Qissa The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, made by Geneva-based filmmaker Anup Singh is certainly appealing to international audiences. The film made in Punjabi with four
co-producers in Germany, France, Netherlands and NDFC India saw its release in Germany earlier this month. The film’s central theme is the Partition and its protagonist, Umber (played by Irrfan Khan), a Sikh, who is forced to flee his homeland during the 1947 upheaval. He obsesses about a male heir and when his wifegives birth to yet another girl, his fanaticism drives him to alter the course of her destiny. The inspiration for the film came from Singh’s own grandfather who
fled the Pakistani side of Punjab to Africa during the Partition. He carried a burning resentment about his loss of home and this tore him apart.
Often he couldn’t help but turn on his own family with a despairing remorseless violence. Bereft of his land, home country, he lived a bitter life of loss as a refugee. His tales of the Partition scarred Singh’s imagination in his childhood and this film is his attempt to put his grandfather’s ghost to rest. One of
the most disturbing stories he heard about the Partition was from an old man who told him how his daughter, barely a teenager. jumped into a well to escape rape (like many other women at the time). Sixty years later, he is still haunted by dreams of her ghost in the well looking up at the circle of sky above waiting for him to come for her. This story was one of the starting points of Qissa. A personal film on one level, Singh says Qissa also deals with the wounds in the collective memory of
the India nation that gets maneuvered and manipulated by politicians looking to exploit the situation to their own ends. However the film’s focus isn’t on the 1947 Partition solely, but on partitions of all kinds— of body, gender, inner and outer truth, life and death.
“We know how these violent separations
are used to label and define
things and people and to put them
in a predetermined place to make
them easier to control and exploit,”
Singh says.
Singh knocked on many doors in
India for five years looking for a producer.
NFDC was the only production
house that stood
with him but he needed more money.
Everyone was interested in the script
but insisted that the film be done in
Hindi. They couldn’t come to any
consensus on the cast either. Finally
a fated meeting with the German
producers of Heimatfilm, Bettina
Brokemper and Johannes Rexin, initiated
Qissa’s adventures into the
world of co-production. Very quickly
then Thierry Lenouvel of Cine-Sud,
France, joined, and then Bero Beyer
of Augustus Films, Netherlands.
Singh stuck to his convictions to
the end, believing that every tale and
every film seeks its own mode of
coming into being. “In any authentic
creation, there is no separation between
content and language. The
spoken language of the characters
then has as much value as any other
element of the film—be it music,
light, colours or quality of performance.
Every language has its terrain,
its music. If I hadn’t fought
to retain the language, I
think it would have been a
little like selling the soul
of the film.”
The large co-production
with international crew
meant that different cultural
perceptions and approaches
to filmmaking
brought huge cultural misunderstandings
to the fore
and also heated debates
about filmmaking.
Singh knew while writing the
script that Irrfan Khan would be
suited to play the role of the father.
The film also stars Tillotama Shome,
Rasika Dugal, Tisca Chopra, Faezeh
Jalali and Sonia Bindra. Tisca Chopra
is Singh’s dream come true. She can
suggest an emotion simply by a shift
in her breath, he says.
Tillotama Shome has won two best
actress awards for her role of the victim
who steadily learns to trust her
own conscience. Rasika Dugal plays
the role of chaos in the film, disorienting
everyone. She is one of the
most metamorphic actresses Singh
has ever worked with.
More than sixty years after the
Partition, Singh says we continue to
live our lives influenced by the same
partisan divisions within our nation.
The old wounds are constantly
scratched at by politicians to create
confusions whenever it suits them.
“One of the main reasons to make
Qissa was precisely to see how this
cycle of violence has today seeped
into even the intimate spaces of our
family. If we’re unable to be compassionate
and respectful with the
women of our family, for example,
then what hope is there for anyone
else?”
He says the film isn’t cynical or bitter
but suggests through its women
characters the scope for tenderness
and redemption.
Qissa received the NETPAC award
for the best Asian film at the Toronto
International Film Festival. It received
the audience award at the International
Film Festival of Rotterdam,
the best actress award for
Tillotama Shome at the Abu Dhabi
International Film Festival. At the Indian
Film Festival of Queensland,
Australia it received best actress for
Tillotama Shome, best actor for Irrfan
Khan, best cinematography and
best director.
The film was screened at the Mumbai
International Film Festival last
year where it won the Silver Gateway
Award. It is slated to release in India
on September 20 this year.
g Review Bureau
