IN QUEST OF THE UNCHARTED

That is true of his directorial output as well. In ten years as a filmmaker, Sivan has built a fairly substantial body of work—his latest feature, Before the Rains, an Indo-US co-production, is his seventh. Each of his films is distinct, stylistically and textually.

Though he earned his spurs at the FTII, passing out in 1985, he opted for his own path. Sivan did his first film as independent cinematographer, Aditya Bhattacharya’s dark Raakh (1988), without ever assisting anybody. He invested the film with a texture that sharply enhanced its mood.

Sivan agrees that the untutored plunge helped. He says, “When you dive into the deep end, you learn from mistakes first hand. You are keen to walk the edge and don’t think of cutting out risks. You create things your own way, as you have observed them.”

Sivan the director made a mark with his first two films, Halo and Malli. But it wasn’t until late 1998, when Hollywood star John Malkovich, head of the jury of the Cairo Film Festival that year, was swept off his feet by The Terrorist, taut and minimalist, that the world took notice of his skills. The film won the Golden Pyramid and fetched Sivan the Best Director prize.

Sivan hasn’t looked back since, crafting offbeat if less feted films like Navarasa and Anandabhadram. He is now on the threshold of another breakthrough with Before the Rains—and much else. The period film, produced by Echo Lake Productions (the company behind Deepa Mehta’s Water) and starring British actor Linus Roache, Hollywood’s Jennifer Ehle, Rahul Bose and Nandita Das, will premiere at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival next week.

Moreover, Prarambha, a Kannada-language short directed by Sivan as part of the Jaago AIDS Project developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Mira Nair’s Mirabai Films, will play in the Mavericks section of the Toronto festival.

Nor is that all. The cinematographer-director will also be a guest speaker with the likes of filmmaker John Sayles and actor Tilda Swinton in the festival’s Talent Lab, which helps young filmmakers develop their ideas into the big screen ventures.

Prarambha, starring B. Saroja Devi and Prabhu Deva, is the story of a boy who is refused admission in a school because his parents are HIV positive. “These are four films, with Mira Nair, Vishal Bhardwaj and Farhan Akhtar doing the others. I presume after the premiere in Toronto, they will be combined and released in the theatres as one,” Sivan says.

If not exactly a leap into the unknown, Before the Rains is a testimony to the spirit of adventure that drives Sivan. The basic idea came from the producers. The director decided to set the narrative in Kerala for “it suited adaptation to an Indian context.”

He explains, “Before the Rains is a film that incorporates something I relate to. As a boy I wondered by whom and when those treacherous roads in Kerala’s spice hills were constructed. The film explores the elements that went into the weaving of a road through nature, into the skies.”

That’s par for the course for a filmmaker who revels in blending the universal with the personal and who once dared to stake his all on a megastar-driven vehicle like Asoka, a visually lush but ill-fated epic. “The producers would obviously like to take Before the Rains to the world market,” he says.

“It was great working with talent from different parts of the world,” says Sivan. “A mix of languages were spoken during the shoot. For me, it was especially rewarding to have Malayalam actor Thilakan in a guest role. This was the first time I directed him after shooting him as a cinematographer for Perumthachan (1990).”

The shoot was a breeze. He says, “Rahul (Bose) and Nandita (Das) are at home with foreign productions and sync sound. Since the film is about relationships it was good to have a close-knit atmosphere.” Sivan reveals that Bose plays a character who straddles two worlds—the world of a colonial planter and that of his own. “The film is a study of the turmoil he goes through,” he adds.

So, will we now see Sivan helming more international projects? “I guess so since I’m comfortable with the language and there seem to be opportunities too,” he replies. Indeed, one such opportunity is already knocking on his doors. Sivan is due to direct a British-produced film set in Afghanistan, The Wedding Party. “These films do take their time,” he says. “I think it will be on next year.”
Indeed, there is nothing Santosh Sivan loves more than seeking out uncharted terrains.