The Birth Of A Filmmaker

Probably this is how it all started.

As a young boy, growing up in a remote hilly village in North Malabar, Kerala, watching a film was a luxury. There were two cinema talkies in the village. Mind you, talkies, not theatres. Whenever a movie was on, you could hear the entire soundtrack of the film from a few hundred metres afar. Listening to the dialogues and songs somehow instilled desperation.

My village slept early. The only establishments that were alive after 9 were the talkies. The last movie screening colloquially referred to as the second show, would start at 9 and end at midnight. And booking tickets for the second show was for the drunkards and the unworthy. Never for men or women of repute.

Such were the times.

Those cinema talkies were characters in their own right. I haven’t visited the village in decades. To be frank, it is no more a village. Officially now, it is a town. The talkies are now theatres with Dolby Surround Sound and soundproof walls.

My ancestral home is flanked by hills and forests. I lived with my mother, sister and grandmother. Father had retired from Airforce and was struggling to build a new career far from home.

But, whenever possible, he would come home, much to my delight. After dinner, he had a habit of pacing the verandah, lit by a dim electric bulb, which was nothing but an apology of a candle. The night would be quiet with only the sound of insects humming around the dim light and the occasional howl of foxes.

There, in that moody night, he would regale me with film stories. Films that he had watched as a young soldier in the Air Force. The life of a soldier allowed him to travel, read good prose and watch amazing films.

The films he narrated were — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Goal — a movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Pele, and of course, Godfather.

And, the way he narrated the stories, you felt that ache in you to watch these films. Father had that gift. Especially when he described that scene from Godfather — the movie studio boss waking up to find a severed horse head in his bed, you had to watch it.

It would be many years before I watched these films. And, I have viewed them many times over.

Now, when I pause and think, I realise that I fell in love with cinema without having watched them. I listened to films.

I imagined films.

Could that be the reason that I am more interested in imagining and making films rather than watching them? As I write this, it has been 6 years since I went to a movie theatre.

Looking back, it was quite unnatural. Night time in a hilly village in North Malabar, Kerala is hardly the place to listen to a Francis Ford Coppola film.

It is all wrong.

No, it is right. It is in fact, perfect.

Cinema is everywhere. From North Malabar to northern Alaska, the magic of films is the same. It is deep, penetrating and inspiring. Be it Padmarajan or Coppola. Tarabont or Bharathan. The magic touch of masters can penetrate the soul of an ardent film lover anywhere.

Hence, my pursuit of films.