Another Perspective on Stability

Stability in our lives is something that most of us intuitively seek out. Mr. Kukunoor, it turns out, has a very different perspective on stability.

Nagesh Kukunoor was a featured speaker in IIT Madras at this year's Saarang festival (2011). He narrated the story of how he came into movie making. He was working in Atlanta, GA, as an environmental consultant, leading a comfortable life. However, he harbored this lifelong desire to make movies though he had no training in it whatsoever. Mustering up courage he quit his US job, sold off all his stuff and moved in with his parents in Hyderabad, India. Using his own savings and his credit cards, and with a lot of assistance from both his parents he wrote and shot the movie "Hyderabad Blues." After starting out slow, the movie really caught on and Nagesh Kukunoor made a name for himself as a director.

Based on his own experience, Nagesh Kukunoor came to believe that stability (and the comfort that a regular paycheck brings) works actively against those who want to pursue their passions. He believed in this so strongly that he named his own production company SIC – which stands for Stability Is a Curse. He has gone on to make around a dozen movies under this banner.


PS – In that talk, Nagesh also narrated the story of trying to get Hyderabad Blues sold. India's Star TV expressed interest in the movie. Nagesh who had run out of money once the movie was made, and was headed back to the US asked for Rs. 2 lakh, which is quite a small sum. But Star TV refused to pay that and Nagesh dropped the asking price to Rs. 1 lakh. The network again refused and in desperation Nagesh said he'd settle for 0.5 lakh. The network wouldn't even pay that. In the next few weeks, the movie got picked up by a couple of international film festivals. Within months, Star TV came knocking and paid Nagesh Rs. 50 lakh (100 times his last asking price) for the rights to broadcast it.

Movie: A Map for Saturday

My wife was already standing in the checkout line at the public library and I still hadn't picked up any movies. I ran over to the Travel section, where the DVD cover of A Map for Saturday caught my eye. The blurb said something about a guy who takes off for a year around the world. I grabbed that and a couple of other travel movies. (It is almost tempting to believe that books and movie choose me, just as much as I seek them out.)

So the next morning, after my wife left (she's taken up a short-term contract assignment) and I was alone in the hotel, I popped the movie into the DVD player.

Even before the initial montage ended, I was completely hooked. And in five minutes, I was feeling really guilty. I knew my wife would really enjoy the movie too, so I stopped it. (I watched a movie about the Silk Road instead.)

That same evening, after dinner, we both watched A Map for Saturday. The title is based on the idea that 'on a trip around the world, every day feels like Saturday.'

Brook is a 25 year old who decides to give up his job in NYC and a successful future as a TV producer to hit the road. And he takes his camera along. He stays in hostels from Sydney to Bangkok to Europe to Rio. And he is really good at interviewing people, making them open up. The result makes for a compelling and at times mesmerizing documentary.

When I mention this movie about taking a year off to others, their first reaction is "Oh, I could never do anything like that." Which is precisely why they should watch this movie. To expand our horizons, and to learn how others think.

The movie reminds us of the dreams that we all squelched in order to fit in. It tells us that we owe it to ourselves to give at least one honest shot at pursuing our dreams.

The finished product is great and professionally edited. But since I have the time these days, I also watched all the deleted scenes. And the interviews and the DVD extras. Those are a little more raw, but people are less guarded and therefore extremely candid, which makes them very insightful for us viewers.

Brook captures the loneliness of the long-time traveler wonderfully well. If you love travel, have dreamed of taking time off, want to know what the joys and sorrows and longings of slow travel are, go and get this movie. (It should be mandatory viewing for all backpacker-wannabes.)

Get it from your local library, or through Netflix, but be sure to view it.

One-Person Projects

I now realize that I was making excuses back then. From time to time, we all come across instances where one person, through sheer perseverance and not much else achieves something remarkable. Confronted with those examples, I was able to go easy on myself by thinking 'if only I had more time'. The thing is, I now have the time and so that excuse doesn’t work anymore.

I recently saw a documentary titled Nobelity, a one-man effort. Since I am also currently reading about Crowdsourcing (and getting very excited about the possibilities), I am realizing that both ends of the effort spectrum -- group effort or single person actions -- are equally interesting and potent.

This post is about three feature-length documentaries that I saw this year, all of which are essentially one-person efforts.

Nobelity has 9 interviews with 9 different Nobel prize winners in disparate fields, shot on location in several countries. Without exception, all these laureates are very good communicators, capable of communicating directly to the lay person about powerful ideas and concepts. (I highly recommend that you seek out and watch this on DVD.)

Turk Pipkin conceived of this project (worried about what the world would be like 50 years from now, the world his two young daughters will grow up in) and took the time (over 3 years) to follow through. It is an opportunity for us to hear Nobel laureates speaking to Turk, one on one.

Peace One Day is one Jeremy Gilley’s attempt (he almost succeeded) to see if the whole world would set aside one day each year when there would be no wars, no fighting. A world ceasefire, just for one day. Obsessed and consumed by this idea, Jeremy meets with students, NGO’s, politicians, the Dalai Lama, presidents of countries and Kofi Annan, trying to convince them to give it just a try. Again, do watch the DVD if you can get hold of a copy, if only for this guy’s persistence.

Finally, Scared/Sacred is one person’s visit to around ten places of major catastrophes (think Bhopal Union Carbide, think Chernobyl, think Cambodia’s killing fields, think Hiroshima). In these places, interviews people, hangs around and allows us to share in his personal journey. His goal is to look for lessons and to communicate hope even in these places of oppression.

All three movies are extremely rewarding, and I recommend them all. Be sure to also watch the story behind the making of these DVD in the special features sections.

Again, the humbling part all of three documentaries is that they are all one person efforts – real-life reminders of what one person can do, if only they took the time.