Brij Nath Betab
A film is not the poetry, yet it is the ‘supreme fusion of creative imagination and objective reality’. And if the objective reality relates the theme with the social fabric of a particular class of society, poetry is created. This is exactly what a team of five young Kashmiri professionals have achieved by making a film in their mother tongue. An endeavor that many would have dreamt of trying to do, but could not achieve, probably due to lack of conviction. Yes I am talking of Kashmiri feature film, ‘Partav’ that has been internationally acclaimed and awarded, even before it was screened in Kashmir. I had the privilege of watching this film at the special screening for “no objection certificate” by the National Film Sensor Board.
Titled Partav, the influence, the film is the reflection of the very tender relations between a husband and his estranged wife and the relation and affection between a confident mother and her innocent child. At the societal level the story deals with the life of a workaholic husband.
The film has all the ingredients of a commercial movie, yet I could safely put this in a non-Commercial cinema bracket. With my little bit of personal experience of Film making, I have no hesitation in calling this a mix of “New wave cinema’ and the “Experimental cinema”.
The Film deals with a serious and sensitive subject. There are no songs in the film. Even the world famous Dal Lake of Kashmir has not been used as a locale for shooting.
“The subject did not demand that”, said both the Director and the Cinematographer of the film, when I asked them about the reasons for that.
The thread of the story line of the film is woven round a professor, but the undercurrent message is that the truth always triumphs. It is a journey of life from Darkness to Light.
For me watching the film was not only a treat to the eyes but also a matter of great pride. As frame after frame and scene after scene would make me more optimistic about the future of film making in my native place Kashmir, that has so much of talent and bounties of nature to facilitate the younger generation in their pursuit of conquering the newer fields of professionalism.
Film buffs very well know that it is not only the story line but also the technical quality of a movie that makes its presentation worthwhile in totality. And to achieve the technical excellence the crew achieved the unimaginable. With very little financial resources at their disposal the technical team went for training and learnt the techniques like coloring and shooting before going on to the sets. “The idea was to make a Film in Kashmiri language that had Kashmiri professionals in every department of the production.” This was to show the world that we Kashmiris are second to none in this field, says Dilnawaz Muntazir, the Director.
The first to get professionally well equiped was Dilnawaz himself who joined a course for camera and Television production at the Anhad Institute of Media Studies, an NGO working in the field at Srinagar. Ashiq Hussain Rather, who edited Partav, went for a course in Film Editing.
The four Dilnawaz Muntazir, Mohammad Younis Zargar, Ashiq Hussain Rather and Zahoor Zahid huddled together and were also joined by Dilnawaz’s brother, Shahnawaz Muntazir who was also interested in Film making and script writing. When they all decided to collaborate, the company that came into being was this production house called ‘Dithyramb Entertainment Private limited ‘that produced Partav. To get the company running, they began by hiring out the production equipment.
The next step was a decision to propagate and preserve the Kashmiri language through the medium of filmmaking. And the choice fell on film making as ‘visual medium is more powerful and it has impact’.
At the outset, the selection and casting of the Artists had its own roadblocks. It was not an easy task. Right from selecting the subject to making a good film script,it meant lot of brain storming sessions, creating and writing a particular story line, rejecting it and re-writing had become sort of routine till I was satisfied of creating what I wanted to create on paper first says Muntazir ,the Director of the Film.
I took the cue from some known persons and conceptualized the story, says he. The son of a well known Kashmiri poet Muntazir Mohiudin, Dilnawaz Muntazir has done a course in Script Writing, Screen Writing and Television Production from Australian college QED.
Another stumbling blog was the script writing. The writers in Kashmir have lot of experience of writing Television dramas and almost no experience of writing film scripts. “I ultimately gave the script to G.N. Shahid sahib. But when the script came back after three months, I had to re-write the script to suit my concept of the film. What I did not change were the title of the film and the names of the characters that he had suggested. I liked them. But wrote the screenplay all over again to suit my concept of the film”said he to me at a meeting at the Press Club of India recently.
Finally the shooting started in the autumn (Late October) of 2011. Some sequences were shot in the summer of 2012.
Post Production started immediately thereafter. And with trained editor like Ashiq Hussain, it was not a difficult task. What was a bit difficult was the required hardware and software for DI Colour Grading and for that the production company (Dithyramb Entertainment) bought the equipment and the Color Grading was performed by cinematographer Mohammad Younis Zargar. The film was finally completed in December 2012.
The success of making film Partav did not come easily, said Dilnawaz. I had to fulfill the wish of my parents and had to complete my studies as a doctor first. But the habit of watching films from early childhood had made him passionate about film making. After completing the studies ‘The first thing to do was to establish a Film Production House, with talented persons’. And team achieved its first success, when the Film was completed.
Apart from being made by an exclusive Kashmiri team, the film has many specialties. The theme and the subject matter are local. The entire film has been shot in Srinagar, exploiting different seasons and the artists who have ample experience of acting in Television serials have to my surprise shun away from mannerism that has become a trade mark of Television and which has its roots in Radio dramas, where a particular era of drama production was prevalent. The credit for this goes to the Casting of the artists that was done by Dilwanaz Muntazir’s team. The dialogue delivery, that is so important for the success of a film, is superbly natural. The pronunciation, the accent and the flow of the language are remarkable. And how difficult or easy was that, I asked Mr. Zahoor Zahid a team member whom I know from Radio Kashmir Srinagar. “It was not easy. If we and in particular the director were not satisfied, we would shoot and retake till the perfection was achieved, says he. “After a day’s shoot we would huddle together and ponder over the days output”.
With the Canada film festival award already in their kitty, the film crew is confident of screening the film in Kashmir to a welcome response. And those who had the privilege of watching the film during private screenings had to look for handkerchiefs in their pockets to wipe the tears of emotional outburst.
Typical and traditional Kashmiri sensibilities subtly float up in the film. And the Film is a declaration from the younger generation of Kashmiri professionals that they have set out to conquer the world and through the artistic and creative means of cinema.
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