Filmmaker Rishi Chandna: ‘I am turned on by a certain kind of humour which is tongue in cheek’

As the aspiring TV newscaster Suzanne Stone, in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995), Nicole Kidman says these unforgettable lines: “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody’s watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.” I sensed a similar attention-seeking spirit in Rajesh, Munna and Prem, the protagonists of Rishi Chandna’s second short documentary Party Poster, an exploration of the ubiquitous poster culture in Mumbai, specially around the time of the annual festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, when the spiritual and scientific, political and personal come together in a unique manner on the massive banners of the pandals and in heads and hearts of the people featured on them. The 20-minute film also looks at how this unique eco-system had to change in the wake of the first wave of COVID 19 which is when the film itself was shot. Rajesh, Munna and Prem are the members of the Bandra Laundrymen’s Association, setting out to design the poster for the Ganesh pandal that they would set up and run. For them it’s a compelling medium of expression and an assertion of their identity that otherwise lies lost in the banal daily grind. Away from the all-encompassing anonymity, the prospect of being featured on the billboard holds the promise of instant fame, recognition and clout and a possible future in politics. It is their way of turning the spotlight on themselves, even as it stokes their vanity. Party Poster comes four years after Chandna’s much-loved debut short Tungrus (2018) about a pet rooster of a middle-class family that runs havoc in their small Santa Cruz home. It played at more than 150 film festivals worldwide, including Hot Docs, IDFA and the BFI London Film Festival. Both the shorts are quintessential Mumbai films, bring the hidden side of the city and its many communities and subcultures to fore. Both are laced with a distinct humour and a sense of the absurd. Chandna has a knack for capturing the quirks and oddities and hidden details of the people and places and narrates with generous doses of both satire and empathy. Party Poster had its world premiere in March 2022 at the 36th Fribourg International Film Festival, where it won the CH Cinema award, given by a Swiss student jury. It has also screened in competition at the Glasgow Short Film Festival, It’s All True International Documentary Film Festival, Brazil, the Krakow Film Festival and the DocAviv International Documentary Film Festival, Israel. Coming up next is the prestigious Palm Springs International ShortFest where it plays on June 25. On the eve of the screening, Rishi Chandna spoke to Namrata Joshi for Firstpost. In both your films, I see a strong sense of Mumbai, whether it is a cloistered, claustrophobic apartment in Santa Cruz, or the world of laundry men in Bandra. Is the city a muse for you? I have lived in Mumbai for 15 years. I moved last year and am now based out of Goa. The density of life in Mumbai reflects in these absurd situations. In Tungrus it is about bringing a pet like a rooster into an apartment. Then things are bound to go crazy. Party Poster can open conversations around what is a public space in a city like Mumbai. It is a city where the insane crosses with the mundane and that’s the cross section that I’m really fascinated by. This wackiness and the sense of the absurd that you talk about, one somehow doesn’t traditionally associate with documentaries. What is it about these elements that appeals to you? You can approach these subjects in several ways. You can have all kinds of gazes, lenses. More than a decade ago, these posters had come into the limelight because there was a lot of civic activism and litigation around them. There was a section of society that saw these posters as a public nuisance, as irrelevant in the public space. Now to me, from the very start of making a film, if you take that kind of position, then you are seeing your world as a problem, which means that you can take a position of entitlement and privilege. I think that’s an approach I can’t take. I think you must look at things from a stance of curiosity, try and find empathy with what is otherwise easy to judge. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t bring a gaze to it. Like I look at it with empathetic satire. Our culture is filled with these idiosyncrasies. You can really illuminate satire when you approach things with curiosity. You can be fascinated by them, and you can try and understand them instead of trying to take a stance. There are subcultures and communities around us in a city that we often end up ignoring or invisibalising.  By focusing on Bandra Laundrymen’s Association you have shown the suburb in a different light than the hipster cliches it is often associated with. I have lived in multiple parts of Bandra for over a decade. It is actually a very diverse space. You can say that of all of Mumbai. Having lived in Bandra, you just need to step out for a walk outside your own bubble and can find yourselves in a very chaotic and productive space. In fact, this [dhobi] ghat which I shot was right behind my house in Pali Hill. It is 100 years old. Imagine the history and the legacy around this one space. Right next to the ghat you have something like The Bagel Shop. Right in between them you’ve got [filmmaker] Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s bungalow. It’s a whole medley, a melting pot of everything. There is no end to how diverse the space is and is, perhaps, less represented. We have stories from Dharavi coming out of our ears but there is so much more potential to tell stories from Bandra. Apart from the sense of absurd and the empathetic lens, how much is humour important to you? I think I am turned on by a certain kind of humour which is tongue in cheek, deadpan and has a subtext to it. Take a film like Parasite. You have a scene when the family is in the basement and fumigation happens. The father says, ‘let it happen; we’ll get pest control done for free’. Now within those few seconds you’ve got so much commentary running about class dynamics. That’s the kind of humour which pierces you. I hope to be able to make films that capture that kind of a tone. It allows you to explore many metaphors in your subject. You can tell allegorical stories. Like someone called Tungrus an allegory of the outsider. Humour also makes people more receptive, perhaps. It makes it more inclusive, and it also disarms you. Some amount of moral ambiguity can be delivered through humour, which I think is more important than taking a high ground on things. There are certain themes and undercurrents—that of identity and fame. The aim to get recognised and gain clout through the entity of a poster, there’s something very moving about it… I come from a very different class and community than the subjects that I’m representing, so the burden of representation is on me, not on them. The politics of representation is something you must be very careful about when you are doing something like this. So, when I started research on the film, I realised that these posters are also known as chamcha (sycophant/hangar-on/lackey) posters. But it was very clear that I do not want to approach it from this path because when I began to speak to the characters in the film, the first thing I realized was that for them the posters are an important means of communication. It’s a mode of expression for them and their community. Likewise, for politicians also it is valid and an important means of communication. You can call it a chamcha poster, but it doesn’t change the fact that it matters and it’s highly relevant to a large group of people. We need to get off our high horse and try and get a sense of their perspective, their point of view on this. They are disenfranchised in a way that they need these posters in their life. It is something to look forward to. I give it full recognition and credit. I like to consult people; I talk a lot to people about what I’m doing. It is like a brain trust. Like one of my friends is an anthropologist, he’s also my co-writer. In fact, he’s one of the first people I go to, he’s the first one to take things apart and to sometimes point out that listen, be careful, you’re walking on thin ice. You start to get perspectives; you can start to recalibrate and it’s a process that happens all the way till the edit. It’s not something pre-decided; it must creep organically into each stage of the filmmaking process. What exactly kicked off the film? Did you know any of the three guys in the film—Rajesh, Munna and Prem? Or did a poster catch your eye?   Living in Bombay, you see posters all the time. At least I have not become indifferent to them. I’ve been fascinated. It started off as an exploration of how and why these posters are created and installed. In July-August of 2020 when the lockdown was beginning to ease, I remember going for a drive on the Western Expressway. All I could see on the streets was messaging around COVID. Basically, you had banners of all shapes and sizes that had taken over the entire outdoor space.  It struck me as something extraordinary because Ganesh Chaturthi was right round the corner and usually this space was bound to have political posters wishing people, welcoming them to the pandals. But there were no signs of any celebration of this major festival. That ignited a curiosity to see how the festival would occur and how these posters would adapt, if at all they would adapt. I was also trying to make sense of this pandemic.  The once in a lifetime, discombobulated situation that everybody found themselves in. So, there was a lot of turmoil within me, and I had to find some way to express that. The path to filmmaking is also filled with coincidences and I have a weird habit of checking people’s WhatsApp DPs. So, I was looking at finding somebody who appears in these posters. I thought of making it from the perspective of somebody who makes them, the perspective of the printer but then the person on the poster is who I wanted to make this about. I remember looking at Rajesh’s WhatsApp profile picture which was basically a shot of the old Ganesh Chaturthi poster from the previous year. He would come to my building in Pali Hill to collect clothes. I got in touch with him. He was in UP at that moment. I asked him about the plans for the festival considering the situation in Bombay was very dire. He was totally nonchalant about it. Poster would surely be made. Ganesh Chaturthi would be celebrated. I just kept getting more and more fascinated by this attitude. That’s where the conversation started. When he came back, I went to the ghat with him and met Munna and Prem. I was struck by the utilitarian aspect of the posters. How they get recycled as waterproofing tools the next year. There is a cyclical nature to it. The poster goes up, it comes down to get utilized in a world where nothing is wasted or discarded. Everything is repurposed and upcycled. Even a poster is part of that repurposing. For more reference, photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani has done a photo essay called Afterlife which is basically about these posters and where they end up. The finale brings the film a full circle—the posters getting removed. I had gone to shoot at Almeida Park in Bandra. Me handling the camera, which I rarely do, but I just wanted to. So, I saw this great truck pull up and the BMC guys just came out and started removing the posters. I had no intentions of capturing it, but I got lucky. Eventually I felt that it became a good epilogue for the film. What next for Party Poster after the festival run? Hopefully, if I can, I’d like to release it on a platform. With Tungrus I got quite lucky because I was able to license it to several platforms. Like Criterion, New York Times. It is available everywhere and is not geo-blocked. I was able to also distribute it to PBS in the US, which is a big market. So, I’ve learnt a lot about distribution for my work. After it’s done a few more festivals, I want Party Poster to be available for people to watch online. What’s coming up after Party Poster? What makes shorts so special for you? In fact, I am making my first fiction feature film. Ghol (The Catch) is a Gujarati film, set in the state. It is about a poor fisherman becoming rich when he catches five tons of the precious Ghol fish. It has been to the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) and the Hong Kong International Film & TV Market (FilMart) after participating in the 2021 Sundance Screenwriters Lab and NFDC Film Bazaar. I am in the process of raising funds for it. I hope to shoot it next year. I’m making three short films, on the subject of water, commissioned by an academic body. They’re in the context of climate change. In fact, I had to put my clients for the feature film on hold because the funding for this came along. Short films are not like a practice for feature films. They are very important as an art form in themselves. It is never going to be one versus the other. But having said that, the kind of freedom you have when you work with your own limited resources, I think I will need to keep doing that. To not get stressed out by the larger pressures, which come with filmmaking. Namrata Joshi is a journalist, National Award-winning film critic, and a fledgling festival programmer. 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