Lights,Camera,Action in Ladakh

At 12,000 feet above sea level,the wind is brutally cold as it whips across the market place in Leh. But a crowd has gathered outside the cinema hall,for the premier of Las-Del (Karmic Connection). After all,Ladakhi cinema’s favourite heroine Stanzin is making a comeback after a two-year sabbatical and the audience cannot wait. Made on a budget of Rs 15 lakhs,Las-Del is Ladakh Vision Group’s most expensive film but as long as the movie is a tear-jerking love story,the producers are confident of having a hit on their hands. “I don’t know why the Ladakhi people like to cry so much while watching a film,” remarks Stanzin,in the documentary film Out of Thin Air by filmmakers Shabani Hassanwalia and Samreen Farooqi,who have traced the growth of the vibrant industry of Ladakhi local cinema.

“When we first went to Ladakh in 2006,we wanted to make a film different from the exoticism of the place. So we stayed away from the stereotype — the bare,lunar landscape with monasteries,maroon robes and echoing wind,” says the duo who founded Hit and Run films in 2008,a Delhi-based film production house. It was at the Leh marketplace where Hassanwalia,28 and Farooqi,30 discovered a riveting subject: local film posters fluttered like flags everywhere,and led them to discover the busy,independent film industry of the region. “We met David Sonam,a hotel owner at Leh and he told us about Ladakhi films,shot on video,released in the local cinema halls,” says Farooqi. Further meetings led them to the Ladakh Vision Group and the film industry,a motley crew of teachers,monks,homemakers,taxi drivers who came together six years ago to make films in their local language,using locals as actors and in spite of the barren landscape and the bitter cold,their own locales. From November to May,Ladakh is quiet and reeling under the harshest winter experienced on Indian soil. But that is also thattime of the year,for the past six years,when a local film is released and runs to packed halls. The story is the same as it is in Bollywood: Boy meets girl,they sing and dance till tragedy ensues and the viewers wait with bated breath for a happy ending. But the essence of each film is completely Ladakhi.

“They want to see themselves on screen as opposed to the conventional Bollywood faces with whom they have not one facial feature in common. And yet,the same Bollywood dance and story is desirable,glamorous: it’s how most of us understand the notions of love,family and loss,” says Hassanwalia. So the next time you’re headed to the region for a break from Delhi,revel in the movies that are made against all odds,of a people who will grow green patches to replicate Yashraj type shots and will even create a sarson ka khet in the middle of a lunar crater.

Out of Thin Air will be screened at the IIC auditorium on August 3,6.30 pm.