Introduction
Below is the story of the rational, beginning and gradual progress of a creative quest that has resulted in Raivision Academy of Film approximately 10 years ago. This story starts in Fiji back in 1970s and travels through England, Australia, India and back to Fiji. It is story of the search for ones identity, in the context of janam bhumi (birthplace) matra bhumi (motherland) and karam bhumi (The land where one works). It is also about ones burning desire to find a voice in the media which is almost totally dominated by the media moguls of the West- a phenomena which started approximately 500 years ago and is set to continue for some foreseeable future.
It is the anti-racist work in London that I did from 1987 till 1995 that made me realize that the perception of the Black and Asian people the majority of people in this world has been shaped by the West through the vast array of media that they control. The Black and Asian people, until very recently, had little say in the global media and had little stake in it. When I migrated to England from Fiji in 1980, there were hardly any Black and Asian owned media there. I remember in early 80s waking up early in the morning each weekend to catch half hour Asian program on BBC TV. A few radio programs, newspapers, magazines flowed later. Asian TV, which was later taken over by ZEE TV followed later. Black owned media in the UK was even fewer. These few scattered Black and Asian media was almost useless in challenging the racism and racially motivated crimes and attacks there.
After graduating as a Sociology degree in Greenwich in 1990, I took up a position as a Principal Race Equality Officer at London Borough of Newham, the east London borough which at that time had the dubious distinction of having the largest number of racially motivated crimes and attacks in whole of United Kingdom. I was offered this job because of my undergraduate research work on race issues in London plus my voluntary work experience with the Greenwich Action Committee against Racist Attacks (GACARA) as well is with the London Borough of Greenwich Race Equality Unit.
After taking an early retirement from the London Metropolitan Police Service, in 1987, I joined politics and in 1990 I was elected to the London Borough of Greenwich Council as a councillor. Because of a series of racially motivated murders and setting up of the national headquarters of the far right wing British Nationalist Party in the borough, Greenwich had acquired the title of the racist headquarters of Europe in early 1990s.
Tackling overt and covert racism in Britain at that time had become a massive task. At ground level funerals for murdered children and young people had to be arranged, families relocated and supported, victims of racial crimes protected, relocated or counseled. At political level public meetings, local and national demonstrations organized and coordinated, police stations picketed and the national leaders lobbied. At the same time formal strategies address the endemic cause of racism and racially motivated crimes and harassments had to be developed. By early 1990s I had developed the first ever anti-racist policies and procedure in Greenwich and all the main Greenwich Council departments began to adopted and implement them.
By now you may be asking what the above experience has to do with creativity and Raivision. Well, here it is.
First step into creative world
As the Principal Race Equality Officer in Newham my main role was to recruit, train and supervise volunteers from the local community to provide support and advice to hundreds of victims of racially motivated crimes and harassments. I conducted training sessions for volunteers every two or three months. A core aspect of this training package that I had developed was the history of Eurocentric racism and how it impacted on race issues in contemporary Britain. After a few training sessions I found myself repeating the aspect of training and I began exploring ways to make a video of this session for the trainees.
A video of this session would have made my life much easier and I could let my colleagues to use it as well! The main stumbling block was that I had no experience in making video films; I hadn’t even seen a video camera then! I didn’t have a clue how to write a script or direct a film shoot.
Fortunately for me I was introduced to an emerging theatre director, actor and playwright. We became friends and because of common interests, began to share a house in Illford. He became one of the volunteers as well. We began to write a script for the video film. But we encountered another problem! I had all the information in my head and he had the skills to write the script. The information was so vast; spanning from the time Christopher Columbus accidentally arrived in the Caribbean 1n 1492 till 1990s. After many ‘heated discussions’ and fewer hair for both of us, a colleague at Newham suggested that I should write the information as a novel. That sounded like a grand idea; it certainly saved our friendship from falling apart. The manuscript of Silent Cries-A Journey through four Continents was ready by 1993 (it was published in 1994 and launched in 1995), and it took us a few months to write the script.
However, by that time my contract with Newham was about to finish and we decided to produce a stage play instead. Funds were raised, actors cast and after three months of intense rehearsals, the play was premiered at the Tom Alan Centre theatre in Strathford (East London) in February 1995. At that time the iconic Sanjeev Bhaskar was working at the centre. The hugely appreciated play toured several theatres in London, culminating in the Asian Theatre Festival held in Hounslow in May 1995. Fortunately a good natured gentleman had video graphed the premier and presented a copy of the edited version to me.
Silent Cries-A Journey through four Continents, the book, the play and the video cassette are the only creative work I did in London. Because of some personal and some professional issues, I left London and settled in Sydney later that year. However my whole experience in Britain, from serving in the police, anti-racist and political work and the creative work made it absolutely clear to me that I must get involved in media in one way or the other. For me my role in media is primarily to educate; entertainment is secondary. Education through entertainment became Raivisions’s motto later on.
After arriving in Australia I started working for the Fiji Times magazine in Sydney, while completing my MA in Communications and Cultural Studies. I looked for actors to put on a segment of Silent Cries. This re-written segment called Alvida, concentrates on the journey of some Indian indentured laborers who end up in Guyana to work on sugar plantations vacated by the emancipated African slaves. I started Sahara Drama and Arts Academy and recruited several Indian models and dancers and trained them as actors. We started working on the play but the attempt was unsuccessful because general lack of interest in stage plays at that time in the community.
First steps into film production
In 1987 I was approached by Vishwa Naidu, who had produced several films in Fiji, to write screenplay for his first film Archanak, which he planned to produce in Sydney. After meeting me he offered and finally persuaded me to act in this film as its male lead. One of the subjects I studied as part of my MA in Communication & Cultural Studies at the University of Western Sydney in 1996-97 was film direction. I requested Vishwa Naidu to let me assist him in directing the film and he agreed. Archanak provided me opportunity to learn the art of film production.
Reuniting with Fiji’s first feature film producer
As a teenager back in 70s Michael Chinappa produced Fiji’s first feature film Kalank. I was just completing my final exams to enter Fiji’s only university when I was offered the lead role in this film. I began rehearsing the part but before shooting started I was offered a medical scholarship at Fiji School of Medicine. I was faced with a tough choice, remain in my home town and become an actor or go to the capital city and become a doctor! In my heart I wanted to become an actors but my family were adamant that I should go to the medical school. I persisted and went to Michael and asked him if I completed his film would he send me to India to act in Indian films. In his inimitable way Michael said to me that he could not promise me that. Disappointed, I took up the medical scholarship. Kalank was released in 1977 and I regretted not doing the film. I terminated my medical scholarship later that year.
In around 1997 I met Michael Chinappa in Sydney. I was pleased to know he was planning a film. After a series of meetings the cast and crew were finalized. I also met up with Ranjit Singh, the villain of Kalank, who was making a comeback into film acting after 20 years. His son Ajit Singh was playing the lead role. Michael offered me the role of Ajit’s elder brother and Sunita Sethi, the heroine of my first feature film played the role of my wife. I was happy working with Michael after lapse of 20 years. His film Jhumka was completed and released in 1998.
Producing my first feature film
While all these were happening a recent Indian graduate from Sydney film school approached me to assist him to run a film acting class. I recruited some students for him and assisted him during the 1 month long course. One of the things he had promised to the participants was roles in several Bollywood films that he stated will be filmed in Australia. However after the course he disappeared with the money and we did not hear from him for a year or so. Some of the students frequently asked me what was happening with their promised acting roles in Bollywood. I had no answers for them but decided to produce films myself and offer them chance to act in my films. This is why I ventured in film production.
I completed script of Vishwaas and bought my own film production equipment. With help from some friends, I started and completed my first feature film Vishwaas. In Vishwaas I departed from my intention to educate through education and indulged into my unfulfilled teenage passion of boxing. As a teenager I was impressed with boxing and spent many hours in an underused village temple, converted by me as a makeshift boxing gym, to train with local lads I the art of boxing. My boxing career came to a sudden termination at the university when several drunken competitors burst into my room and told me to hand my glove, with a sharp knife pressed firmly against my throat. Vishwaas provided me a vent to express my unfulfilled dream to become a heavyweight boxer. In some ways it was also my humble tribute to the famous Hollywood films Rocky.
In Vishwaas I teamed up with Sunita Sethi once again and roped in Bobby Jainan Kumar to act as the boxing trainer. At first he was auditioned to play my opponent but due to casting difficulties he had to settle for this role. In his first movie, Vishwa Naidu’s Archanak, Bobby played a cops role alongside me. My opponent’s role fell to first-time actor Lalen Sharma, who also lent his voice to couple of songs in the film. Anup Kumar, who also acted in Michael Chinappa’s Jhumka, played Lalen’s scheming brother, out to seek revenge by any means for an earlier defeat by my character. Famous Sydney singer Vijay Jogia, who first acted Vishwa Naidu’s Archanak, played the role of a TV journalist pursuing the boxers for news items for Indian TV. Other cast included Anju Singh, Huma Wason and Teg Singh. Vishwaas was released in 1999.
In the meantime Sheetal Kumar was making her debut film Khayalaat, a story about a working mum’s dilemmas, with an uncompromising husband at home and a besotted lover at her workplace. I was invited by the film director Param Shivan to make a friendly appearance as a work colleague of the lover. Khayalaat was also released in 1999.
Producing my first documentary film
My foray into documentary film production stared almost by accident. During my first two visits to India back in 1994 and 1995 I visited ancestral homes of my cousins in Fiji. In 2000 my cousin Asha Singh, who was a senator in the Chaudhary government, contacted me in Sydney and requested me to accompany her to India. She was visiting India and her ancestral home there for the first time. As I was just starting my Milaap-discover your Indian roots project at that time, I agreed to accompany, on the condition if I could film her visit. She agreed and the result was my first documentary film, Milaap-Discover Your Indian Roots, the first of the Milaap trilogy. Apart from filming Asha’s visit to her ancestral homes in Ghaziabad and Basti, I managed to film my visit to the ancestral home of one of our neighbour in Fiji. One of the descendants of this girmitiya from Gorakhpur is the respected former Fiji judge and MP Arya Ratna Surendra Prasad. Other highlights in this documentary includes a visit to Asian Academy of Film & TV, owned by Shri Sandeep Marwah and live performance in Basti by world famous Bhojpuri singer and actor Manoj Tiwari. This documentary was completed back in Sydney later that year.
Production of Flight from a Paradise
My second feature film started as a TV series for the first but short-lived locally produced TV channel Hamara TV in Sydney. Apart from including local news, sports, current affairs and entertainment, as the Director of Hamara TV I decided to produce a TV series for the channel. When I arrived in Australia in 1995 I was told of a story about a couple I knew when I lived in Fiji before migrating to UK. It was a said story, a story about this married couple’s failed attempt to migrate to Australia after the 1987 Fiji coups. One of the couple succeeded, but the other could not. Ultimately the one remaining in Fiji committed suicide. This story, and many similar stories that I l heard subsequently, demonstrate how desperate people in Fiji were for many years post the 1987 and 2000 coups to leave Fiji. I was determined to tell their story. Flight from a Paradise attempts to tell their stories.
Flight from a Paradise brought together some of my former actors plus some knew talents. Shobhana Sharma, the second lead in Vishwa Naidu’s Archanak came in as the heroine and Mumtaz, my lead in Archanak played an important character role. Anup Kumar played a great role as the jilted husband. Huma Wason and talented Afghani Idris Arya played the romantic lead New finds Rajesh Thakur and Shafqat Nizami with dependable Anju Singh completed the main cast.
Halfway through the production Hamara TV closed down and a decision was made by the production team and the cast to turn this effort into a feature film. Flight from a Paradise was released in 2002.
Two more documentary films in India
In 2003 Fiji held its first and only India Week. At that time I was working closely with Tourism India in Sydney to develop and promote Milaap-Discover Your Indian Roots. Tourism India participated in India Week in Fiji and invited me to accompany them to screen my first documentary film and to conduct seminars on Discover Indian Roots project during the India Week. Despite short publicity nearly 1000 Indo-Fijians lined up at the Suva Civic Centre to get information about their ancestors in India. Screenings of my film were held in Suva and Lautoka.
After the successful India week, and after seeing the overwhelming response by the Indo-Fijians to Milaap-Discover Your Indian Roots project and film during the India Week, Tourism India-Sydney supported by application to make two more documentary films in India. Eventually the Government of India Tourist Department and the Uttar Pradesh Tourist Department partially supported my two productions.
The first documentary, Milaap-A Royal Discovery (52 mins), traces my visit to my ancestral home in Galibpur, in Balrampur district of Uttar Pradesh. I had managed to find my paternal grandmother’s home after a 10 year search, which involved three separate visits to India. This story is related in full in my article Milaap-A personal Journey. This film also consists of my attempt to find and visit the ancestral village of my good friend who now lives in New Zealand. His village is in Karuali village in Rajasthan. I managed to film there in between my filming in Jaipur and Agra. The film is narrated by Anup Kumar.
The second film, Dream Indian Golf Holidays (28 mins), is about some of the golf facilities available in India. One of my golf partners in Sydney had informed me about some excellent golf courses in India and decided to share this with other golfers in Australia. The film contains tours of the following golf courses: Delhi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow and Greater Noida. The film is narrated by Chandi Perera. These films were completed and screened in 2004.
My first documentary film in Fiji
In 2002 I became interested in poverty issues in Fiji. I had an opportunity to hear Professor Subramani speak on increase in poverty among Indo-Fijians in Fiji during a seminar arranged in Sydney by the International Congress of Fiji Indians. I was particularly interested in the increase due to evictions of Indo-Fijian farmers, a process that had started with increased vigor around 1997. I decided to make a film to highlight this.
I visited Fiji twice in 2003 and with help from several socially conscious friends in Fiji I filmed in Suva, Nasinu, Ba, Lautoka and Nadi. The film contains scenes of several villages from where Indo-Fijian farmers were evicted (it is been stated that approximately 5,000 farmers and their families were evicted), as well interviews from the evicted farmers, many of them living in squatter settlements that had sprouted in Ba, Nadi, Suva and Nasinu since the evicted had started. This film (Once Were Farmers), which was completed in 2004, is also narrated by Anup Kumar.
The beginning of Doctor in Creative Arts candidature, and its creative component, a feature length documentary film
In 2005 the University of Western Sydney approved my candidature to pursue a professional degree in film production. I selected this professional PhD over a conventional PhD because it permitted me to combine my scholarly pursuit with my professional pursuit in film production. The creative component of this degree (which forms 70% of the candidature), consists of production of a 90 mins film on the research component of the candidature. I was also thrilled that the university had approved me to research on the reasons why approximately 60% of the 60,500 Indians transported to Fiji under the indenture system did not return to their homes in India.
The scholarly component consisted of two research activates. The first research related to the exile of Indians in Fiji and includes in-depth analysis of historical documents on this subject. The second research consisted of literature review of documentary film production and to find a genre for my documentary production. The first research also formed the basis for the script for the documentary film In Exile at Home.
The film In Exile at Home was filmed in parts in India, London and in Fiji. The shoot in Fiji for a month was the longest and most intense. The thesis of this candidature has outlined how and why some 35,000 Indentured Indian labourers were prevented form returning to India and had to spend rest of their lives in exile, unlike 25,000 of their who were able to return. This documentary drama explores how they recruited in India and transported to Fiji, their treatment on the plantations and the coolie lines, their exile and the second exile of their descendants after 1987 and 2000 Fiji coups. The film was completed I December 2007 and the PhD candidature was completed in October 2010.
The last of Milaap trilogy-Milaap-the Land of South Indian Girmitiya
The seed for this film was sawn in an emotional episode during the India Week in Fiji. Hearing about the Milaap project over the radio an elderly woman had traveled from Navua town by a bus to find out where her ancestral roots in India was. A short conversation with her at the Suva Civic Centre revealed that at least some of her ancestors had come from the Malabar Hills (which is in the present day Kerala state of India). We had a large map of India posted on the wall and the lady, like so many others, requested us to show where her village was on it. She said to me that she would not be able to travel to India to visit her ancestral village, but she would be satisfied if could see where in India they were from. She was very emotional and tears rolled down her face as she stared at the map, her eyes fixed for a long time of the Malabar Hills. I could only guess that she was traveling down the memory lane, recalling her parents and grand parents and imagining their lives back in India. The pain was evident in the tears in her eyes and expressions on her face. After a while she wiped her tears and with a quick grateful look, she disappeared into the crowd. Her face still haunts me occasionally.
During a shoot in India in 2006 I took time out to travel down to south India to film some of the main areas in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the main southern states from where Indians were transported to Fiji and other colonies where Indians were transported as indentured labourers. As a film producer I believed that the least I could do was to capture these images on a video film for those who are interested to learn about the areas south Indian indentured Indians had lived prior to their removal and transportation to the colonies. The lady from India Week may never see this film, but I know many others have.
Life in Exile-A documentary filmed in London
Life in Exile is a short 30 mins documentary on my own exile in London after 1987 coup in Fiji. This story was initially going to be a part of the PhD film. But when its length was reduced from 120 mins to 90 mins, a decision was made to edit out this section from the film. In the winter months of 2007 I had traveled to London to shoot the footage. I had lived in London from 1980 to 1995. The initial migration was for just five years. The 1987 coups prevented me from returning to Fiji. The harrowing images of the coups on TV had made Fiji and alien nation for me. It no longer felt like a home to me. Eventually neither did London. Life in Exile is a brief refection of my life in exile in London, told by some of the friends and work colleagues who were closest to me during the trying moments.
Start of TV production on TVS
I was introduced to community TV production back in 1997 when I assisted the producer of an Indian community TV program on Channel 31. At that time the channel transmission quality was very poor and my association terminated when the program was taken over by another person. However I kept interest in the channel and when TVS announced in around 2005, I expressed an interest to produce a program to be screened on the channel. I was subsequently granted a contract and my programs were on TVS three times a week since transmission began in February 2006 till I took a break in June 2008. At this stage, subject to discussions with TVS, I will begin my programs again on TVS in February 2011.
My third feature film Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment
Production of this film began in 2006. It started as a TV series for my TVS program and segments were screened for several weeks, until it was decided to turn it into a feature film. The original cut was screened to audiences in Sydney and in Fiji. Based on feedback from we received from audiences, some more scenes were added and a few scenes were edited out. The film was finally ready in 2008.
Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment is a story of a man who discovers his wife in the arms of his friend and walks away from her, his home and city, and lives on streets of Sydney for a year, until he is found by his trusted friend. Then as he struggles to get back into the society once again, his wife tries desperately to convince him that what he had witnessed was a mistake. In the meantime the friend pursues her and tries to persuade her to forget her husband and spend rest of her life with him. This social drama shows that a moment’s indiscretion can lead to major upheaval in an individual life and in lives of people around that person.
My first short feature film Ria….
As a print and TV journalists I have been researching several issues concerning the Indian/Fijian community in Sydney. I am particularly concerned about lack of social and leisure facilities for the elderly and lack of support provided to them to deal with the effects of displacement from India and Fiji to entirely new environments in Australia. I am equally concerned about lack of awareness in the community about these issues and subsequent lack of concern in the community. In 2008 I was shocked to learn of a suicide by a person who I had interviewed in my TV studio only a few weeks earlier.
I decided to make a short film as a way to highlight this issue in the community. Raivision Films and India Fiji Community Cultural Association (Ifcca) teamed up to work on this project. The Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Migrant Resource Centre provided small grants to assist us to produce this film. The script was written and the team working with me on my TV program was trained in the art of film acting. The film was shot on various locations in Liverpool. A 26 mins film was completed in 2008 and screened in Sydney and Fiji on several occasions. It was the most popular film at the Fiji Film Festival 2009, screened daily on popular demand throughout the 2 week festival.
My feature documentary film-Sab Set Hai
In his review of my film Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment, Professor Subramani concludes by stating ‘Satish Rai has done the necessary apprenticeship work; he is ready for an important break. In the meanwhile he has to go on searching for that larger emotion, and discover a cinematic language to express it in, so that he can win that place as a recognized filmmaker of this region’ After reading the review I decided to take a stock of my film production experience before venturing out to produce another feature film. In the meantime another friend indicated to me that he will get together investors to produce a film commercially if I came up with a good story and a film script which is ‘essentially Fijian’.
My next documentary film
My next documentary film is going to be on the life and issues of Indian elderly living in Sydney. I am presently working on the script of this film and shoot will start later in the year. People wishing to be part of this film or contribute towards its production please contact us.