ABOUT ME
Writer, Director
My foray into the world of film has been an exciting and terrifying experience at the same time. Almost three years ago, I made the decision to leave my Geology major and switch into the Film and Media program here at Queen’s University. At the time, anxiousness and second guessing became second nature to me. This nervous energy extended into my family who feared about me venturing into a career they had no knowledge about. Nonetheless, they supported me and willed me to be the best I could possibly be in this new world. Their courage and sacrifice were huge influences on my largest project to date.
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In my final year at Queen’s (which technically is still only my third year in film) my thesis project has begun to come together. The main theme of this project is sacrifice and memory. Through interviews, archival footage and animated sequences, I am capturing the life of my grandfather who passed away when I was really young. All the interviews therefore were of my family who grew up around him and have been incredibly influenced by him. Here, I realized there were two very distinct sections to my thesis. The first of course is the process of producing a documentary which is down to mostly my own creative direction but the second is much more collaborative. This involved the process of collecting interviews from all of my family members. As I asked them questions, I realized I was out of depth at times since I didn’t know certain family details and relationships. Here, my father was able to step in and together we conducted many of the interviews.
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This process of documentation as it went on, started to gain importance and evolve into ab independent project of its own. Working so closely with my father on a creative process such as this, allowed me to understand how memory and post-memory permeate’s through different generations. Furthermore, the actual, very tactile process of documenting my family’s experiences, had not been done before due to lack of access to photography at the time. To capture their voices and memories in this format was incredibly important since it allowed for their accounts to enter the cannon of the time period. A cannon that has historically been presented by western colonial voices.
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To be involved in such a process made me feel very proud. Not just for the fact that this process of documentation was an act of reclamation and re-appropriation but also due to the shared experience with my father. Collaboration can be a rewarding experience. It was amplified even more so due to the pride I felt in being of service to my family.
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Commentary on some of my influences
The process of working on a project can often be disheartening. As you bring the ideas you have into a more tangible format such as a screenplay or an actual film, many small details can be lost, and it can feel as if the original vision in your head can never be truly met. To persevere through these moments of doubt, I have turned to certain films and filmmakers to bring back my love for the process of creating art. The works listed below are not just films that have been influential to me but also have inspired me to produce greater work.
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Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) by Satyajit Ray [1959]
The third in a masterful trilogy is my favourite film of all time. From a very young age, I was exposed to the films of Satyajit Ray due to him being from the same city me (Kolkata, India). I understood how incredible his films were but my special relationship with these films formed much later. is a perfect example of Ray’s humanist cinema; a form that shows the beauty in people’s lives as they struggle in very harsh conditions. The duality here gives the characters dignity and grace while we look into their lives. This approach to character exploration has been very influential in the way I can place my own characters in melancholic situations but also show the realism in their own hopes and aspirations.
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Roma by Alfonso Cuaron [2018]
Jumping forward 60 years, the humanist experience continues in Even more than the realism and humanistic qualities of the characters, the method in which Cuaron places the very personal relationships between people in the midst of a historical conflict really stood out to me. The brilliant juxtaposition of the two shows how the personal lives clash with the public lives and this balance is one is very much work to meet with the stories I create; placing believable characters with normal lives in extraordinary, historical moments.
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Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola [1979]
A classic in its own right, Apocalypse Now has had a deep influence on the way I look at epics. Coppola takes the traditional hero’s journey and completely flips it from the get-go. The tone and themes of the film reflects the very real chaos of the Vietnam War thus creating a very meta-textual experience. The biggest thing I took from the film was how to orchestrate controlled chaos. If the final destination has been decided, the story can take many different and unsettling turns. The stories I write have this quality as the audience is given clues as to how the journey will end but they have no clue as to how exactly they will get there. Furthermore, the meta-textuality of the film also showed me how it was possible to create a personal relationship with the audience through the use of cinematography and mise en scene.
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Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan [2017]
On the other side of the coin, a film like can be seen as very impersonal. This has been a re-occurring theme in the films of Christopher Nolan where instead of going too deep into the emotions of the characters, the focus is more on the character’s experience in the world. The cinematography, screenplay and score create a world for the audience to get lost in and this is precisely the thing I draw inspiration. World building is important factor in my stories and one of the main reasons is the techniques on how to engage audiences learned from this movie.
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Waltz With Bashir by Ari Folman [2008]
Ari Folman’s very personal war story is played out in the riveting This documentary deals with lost memory and in order to display the subjectivity of these memories, is told through the format of animation. This film had a very direct influence on me in the sense that it pushed me to look at memory as a theme. In my most recent film; a documentary about my grandfather and a very turbulent time in Indian history, I use this very technique to explore memory. Stories that have been passed down through generations are rotoscoped by me into minimalist animated pieces in order to not only display them on screen but to show how memory can be subjective and can be passed on through oral history.
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Cléo from 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda [1962]
Cléo’s two-hour existential journey had a profound effect on me when I first watched it. Since I had never experienced a French New Wave film before, it felt like a breadth of fresh air. With this film, I learned how a beauty can be found even when there is turmoil. Beauty in life and the lives of others in a city which itself is a character in this film.