Lights…camera…behave

Amarjot kaur

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Engaging environmental concerns with real life events to make a children’s film can be quite a task, especially in the market-driven mainstream cinema and director-producer Amitabha Singh carefully tested the waters before treading on this turf.

Having produced films like Chillar Party, Khosla Ka Ghosla and The Good Road (which was the first Gujarati film selected to represent India at the Oscars), Amitabha enters the realm of directing for the first time with his up and coming film, Shortcut Safari; and he sure finds the director’s job to be the toughest one! Why? Ask him, and he pops an honest answer, “Well, most problems that a producer faces are solvable, while the challenges and problems that a director faces are mostly, unsolvable!” he laughs.

While talking about the film that features Jimmy Shergill in the lead role along with seven children who, on a school trip, lose their way and land up in a jungle, Amitabha says that environmental concern was not the only reason that prompted him to make the film.

“The film is inspired by real life events and I made it with the objective that children are made aware of the importance of forests in our environment and how would they impact our lives in near future,” elaborates Amitabha. Though he shares that the first of his interests was not cinematography, but photo journalism, he says that most of the shots that show animals have been shot by him, except the clouded leopard. “The clouded leopard has been made in CGI, because it was almost impossible to find one here. In fact, what compelled me to get the clouded leopard on screen was because it gets hunted only because it is so beautiful, so it’s his beauty that gets him killed,” he says.

Also, as he talks about making a film with children, Amitabha says that he made sure of three things, the first of which was to keep the children’s parents away, the second being the omission of the word, “action” and the third that he arranged for a support team to assist shooting a film in the jungles of South Gujarat.

“I didn’t want children’s parents around because kids tend to get conscious around them and instead of using the words, ‘action’, I would say, ‘behave’, which ensured that children didn’t act, but be themselves. We also had a support team that would arrange for portable toilets and a team of forest experts too,” he explains.

Though most people resist the idea of making films for children, Amitabha says that it is by far, one of the strongest mediums of influencing and sensitising children about issues. Adding to his statement, Jimmy shares, “I did this film mainly because of Amitabha ji, and because of the message that this film gives.”

The film has been taken to as many as 10, 000 schools across India so far, and it was showcased at Vivek High School-38 on Friday to mark The Earth Day celebrations. The film will be released on April 29.

amarjot@tribunemail.com