Over a cup of piping hot herbal tea, looking at the serene Lake Pavne from Club Mahindra Resort’s deck, I asked Hollywood actor-director Kasi Lemmons what she thought was a fine narrative. She gazed at the distant mountain, took a deep breath, thought for a second and summed it up beautifully as she said, “A good story is something that you just fall into and go for the ride...the one that takes you on a journey where you travel with an open heart while it pulls you in! I look for characters.”

We step into the shade. The sun was getting hotter. Inside, it was enticing to watch an animated conversation between Howard A Rodman and Charudutt Acharya while Marcos Bernstein was busy chatting with Anusha Rizvi. Michael Goldenberg and Kartik Singh were seen doing some serious introspection. The others had spread in different areas of the room for their one-on-one mentoring sessions. Everyone was at ease. It seemed unreal. The greatest storytellers of Hollywood were all right there – under one roof. They had come half way across the earth to mentor India’s chosen 10 storytellers. Far from the distractions of urban life, Club Mahindra’s Lake Pavne Resort near Lonavla was the perfect venue.

One had to be really talented yes, but also fortunate to be a part of this experience. Each participant was filled with gratitude. Some even had tears in their eyes because they had lived with the scripts for long and now they actually saw them transform before their eyes by some of the most generous advice given by the most brilliant minds.

Last year in May, a simple letter went out that said – ‘Do you know anyone with a good story?’ It could be a paanwala with a riveting chronicle, it didn’t matter. The tale had to be striking. About 500 applications came in from Indians from various corners of the globe. Each entry was carefully studied by the Mumbai Mantra Lab team. Some were heartwarming, some directionless, some pompous, some simple. It took months to long list 94. In the second round of elimination, 35 were shortlisted. Then, industry experts like Shabana Azmi, Zoya Akhtar, Konkana Sen Sharma and people with artistic bends like Feroz Khan, Ram Madhwani and film critics went through the scripts to select the final 10.

It’s interesting to look at this motley group of writers. Some have lived here all their life, some are NRIs, some have lived abroad and returned. Everybody has a unique way of telling a story – some are direct, some circular, some tell realistic stories, some tell fables. So whether it is Rajnesh Domalpalli’s Avani or Ajitpal Singh Dhaliwal’s Manjhi or Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar’s Margarita. With a Straw or Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui’s Opium or Kartik Singh’s Public School or Charudutt Acharya’s Sonali Cable Centre or Vikas Chandra’s Toothache or Prashant Nair’s Umrika, each story is very different from the other. As Howard A Rodman observes, “They all have individual voices from a part of the world that I’m just beginning to learn about. It’s exciting, informative, fulfilling and has really extended my sense of the world and of what screenwriting is. It’s a pleasure for me to have my vocabulary expanded.”

Jose Rivera says, “It all comes down to storytelling. My knowledge of Indian films is fairly limited to the classics. Just to hear new, fresh voices talking about personal experiences and the short stories that don’t often get told in commercial cinema is fascinating and enlightening and puts a window into a part of the culture that I don’t think I could get in any other way. So, it’s always been a filter through so many layers of media and preconceptions.”

Marcos Bernstein finds “The most striking thing about these stories is that they deal with interesting social issues that are different from American issues. For instance, lack of water or water pollution or the issues faced by handicapped people in society.”

The advisors, Kasi Lemmons, Guillermo Arriaga, Marcos Bernstein, Michael Goldenberg, Asif Kapadia, Shekhar Kapur, Anjum Rajabali, Jose Rivera, Howard A Rodman, Malia Scotch Marmo and Audrey Wells bring in a lot of humility and they have expertise. They’ve been mentoring for a long time, but they don’t assume that they know all the answers or that they are here to teach. They know when to say, ‘I don’t know how to help’ and are good at leaving their ego on the side. Michael Goldenberg said, “I’m trying to bring in my experience of writing films for the last 20 years. I think I may help them dialogue better with international audiences, telling stories in a more consistent way. The plan is not to give your ideas but try to address issues and help writers understand their potential and make them go to a next level.”

Rohit Khattar, Chairman, Mumbai Mantra
“Mumbai Mantra, a non-profit initiative of the Mahindra group is a small company that provides an independent platform for talented filmmakers. We’ve made commercial films but over time, we realised that we had to stop and think about Mahindra’s group synergies and vision.

From the revenue point of view, one needs to produce big films because they make money, but a company like ours can take a gamble and make films that perhaps won’t be as successful, but is there any way that we could mitigate the risk, indulge in our passion and not lose our shirt by at least getting the investment recovered. The answer lies in knowing how to sell them. But to sell you need to have a really fine product, a very good story with a well written script. We started looking for people who could help us groom and nurture talent. UCLA and NYU had degrees but Sundance Institute fit the bill. That’s how the campaign started. We are not doing this to produce their films, we are doing this for the Indian film industry, period.”

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
“For all that Hollywood star Robert Redford had achieved, his interest lay in independent cinema. His philosophy is clear – risk-taking is an independent choice, don’t think that it’s going to make money. If it is a good story and it resonates, it will make money.

He had a special affinity towards Latin America and felt it was important to cross the border. In the early 1990s, using his influence, Redford got the best people in the business to come over and ideate with young talent. That’s how Sundance Institute started, with its first body of work being in Brazil. We’ve always been committed to the international world and now more than ever because we are living in a world that’s interconnected and global. For us going anywhere internationally is finding a great partner to work with who shares our visions, and values and we are glad to have found that partner with Mumbai Mantra and Mahindra. Their sponsoring the Global Filmmaking Awards is a noble task. A part of our mission is to support international work and that Americans have much to learn from their international counterparts across the world. It felt like the right moment to be here and to support the work of extremely talented group of emerging filmmakers who are telling stories that will both reach their own region and can travel around the world. We don’t train or influence, we just support the filmmaker to get them to clarify their own voice. By independent movies, we mean independent vision. You have to be creative in selling a film but the starting point should not be ‘I’m going to make a film that sells’.”
- Michelle Satter and Alesia Weston

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