A tale of three men and a bulb

Film fiesta

Largely, films are known to be of two kinds: either commercial Bollywood potboilers or issue-based documentaries. But what do you call a film which neither has a star cast nor involves serious issues but deals with the lives of ordinary people?

We call them Pankaj Rishikumar’s films, where regular people form the cast and their everyday lives become the plot.

Pankaj Rishikumar graduated from Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in 1992. He was assistant editor on Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen and edited many a documentaries and TV serials. Subsequently, he became a one-man crew producing, directing, shooting and editing his own films.

His films like Pather Chujaeri, The Vote, Gharat, Punches n Ponytails have been screened at festivals worldwide. He has bagged grants from Hubert Bals, IFA, Jan Vrijman, Gotoberg, Banff, Majlis etc. and was also awarded an Asia Society fellowship at Harvard Asia Centre ‘03.

Recently, his acclaimed film Three men and a bulb was screened at a cafe in the Capital and won appreciation from many a budding filmmakers in the audience.

Three men tells the story of three villagers – an old man Rawat, a young man Satya and a school-going boy Harish – running a gharat (watermill) in their village in Uttarakhand. The watermill generates electricity which can light up all the households in the village but the residents overdraw power and refuse to pay bills resulting in the village plunging back to darkness.

On the other hand, the three of them, finding no other source of employment, are stuck with the mill. The old man Rawat wants to hand it over to Satya and just earn a monthly pension. Satya, getting a meagre income from the mill, does not want to share it with Rawat. Harish, on the other hand, lured by citylife, wants to just escape, which he does ultimately.

The politics between the villagers and these three men makes for an interesting watch. Also remarkable is the filmmaker’s ability to spot a story and keep patience for months over which the drama plays itself out.
Pankaj says, “I do not make the NGO-activist kind of films as I find no challenge there. You walk into a protest, speak to four experts and make a film – what is the big deal about it? But human dramas can be much more interesting. Thye tell you about the people involved, their culture, problems, even draw a picture of the area they live in.”

“Also, it is not necessary to provide solutions in films. Sometimes, not being judgemental, acting just as an observer makes more honest film. The appreciation I have received in film festivals and screenings like these tell me that such films can also be entertaining.”