Summer is Upon Us [a review of sorts]

My friend and writer Paras Borgohain thought we should speak about my experience of making A Summer Flu and his experience of watching it. Here are bits from our conversation...Read the entire piece on his blog Reeling.

Never cold enough to be clinical, nor warm enough to play to the gallery – quite the case with not just her most recent venture, A Summer Flu, but a striking characteristic of most of Priyanka’s films – at least the ones I’ve seen. Set in a west Delhi neighborhood, an aunt’s visit for devouring sweet mangoes also marks a little girl’s flirtation with disaster – a tryst with an ice lolly that lands her a fever and a sore throat in the peak of summer. The images lull, rouse and very successfully present sights, sounds and smells of a Delhi summer known to many of us with a sense of heightened perception. Every bit is inventive and the images processed with hearty consideration.

Fresh in its telling of a predicament, its evocation of a time and space so intimate, yet familiar, the film was lauded for its originality in the Short Film Awards section at the recent Toto Funds the Arts in Bangalore. It was also in official competition in the short film category at the Mumbai International Film Festival and from what I hear  now – at the ultimate shining place for all short film makers – the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany. After one too many, “I don’t knows”,she finally spoke to me at length about where it all came from and how many alternatives to her initial choices lend an interesting texture to the film. Ladies and germs, I give you my one time partner in (film-making) crime – Priyanka Chhabra

1. It feels like ‘A Summer Flu’ is quite steeped, and vividly so in the space that its set in. Were you sure from the start that you wanted to set it where you did? I guess what I’m asking is, when you thought of making the film, did you always picture it playing out where it does? (Why so/ why not?)

—Okay so this is actually really interesting for me — because the film has been shot in my house where I was born, have lived and grown up. But I never wanted to do that, for some reason I was really trying to get away from that space but trying to look for something very similar. I looked at various houses in and around west Delhi, because that was the place I wanted to locate it in—-in the sense of the kind of houses -which is maximum 1-2 storey kothis — but found most people to be really uncooperative about shooting and also not finding something satisfying.

So when I did come back and started shooting in my house, for all practical reasons — the images helped me resolve that it was what I was looking for from the beginning. It was a familiar domestic space, which carries a nourishing energy, protects you and allows you to be and a lot of time has been spent in it right. The whole idea of ‘walls’ that the film keeps coming back to. The other important thing which really defined the way we created the images was that the characters were always enveloped by the space–the space was always bigger than the characters in it, surrounding them. The characters could not be outside or bigger than the space which contained them.

2. I loved the sound design detail, but one of the most organic and experiential scenes in the film to me was when our little girl tucks into the ice lolly – the rhythm in the background, the pace…it was almost cheeky in a way. What made you think of that? Were you actually looking to punctuate the film with that scene or was it an epiphany on the edit – the “magic” that some filmmakers keep talking about?

The epiphany for me really was how we shot that scene. I had imagined it very differently. And we had shot it like that the first day. It involved some very complicated (for a small crew) coordinating with the ice cream cart guy, the actor, the track, the sound recordist and making all noise in the neighborhood shut down. It was simply not working to anyone let alone the image’s effect.

So I had to improvise and this is in fact the last thing we shot because my cousin who’s the protagonist in the film, her aunt was coming to pick her up and I had a fifteen minute window to get this. This was the turning point in the film and I was out of ideas! I remember running up to the terrace and tucking my head between my knees and thinking what the entire scene meant anyway. The sound over that scene came up during the edit–I was unsure of it myself for a bit–but then decided to keep it.

3. Was there anything about your personal experience of summer that you wanted to capture but found limiting? Were you satisfied with what you could capture?

I did run into various crises (as I like to call them) during the film. During the shooting we definitely struggled with and I remember Sayak (cinematographer) and me going over this again and again — without resorting to any tricks or effects how do we prevent the images from looking too real. How do we infuse a sense of that languid-ness that you talk about. Because when you’re working without a budget, with almost no crew, basically under constant doubt whether it’s even worth everyone’s time and energy — it’s very easy to slip into what I call television mode. We did that the first day reviewed the footage and realised we needed to do this sticking to the original intention. I am very self-critical so it takes me a really long time to feel satisfied — in most cases it happens only when I -the person- feels really removed from the work I have been imagining and making – when the film becomes a thing of its own-thats when i can see it with any sense of objectivity –till then I work with a lot of reluctance — so it’s very difficult actually for me. But now with the screening at IAWRT my entire family is going to be there for it and I think now it really does satisfy me that I can show them this piece of work for which they really helped and supported me and I hope they will enjoy it.

4. What’s next? Do you consider this film’s “narrative” unique to itself or were there things about the process that you will consider learnings or revisit on approaching, say – a feature length film?

Right now I’m working on a short documentary exploring the emotion of Shame and another short work which was part of a residency I did in the Scottish borders in October last year. I’m not sure what you mean by the film’s narrative ‘unique’ to itself- but there are most definitely learnings from this process. Big learnings in fact. One of them is definitely to trust your process and watch that voice with the doubt.