Award-winning documentary filmmaker Archana Phadke, in a conversation with Christy Varghese, reveals what made her train the camera on her family for her directorial debut
Born in 1986 in Mumbai, India, Archana Phadke is a is an alumni of the Berlinale Talent campus and a National award winner. Her short film as a Director, Uski Baarish (2013) was screened at various international film festivals including Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, Aspen Shorts Fest, Toronto International Film Festival (KIDS), Seattle International Film Festival and 34 others. She has produced and edited, feature-length documentary Placebo. Placebo was an Indo-Finnish co-production that premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), 2014, where it won the jury nomination for Best Film in First Appearance Category. She has co-edited the film Raghu Rai, An Unframed Portrait — winner of IDFA Europe fund and winner of Best International Pitch at Asian Side of the Doc and premiered at IDFA 2017 (mid-length competition).
Her debut as a director of the feature-length documentary, About Love, premiered at the Sheffield Doc fest in June 2019, where it won the New Talent Award. The film also won the Best film Asian Perspective award at DMZ Docs 2019, and Best film at the Hainan Island International Film Festival.
About Love is in the news since it is up for viewing on MUBI, the globally curated film streaming platform. The film is a story which underlines the place of a woman in Indian society. You can say that the film is super feminist, but in a non-preachy way. But it reflects the reality that exists in society today.
For the film, Phadke trains the camera on her household, making what’s extremely personal at times, public. The film revolves around the daily happening, and conversations of three couples living alongside the director. Keep reading for excerpts of the interview with Phadke.
Dealing with your own family members for About Love, start to finish, was it easy or difficult?
It's always a very difficult decision. I was filming there for around two and a half years and everyday I was wondering whether I was doing the right thing. Exposing my family to the world was a very difficult decision to take because I was able to capture not just the comfortable but the uncomfortable moments also of family life. It was quite a difficult process for me.
Would your family members play nice in front of the camera?
Like every documentary, this is one of the first processes that one goes through — that you have to break that act in front of the camera. Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it take months, sometimes it takes years for that to happen. But i was very fortunate that this never happened to me and this is probably because I was the one shooting them. When this was going on, they did not know this was going to be a film. But when this kept going on for an year or two, they were wondering, "Oh, she is still shooting us maybe she is just collecting random footage." Fortunately they never ever put up an act in front of the camera. They were always themselves in both comfortable as well as uncomfortable situations. I actually shot my grandfather's death on camera which was quite difficult for me to show. But both my family and I were honest, with respect to everything shown in the film.
How long did filming take?
I started shooting the film in June 2015 but the film premiered in the 2019 edition of the Sheffield Doc Fest. Initially my lens was trained on my grandparents, but my brother actually decided to get married halfway through shooting and that's when I decided to make that a part of my story as well. But then I expanded the scope of my story and I started shooting my parents as well. It became an interesting landscape — three generations of couples and how love changes over time. And, oh, just for context, my bhabhi and my brother had a love marriage. They met in IIM Lucknow. He was just following the example set by his ancestors; my grandparents and my parents also had a love marriage.
While you were behind the camera, you were also an integral part of the household. You can’t help unknowingly influence what happens in front of the camera, we get it. But did you ever knowingly influence the course of the film?
I made certain rules. When I would start filming, I would anticipate the flavour of what it was going to be. So, I would make certain rules as a filmmaker which were sacred and unbreakable since that would not be good for the film. I wanted complete honesty in the film where I would not drive the narrative. I also knew that for a film like this the essence is important, which is why I was shooting for three and a half years, whereas I could have easily wrapped up shooting in three months since it was my family and I had easy access to them. But I knew that to get into the depth of the characters, I would have to spend a lot of time. So, I took my time to do it, but I did not make anything happen at all.
While everyone is aware of the process, ie. What happens ahead of a wedding in India, you trained the camera on your own family members. What led you to do so?
This is my first feature documentary as a director, I have produced a film before this, Placebo, and a filmmaker's first film is always about a subject that they hold dear. For me, I have always been obsessed with my family. We are very close, we tell each other everything. This film is sort of a love letter to them. I wanted to understand the workings of love in my family and that is exactly what I wanted to make a film on. It's a tragi-comedy that looks at the dysfunctionality of families and I tried to capture this in a sensitive and dignified manner.
With every film I make, I hope I learn something about myself. Part of the reason why I did this film is because I don’t want to get married, I don’t believe in the constitution of marriage. There have been numerous love marriages in my family, but how come I don’t believe in marriage, that was my enquiry. So I wanted to observe my own family members to get to the bottom of it. My grandparents, for that matter, regularly pass snide comments at each other, but are very much in love, this is evident from what I could capture for the film. But back then, in the initial stages of the shooting, I wasn’t sure this would turn out to be a film.
What is it about love that fascinates you?
You can call me a total romantic. I have grown up on all these Yash Chopra films, and I absolutely adore them. I don’t think those type of films are made anywhere, where the romance is evidently there. I am talking about films like Chandni and Dil Toh Paagal Hai. That is the essence I am trying to capture, not through a Bollywood film but through life itself. It is so difficult to understand love, through my film I have come to makes sense of so many things about love. As an artist, it is natural to try and try again to understand the mysteries of life; love being one of them. I am trying to understand past notions I had of love while growing up.
We are sure you had some solid ideas about this film when you started shooting. Did the final product match what you had in mind?
Well I did have some ideas in mind but documentary films are all about observing.
There is a very cool saying which one can read as you enter SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute), “In fiction films, the director is God and in documentaries, God is the director.”
At certain points during the film, you have to be ready to receive, instead of trying to implement your notions. That is the magic of documentary cinema, it springs a surprise every now and then. You cannot be in control all the time, at times you have to let go of control and watch the magic unfold.
Do you have any other projects, or thoughts about any projects in the pipeline?
Yes, of course! I am writing for two projects, one is a feature-fiction that revolves around farmer suicides. I hope I am able to make the project a reality within the next year.