THE slum-filled arteries of Jogeshwari East are the sort of places where you would hold your life as close as you can. Granular tin-can houses are piled on top of each other in this afterthought of Mumbai progress. But it’s also the way to film-maker Vijay Kalamkar’s room #7 in Gulabkondi chawl. The home was once just a single tall room, but now a second floor has sliced the original height and created a space that can accommodate nothing larger than a standard 5’10’’. The alcove is 23-year-old Kalamkar’s space, where the budding director and the Spandan Parivar brainstorm ideas that they hope will one day create an army of Hindi film-makers. The Parivar consists of more than 30 youngsters with various forms of film-related expertise, from direction (10), cinematography (4), art direction (3), editing (3), to numerous actors and production assistants. Each adds his expertise to create stories, mostly shorts, on Rs 25,000 and tinier budgets. Equipment is always rented and editing facilities are courtesy of Bollywood friends like director Milind Ukey, who’s on the team of megabrand Sanjay Leela Bhansali. ‘‘At first it was hard to understand what they were doing, but when you see the way they support each other, you can’t say no,’’ says Ukey. Along the way, members make enough material to strand together a portfolio that will hopefully propel some to the big time. Unlike any kind of formal association, Spandan has no office, no number, some have day jobs, others do this full-time—all contribute Rs 50 a month to meet sundry expenses. Stringy though it sounds, several members have gone on to study film at some of the best international institutions. In September, 28-year-old Spandan member Rajiv Mohite, who’s doing a diploma in film-making at the London Film Academy (LFA), made it to the top 10 of Europe’s Nokia and Raindance Festival with his 15-second Beautiful!. Last year, the Spandan associates used their beggar-bowl collection to get to the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. ‘‘Nineteen of us went in the general bogie and stayed in Rs 50 per night rooms,’’ says Kalamkar. The gamble paid off when his Rang won in the 24x7 movie-making category. It beat more than 40 entries, some from organisations like Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The Parivar first took form five years ago when a bunch of engineering students, including Kalamkar, met actor-scriptwriter Amarjeet Amle during a college festival. ‘‘We began talking about films and the atmosphere changed from engineering to films,’’ says Kalamkar, the son of a mill worker. Soon, several of them switched gears from science to film-making. Amle today is the centre of the group. The 35-year-old actor is a local Pied Piper of sorts, talking, and—in parent lingo—instigating youngsters into chasing the film dream. Seven years ago, he was a bank employee with quiet ambitions of making it as a Bollywood actor. So, one day he resigned to give it a shot. His scroll of film credits is still pretty short, with roles in the 2003 Javed Jaffrey-starrer Jajantram Mamantram and a smaller credit in the Ketan Mehta opus Mangal Pandey—The Rising. But what he hasn’t achieved for himself is far more impressive. Over the last four years, Amle has trekked across Maharashtra, from Sharad Pawar’s Baramati to Neera village and social worker Anna Hazare’s home town Ralegaon Siddhi, talking to anyone from theatre enthusiasts to juvenile delinquents about films. ‘‘Everyone wants to become an actor. I tell them they won’t,’’ says Amle. Instead he diverts them to an area that best utilises something other than their face. Like Mumbaikar Vijay Kadali (23), a Ganpati idol-maker, who wanted to be an actor before Amle suggested art direction. ‘‘It comes down to who’s got what and what they can get out of doing this,’’ says Amle. Using his advice, some Baramati attendees made four short films on subjects like euthanasia and poverty; there are also small groupings in Neera and Pune that consider themselves Spandan branches. Amle travels at his own expense and the workshops are organised by word of mouth. For instance, Satara residents got wind of Spandan through the Kumbhar caste newsletter Kumbhashri, which mentioned Kalamkar’s award. Amle is also the stimulus for members who want to study abroad. For instance, when Mohite needed Rs 11 lakh for his tuition fees at the LFA, Amle did the rounds of the banks and lenders. Talking to him, it’s easy to imagine this easy-going, frugal but enthused individual dash about with a desperate young man in tow. ‘‘My wife works and takes care of all the day-to-day things, or I would have been in trouble,’’ says the father of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy. As Kalamkar calls visitors up to his second-storey lair, nothing prepares you for the man—just 5 ft tall, a bout of childhood polio shrunk his body and left him crutch dependent. ‘‘I want to be the first handicapped person to enroll at FTII,’’ he says of the organisation that’s turned him down twice. Admittedly, his IFFI award-winner was a scratchy debut, but his latest and much better-executed work Need is an entry for the Berlin Talent Campus contest. As a photographer directs him, one of Kalamkar’s four sisters, Padma, a schoolteacher, watches silently, and Kalamkar remarks, ‘‘My family and I used to clash often when I said I wanted to do films, but when they see me doing an interview, they think everything will be alright.’’ Maybe even the FTII will change its mind.
