Root.ax

Root.ax podcast seeks to bring together South Asian creators, artists, filmmakers & writers in a virtual room to discuss how they make, move and bridge their creative process. Tune in ✨

Produced by @alinaguf for @root.ax

Root.ax podcast seeks to bring together South Asian creators, artists, filmmakers & writers in a virtual room to discuss how they make, move and bridge their creative process. New episodes twice a month  ✨. Tune in.

Produced by @alinaguf for @root.ax

Highlights

The fact that I wasn’t able to recognize any of my friends or myself in everything I mentioned before. There are a lot of cartoons and everything we mentioned before that’s entirely through a Western lens. I’ve never seen any characters or storylines that I felt connected to. And, yeah, that was kind of interesting for me to have a mix of my background and where we come from. Even characters that are different shapes, sizes and colors. It was quite homogenous, from my perspective. I guess, even like voice and things like that, art for me has always been reflective of who I am as a person. As I grew older and my practice progressed, what I was interested in came through that as well.

Just the idea of hope. Sci-Fi I’ve always been inspired by. Even when I was younger, I was very into the Jetsons and Futurama and all kinds of Sci-Fi cartoons, animations and movies like Ghibli as well. The idea of Sci-Fi fantasy for me is quite limitless because you can imagine whatever you want the future to be like. Even when I was younger, I was always a daydreamer and I felt like Sci-Fi was a great avenue. Comic books too, I’ve always been fascinated by.

This was right before the pandemic, it was my biggest mural to date and it was in Chennai so it all kind of came together for that. The mural was a collaboration for St+art India Foundation, who go to different places in India and have art districts and festivals. This one, in particular, was in Kannagi Nagar in Chennai, which is an under-represented community. This mural is also next to the sea so I wanted to capture the folks there. Providers & Protectors was kind of an homage to the fisherwoman folk in Chennai. The character itself is Tamil woman and has a lot of Chennai flora and fauna, motifs and elements in it. The words themselves mean the womenfolk taking care of their family aspect but they also take care of business. They sell the produce, the fish and the men usually go fish in the morning. I found that quite fascinating. They’re super strong ladies who’re quite aggressive but in a good way, right? Super confident, amazing. They wear these super colorful saris and the whole strip is breathtaking for me. Yeah, that’s kind of where I got the inspiration from for that piece.

Root.ax podcast seeks to bring together South Asian creators, artists, filmmakers & writers in a virtual room to discuss how they make, move and bridge their creative process. New episodes twice a month  ✨. Tune in.

Produced by @alinaguf for @root.ax

Highlights

At that point, I probably did not know much about what an international co-production meant. I was just looking online and how things are constructed, I had a sense of what it could be. I always felt, with the amount of information out there, forums to be able to explain it were missing. I dove into it with the directors. What happened with Arun was I drove down to Coimbatore. He said, just come and meet me if you want to make this film. So, I went and met him over there. We spent the night in this room he had taken near where the film was going to be shot and he took me on a walk through the city and sort of explained what he was doing and it was then it occurred to me that mainstream films, the director require a different kind of infrastructure. Directors who work in Independent cinema need, of course infrastructure, but also sort of someone who can understand their vision deeper and personally to be able to actualise that in fundraising, in the pitching and sit with them for about 3-4 years. 

Picking these films was the most important piece of co-producing. Often, that’s the part that’s misleading. Not every film can be a co-production. To make an informed decision, it mostly rests with the film-maker. The filmmaker has to have had some history with film festivals or has to be known or have a really, really original voice. In the case of Arun, he had already been in Rotterdam, Vijay Jayapal had already been at Busan so at least there was some history to the filmmaker. It’s always a good place to start as a producer. And, there’s also the story. What you’re trying to say and whether it’s important. When you’re co-producing, you have multiple producers who are participating in the film and when you say internal co-production, there’s an international producer coming on board. The piece here that’s often misunderstood is that international co-producers usually are thought to produce with their own money. It’s important to remember that India’s a bit like the US in the sense that we use private money to make films. 

This could be in the form of equity or debt, which means that someone signs a check and says, hey I’m making this film. I want this return, this is private money. If you look at international money, it's mostly grant money. which means a European producer is going to work with you if a grant comes through. They can work with you creatively, all of that fine, but they can only produce if the money comes in. They usually have some history of being able to apply to different funds and they have relationships which allow them to do that. 

Root.ax podcast seeks to bring together South Asian creators, artists, filmmakers & writers in a virtual room to discuss how they make, move and bridge their creative process. New episodes twice a month. Tune in.

Follow us on @root.ax for more updates

Produced by Alina Gufran
Post-production by Gaurav Krishna & Ishan Gupta

Highlights

I was sharing my writing on Instagram and then I saw that other writers, lots of them including Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie, are on Substack. I thought it was an interesting format because it's not limited to time. You have the capacity to experiment with time, in that it's like a TV show, you have something to look forward to every week. It doesn't end in one post. It has the capacity to be serialised. Also, it's not abundantly open to everyone, it's only for these people who're genuinely interested in what you're doing. It filters out the extra noise. People who are serious about writing or are seriously interested in what you're writing about would be the ones who are within this space. So, it helps you have a more intimate conversation. I like that, after the loud availability of Instagram, I like the fact that a newsletter is quite niche. I wanted to see what happens in that space and I was inspired by other writers who're of the same age and in the same space. I like Rega [Jha], I like what she does. She had started this whole Newsletter business and I thought, why not get paid? Why am I doing this for free? What do I gain out of it? I wanted to know if there's any potential of making money in this manner while being true to my work because otherwise all the money I make is through advertising which is definitely not very fulfilling, in my case.

When I'm adapting my writing across different mediums namely Instagram, The Soup and the Newsletter, my guiding principle is that on IG and the Newsletter, it's me writing for myself. It's whatever thoughts are coming into my head. I'm not really streamlining any opinion as such. But, on Soup, it's not me at all. It's other writers and creating a community of writers, artists & photographers so there's a lot more experimentation with the medium itself. It's not restricted to just writing, it's more visual, there's a capacity to build a network of people I collaborate with who bring so much more to the table than what I could possibly bring by myself. It's not so inward looking, it's much broader. It's not my writing on Soup, it's a lot of other people's writing, I purely edit. 

This middleman business is interesting to me. There's already a clique of writers- from Delhi, journalists, established writers, whatever and the same stuff is coming out constantly-- same people are writing, same people are scratching each other's back and it feels like it happens in an infinite loop. It doesn't seem like that's good for the industry. I like the fact that Substack or any sort of Newsletter format allows you to reach directly to people. Nobody is governing your worth or how valuable or marketable you are. There's no gatekeeping or gauging the commercial aspect of your writing. There's no hassle of going into publishing in the sense of actually printing something which is very expensive to do. It feels like a democratic process.