GHOSTS of PARTITION

GHOSTS of PARTITION  

July 20, 2014

Anup Singh’s Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, based on the Partition, is slated for its India release on September 20. The filmmaker spoke to LISA ANN MONTEIRO 


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 wife gives 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. Review Bureau