What do Srinivas Krishna and Vic Sarin have in common? Only celluloid, some roots in India ) and a wise resistance to any ac- Harvey Crossland's The Burning Season prepares for the upcoming shoot of his new cepted wisdoms when it comes to race. (1992). film A Promise of Heaven, we sit them down Sarin is best known as one of Canada's best In 1991, Krishna came along and unset- with moderator Hussain Amarshi — former cinematographers, but he's long been a film- tled the nation with Masala, a heady stew of director of 's Euclid Theatre and the maker in his own right as well. In 1989, he Bombay musicals and youth culture angst Kingston International — for a directed Cold Comfort, the first agency-fund- which signalled a change in what race bracing talk about things usually left unsaid. ed feature to be directed by a person of means in Canada. In a week when Sarin bat- colour. Sarin was Director of Photography on tles in development purgatory, and Krishna AMARSHI: You are very different filmmak- left, Srinivas Krishna this page, Vic Sarin

ers at different stages in your careers and SARIN: Well, I was born in Kashmir but I doesn't worry me one bit. I have to move on. with very distinct talents, styles, sensibilities. grew up in , which was supposed to I had really never had any kind of a prob- You have little in common, yet the reason you have a White Australia Policy. But it never lem where I felt that I was different. But as are here today is — affected me on a one-to-one basis, because I'm getting older, I feel it much more, partly SARIN: Because we make movies! since I was a kid I always believed that the because I've learned a lot more, and I've also AMARSHI: Because you make movies, and day God made you, he made some choices started to see the hypocrisy and the vacuum you are, in the local lingo, called filmmakers right there. He made somebody Black, some- in some areas which I never sensed before. of colour. So what is it, to be a filmmaker of body brown... I mean he's the guy to blame. AMARSHI: Krishna, how do you conceptu- colour in Canada? After you've said that — that's what I am — it alize this idea of being a filmmaker of colour? KRISHNA: Well, I didn't realize I was a film- ness. I feel that they will not give you the more work on it. You brought this whole maker of colour until after I made Masala. same kind of attention, even if you've done thing when you walk with the jet, and the There was a panel at the Festival of Festivals over a hundred films now, or the hundreds of flashbacks - — Michelle Mohabeer organized it — and she documentaries that I've done now. They still KRISHNA: No, no, no, no. That was there called me about it and said, "Do you want to do not have that kind of respect for you. You from the beginning. It went through many, be on this panel, it's about colour and cultur- have to prove yourself all the time, every time. many rewrites, but its essential stock and al appropriation, voice appropriation." In all So what's happening for me now is I'm take on things didn't really change. honesty, I wasn't so familiar with that kind of turning back to the old roots. I was there SARIN: Well, of course I'm wrong— language to begin with. I'd been in the U.S. (India) last month. It's not like I'm going to KRISHNA: You know what? I don't think working in very isolated circumstances. embrace everything, but I have some ideas you're wrong. In fact, there's a queasy prob- So when I got to that panel, I realized I that I want to make films about. I'm seeing lem with that film for a lot of people: "What was a little out of my league, and I didn't the good things there now as well. kind of film is this?" know exactly what the consensus was. I was on a more artificial level before, in I don't know how to answer the question, Essentially, I'd wanted to meet Richard one sense. Also, everything was camou- "Is this an Indian film, or is it a Canadian film? Bugajski, who was also on the panel. And flaged here, just like death is camouflaged Are you Indian or Canadian?" In fact, it never then I saw the description of the panel in the when you walk into a funeral home — "ahhh, it occurred to me to settle on any of those Festival catalogue, and it said, "This is an looks so beautiful." It's not like the old coun- names to attach to myself, but this is what amazing moment for Canadian cinema, try where you take your mother in your arms I've had to reckon with. Within official cultural because for the first time in its history, we and you bathe her and you clean her. You circles, I think the film has been very, very dif- have two filmmakers of colour represented." I feel death much differently. It's the same ficult. For example, at Telefilm, there's been freaked! I thought, "You called me a filmmak- thing on every other level here. an incredible failure to represent this film er of colour and you didn't even ask my per- Essentially, what you have to do is talk the internationally as a Canadian film. mission to print that!" (Laughter) Little did I same language. That's what's missing for me. AMARSHI: Placing yourself in this kind of know what I was saying. It never really See, I come from a visual background. I talk context, do you relate to similar cultural dawned on me that I, in fact, was a person of in pictures, I talk in emotion, my background developments in the U.S. and England — with colour. I thought it was some political organi- is an emotional background, where I was the works of Salman Rushdie or Rohinton zation or some kind of new word or coinage born. People don't talk about this here. I Mistry or Mira Nair? Or do you see yourself mean, I just had a three-hour more related to, say, Bruce McDonald or session with the CBC. They're Patricia Rozema or Atom Egoyan? Everybody does go through the talking all mind! KRISHNA: I see relations (with other dias- KRISHNA: I think that you poric Indian artists), but there's still a real same hell, trying to get money just experience it () in a paucity of work, especially in cinema. So it's more rarefied way. That's a vague feeling of "yes, but..." How much of that is in fact essentially what Vic is saying, For example, Mira Nair's interests in cine- and it's entirely true. ma are probably very different from mine, racist is very hard to discern A lot of my background is same with Deepa Mehta's. My interest is

similar to Vic's, in that I trained more formal, and also more narrative, a cer- PRIMEIIA PICTURES AND that was developed to represent somebody. I as a painter and then as a cinematographer, tain narrative experimentalism that comes out didn't quite think it was me. This sounds a bit so it was only later that I arrived at this. I'm of the avant-garde of the 60s. Yes, we are a fatuous, but it's not meant fatuously. I don't interested in storytelling, so I learned some of part of the Indian diaspora, but there are mean to be an ingenue about it; it really was that verbal discourse in order to get money other things that make us different. PAGE 15 TOP, surprising. to make a film. I still find it extraordinarily SARIN: I'm at the stage where there are As far as I was concerned, I was just a painful. some films that I want to do, and it has noth- filmmaker — very much obsessed with my The question always arises "Does every- ing to do with being Indian, or Oriental or own interests which really weren't political, body go through this?" Everybody does go anything. They're going to be good films

weren't even about race; they were much through the same hell, trying to get money. because they'll touch people one way or NORSTAR RELEASING;

more about images, more po-mo kinds of How much of that is in fact racist is very hard another. I prefer people to take me as Vic, 13, concerns that were thrown into a narrative to discern. I think you do experience it, but the filmmaker. context. it's very rarefied, it's very heightened. AMARSHI: If you were just starting out to After that panel, I thought I'd better read • make your first film now, knowing what you up on this stuff. I got a lot of books, and now KRISHNA: I remember when I showed you know, how would you go about it? I know what people mean. I'm able to talk my script of Masala before I shot it - SARIN: I would drive the whole project about it a little bit. However, I still don't see SARIN: Yes, I remember. myself. If you're passionate about something, myself as a "Filmmaker of Colour," as though KRISHNA: Either you told me, or someone and you want something badly, you'll have to that somehow differentiates my work from said you had said, "Oh, this script, it's not work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. white people who make films. going to be produced. It's too Indian, no Knock on doors, I don't care what it takes, AMARSHI: As people who are different one's going to put money into it." but you can't sit until you've got it done. from the mainstream here, do you, as pioneer SARIN: No, no. I said to you it was very eth- There's no easy road for any of us. filmmakers, have the luxury to be divorced nic because all the inside jokes would be KRISHNA: The other thing I would empha- from the exclusions, and hypocrisies hard for people to understand. But don't for- size is never give up control over your pro- that other people of colour experience? get, in all fairness, you did a lot of work on it ject. Incorporate it and be 100 percent SARIN: It's a very subtle thing. I'm realizing after that. shareholder of your own company. And don't that in Canada nothing is said out front, but KRISHNA: No, it was the same script. ever let anyone have that. Stick to your guns, the undercurrent is very strong. It's polite- SARIN: No, the one I read, you did some and make sure your guns are really big • 1 4 TAKE ONE

Ayub Khan Din and Akesh Gill in THE BURNING SEASON

Sakina Jaffrey and Herjit Singh Johal in MASALA