Brick in the wall

India’s presence at the Oscars is a short film with a big impact. Here’s to Kavi

The film just walked to me,” Harish Amin is still a little numb with the announcement of an Oscar nomination for his short film (live action),Kavi. Directed by American documentary filmmaker Gregg Helvey,Amin and Guneet Monga co-produced the 19-minute film along with Gregg. “It was Gregg’s school passing out project,and being a huge fan of India,he came here three years back to make a film,” so impressed was Gregg with the culture,vibrancy,colour and people of India that he travelled extensively in search of stories,and en route stumbled upon one of a boy working at the brick kiln. “A place where his family worked for generations. It’s a film about child and bonded labour and how this boy (played by Sagar Salunke) yearns to go to school and play cricket,” narrates Harish,telling us about how Gregg raised money through fund-raisers and personal loans,and shot the film in 12 days. From travelling to brick kilns in Delhi,Uttar Pradesh,Rajasthan and Bangalore to reading up on slavery in kilns in Disposable People,a book by Kevin Bales,“Helvey did everything,and this was a story with lot of potential,about a boy who has the courage to fight for freedom. And no,it wasn’t inspired by Slumdog. It was worked upon much before that.” The film has already won 12 awards across the globe,“including the Academy Student Film Award in the US and was screened for House Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington DC,in the presence of Congressmen,” Amin adds that Helvey’s rewriting the script for a full feature film on Kavi.

Intrigued by the topic of slavery,Helvey,who pursued a Master’s in Film Production from University of Southern California,says that Kavi was his thesis submission and had the support from a California based-NGO,Coalition Against Slavery and Trafficking,that’s working to pass a legislation in the California senate against slavery. “Bonded labour and slavery are not just an Indian issue. They are global issues that affect people in many developing parts of the world,” says Helvey,who shot a 30-minute segment for BBC 1 productions on solar rickshaws in Udaipur,and in 2006,an award-winning documentary,Overexposed on how pornography adversely affects men. The next year he produced a documentary The Knife Grinder’s Tale in the slums of Nairobi.

With Debesh Bannerjee