Date:08/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/08/stories/2007120860851500.htm

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Award for Indian film-maker

Hasan Suroor

Film shows how Indians recycle paper

G.D. Jayalakshmi

LONDON: G.D. Jayalakshmi, a U.K.-based documentary maker from Karnataka, has won one of the top prizes in this year’s Commonwealth Vision Awards for her film on how India recycles paper.

The 90-second film, ‘Paper ! Paper !’, was commended for its innovative interpretation of the Vision Awards theme, “Changing Communities, Greening the Globe.”

Ms. Jayalakshmi, who received the award from the outgoing Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon at a ceremony here on Thursday, told The Hindu, that the film was a tribute to India’s “raddiwallahs” and their contribution to conservation.

“Like all Indians I grew up seeing my family sell old newspapers to the ‘raddiwallah’. So when I set out to explore the theme of this year’s awards, I thought here was the story of ordinary people doing something extraordinary without even being aware of it. I like telling stories about ordinary human beings because it is the ordinary human being who, in the end, is extraordinary,” she said.

The film, shot in Delhi, opens with a “raddiwallah” going on his rounds calling “Paper! Paper !,” and culminates with the “raddi” he has collected being converted into paper bags by a group of women who earn their living doing just that.

Ms. Jayalakshmi, who came to Britain in the 1980s as a Commonwealth scholar, worked for the BBC for many years and currently teaches at a British university besides making films.