Ashvin Kumar
It has been suggested that this article should be split into a new article titled Ashvin Kumar filmography. (discuss) (July 2020) |
Ashvin Kumar | |
---|---|
Kolkata, India | |
Parent |
|
Website | ashvinkumar |
Ashvin Kumar is an Indian filmmaker. He wrote / directed and produced India's only
In 2005, Kumar became the youngest Indian writer/director to earn a nomination for an Academy Award Oscar nomination. He is also the first Indian to be nominated at the European Film Academy with his film Little Terrorist.
Early life and education
Ashvin Kumar was born in Kolkata, India. He is fashion designer Ritu Kumar's son.[citation needed]
He did his schooling at
Films
Road to Ladakh
Kumar's first feature film was Road to Ladakh, which took nine months to make, although the actual filming was done in 16 days.
Starring Irrfan Khan and Koel Purie (of Everybody Says I'm Fine!), Road to Ladakh follows the surreal rites of passage encounter between a dysfunctional, coke-snorting fashion model and an ultra-focussed, strong-silent stranger who are thrown together by chance.[citation needed] Road To Ladakh was set near the borders of India and Pakistan, and employed a multi-national European crew. It hit several obstacles in the Himalayas and was nearly not completed, as documented in The Near Un-making of Road To Ladakh.[5]
Little Terrorist
His second film, a
The film was based upon a real-life incident in the year 2000, where a young goatherd crossed the Indian-Pakistan border and was subsequently imprisoned by the Indian police. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister of India, freed the boy as a peace gesture intended to improve Indian-Pakistan relations.[citation needed]
In the film, a 12-year-old Pakistani boy named Jamal mistakenly crosses the border into Indian territory while attempting to retrieve a cricket ball.[8] While Indian soldiers search the village for the Pakistani "terrorist", the boy is given shelter by an elderly Brahmin schoolteacher named Bhola, despite the latter's deep-rooted prejudice against Muslims, and the objections of Bhola's niece, Rani .[9]
The story is set near the
The film is a "live action short", just 15 minutes in length. It has been described as the first short film to get a commercial release in India.
The film was crewed through the Shooting People organisation; members who liked the script paid their own fares to travel to India to film it.[12] Kumar became the only Indian to be nominated for an Oscar in the short film category.[13]
The Forest
The Forest was loosely based upon the writings and exploits of Jim Corbett and uses the tale of a man-eating leopard to address environmental concerns.[2] The film is feature-length (86 minutes), and was released in theatres in India on 11 May 2012.[citation needed]
The plot concerns a married couple who arrive at a
While The Forest is a conventional action film, Kumar intended the film to convey a strong pro-environmental message.[14]
The film was produced by Judith James and the music recorded at the
Dazed in Doon
Kumar, himself a former student of The Doon School, was invited by them to create a film, subsequently named Dazed in Doon. The film runs to 55 minutes and was made in just four months, from the start of pre-production on 20 June 2010 to the first screening on 23 October 2010.[citation needed]
An international crew contributed to the making of the film: post-production was completed in Goa, Italy, and London, with Kumar simultaneously completing post-production on Inshallah, Football. Most crew members worked for a fraction of their usual fees: Kumar persuaded them to participate in the making of film by highlighting the opportunity of teaching young children film-making in a participatory film project that would result in film of their own. Kumar sings the Doon School song "Lap Pe Aati Hai" in the soundtrack as well as Howly is Krishna which was improvised during a music recording session in Goa.[citation needed]
Imaginox, an online film school, were the sponsors of the video Making of Dazed in Doon. Two British film makers were sent by Imaginox from the UK to join Kumar's crew on The Doon School campus where they, simultaneously with Kumar's filming, shot a behind-the-scenes documentary film.[15]
The film is a
Kumar and his crew spent several months on the campus making the film in a consultative and participatory process that included both teachers and students. The film was shot over 25 days, and included a cast and crew of 40 boys and more than 500 extras. As a consequence of dealing with these logistics, which included training a large number of young boys as actors and crew-members and dealing with a heavy monsoon that upset the shooting schedule, Kumar improvised some of the acting and settings of the film.[citation needed]
Inshallah, football
Kumar's first documentary film, the National Award winner [1] Inshallah, football, is a feature documentary about an aspiring footballer who was denied the right to travel abroad on the pretext that father was a militant in the 1990s. The film was completed in 2010, and faced difficulties getting released in India. The film's first screening in India at the India Habitat Center received this review from Tehelka magazine: "Kumar's camera catches the irony of Kashmir's physical beauty, the claustrophobia of militarisation, the dread and hopelessness of children born into war and the nuances of relationships. It also filters the inherent joie-de-vivre of youth, even if that flows uneasily with Kashmir's collective memory of unmitigated grief... There is no better way to understand Kashmir right now".[16] The film was shot by Kumar himself using five different camera formats.[17]
Inshallah, Football is about 18-year-old Basharat Baba, known as "Basha". His father, Bashir, was a much-wanted leader of the armed group Hizbul Mujahideen. When he left his home in Kashmir to join the training camps in Pakistan in the early 1990s, his son Basharat was barely two months old.[citation needed]
Basharat belongs to a new generation of Kashmiris, having grown up under the shadow of a protracted conflict. His passion is football, and he has been coached by Juan Marcos Troia, an Argentinean national and FIFA accredited football coach by profession. Marcos aspires to breed world class players from Kashmir; he and his wife, being attached to both Basha and Kashmir, migrate to Srinagar with their three daughters to take up Basha's cause.[18]
Marcos runs a football academy called International Sports Academy Trust; and an exchange program for his most talented players to train at Santos FC, Pele's old club in Brazil. Basharat was one of chosen few, but was denied a passport by the Government of India. The passport in question did come through after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah intervened.[19]
Inshallah, Football tells this story through Bashir's recollections and travails.[20] Kumar describes the film as "the story of three remarkable men – one is his father who fought for his beliefs, another about the football coach who's come all the way from Argentina to start this football academy, and this young man who is struggling to play football."[21]
The film has been critically acclaimed and played in competition part of the wide-angle documentary section at the Pusan Film Festival where it also received the Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund,
Inshallah Kashmir
Kumar's 2012 film on Kashmir, Inshallah Kashmir, is the story of contemporary Kashmir. A series of counterpointed testimonies, the heartbreaking coming-of-age of ordinary people; warped and brutalised by two decades of militancy and its terrible response.[24] Tehelka says, "Although the camera and narrator usually provide the impartial eye in a documentary, stitching the story together, in Inshallah, Kashmir it is the Kashmiris who weave their deadpan narrative into a cohesive picture. Their matter-of-fact monotone says more than an entire valley of screams could."[25] The film won Kumar his second National Award, this time for Best Investigative Film.[26]
Inshallah Kashmir opens with ex-militants describing the torture they underwent when captured by the army. A
Disappearances and fake encounters led to the creation of mass graves, hidden away in sensitive border areas that civilians and journalists are not permitted to access in the name of national security. Human rights lawyer and activist Parvez Imroz reveals to us the presence of almost a thousand such graves in the valley. Rape victims from
The film then leads us to 'normalcy' or the social ramifications the last twenty years of devastation brought to the valley. Militancy in Kashmir resulted in the Government of India deploying tens of thousands of armed troops in the region. We hear the story of one boy who lost his leg because he was caught in crossfire. The film ends on a poignant note with a young artist saying 'I need my space.'[citation needed]
On 18 January, Alipur Films uploaded the first seven minutes of the film Inshallah Kashmir : Living Terror online.[27] Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter picked it up and the link had over a ten thousand hits in a week and generated curiosity and contempt alike. Views had crossed over fifty thousand within a week.
The idea of releasing Inshallah Kashmir online and free of charge was to take the film to the masses, and to make it accessible to as many people as possible – in Kashmir, within India and around the world.[28] The full film went online on 26 January 2012, on the Indian Republic day and had over almost fifteen thousand hits that day. Since then, the film has been screened at festivals around the world.
No Fathers in Kashmir
In February 2016, Noor's Kickstarter campaign raised £74,000 ($100,000). The Kickstarter platform provided funding for the film without being held to anyone else's agendas, or having to compromise the creative vision of the script. To support the crowdfunding campaign, Ashvin travelled across the UK to visit Kashmiri communities in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Rochdale, Bradford, and Birmingham and held free screenings of his films Inshallah, Kashmir and Inshallah, Football.[32]
Filmography
- Road to Ladakh (2003)
- Little Terrorist (short film, 2004)
- The Forest (2009)
- Inshallah, Football (2009)
- Dazed in Doon (2010)
- Inshallah, Kashmir (2012)
- I Am Not Here (2015)
- No Fathers in Kashmir (2019)
Awards
Year | Award | Film | Result | |
---|---|---|---|---|
2005 | Academy Awards – Oscar | Little Terrorist | Nominated | [33] |
2005 | Almeria International Short Film Festival – Audience Award | Little Terrorist | Won | [34] |
2005 | BAFTA /LA Award for Excellence – Honorable Mention
|
Little Terrorist | Won | [35] |
2011 | Gold Hugo
|
Inshallah, Football | Nominated | [36] |
2010 | Dubai International Film Festival – Muhr Arab Special Mention | Inshallah, Football | Won | [37] |
2005 | European Film Awards – European Film Award | Little Terrorist | Nominated | [38] |
2004 | International Film Festival of Flanders-Ghent – Prix UIP Ghent
|
Little Terrorist | Won | [39] |
2004 | Manhattan Short Film Festival – Grand Prize | Little Terrorist | Won | [35] |
2004 | Montreal World Film Festival – First Prize (Short Films) | Little Terrorist | Won | [40] |
2011 | National Film Awards, India | Inshallah, Football | Won | [41] |
2012 | National Film Awards, India – Silver Lotus Award | Inshallah, Kashmir | Won | [42] |
References
- ^ Doononline.net
- ^ a b Hyderabad Times, 12 April 2005
- ^ Shooter Films Interview with Archived 1 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Shooting People. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Durham, Bryan. (9 May 2009) Little Terrorist / Road To Ladakh – Movies Reviews. Mid-day.com. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Little Terrorist / Road to Ladakh DVD. Induna.com. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Little Terrorist
- ^ "Bollywood and partition". Mumbai Mirror.
- ^ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 25 February 2005
- ^ Deccan Herald, 13 February 2005
- ^ Express India 16 September 2004
- ^ BBC News World Edition, 17 February 2005
- ^ Shooting People Interview Archived 1 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Shootingpeople.org. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Merinews, June 1, 2009. Merinews.com (1 June 2009). Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Tharakan, Tony. (27 June 2007) Reuters UK, June 27, 2007. Reuters.com. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Behind the Scenes of 'Dazed in Doon'. Imaginox. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ India's Independent Weekly News Magazine Archived 10 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Tehelka. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ India's Independent Weekly News Magazine Archived 13 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Tehelka. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ A football kick that aims for hope Deccan Chronicle, 13 November 2010
- ^ Tehelka, 15 November 2010
- ^ More Than A Game, Express India, 5 November 2010
- ^ In Kashmir, inshallah, there will be football, The Daily Rising Kashmir, 15 November 2010
- ^ Pusan International Film Festival loves docs Archived 10 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Europe-asia-documentary.com. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Inshallah, Football Archived 4 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Dubaifilmfest.com. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Inshallah, Kashmir: Living Terror – Info. Facebook (26 January 2012). Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ India's Independent Weekly News Magazine Archived 30 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Tehelka. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ "National Awards: list of winners | NDTV Movies.com". movies.ndtv.com. Archived from the original on 20 March 2013.
- ^ Inshallah Kashmir: Living Terror – Preview, the first seven minutes. YouTube (18 January 2012). Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ Kashmir movie triggers new controversy | Andrew Buncombe | Independent The Foreign Desk – International dispatches from Independent correspondents – Blogs Archived 1 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Blogs.independent.co.uk (27 January 2012). Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ "Ashvin Kumar: Noor". ashvinkumar.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2016. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
- ^ "Sundance screenwriters lab". Mumbai Mantra. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
- ^ "Pandolin – ASHVIN KUMAR'S 'NOOR' SELECTED FOR APSA CHILDREN'S FILM FUND". Archived from the original on 28 April 2016.
- ^ ABPL. "EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominated film director visits UK to cast and film new movie on..." asian-voice.com. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
- ^ "The 77th Academy Awards|2005". Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "Almería en corto Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes". almeriaencorto.es. Archived from the original on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ a b "Little Terrorist | Short Film Central". shortfilmcentral.com. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "Chicago International Film Festival – 2011 – 47th Chicago Film Festival". 7 January 2014. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "Dubai International Film Festival – NEWS 2016". Dubai International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 24 April 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "European Film Academy : Home". europeanfilmacademy.org. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ Lavagraphics. "Little Terrorist wins UIP Prix 2004 Ghent". Film Fest Gent. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "Our hope at the Oscars". The Telegraph. Kolkata. 21 February 2005. Archived from the original on 24 April 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
- ^ "Fighting for a Voice". The Indian Express. 15 November 2018. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
- ^ "List: Winners of 60th National Film Awards". Daily News and Analysis. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
External links
- Ashvin Kumar at IMDb