His first feature film Nachom-ia Kumpasar (Dance to the Rhythm) has won three national awards, six international awards and made it to the Oscar list in the Best Picture and Best Original Score categories. When Bardroy Barretto was growing up in the Goa of the 1970s, his school would screen a film a month. Barretto vividly remembers watching his first Charlie Chaplin and Aa Gale Lag Jaa at these screenings. In Class IX, his brother gifted him an SLR camera and Barretto’s fascination with the moving image attained a new dimension. A self-confessed reluctant filmmaker, Bardroy Barretto came to Mumbai in 1988 and joined advertising. He says: “Those were the heady days of MTV and Channel V and I pretty much did everything; but I always wanted to be a cinematographer. Then I learnt editing and, finally, direction. Advertising was my honing ground. That’s where I learnt my craft but when I had to do something of my own, I always knew it had to be a feature. I wanted to make a Konkani film to convince myself that I could do long-format films.”
Kunal Ray He had initially planned it as a biopic but when he unearthed the tragic love story of the two jazz musicians, Chris Perry and Lorna, he realised it would be a perfect metaphor to talk about Konkani music and also acknowledge the substantial contribution made by Goan musicians to the Hindi film industry. “When Pyarelal composed ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves’, it was actually a tribute to his guru, the great music composer and arranger, Anthony Gonsalves. Gonsalves delved deep into Hindustani classical music traditions. He would spend time with sarangi virtuoso Pandit Ram Narayan during their film recordings to learn the nuances of Hindustani classical music. The jazz player Chic Chocolate was the righthand man of C. Ramchandra and you may attribute the jazz influence in his songs to Chocolate. Sebastian D’Souza was an assistant to Shankar Jaikishan. So, this film is about these unsung heroes and it is also a moving image documentation of a way of life that has gone by, almost a seminal epoch in contemporary Goan history.”
Nachom-ia Kumpasar is believed to have breathed new life into the nascent Konkani film industry. While films made by Laxmikanth Shetgaonkar and Rajendra Talak in the recent past have received critical acclaim and travelled to various festivals, none of them could make any profits. “We had to show it was commercially viable to make films in Konkani and that there is an audience available for such films. In the last two months, there have been at least four new releases in Goa. Let’s not be too finicky about quality at this point but making films in Konkani and sustaining them through local means is more important.”
Interestingly, Barretto and his team has refrained from releasing the film in theatres. “It would have died in two weeks,” he says. The idea, instead, was to have screenings for at least two years, like those old Hindi films that have had long runs at theatres. In Goa, they used government auditoriums and did a regulated release. Since 2014, they have organised special screenings, with uniform ticket rates. Luckily for them, the film has proven to be immensely popular in Goa and elsewhere. “We have had screenings in Australia, Canada and the Gulf, which have a strong Konkani diaspora. The model has been viable. It is impossible for small, regional films to be sustained otherwise. After the National Award, the film has been declared tax-free in Goa.”
Now, the team wants to take the film to other cities but is still working out the dynamics. Barretto made the film primarily for the Konkani-speaking audience in Goa. “I was never too ambitious,” he says. It is, however, clearly very gratifying to know that it has generated interest in other parts of the country and that people are clamouring to see it.
Music is the obvious bedrock of the film. The narrative unfolds through 20 popular Konkani songs from the 1960s and 1970s, which have been re-recorded for the film. All songs were recorded live, with musicians who played in the studio era of Hindi film music. “Most of these musicians are sexagenarian now. Nothing was programmed at all. I wanted the ‘60s sound to permeate the film. Everything was played live and it has a very organic feel.” Nachom-ia Kumpasar has 102 producers, many of whom are Barretto’s family and friends. The film also features several new actors and amateurs who face the camera for the first time. Says Barretto, “We made the film in a very democratic way. Nobody could dictate terms. Vijay Maurya, who plays the lead, was selected because of his uncanny resemblance to Chris Perry, and Palomi Ghosh came on board just 20 days before the shoot because I couldn’t find anyone as convincing as her. Even the Mumbai part of the film was shot in Goa. It was just impossible to shoot in Mumbai. My friends and colleagues came over from Mumbai to help me in the making of the film. It is a huge collective effort.”
The journey thus far has been impressive. Asked about what made it possible, Barretto replies, “Our film has survived and travelled this far purely on merit. I did not even seek government support. We have no muscle or monetary power or a strategy to push our prospects at the Oscars. Hopefully, merit will do the last bidding.”
What next? Barretto wants to make another Konkani film. Why not Hindi, I ask. He replies that the quintessential Bollywood film is essentially quite a different animal.
Kunal Ray teaches English Literature in Pune and writes on art and culture.
