From bringing attention to cinematic literacy to emphasising upon the need for raising the bar for children’s films, director Aditya Om tells Chahak Mittal that film festivals are important for people to realise that they are more than just entertainment
There have been talks about how the Indian education system, syllabus and pedagogy need change. However, before we even begin to change the system, ‘building’ it is of utmost importance since not everyone has access to primary education in the country even today.
And director Aditya Om’s Maassab is testimony to the same. A leading actor in the Telugu film industry, Aditya has not only been associated with cinema but with social causes as well. It was when he dug deeper into the matter of how the education system needs regularity and more than that, functionality in the country, that he decided to do his bit to bring about a change. The film deals with the state of primary education in rural India. When an education inspector visits a government school in Bundelkhand, he realises how the kids are not taught even by the employed teachers. He discovers that there is no regularity in the school’s curriculum. When Ashish Kumar, the new teacher walks in, he takes charge of the children and the mammoth task of turning the school around. Aditya says that this teacher is a reformer who believes that education is a universal treasure and everyone has an equal right to it. He tries to do his bit to spread quality education even in small villages.
A lot of research went into making the film’s story reachable to many. He says, “We researched quite a lot about how primary education gets delivered in the rural areas of the nation and came across many pitfalls in the system. Private education provides more facilities but has been viewed as a business. They indeed created more opportunities and facilities but the pricing rose exorbitantly, which in turn made quality education only a distant dream for the poor and affordable only for the urban elite, while government schools in small towns and villages lack quality mentors and infrastructure. These are the challenges due to excess commercialisation.”
While digging these facts was challenging, finding a suitable location to shoot was even tougher for Aditya. “It was difficult because the originality of the concept had to be maintained. So, I zeroed in on Bundelkhand in India’s oldest state, Uttar Pradesh. Here the problems were more visible. The social, economic milieu of the problems were very evident. We shot the film there and many local people were involved. In fact, none of the children in the film are actors, but from the same school where we shot,” says he.
It would have certainly been a challenge to make a film with children who don’t understand the cinematic process and language. However, he says that the kids became well rehearsed with the terminology within six to seven days so it wasn’t that difficult, rather turned out to be fun. He laughs to tell us that they started enjoying the shoot so much that there came a point when they knew when the sequence will begin or be cut. “Before even the crew would say ‘action’ or ‘replay’ or ‘retake,’ they would!” he says as he bursts out laughing reminiscing over the time.
The Lahiri Lahiri Lahirilo actor tells us why he did not choose professional actors for the film. “More than our low-budget limitations, I wanted to give the film a real touch of ruralhood. You can always create fictional characters to present something, but taking real people and faces enhances the story’s true essence. And there is always a need for new faces for realism in cinema as a distinction needs to be made between commercial and arthouse ones,” says he.
The issue he would like to touch upon in his next project, he says, would be manual scavenging. Aditya talks about why he digs out stories from rural India more than urban cities. He says that it is because in the city, it is difficult to find stories that are grounded in the history. “Villages always bring across stories which will make you think how human life functions at such places. It makes you think beyond the urban infrastructure and facilities you are born with. We are so engrossed in our own world that we are not aware of the ground realities. And I think many things could be highlighted from villages in India,” he adds.
The director wanted to explore a space that does not commercialise its subject and at the same time, offers something different. “And sometimes to shoot such films, where even our budget is less, it could take around two to three years,” he says. However, it’ll be surprising to know that Massaab, the two-hour-long film, took just 21 days to complete even though it faced many financial challenges like demonetisation as it went on floors in late 2016.
So how do film festivals help in differentiating the commercial cinema and arthouse cinema in India? For Aditya, film festivals are “extremely” important to recognise films which do not fit into a regular, commercial space. “Not always can films be made for entertainment purpose, right? Here is when the idea of ‘Cinema Literacy’ comes to fore. It’s the idea that apart from entertainment, these kinds of films exist too. So a literacy to understand cinema needs to be developed in people,” he says and goes on to add that even though such festivals are there, but they work only when media talks about them. “Media attention is important for festivals like these, otherwise people wouldn’t move beyond the Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn kind of cinema. They need to appreciate all kinds of genres and subjects,” says he.
As the film, Maassab is set to be screened at the Habitat Film Festival at India Habitat Centre, Aditya talks about why the category — ‘Children’s Films’ — is important. “Firstly, you can tell so many stories through children. They are honest and can make people realise even the harsh realities with innocence. Nowadays, kids are into movies like Avengers and Iron Man, yes they attract them but even these stories which are told by children themselves need to be looked at. They don’t always need superhero films,” says he.
Well, still wondering what ‘Maassab,’ means? The term implies a teacher or a portmanteau of ‘master sahab,’ which the students in villages call their teachers, Aditya says as he laughs.
(The film will be screened at 11 am on May 26 at Amaltas.)
