All That Breathes
Two solid, evocative films from India have been bestowed with prestigious Peabody Award. Both the films, All that Breathes by Shaunak Sen and While We Watched by Vinay Shukla, have had a long an extremely rewarding journey at various film festivals. While the former talks about the decaying ecosystem of today through the point of view of a bird, the latter also talks about the rapid changes of country through the eyes of the leading journalist Ravish Kumar. Both the films raise important questions and urge you to pause and reflect.
Sharing a few snippets from our conversation with the creator-director of the films.
All that Breathes
All that Breathes, traverses the lives of two brothers, Nadeem and Saud, who have this unspoken, weird, almost blind love for a majestic bird of the sky, the black kite. Against the backdrop of apocalyptic air and toxic eco-system, the two brothers decide to protect the bird, a casualty of these turbulent times. After winning numerous awards at Sundance, Cannes and getting nominated for the Oscars, the film is being bestowed with the prestigious Peabody Award.
All That Breathes
ELEMENTAL STAGES OF THE FILM
While at Cambridge, I was housed in the human geography department where a lot of people around me were working on human animal relations. Many people were concerning themselves with a frame of thinking where you look at the human and non-human relations through all kinds of lenses — philosophical, sociological, ethnographical, and so on. I was very interested in this kind of frame of thinking, so the foundational thought about wanting to do something about an obsessive relationship between men and birds came from there.
Initially, I wanted to make something that communicates the sense of breathing the air of Delhi and the gray monotone envelope that laminates the city, which is now fairly distinct. And the figure of the cheel, the black kite, or the tiny gliding dots that pepper the sky, is a part of living in Delhi. This sort of weird triangulation of birds in the sky, the sky itself as a kind of gray hazy monotone interested me. And also a story that ties together the toxicity of the air and the ground. So, once I came back to Delhi, I started looking for people who were working with birds, and that’s when I chanced upon the brothers Nadeem and Saud, and their remarkable story.
SEEKING ANSWERS
The answer to this manic love of the brothers with the bird, sort of unfolds through the film. At first, they would go for meat tossing as kids. And then, over time, as life happens, they start saving one bird and then you really start caring about the life of the bird. And before you know, there are hundred more birds that come. Now in the last twenty odd years, they’ve saved over twenty-five thousand kites. And the true beauty of it is that they can’t ever pinpoint a finger to a reason why they do what they do. Without too much financial support they do it on their own accord.
It’s almost like a spiritual force. To think of it, the richness of the film is the fact that there’s no one reason for it. There’s plurality of things. And the reason adds a sort of mystery to the film because it’s an investigation of why people do what they do. And how does one understand this kind of obsessive behaviour because otherwise they have like the front seat to the apocalypse. Birds are literally falling off the sky and they see it; yet they just soldier on with a kind of wry humour and with a kind of casualness that really interests me and a large part of the film is trying to communicate that.
Read our full conversation with the flimmaker here.
While We Watched
While We Watched by Vinay Shukla
While We Watched pivots around one of the most talented, knowledgeable journalists, Ravish Kumar. The camera follows him everywhere, inside the newsroom, in his car, when he’s alone with his thoughts. ‘It’s a psychological thriller set inside a newsroom. It’s a film about adult loneliness. We have shot the film really up close with Ravish,’ says filmmaker, Vinay Shukla.
Finding Ravish
When I came across Ravish, I felt like he was going through a phase of intense contemplation in life — one wherein he was questioning his own relevance vis-à-vis his audiences. He was also openly disappointed with his audiences. I liked that about him. In a sea of self-proclaimed “Number One” news anchors who are out to validate and please their audiences, here was somebody who was going on-air every night and really chastising his audiences for not knowing/doing better. I have always been a fan of newsroom dramas and I felt like Ravish could be a new kind of protagonist for a new kind of newsroom drama. We are used to watching feel-good newsroom dramas but I wanted to make a film which reflects the anxiety-ridden lives of the news consuming audiences today.
While We Watched
Research and Production
I spent two years with him and I began shooting from day one. Whatever research I did, it happened alongside the process of shooting everyday. I didn’t have too many conversations off camera with Ravish to be honest. I am very focused on making sure that whatever story I want to tell, it must firstly be present within my visual material. It doesn’t matter what I have in my head, or what conversations I have with people, or what anyone else thinks the film should/could be — it will only work if the story I want tell is truthfully present within the material I shoot. So for two years, I shot with Ravish for ten hours every day. It was an exercise in patience. You shoot through the mundane, waiting to capture cinema. You try and find characters who you think will help tell you the story. I focused on Ravish’s team, his family and those around him, to try and map his internal life.
Read our full conversation with the flimmaker here.
Words Hansika Lohani
Date 14.05.2024