What place do you call home? What do you do when your heart points in one direction and the world beckons you to another home? For most of us who’ve lead peaceful comfortable lives, issues of fragmented identities and scattered homes may seem remote and cut off. But not for those who’ve survived it. And not for those people in most part of the world who still struggle with it.
And a grim reminder of such an existence are films like the classic Garm Hava , directed by M.S. Sathyu in 1973. The questions raised in the film are still relevant 40 years after it was made. Sathyu and his friend decided the world needs to see the film again. And so, in 2010 efforts began to restore the film, to release it as a DVD. It took on a larger framework when Indikino Edutainment stepped in to restore it, and after three years of being worked on, the film is set for a theatrical re-release on November 14.
“The whole atmosphere has changed in India. It’s become more communal and fundamental, with the Congress and the Left failing, giving room for communal forces to take over,” says Sathyu, over telephone from Mumbai where he’s readying for the film’s premiere.
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The film dealt with the plight of Muslims in post-Partition India through a drama of nuanced relationships between members of a large family. “We have the second largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia. You can’t doubt their nationality or their patriotism. The whole idea of making the film in 1973, was to show that ‘we are not different from the others’.”
Winner of the National Award in 1973, the film was India’s entry for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Garm Hava starred Balraj Sahni and Dinanath Zutshi in the leading roles and marked Farooq Shaik’s debut. Based on Ismat Chugtai’s work, the film was written by noted poet Kaifi Azmi and Sathyu’s wife Shama Zaidi. One of the biggest challenges of making the film, says Sathyu, was shooting on location in Agra. There were no film sets used.
The one compelling reason that made him want to tell the story? Sathyu’s response is a bit underwhelming: “We got finance for the movie! D.K. Karanjia, who was heading the Film Finance Corporation (which later became the NFDC) liked the script and agreed to finance it. There’s nothing pre-planned about such things. Later, it just turns out to be whatever it is,” laughs the 83-year-old.
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He does concede that it took almost 25 years after Partition for a film on the subject to be finally made. “Ritwik Ghatak and Nemai Ghosh (noted photographer who made Chinnamul) did make films on the aftermath of the Partition of Bengal, but no one had attempted this…on the Partition that led to India and Pakistan being created. The subject was too delicate and many people didn’t want to remember it,” he points out.
What does he hope the film’s re-release will achieve? “That’s an experiment. The film has an old-fashioned narration, of the kind not being used in today’s films. Today there’s a lot of ‘bang bang’ stuff. I’m here to see if people are still interested in this kind of cinema. You can never say what becomes a success,” says Sathyu.
After the film was made, there were apprehensions that it was a rather delicate subject. The whole process of getting censor certification for the film took 12 months. And when it was finally released, it was in Bangalore that it was first shown. When it was ready for release, midterm elections were on in UP. “There was a belief that the film was made to move the Muslim vote...we had no such thing in mind. Ultimately Mrs. Indira Gandhi helped us get the certification and it was released in the south because there was not much impact of the Partition here.”
The film will be released through PVR Director’s Rare across nine Indian cities on November 14, including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Ahmedabad. Then it will also go to single theatres.
Sound restored over a year
Both Garm Hava's director M.S. Sathyu, and R.D.Deshpanday, MD, Indikino Edutainment — the company that restored the film — admit that the film's restoration was a tedious process, beginning with having to repair torn and scratched film negatives. The almost two lakh frames were restored frame by frame, at a cost of almost Rs. One crore. But the biggest challenge was to convert the sound — originally in mono form — into the present Dolby surround sound. "Sound restoration is rarely undertaken as it's a complicated process; then matching it to the original picture was a challenge. It was done over a year in Los Angeles," says Deshpanday, whose company has interests ranging from hospitality to agriculture across India and Europe. A film lover, he says they undertook the project after acquiring a motion picture company, as they hope to build a library of Indian classic films. "Our idea is that such a film should be available to the younger generation. These issues of lack of trust and questions of national identity are not limited to our country alone," he adds.