Dungan Checks In

the film.

“Initially it was just this crazy one-line idea about an American filmmaker who made Tamil films. It is something I found out while trying to document the pre-independence era of Indian cinema. I discovered him in a write-up in an encyclopedia and tried to find out more. But there was lack of available archival material,” says Bali.

The research for the film took him to Chennai where he started picking up pieces of the puzzle,crucial aspects of Dungan’s story which had escaped history books. He met several film scholars and historians who are important voices in the film,elderly women who were once child actors and even actor Kamal Haasan,who despite not having worked with Dungan threw up perspectives from the Tamil film industry.

More importantly,he watched all films made by Dungan just to be sure whether it merited a movie. “He was significant in the sense that he brought in a lot of inventive techniques such as moving out of the studios and shooting outdoors. For instance,a scene in Ambikapathy,where the protagonist’s life flashes in front of him as he waits to die,” explains the 45-year-old. Dungan’s impact was a little more than the technical gloss and sleekness that he is attributed to have brought in,believes Bali. His strong women characters were a contrast to the submissive leading ladies of those days. Some of Dungan’s most memorable films are Ambikapathy (1937),Meera (1945),Ponmudi (1949) and Manthiri Kumari (1950).

Bali’s film keeps it simple,putting together a comprehensive picture of Dungan’s stay in India,rather than an all-encompassing biography of the man. “It was a conscious decision by my editor (Irene Dhar Mallik) and I that we’ll keep the narrative linear,” says Bali who went to Film and Television Institute of India in the early ’90s. Although Bali has made a number of documentary films,An American in Madras is his first feature-length. He was an assistant director in Everybody Says I’m Fine and Matrubhoomi-A Nation Without Women.

The most crucial aspect about Bali’s film was gathering archival material on Dungan,which was hard to find. Among other things,he traced the author of Dungan’s autobiography,visited film archival centres such as West Virginia State archives,US,National Film Archive of India and Columbia Video Films Malaysia. “They initially said they would charge me for the material,” he says,about the folks at West Virginia,“but all they knew about Dungan was that he went to India,made a name for himself and came back. I told them,I am only filling the gaps in what exactly he did in those 15 years in India. They saw a point there and gave me all stuff,” says Bali,who wants to make a “Punjabi indie” film next.