More than a decade later, now working in Bombay, I saw Sayalee Karkare's film, Books in the Big City, and not only did it take me back to my thoughts as a child but gave me answers for the many questions I asked myself then. Featuring readers, booksellers and prominent writers such as Jerry Pinto, Namita Devidayal and Kiran Nagarkar, the film left me overwhelmed.
How did the idea of Books in the Big City come about?
Sayalee: Whenever you embark on any kind of creative project, you have to feel like you have something to say. We have always been book lovers and have grown up around books. So this film is like our own personal ode to books and reading, because they mean so much to us. Reading, as a pastime, is a rather solitary event and the film was born out of a desire to capture this inner world of reading.
What were the biggest challenges you faced (1) as a film-maker and (2) as a reader while making this film?
Sayalee: As far as film-making is concerned, it was learning all the technical aspects from scratch. For instance, while Matthew had experience in photography, Books in the Big City was his first film, and he had to pretty much figure out video and sound on the job. Plus, he is from South Africa and was not familiar with Bombay at all prior to the film. Obviously, this resulted in many confounding situations, but it made the experience all the more fun. Similarly, we didn't know how to edit, we learned how to use an editing software while actually editing our film. Aside from the technical aspects, getting people to speak to us was another challenge and so was getting permission to shoot in bookstores or on the streets. These, however, are part and parcel of documentary film-making.
Tell us what you learnt about people, reading and the culture of reading in Bombay after making this film.
Matthew: For me, this was a public policy lesson. It is a hugely positive thing to have people, especially the youth, reading books in cities like Bombay. But a reading culture needs to be nurtured and protected by government and civil society, especially with the distractions of this technological age. At very least, school and public libraries need to be well-stocked and open to everyone, and book fairs and other events should be organized regularly. There is plenty of room for innovation in encouraging and supporting public interest in books.
Did the film intend to give a particular message or was your focus was to narrate a story? Aakash: Our focus was the story. We wanted to tell the story of reading in Mumbai in the '80s and '90s, the time in which we grew up. We didn't want to use a voiceover or make it about ourselves so we tried to find people whose voices were close to us and in that sense it is the autobiographical story of us as readers.
Sayalee: However, Aakash has since completed a media course at the Sophia Institute and I am pursuing my PhD in German film and literature. Matthew is now working as an urban development analyst with the World Bank in Jakarta, so here's hoping that Jakarta gets a lot of green, reading spaces! We all had our pet interests, and it is nice to see that the team continues to engage with topics that meant something to them. There will definitely be more film projects!
I don't quite know when and how, but there will certainly be more.
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