This page will eventually contain a lot of information about Raivision Films existing productions, current productions and furture productions. It will contain trailers and synopsis of all of its 12 productions and information as to how to purchase copies of the films you may be interested in watching at home with you family and friends.
This page will also contain information how you can get involved in our film productions, should you so desire.
Raivision Filmography
Synopsis of Raivision films on Indian diaspora in Australia Pacific region
All these films have been produced and directed by Satish Rai.
FEATURE FILMS
- Vishwaas (1998-100 mins feature)Vishwaas is the first feature film produced by Raivision Films. It is the only film produced by Raivision in Hindi. It is a family drama caught up in a conflict when the husband takes up a challenge from a former adversary to fight his brother in a revenge boxing match. The story of Vishwaas: A former heavyweight boxing champion of India (Raj Sinha) migrated to Australia after premature retirement and lives in Sydney with his family. One day he bumps into his former adversary Karan Singh who accuses him of running away from his brother Ronnie (a title contender) and challenges him to fight him in a prize fight in Sydney. Provoked while intoxicated with alcohol, Raj accepts the challenge and signs to put up his share of money. Next morning his wife hears about the challenge on local TV and is not happy at all. She refuses to help him. Forsaken by his family Raj prepares for the fight with help of his former trainer. In the meantime Ronnie arrives in Sydney but takes the bout light lightly because he will beat his aging opponent easily. He prefers to gallivant with women instead. CLICK HERE for photos and trailer of Vishwaas.
- Flight from a Paradise (2006-120 mins-feature film)Flight from a Paradise is also inspired by a true incident. 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 sad story, a story about this married couple’s desperate and tragic 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 had 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.
The story of Flight from a Paradise-the wife divorces her husband in Fiji and marries another man in Australia to get her Australian permanent residence visa. The plan fails when she falls in love with the Australian man. When the husband does not hear from her for some time, with help from a friend, he goes over to Australia with his son. They do not get to meet the wife but are informed by her Australian husband that she does not wish to meet them. The husband is shocked and suffers heart attack. The wife is traumatized. The drama that follows reflects the desperation of the Fiji family.
This film touches on a very sensitive issue that prevailed in the Indo-Fijian community after the coups. There was desperate attempt to flee Fiji and the method adopted by the family in this film demonstrates how desperate the Indo-Fijian community was to leave Fiji by whatever means necessary. The film also shows how some people in Australia took advantage of this situation in Fiji to make money for themselves, with total disregard to the eventual consequences. Once again the film relies on the Indian community in Sydney to come to the assistance of this desperate family.
- Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment (2008-115mins feature film) The story-Kishan is a successful migrant from India living and working in Brisbane. One day he arrives home early to surprise his younger wife Kaajal on her birthday. He finds her in arms of his good friend Vicky, who is also Kajaal’s dancing partner. Kishan leaves home and ends up living on streets of Liverpool. His work colleague Raj finds him when he is transferred to Sydney. He rallies some people and provides support to Kishan, who is unwell both mentally and physically. Raj informs Kaajal about Kishan and she arrives in Sydney. But Kishan is not ready to meet her. Vicky follows Kaajal to Sydney but instead of helping her to reunite with Kishan, tries hard to keep her away from him. Rest of the story is about Kaajal’s desperate attempts to reunite with her husband, his friends’ attempts to help him back to health and Vicky’s persistence to keep Kaajal and Kishan away from each other.Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment provides a little window into the individualist lifestyle of Indian migrants in Australia. Kishan’s character is inspired by a real person who took to heavy drinking after he discovered his wife was unfaithful to him. A healthy family man prior to this episode, he died a loner on a park bench in Sydney a short time later. In the film however, Kishan’s character avoids similar fate only because of the community support rallied by the character of Raj. This film, as does Raivision Film’s short feature film Ria… calls out to the Indian community to start examining the causes of some of the social problems that are beginning to rear their ugly heads in the community and provide community based solutions to them.
- Ria…. (2009-26 mins short feature film)
This short feature film has been made by Raivision film in collaboration with India Fiji Community Cultural Association (Ifcca). Ifcca researched on several social issues facing the Indian community for several years. However, this film was triggered by suicide story of a person of Indian origin in Liverpool in 2008.
Ria… provides a glimpse into the life of an Indian family living in western Sydney through the eyes of teenage daughter Ria. The family consists of her working parents and grandfather (mother’s father) who was brought over to Australia to perform child minding duties when Ria was a child. Now that Ria was older her father puts pressure on the grandfather to contribute towards the housekeeping by getting a job. During an argument involving the feuding parents and grandfather, Ria’s father slaps her grandfather. Next day the grandfather disappears after he drops off Ria at an Indian youth centre. He was last seen leaving the youth centre looking very depressed and disoriented.
A decision was made by the youth centre workers to go out looking for the granddad. They are joined by Ria’s parents and her father’s girl-friend. The search for grandfather runs parallel with the family drama, with Ria right in the thick of both.
Like Ek Pal-the Unforgettable Moment, Ria… explores several social community issues and suggests community oriented solution to these issues.
CLICK HERE for photos from Ria.... .
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
The Milaap trilogy
- Milaap-Discover your Indian Roots (30 mins documentary film)
Milaap-Discover your Indian Roots is first of my Milaap documentary trilogy. This film production happened almost by accident. During my first two visits to India back in 1994 and 1995 I had visited the ancestral homes of some of my cousins in Fiji. In 2000 one of these cousins, Asha Singh, 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 her on the condition that I should be able to film her visit. She agreed and the result was my first documentary film, Milaap-Discover Your Indian Roots. 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 Surendra Prasad. Other highlights in this documentary include a visit to Asian Academy of Film & TV, owned by Shri Sandeep Marwah and filming of live performance in Basti by world famous Bhojpuri singer and actor Manoj Tiwari.
The most poignant part of this film is the emotional contacts between Asha Singh and her two sets of relatives in Ghaziabad and Basti. Only a handful of Indo-Fijians have been able to trace and visit their ancestral homes in India. This is the first documentary film that has captured the first contact between the descendants of Fiji’s indentured workers (girmitiyas) and their relatives in Fiji.
- Milaap-A Royal Discovery (52 mins documentary film)
The inspiration behind this film: 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 my application to make two more documentary films in India. The Government of India Tourist Department and the Uttar Pradesh Tourist Department also 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. My search for my identity through my Indian ancestry started in 1994 when I lived in London. I finally managed to find my paternal grandmother’s home in India after a 10 year search, which involved three separate visits to India. This journey is told in full in my article Milaap-A personal Journey.
This film starts with my visit to Karuali village in Rajasthan to find the ancestral village of a friend who now lives in New Zealand. After successfully tracing this village I travel to the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh and endeavored to trace roots of another Fiji person. Finally I met up with my uncle, cousins and their families in Balrampur. During conversation with them I learnt about the historical background of my family. I was informed that the males were employed as raj kavis (royal poets) in the palaces of Balrampur. I visited the palace and met the prince, who confirmed the royal connection of my family with his palace-hence the title of this film. The most poignant part of this film is the interaction with 94 year old Uncle Dhoke Rai, who died a year later.
- Milaap-the land of South Indian Girmitiyas (28 mins documentary film)
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.
DOCUMENTARY ON POVERTY IN FIJI
- Once were Farmers (78 mins documentary film)
The inspiration behind this film is Professor Subramani’s speech in Sydney on increase in poverty among Indo-Fijians in Fiji. After listening to him I became interested in poverty issues in Fiji. 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.
Once Were Farmers first looks at some of the villages in Fiji from where farmers were evicted when the Fiji government refused to renew their land leases. Majority of the farmers lived on their farms for approximately 100 years. (It has been estimated that approximately 5,000 farmers were evicted between 1997 and 2005) Then the film interviews some of these farmers at the workplaces and squatter settlements where they lived since their evictions. The film is narrated by Fiji journalist Thakur Ranjit Singh and contains inputs from Professor Biman Chand and Sunil Prasad of the University of South Pacific. It also contains extracts of speeches of Mahendra Chaudhary-former Prime Minister of Fiji.
Once Were Farmers is a poignant story of the unfortunate Indo-Fijian farmers who were caught up in the racial politics that has plagued Fiji ever since the Colonial government of Fiji decided to transport indentured Indians to work on European plantations in Fiji.
FILMS ON EXILE
In Exile at Home and Life in Exile will be of interest to all those who are interested in the transportation of approximately 1.2 million Indians as indentured labourers to Mauritius, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Surinam, Jamaica, French Reunion, South Africa, Fiji and some other islands between 1828 and 1917. There is a growing interest in this area of study in the girmit diaspora as well as in India. Little creative work has been done on the subject of exile of Indians. In Exile at Home is about exile of Fiji girmitiyas approximately 100 years ago and Life in Exile is about exile of 3rd generation descendant of some of these girmitiyas (twice banished) in 1980s. Destination Australia was made to inform Indian students about education and residential opportunities available to them in Australia. This was before the Indian student debacle in Australia that started in 2009. Sterling College, which had commissioned this film, was one of the first victims of this debacle. I was a lecturer there when it was closed down unceremoniously in July 2009.
- In Exile at Home-a Fiji Indian story (90 mins documentary film)
The background to this film: In 2005 the University of Western Sydney approved my candidature to pursue a professional degree in film production. I selected a 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 my application to research on the reasons why approximately 60% of the 60,500 Indians transported to Fiji under the indenture system (girmitiyas) 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 confirmation of the style 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 outlines 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 home. This documentary drama explores how they were recruited in India and transported to Fiji, their treatment on the plantations and the coolie lines (where they were forced to live during indenture), their exile and the second exile of their descendants after 1987 and 2000 Fiji coups.
This documentary drama, contains interviews of ten most prominent Indo-Fijian academics/scholars. It also contains several dramatic scenes that recapture scenes of Fiji’s indenture era. Briefly, the film, through narration, interviews, poems and dramatized scenes tells the story of the history and presence of the Indian community in Fiji from 1879 till today.
- Life in Exile (52 mins documentary film)
Life in Exile is a short 30 mins documentary on my own exile in London after 1987 coup in Fiji. This was initially going to be a part of the PhD film In Exile at Home. The story of my exile, the narrator and 3rd generation descendant of Fiji’s indentured workers, was to be the third story of exile in that film, complimenting the exile of the indentured Indians in Fiji and how they survived by using the story of the exile of Lord Rama, the princely hero of Indian Epic the Ramcharitamanas. But when duration of my PhD film was reduced from 120 mins to 90 mins, a decision was made to edit out the story of my exile from the film.
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. 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. The film is about how a temporary migration eventually turned into a life in exile. It is story of internal and external struggles, pain and suffering and eventual escape from them in order to survive. The footage for this film was taken in 2007, 12 years after my migration from UK.
TRAVEL DOCUMENTARIES
- Dream Indian Golf Holidays (2005-28 mins documentary)This documentary film showcases some of the golf facilities available in India. Motivated by information provided by a golf partner in Sydney about some excellent golf courses in India, Raivision decided to share this with other golfers in Australia and around the world. Narrated by Chandi Perera the film travels through the cities and courses in Delhi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow and Greater Noida. It talks with golf enthusiasts in these cities and provide many features of all these golf courses and other golfing facilities available to visiting golfers. It also showcases many additional facilities such as accommodation, food and sightseeing available in these great cities of Northern India. This is a must-see film for anyone who wishes to travel to India and wants to play a round or two of golf while they soak in thousands of facilities that India has on offer to any visitor.
- Destination Australia (2006-26 mins documentary film)
I produced this film on request of the Sterling College, an international college in Sydney. This educational film has been used as information tool for prospective students in India and East Asian countries. The film starts with background information about Australia and contains information educational, housing, employment and recreational opportunities for prospective students.
- Mt. Kailash & Lake Manasarovar Yatra (2007-52 mins documentary)
This film we will take you on a journey that millions of people of Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Bonpo faith wish to embark upon but only a handful do actually realise it.
Jagdish Lodhia, a successful Sydney-based businessman, together with seventeen other people from Australia succeeded in realising their lifetime dream of a pilgrimage to the most holy and sacred sites of Kailash Parvata, (also known as Mt Kailash) and Manasarovar, the holy lake that sits at the foot of this holy mountain. The Holy Mt. Kailash is situated at a height of 6714m (22156ft) above sea level. For four major religions of the world, i.e. Buddhism, Jainism, Bonpo (a religion prior to Buddhism in Tibet) and Hinduism, Mount Kailash is the sacred place of utmost reverence.
For the Buddhists, Kailash is the centre point of the universe. For the Jains, Kailash is the Mount Ashtapada, a very holy place of pilgrimage. For the Bonpo followers, Kailash is the nine-faced swastika mountain and is constantly emanating great power. For the Hindus Kailash is the Sumeru Parvat, the throne of Lord Shiva and the spiritual centre of the world around which all the earthly powers revolve. If there are heavenly abodes on earth, Mt. Kailash and Manasarovar Lake are to be treasured as the most celestial. This region gives birth to four great Asian rivers: the Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Sutlej.
The film will take you to the most fascinating Kora (Circumambulation) of Kailash on foot, crossing the high pass Dolma La 5636m (18600ft) above sea level. So as you trek around Mt. Kailash you enjoy the grand views on both sides of the valley and Mt. Kailash from all directions. It also takes you for the parikrama (circumambulation) of Manasarovar Lake by jeep and visit some of the Gompas and holy site on the shore of the lake. It is indeed a rare opportunity and privilege for all devotees who have been dreaming to be close to the home of the Gods in the world.
The film also show a miracle that the pilgrims witnessed just before they arrived at the abode of Lord Shiva. As they relaxed under the blue sky on the plains of the Himalayan Mountains, Lord Shiva opened his third eye and looked upon them for full five minutes. It was truly a miracle and you would see this amazing feat in this film.
This is the journey of a lifetime that all human beings should endeavor to make at least. We invite you to join us upon our pilgrimage to this holy region and share our experiences of Mt Kailash, Manasarovar and the dazzling beauty of nature that we witnessed.
Footage during the pilgrimage was taken by Jagdish Lodhia. Additional Sydney footage, scripting, and post production was done by Studio Raivision.
Second film in this series is being edited at the moment and will be available soon.
END
