bundle of nerves, perpetually bedevilled with headaches.
Maharashtra’s rural milieu is being battered by unabating waves of farmer suicides. But Ingale’s suicide attempt also illuminates the old fault-line between a Bollywood heaving with grossly overpaid stars and Rs.100-crore publicity budgets, and the straitened circumstances of those attempting to make ‘meaningful cinema’.
Born into a family of impoverished farmers in Shirur Taluk, Ingale bagged the role serendipitously when the lead actor was deemed “not natural enough” by director Bhaurao Kharade. He was paid Rs. 15,000 for his role.
The making of ‘Khwada’, which bagged the prizes in the Best Director and Best Sound categories at the 62 National Awards in March last year, was as dark and disturbing as the lives of the protagonists it attempts to delineate.
Kharade, a vegetable seller, sold five acres of his farmland in Shirur to get his project to fruition.
“It was a unique situation where the director and his crew were sailing in the same economic boat. We were merely playing ourselves and aware at the same time that the disaster chronicled in the film could very well befall us,” he recalls.
Kharade says that while financing and publicising independent filmmakers from rural sections remain a Sisyphean task, the recent releases of critically-acclaimed films like ‘Fandry’, ‘Court’ and ‘Killa’ have shown that Marathi cinema can perform yeoman service to the genre of ‘socially-conscious film’.
Akin to Karhade’s struggle is that of Santosh Ram’s, another ‘Indie celluloid boondocker’, hailing from Udgir in Latur district.
Son of a schoolmaster, Ram worked as a data collector in Pune to support his dream of becoming a filmmaker, living in a room shared by five other boys at the Mahatma Phule hostel here.
(Writer-director Santosh Ram. The larger objective of Ram's 'China Mobile' is to generate employment for the children in drought-hit Latur. Photo: Special arrangement)
He learned his craft by watching classics screened at a National Film Archives of India (NFAI) film appreciation course after failing to get through the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) entrance exam. Dubbing himself an FTII ‘canteen pass-out’, Ram finally broke through with ‘Vartul’ (Circle) in 2009 – a stunning 18-and-a-half-minute documentary that won 13 awards across India and put him on the filmmaker map.
Instead of ushering in opportunity, there followed three bitter, disillusioning years in Bombay, where Ram reminisces knocking in vain on doors of legions of production houses.
“It eventually dawned that there is no open-door entry for the likes of us. Every Assistant Director whom I saw used to come in a car of his own. I felt that I could not continue in this place where my output, which would have been mediocre anyway, would have been stifled by rigorous conformity to the system,” he says.
Determined not to compromise on his art, Ram returned to Udgir and produced yet another brilliant short, ‘Galli’ (The Lane). His ‘stock company’ is drawn from the drought-stricken parts of the State.
Lacking the aristocratic moorings of a Visconti or a Rossellini, or the social eminence of Ray, Ram says funding for his films came entirely through donations by friends with steadfast faith in his art.
His much-anticipated full-length feature, ‘China Mobile’, is about the impact of the digital world on rural Maharashtra, as seen through the eyes of two teenagers.
“I would not straitjacket these films with a label like ‘neo-realism’. Like a bitter pill, it is essential our films be sugar-coated as entertainment for audience consumption, yet deal with the larger social concerns of the day,” says Ram.¬¬¬
One of his recruiting pools is 37-year-old Kalyan Waghmare’s ‘Sunday Theatre’ of Latur. Eking out a living by shooting and editing marriage videos in his district, Waghmare’s concept has wrought a pocketful of miracles in the district. Begun in 2008 with three other friends, this exercise in drama therapy has changed the lives of adolescents hailing from the social margins of Maharashtra.
“The larger purpose has been to channelise their despair and troubled childhoods into the service of meaningful theatre and cinema,” says Waghmare.
While establishing a strong sense of camaraderie, the Theatre has helped in emotionally stabilising and supporting the teenagers and securing steady jobs as well.
“The six years I spent with the Sunday Theatre was a revelation and has changed my life for the better,” says Pratiksha Rajmane, who now works as a press co-ordinator in Latur.
Both Karhade and Ram have crossed the Rubicon, turning their backs on Bollywood manna. They seek to create precisely what they want without surrendering to the considerations of commerce or audience preconceptions of what cinema ought to be.
Bereft of capital, but undaunted, they seek to unravel the poetry in the every-day.
