WAH!: AN INTERVIEW WITH RAMESHWAR BHATT
All photos in this series by Rameshwar Bhatt.
Hi Rameshwar. I'm curious to hear from you about the themes/processes of portraiture, fluidity, and solitude that appear in these stills.
My filmmaking, so far, has shied away from an auteuristic approach. There is no grandiose mission to configure some deep meaning. Instead, I struggle to find a balance in the process between spontaneity and high concepts. I do not wish to overlook the power and beauty of spontaneity by viewing films as only a controlled production.
Each project I make is like a constant succession of birth and rebirth. One grows from the other. My emotions usually guide the aesthetic and formal approach. For example, emotions of affection and love result in the possibilities of metaphors. Emotions of unrest and concern drive me to raise questions about our changing climate and the environment. My financial needs give rise to a body of work that is guided by emotions of necessity. On the whole, my films are a mixture of internal, contemplative and reflective feelings that come to me.
What possibilities does performance/film/portraiture open up for you? What do you love or find challenging about the process of making?
Any filmmaking offers the possibility of capturing the present time, space and people within a shot, and representing that into another time, space and to people. This is a powerful and precious skill. I do not dictate or direct details; I reveal details. I try to let the gaze find its own place rather than always controlling or directing it. I believe in the potential of the suggestive and implicit.
I see an object or the subject as it is and find the essence of that object and reveal all the details about that essence that may complement the larger narrative. The reason is that a good shot, in any case, is not possible without details; one only has to recognise and reveal them. I enjoy imagining one shot from many angles. That has helped me develop the ability to view one's own life from many angles, and be at peace with it.
How is a body of work that emerges from video stills different from (and/or in conversation with) each discrete, distinct film?
I could divide my filmmaking journey in two facets. One facet is unguided or spontaneous self explorations, and the other is collaborative and commissioned projects. My constant urge to capture and record leads me to the unusual in the very usual. Often I question if what I do can be called filmmaking. Because the stories I end up filming find me, the shots are all naturally-lit, I mostly work with ambient sound, sequences are often unscripted and improvised, there's no production crew, and the creative decisions are made through the five senses – spontaneous. At a young age, I was extremely taken in by the spontaneous and diaristic narrative formats of YouTubers. I was fortunate to cross paths and work under the guidance and support of contemporary Indian filmmakers like Anand Gandhi, Daria Gai, and Dheer Momaya. I spent time shadowing on their sets and trying to meet their prompts. Being on set with these filmmakers was my version of film school, where I found the knowledge of production techniques, equipment and effective storytelling at play. If one wants to make films, one starts making films!
As a current third year undergraduate student of philosophy and languages, I am accumulating perspectives of theoretical underpinning to water my visual work. I wish to see my body of work in all its possible incarnations. I have yet to bloom a thousand times more, at least!
I'm curious if you could share more about your making/philosophical guides or teachers that have influenced your making practicee. Also, how do you break away from teachings in your making process?
The majority of my work has emerged out of direct observation of my near, close, and real world. Being a stammerer, I dialogue through my visuals and films. I equate filmmaking to the philosophical thought of Sphoṭa:
When discrete alphabets, which are so fundamentally different, are brought together to reveal a specific meaning, the pre-existent meaning in the mind of the speaker manifests itself through these sequential alphabets in the mind of the listener. But, what fascinates me is that the meaning that emerges in one’s mind is never sequential; it will always be as ‘a flash’ of revelation. I draw this fascination from the terrain of philosophical discussions about language by the ancient Indian philosopher and grammarian, Bhartṛhari.
Similarly, when I make films, a pre-existent and self composing reality — with it’s own meaning — is captured, curated, or arranged to reveal meaning, and is presented to the viewer. It is the library of perceptions, observations, ideas of the filmmaker and the viewer that are in conversation through the film. Therefore, frames are my alphabets, shots are my words, and a film is my utterance. So, when sequential images are moving, they define the motion and your perception of the meaning that they reveal. But, when one freezes on an image, it becomes you who defines what you perceive of it. The whole (a shot) manifests through parts (frames). When presented with just a single screen grab or a still, it often manages to reveal something other than what it manages to reveal when in its sequence. The viewer often imagines a shot that may have never been the shot, and that variety of imagined shots compose a film that I would not have been able to see if the stills and screen grabs wouldn’t have the urge of disclosing meanings on their own. All this makes me amazed, or as we say in Gujarati, vismit!
What moved you to choose the selected images/screen grabs? What was your process for choosing/selecting these images?
Ḍingaḷ Sāhitya in Gujarati literature has attracted me for many many years. Besides its powerful emotive nature, the form of writing and recitation in Ḍingaḷ manages to create dynamic visions through, often, just onomatopoetic rhythm. Therefore, I try to create, or at least explore, visual onomatopoeia in many of my films. So, I tend to gravitate towards formal cohesion and compositional rhythm in the images I choose to share.
If you'd like, please share more about the current projects you're working on: what excites you about them, and what are you looking forward to in your making practice (long-term or short-term)?
My projects are many. A project a day! Some survive all the way to becoming a full and final film. Some ferment and rise when they feel like it. Having said so, I am currently working on tribal farming, interviewing radical design, and finishing a film of silk brocades in the city of Banaras.
What do you most want people/viewers to ask you about your work? (Another way of asking this is, what have I left out that you'd like to speak to?)
We always leave out things as soon as we capture something, and that is the nature of our reality. The list of films I want to make is long today, and longer at the end of my life. Therefore, I focus on what comes to me, and when time remains I focus on what can be done. Developing schedule, as opposed on an enveloping schedule!
I do not see myself as just a filmmaker, as my love for labour makes me a gardener and a cleaner in the morning, often a cook in the afternoons, and an argumentative son at night on the dinner table. I cannot just be a fascinated spectator, I have to be an involved participant in all that attracts me. That is why, reducing one’s self to a single dimension is unfair to not only one’s own self but also to others. This multi-dimensionality of a developing soul enriches one’s life as spectacularly as a multi-dimensional shot-sequence would enrich a narrative! I wish to master at living, that will help me do things in their possible totality—considering an individual’s capacity.
Rameshwar Bhatt is an Indian documentary and art filmmaker who began telling stories at the age of thirteen. Some of his work has been shown at the Abrons Arts Center (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Arts (New York), Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and Solas Gallery (Ireland) among a few other venues. Some of his selected collaborations are with Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Memesys Labs, Aware Foundation, International Food and Policy Research Institution, and the Self Employed Women’s Association. A few of his early films have received awards from the United Nations, the World Bank Group, and the State Government of Gujarat. He is also a third year philosophy and languages student at the Ahmedabad University. While discovering the minimalism of lavish details, Rameshwar is genre bending from a love of hard labour into varied incarnations of his films. He is yet to bloom a thousand times more.
Instagram: @ek_shabda