Village Voice

Gurvinder Singh,director of the National award-winning film,Anhey Ghorey Da Daan,on showing a different aspect of Punjab.

A calm smile plays on the face of Gurvinder Singh at the mention of his film,Anhey Ghorey Da Daan (Alms of the Blind Horse). The film won two national awards on Wednesday,for Best Direction and Best Punjabi Film. But for the director,nothing much has changed. I am happy,but I dont get carried away easily, he says.

The film is an adaptation of Punjabi novelist Gurdial Singh’s story of the same name,and deals with the issues of exploitation and migration. “After reading the novel,I had a desire to make it into a film. The issue of exploitation of lower-caste,landless labourers struck me as a problem that was common all over the nation, he says. The film sketches the lives of Dalits living in ghettos in Punjab. It is a realistic depiction of their exploitation by the land owners and their migration to other cities for work. This aspect of the state is never depicted in movies. Showcasing it on the big screen was not an easy task,” he says.

The plot unfolds the story of a village where the landlord has sold land to an industrialist and consequently,asks the villagers to vacate the place. Rickshaw pullers in the village,led by the protagonist Melu,protest the move,thereby changing the life course of the entire village.

The shooting for the film continued through January and February last year,and was ready with the final print by September. We shot on the outskirts of Bathinda along with people of the villages. It was quite a challenge,because the villagers were not actors and had never seen a camera. Getting them to act was not easy.

Singh,a graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India,is busy planning for the finances of his second film. I will be travelling to Hong Kong for the same purpose, he says. It will again be set in Punjab,in 1984,following Operation Bluestar. It will capture the lives of ordinary people who got caught between the violence of the state and the militants.

Anhey Ghorey Da Daan had a world premier at the Venice International Film Festival and since then has travelled to South Korea,BFI London Film Festival,Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and South Asian International Film Festival in New York. It also won the Special Jury Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival conducted recently.

Click here to join Express Pune WhatsApp channel and get a curated list of our stories

Tags:
Gurvinder Singh