Gurvinder Singh shot into prominence with the National Award-winning debut film Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse, 2011) about the subordination of Dalits in Punjab. The first Punjabi-language film to have travelled to numerous international film festivals, Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan premiered in the Orizzonti section (Horizons) at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. Since then, the 2001 filmmaking graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has become the face of alternate Punjabi cinema.
Singh’s second film, Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction) is set during the Sikh militancy era of the 1980s. Based on two short stories by noted Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu: Chauthi Koot and Main Theek Thak Haan (I am Feeling Fine Now), it is the first Punjabi film to have been screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival last year. On the eve of Chauthi Koot’s release the director, talks about creating multiple meanings in his movies, about the use of sound and silence and the persistent apprehension of violence in the film. With Zen-like calm Singh also talks about how he is not too anxious about how the film is received. And that there is more to his life than cinema. Edited excerpts from an interview:
How significant is it for Chauthi Koot to have found a commercial release?
It will get a wider audience in one go. That was what parallel cinema was supposed to be, to run parallel to the mainstream, popular cinema. It has always been the problem with this kind of cinema right from the New Wave. There have been absolutely no outlets to screen these films especially those in non Hindi languages. They got to be seen in festivals alone. That time festivals were also very few. There just used to be the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).
Now, there is a mushrooming of festivals within India and abroad. It is because of the festivals that people are getting to see non-Hindi cinema. If you look at Mumbai itself, the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) festival is exposing people to films from different parts of India. That’s an important thing to do. Then of course, there’s social media. But the thing is that these films still somehow have to find acceptance outside India first. There is no other way.
If my films [hadn’t gone] to Cannes, Venice they wouldn’t have been taken that seriously. Because they won international and national awards they got this stamp of recognition. This has always been the case with Indian arts, right from Ravi Shankar. But it’s not that simple also. Eventually the film has to appeal, it has to find some value to be appreciated, to make people actually go to the theatres and watch it. Films like Court, Thithi, Fandry; I haven’t seen Sairat but I am told it has done very well. Lots of films have done well. We are still very far from the stage where language doesn’t matter. Many people might still think ten times before going to see a Punjabi film. Change can’t happen overnight, but it is happening slowly. Every success story opens up avenues for other films.
How do you react to the opinion that Chauthi Koot is your most accessible film? And yet there are layers and profundity…
I think anything can be made profound. Even a silly story can be made profound. That’s the skill of an artiste or filmmaker. You need to know how to create those multiple layers. [That is using] meanings, metaphors, signs, symbols; how to open up a work to various readings, interpretations and personal experiences.
At one level there is this objective existence of the film but there is the audience also which is creating meaning. When you are watching a film you are relating to the images in your own way. A shot of the train, field, house or dog doesn’t mean the same thing for everybody. There has to be an understanding of the craft, how to narrate, layer it through various means. That’s cinematic understanding. Lot of films stray at that. They have great subjects; it’s the multiple meanings that they are not able to create. That’s why I say that a silly story can also be made very deep. A good film has to create multiple meanings. A film that you don’t step out of the theatre and forget. People say that Chauthi Koot stayed with them for days and weeks. What can be more satisfying? That people got so immersed in it. They call it haunting. They felt they were in the film.
If the film were a journey so to speak, Chauthi Koot feels a very rewarding one at the end of it…
For that you have to keep your predispositions aside and let the work take over. Start breathing afresh, don’t come with any expectations. Anhey Ghode Da Daan was more abstract, disjointed narrative where things were not spelt out clearly, relationships were not defined so people felt lost. That was not its failing, for me that was the plus point of the film. With this film I knew that people will not feel lost, at least they will be there at the simple level of understanding the story. It’s to do with the experience of it, constantly feeling on the edge, feeling for the characters, what’s going to happen, apprehending the violence. It’s more about the expectations, the apprehension that something bad is going to happen.
Yet there is hardly any bloodshed or violence in the film…
We have become so desensitised to violence now. It’s all the time in the media—dead bodies lying here and there, bomb blasts, suicide bombers every day. Blood has lost its meaning. People have become immune to it. In my film there is hardly any violence. There is just one shot fired, you don’t even show the result. Things remain in suspended animation for a while. There is a scuffle and a [single] gun shot in the whole film. Yet it’s about violence and fear. In the Natya Shastra they say that the rasa should not be felt by the actors but should reach the audience. It should be created in the audience. Without showing violence you have to create the fear of violence.
The connect could be because it draws from real life…
It is very rooted [in real life]. [It’s] 1984, Operation Bluestar has happened, the state is disturbed, Punjab used to be in a curfew situation. Though I am locating it in a certain milieu, period, space I am also thinking of it as a universal thing. I am thinking of the militant, police, army as militant, police, army; not as *Indian* or *Punjabi* militant, police and army. I am thinking locally as well as universally.
It could apply to the current Kashmir situation too?
It could apply to anything. The Baltic region has gone through violence recently. People in their 30s and 40s have grown through the period when Yugoslavia was breaking up. In fact in Cannes the representative from the Baltic States was the first person to buy the film. I have shown the film in Slovenia, Serbia. The way those people relate to the film is really amazing.
Does it draw from your own experiences?
Childhood memories at times remain stronger than adult experiences. I was a 10-year-old kid in Delhi in 1984. I never lived in Punjab. The whole family was locked up from the outside by neighbours. Through the window we could see mobs on the streets, the gurudwara being burnt. But we read the news. How Hindus were segregated in Punjab and shot at. One felt disturbed. You become aware of your identity, that you belong to a minority that can be singled out. You become identified, targeted for the religion and community you belong to. You hear of Sikh militants being gunned. Suddenly everyone is talking ill of your community. Perhaps the way Muslims would feel now. It’s stereotyping. Then I read these stories. It was like a parallel narrative happening in Punjab. Sikhs in a minority in Delhi and majority in Punjab. You relate to what people have gone through there.
You have based your film on a literary work and yet brought so much cinema to it…
The fact that you choose a particular literary work is because it has already created certain impressions on your mind. That it can reach a certain cinematic level. Of course you are picking it up for several other reasons—the story, content, issues, relevance. But sometimes the bigger concern is whether it can become a cinematic work or not. Does it have the potential to transcend completely and acquire its own identity that is totally different from the literary? It was the same concern in my first film. Gurdial Singh, the writer, saw it after one year of the making of the film. I was scared how he would react to the film. He said, “After seeing your film I realise the difference between literature and cinema”. That is the best compliment somebody has given me.
Cinema based on literature seems to have a bigger resonance…
There is a certain authenticity that you are building upon. The stories themselves are very powerful. The reading of them is a powerful, enriching experience.
Your actors bring a certain organic touch to the film…
They are mostly theatre actors from Punjab, Amritsar. Some are non actors. I am very flexible. People think I only work with non actors. But I have a full- time actor who is into street theatre, an activist actor. I haven’t cast outside Punjab but then the roles have been such. I am very particular about language and dialect. The Punjabi in my two films is very different. In Anhey people are from the Southern belt of Punjab. It’s more rustic. Chauthi Koot is the Punjabi I am more comfortable with. The Punjabi of Lahore and Amritsar. Also first [the] thing is the face. It has to be believable. If the face is not working then however good an actor you are things won’t work.
Does the drama emerge from the lack of drama?
It’s that the characters are living in fear. In theatre you need exaggerated expression to communicate that fear. How would you express it in film? Then there is also the close-up in film which you don’t have on stage. Because of the close-up, the whole mise en scene, the lighting, the camera, the composition, the objects, the sound and the silence. Silence is building up and suddenly there is a rupture. In fact the whole film is built like that. It’s like the silence is the anticipation of the violence, post that violence comes silence yet again. The whole film moves between silence-rupture-silence.
You see grief from a distance which hits one much more. For instance, the way you frame the mother…
Yes, the camera doesn’t focus on her face, you can hardly see her face… Then there’s the scene where the whole family is sitting and eating. It’s a long shot. I don’t have the anxiety to show each one of them. The whole image speaks for itself. People send me scripts for feedback and I find them full of dialogue after dialogue. But you are not thinking of what’s around it, the space, the sound. Scripts don’t think of what’s outside the frame, how that is impacting. A frame should make you imagine what’s outside the narrative.
The storm. Did it come by chance?
You have to create conditions for chance to happen. We shot during the monsoons. [For the] first 15 days there was no rain. It was totally dry. And I was hoping to set it in rain. And then one day we saw black clouds coming. The moment we had been waiting for. But it wasn’t as though it was in the script. It was like the Coming of the Train by the Lumiere Brothers. Film ruk gayi, ab thunderstorm kaise aata hai ye dekho.
You haven’t accepted the National Award yet?
My producer accepted the award.
You don’t believe in awards? Under any regime?
I was very happy with the award for Anhey Ghode Da Daan. Anyway what does the best Punjabi Film Award mean? It doesn’t really matter but history will say it won the best Punjabi Film Award.
There is a lot of buzz around Punjabi cinema?
I do catch snippets here and there. I have never approached a Punjabi producer. Now I have got calls. They want to do something with me and I tell them that I don’t do that kind of cinema. Perhaps they are tired of making the same films again and again. People are also getting sick and tired of the same kind of film. One superhit and you have the same kind of film. The same slapstick humour, violence, caste identity, maleness. We all go through phases.
Will your engagement with Punjab—its stories, folk, traditions continue?
After FTII I travelled in Punjab for four-five years. I lived with story-tellers, balladeers, folk musicians. I spent nights listening to qissas. Perhaps there was romantic idea of a sense of belonging to this reality. Never having grown up there – it’s about creating a certain identity you never had. Suddenly coming face to face with whatever is left of that living culture, the remains of it. Also, sometimes as an outsider you see things better, with a fresh perspective. People growing up there lose that perspective. When you go as an outsider you see the special in the ordinary. It was like this is so ordinary yet it is extraordinary and no one has shown it in cinema. The faces I captured in Anhey Ghode Da Daan I had never seen in Punjabi films.
Is co-production the way out for filmmakers like you?
That is the way forward but even in that the options are very limited. Funds are very small and hundreds of people are fighting for them. It’s not easy. The reverse is also happening. Lot of foreign producers are interested in Indian cinema especially with the success of The Lunchbox. They come to (NFDC’s) Film Bazaar. They meet Indian filmmakers. They show interest but are not able to find Indian co-producers. There are people who call me up that they have German producers and if I can find them an Indian one. I tell them that I can find them a French producer but not an Indian one. For an industry that talks of 100-200-500 crores can’t give a few crores to young upcoming filmmakers. It’s a miniscule sum we are talking of but Rs 2 crore could mean a lot for an institute graduate. But the big studios are geared towards just one direction.
Now you are in Bir… What is it about Himachal that attracts you? (Another FTII filmmaker) Amit Dutta is also based there…
Amit is in Palampur but right now in Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla. Amit is a person who doesn’t interact much, doesn’t go to any festivals. But I am not like that. I travel a lot. I like meeting people, interacting with audience. I have been there only a few years. I made a short film set in Pathankot. I am planning my next in Amritsar which is only five hour drive from Bir.
But working as a filmmaker out of Bir… Doesn’t it have its disadvantages?
But life is not only about filmmaking. Why should we put all our eggs in one basket? Theek hai ek film banayi, kal main wahan jaa ke kheti kar sakta hoon. Here I am at Fun Republic where my film is getting screened. In three days I could forget about it and wonder why the ladyfinger and eggplant are not flowering. I will be completely immersed in that world. [For] a month, I [could] just paint and not think about cinema. I do this. [Another] month I could just be reading. If you are creating multiple narratives in film, you need to create multiple narratives in your own life.
It’s a very idyllic life to think of…
It’s because I am not anxious about when my next film will be made. The idea is to be relaxed. It will get made when it has to get made. People who don’t have 9-5 jobs, I wonder why are they should be stuck to cities?
