Breaking barriers

Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Reel it in Swaroop Kanchi

Swaroop Kanchi was a tennis player before he became a filmmaker. At 16, he joined Wigan and Leigh for design and advertisement as attendance was not a priority. He was part of the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy, Chennai, and played tennis at the junior level. “As a sportsperson, I had no idea about creativity”, says Swaroop about joining Wigan and Leigh. “I started dabbling in filmmaking and made ‘The End’ which received good reviews — people who watched it compared it to Satyajit Ray’s movies!” “The End” was also screened at Rhode Island.

Swaroop looks at making films very differently. “It is not work — it is my excuse not to work!” Filmmaking is a creative, childhood wonder for him. Swaroop was firm that he didn’t want to get into the Kannada film industry and filmmaking was not a mere hobby. “I was dissatisfied working at an ad agency, which had its own limitations and sold my friend’s furniture to create a budget of Rs. 7,000 for the second film”, he laughs. He was firm that he didn’t want to sell soaps and shampoos. With an empty room, a reverse sleep cycle and cheated of Rs. 3,000, Swaroop’s dreams of a big set began to fade. But he kept at his dream of making feature films in India.

“DéjÀ vu,” his next film with Mrinmoyee, had a surreal element. “It received international recognition, and people would analyse and discuss the film with ideas and meanings that we hadn’t thought about!” Hundred and twenty actors, 30 locations with props like fire and machine guns on board created a sense of disbelief when Swaroop told people about his big set dream.

“‘Black Sugar’ looked into terrorism from a different angle — about terrorism as self-preservation.” People at the New York and Los Angeles film festival loved the film though. He was a night bird, working all night long, writing scripts.

His next film “Acid” was about drug addiction, produced by Iranian-American Alex Kazan. “Taxiwallah” was about a crime fighting action hero — a Sikh taxi driver by day and a crime fighter by night — much like a comic book hero.

Sure that his films weren’t going to represent Bollywood, he worked on a docu-drama “Bollywood Calling” starring filmstars from Anupam Kher to Jackie Shroff which never took off.

Fascinated by the Kumbh Mela, he documented the Naga babas and others who go underground without food and water for nine days, in “Ardh Kumba”, named after the event which was a huge event and saw an equally large congregation. “Hong Kong Dreaming”, an Indian-Chinese collaboration which saw the relationship between a father and a daughter, premiered at the UK Film Festival.

“People think that any movie from China or Japan will be about martial arts, so I wanted to break that stereotype,” says Swaroop who also produced the film. “Superman and the School of Necessity” was a short film to promote education amongst the underprivileged. Swaroop is currently working on a music album and starting on a film called “The Circle is not Round”.

Visit www.hongkong dreaming.com

This column features those who veer off the beaten track.

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