If it looks like an auto transition from an unabashed muckraking
film journalist to
turn a filmmaker, Ram Kamal Mukherjee argues that it was no easy a journey to
make his short film directorial ‘Cakewalk’, starring Esha Deol Takhtani, Tarun
Malhotra, Anindita Bose, Siddhartha Chatterjee, see the light of the day.
Ram Kamal, who baked ‘Cakewalk’ from a raw
story of a woman’s triumph over odds he wrote, to screenplay integrated with
dialogues along with Chandrodoy Pal, meant to make the film as a producer but
never knew an artist’s vision can be tested at so many points of time. “Esha
was ready to do the film as soon she heard the story but on condition that I
direct the film. She said that as it was my story and I know how the characters
sit, talk and emote, so I only have to direct the film,” reveals Ram who had
recently written the biography of Esha’s mother and eminent actress Hema
Malini, titled ‘Hema Malini: Beyond the Dream Girl’ that scored quite a
success.
Once Ram hovered this unique idea of making a short film, he had
to transcend arrays of preconceived writs of theories and people’s endemic
inability to look into the depth with more than a consummate eye, he regrets.
“Everybody discouraged me. All had their negative self in fore. Where will you
do it? You will get a YouTube release, who will watch it? How will you mount
the film? How can you guarantee the return on investment? Why not with a
younger, popular, mainstream actor? They were actually not understanding what I
was trying to do,” he laments.
Principally, he chose not to let Hema Malini close rank behind
him for this project. “I didn’t [approach Hema Malini] and I purposely didn’t
to avoid it being called a family-funded film and I didn’t want people to say
it was a cakewalk for Ram Kamal. I named the film Cakewalk but everything was
anything but cakewalk”, he grins. His approached was finally shaped by Dinesh
Gupta, Shailendra Kumar and Aritra Das, who came together to produce the film.
Bollywood is a different ball game for a debutant director with
a fresh idea. Almost eight years ago he had decided to make his first feature
film and ‘was almost done with the casting of Esha, Riteish Deshmukh and South
Indian actor Surya. Somehow, that never worked out.’
Ram decided to take baby step to have a better foothold as a
storyteller before he takes a quantum leap to feature films. “I first wanted to
prove myself as a good storyteller. I thought I would rather go with the newer
trend of short film, web-series, digital platform, because there you really
don’t have to bother too much about where will you show the film. I didn’t have
a platform when I started the film, but I was pretty sure about the content and
it will get platform,” he said. The film is set to have its World TV Premiere
on Rishtey Cineplex HD on February 17.
Ram
is not a novice. He gathered on-job experience on filmmaking working in around
12 films while he was with Pritish Nandy Communications and recent enough he
produced ‘Bin Kuch Kahe’, a television series aired on Zee TV. He has another
short film ‘Season Greetings’ in post-production and signed two more short
films before he takes a plunge to fulfill his long-dormant dream of making a
feature film.
