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Journalism of Courage
Self-taught director Akshay Indikar believes that the process of making films is “not rocket science anymore” since technology has now become accessible to all. What’s more crucial for him is to protect his “voice” as a storyteller. “My films should be an honest representation of my life and community. Otherwise, it becomes an outsider’s gaze. It’s a challenge to protect it,” says the 32-year-old.
In his writer-director kitty is a documentary, “Udaharnarth Nemade” (2016), and two feature films, “Trijya” (Radius, 2019) and “Sthalpuran” (2020). When he made his feature debut with Trijya, at the age of 27, he borrowed heavily from his experience of migrating from his village to Pune. “My ancestors belonged to a nomadic folk tribe of Indi village in Karnataka. We used to travel to different rural areas and sing the praises of goddesses,” says Indikar. Udaharnarth Nemade and Trijya are streaming on MUBI in the New Voices section.
My ancestors didn’t own any property or have any proof of residence. We could not get a place to live because of our surname, Gondhali, which is also our caste,” says the filmmaker, who shifted to Mumbai earlier this year. That made his grandfather change their surname to ‘Indikar’. Discouraged by the lack of recognition of their folk art, his family looked for other sources of Income. Indikar’s father was the first in the family to go to school. After he got a teaching job at Akluj village in Solapur, the family settled down there. “We now have an address,” he says.
“When I moved to Pune for the first time at the age of 15 for higher studies, I was judged because of my accent,” recalls Indikar. He enjoyed taking part in theatre activities, and years later, he went on to study mass communication at Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, which proved to be a fruitful phase. It’s here that he read the writings of Padma Shri-recipient Bhalchandra Nemade. “His novel Kosala (Cocoon) and his idea of ‘nativism’ had a deep impact. He also became the subject of my first documentary,” he says. For this Marathi docu-fiction “Udaharnarth Nemade”, Indikar had to borrow cameras from a wedding videographer.
Down the line, at NFDC’s (National Film Development Corporation of India) Film Bazaar, its Co-Production Market, he found a producer for “Trijya”. This film eventually premiered at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2019. His second feature, “Sthalpuran”, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020. “Sthalpuran” explores an eight-year-old boy’s struggle to get used to his life in his grandparents’ village after his father leaves them.
Currently, Indikar is one of the directors for a Dharma Productions love-story anthology, and is doing the sound design for an upcoming Anurag Kashyap film. He is also finalising the draft for his third feature, “Construction”. “It is a personal movie. The story starts 5,000 years ago,” he says. Though he believes that making movies has become easier, their distribution remains an uphill task.
The filmmaker, however, is aware that “cinema is a privilege” for youngsters in rural areas who are not exposed to the art. “Under my new initiative ‘Phirta Cinema’ in 2017, I would like to show Majid Majidi (Iranian filmmaker) and Charlie Chaplin movies to people in villages. So far, I have conducted five online ‘cinema labs’ to train aspiring filmmakers. We have one more coming up in December,” he says.
