Garbed in a Pathani kurta and sporting a beard, Rahul Chandawarkar seems like an extension of his documentary, one about Lahore in the year 2004. It was in that year that this first-time documentary filmmaker visited Pakistan and got the chance to interact with the locals who often spoke in Pashto to him. The visit actually happened because Rahul, a Goa based senior journalist, was a performer/manager of the Urdu theatre troupe, Raabta who were performing their play ‘Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhiya’ at the World Performing Arts Festival in 2004 at Lahore. ‘I was excited to visit Lahore and I carried along my Nikon camera and Sony handycam. I shot nearly eight hours of footage over the period of 14 days which had to be edited to just 45 minutes for the film,” says Rahul.
Originally from Pune, Rahul has worked in noted national dailies like Mid Day, Times of India, Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Sakal Times and Gomantak Times. An alumni of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, he worked for ten years in sales and marketing and 18 years in media. “I started writing as a class X student and have been writing ever since. I studied for four years at Don Bosco School, Panjim and my wife Shobhana also lived in Vasco da Gama for 14 years. We are very fond of Goa and that brought us back to settle down in Colva,” says Rahul, who was the editor of Gomantak Times in Goa. He is also the recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism on environmental reporting in January 2012.
While working for Times of India and before moving on to DNA, Rahul was a freelancer who dabbled in theatre. “As an actor and manager of the theatre group, I could travel to Lahore to perform at the World Performing Arts Festival in 2004. It was a wonderful experience as people from different countries were participating and it was an amalgamation of various arts on one stage. I shot my footage on analogue format which later had to be digitised. I captured the sights, sounds and the glimpses of Lahore. In 2005, I visited Lahore again as the manager of the troupe but I didn’t shoot anything,” says Rahul.
After coming back to India, Rahul was occupied with his profession and didn’t get the time to go back to his bag full of video cassettes. In 2012, he found the time to digitise the film for editing. “I got in touch with Mihir Apte, who edited my footage to 45 minutes with background music by Strings, the Pakistani pop-rock band, who provided their music free of cost. Few scenes have my voiceover to explain the video,” explains Rahul.
He further adds, “The streets of Lahore were vibrant with energy; people with smiling and welcoming faces, colleges students conversing against campus walls, a lot of freedom which won’t be found today. It was very peaceful and charming. The festival itself was a uniting force. During the British rule, Lahore was known as the Paris of the East for its culture. I even attended an India vs Pakistan hockey match with both flags in my hand. I was waving both and yet the other spectators were very sporting and starting waving the Indian flag. My photograph was printed in the Pakistani dailies.”
Lahore has not been the same since and today Rahul’s documentary film, ‘Building Bridges’ can be viewed as an archival video dating back 12 years. The film was screened in Pune in 2012 at the Film and Television Institute of India with Shyam Benegal as the chief guest and in December 2013 for Sanjana Kapoor in Pune. The first screening in Goa will be held at People Tree, 6 Assagao on May 9, 2016 followed by screening at Carpe Diem, Majorda the following day. ‘I am planning on submitting the film in the non fiction category at the International Film Festival of India this year and the Dallas South Asian Film Festival and the Florida Film Festival,” concludes Rahul.
‘Building Bridges’, a documentary film by Rahul Chandawarkar will be screened at People Tree, 6 Assagao on May 9, 2016 at 8pm and at Carpe Diem, Majorda on May 10, 2016 at 8pm
