Happy to call herself an independent filmmaker, Chitra Neogy relies on investors and grants to help make her own movies. With the assistance of these parties, she completed her most recent and personal film, A Journey Within A Journey
By: Jim Boyle
In the past few years, foreign films have been attracting increasing attention. The films Il Postino and Life is Beautiful from Italy, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from China earned multiple Academy Award nominations, including best picture. India’s lucrative movie industry has been compared to Hollywood and has even been given the name "Bollywood."
Unfortunately, like Hollywood, the product that comes out of Bollywood is not always the highest quality at least in director Chitra Neogy’s eyes.
"I’m sick of all that stuff," she says. "They are always about boring themes like ‘East meets West.’ "
A resident of New York City, Ms. Neogy doesn’t use the Bollywood system to make her films. Happy to call herself an independent filmmaker, she relies on investors and grants to help make her own movies. With the assistance of these parties, she completed her most recent and personal film, A Journey Within A Journey, with her production company, Kalki 2000 Arts. The movie will be presented at the New Jersey Fall Film Festival Nov. 16-17 at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Ms. Neogy will appear at the first screening to discuss the film.
The film festival opened on Sept. 7 with Down from the Mountain and closes on Nov. 21 with Noise in my Back Yard. Other films presented are A Clockwork Orange and Wittgenstein.
Ms. Neogy was in India in 1990 as an assistant to German director Werner Herzog, who was filming a documentary. While she was researching the production, Ms. Neogy was told of the death of her father, Sisir Kumar Neogy.
"I was very close to my father," she says. "He was always supportive of my work. The people of the area where I was at the time knew what had happened and helped with my grieving process. They showed me their artwork and performed dances for me."
After she returned to the United States, Ms. Neogy wanted to document the culture that opened up to her. She scouted locations in 1992 and settled on the state of Kerala in south India. She went back to India in 1993 with a shooting script and a crew. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until she arrived home after filming.
"The person that wanted to finance the film could not complete the funds for post-production, which is the most important part," says Ms. Neogy. "The film had to be printed or I would lose everything. I had a good relationship with Technicolor and asked them to develop the film and give me 30 days to get the money. They ended up giving me 60 days."
She successfully found the money to pay for the prints, but she still needed more to pay for editing equipment. The film sat untouched for two years before she found another source of funds.
Ms. Neogy was asked to be film curator for Women of Vision, a conference that took place in Washington, D.C. More than 600 women attended the event. Ms. Neogy met some people who were familiar with her previous work and were eager to help her complete A Journey Within a Journey.
"This is not a pure documentary," says Ms. Neogy. "There are some documentary elements, but there are also dream sequences and poetry involved. I wanted to express how I was healed through their art. I wanted to capture the essence of the forms. They had rituals for their sacred dances."
While the inspiration for the film came from something personal in Ms. Neogy’s life, she deliberately worked to make the film a universal experience.
"The only image of my father in the film is a shot of a photograph," she says. "It is completely an expression of what was coming out, but I never feel it’s indulgent. I’ve shown it at festivals where people came over to me and told me how it changed their lives. The whole raw grief turned into something creative and productive."
A Journey Within a Journey will be shown at the New Jersey Fall Film Festival, Scott Hall, Nichol Avenue and George Street, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Nov. 16-17, 7 p.m.; Ms. Neogy will lead a discussion following the Nov. 16 screening. For information, call (732) 932-8482. Admission costs $5. For a full schedule of the film festival on the Web: www.njfilmfest.com