Starring: Nandita Das, Deepti Naval, Raghuvir Yadav, Govind Namdeo, Gulshan Grover, Laila Rouass, Rahul Khanna
Screenplay: Ashok Mishra, Sudha Arora
Dialogues and Lyrics: Hariram Acharya
Audiography: C. Anand
Song Composer: Daan Singh
Background Score: Vishwa Mohan Bhatt
Art Direction: Jayant Deshmukh
Costumes: Mala Dey
Cinematography: Ashok Kumar
Produced by: Jagmohan Mundhra,Gaurang Doshi
Written, Edited and Directed by: Jagmohan Mundhra

Synopsis

A rural low-caste woman , Sanwari, working for the Rajasthan Government's Saathin (women's development programme) speaks out against the prevalent custom of child marriages for which she is brutally gang-raped by the village's upper-caste men. Expecting her to wither in shame, they and other villagers are astounted when she seeks justice. Her real rape begins when she is amde to run from pillar to post in a judicial system corrupted by sexism, chauvinism, feudalism and political opportunism. The international media make her a pawn in the political chess game between the ruling party's Central Government and the Opposition Party's State Government. One places her on a pedestal while the other openly maligns her. From a rape victim, she becomes a rape activist...

I have tried to make a film which is neither ponderous, abstract, experimental and pseudo- intellectual, nor just a mere irrelevent, escapist, good "time-pass".I hope it is rivetting, engaging, gripping, thought-provoking and pushes the envelope.I have no illusions that it will bring about revolutionary change. At best it can create awareness, and a sense of shame that as a civilised society, inspite of the lip-service of calling our women Devis, we actually treat them with utter contempt and disrespect. I want the audience to really feel horrified and repulsed by rape and its aftermath and not see it as sexual titilation.I want them to feel that rape is never about sex, it is about subjugation. My audience is any one who doesn't believe in leaving their brains behind when they go to see the movies. After they leave the theatre, if the film stays with them generating passionate dining table discussions, I would feel that I have achieved my goal

I had read Bhanwari Devi's true story in a newpaper article in London. It was called The Courage of a Rural Indian Woman. There was a picture of a Rajasthani woman in traditional garb with determination in her eyes. This combination of traditionalism and feminism was fascinating. And this real life drama of gang rape and its aftermath exposing issues of sexism, feudalism and political opportunism was set against the backdrop of colorful contemporary Rajasthan. The grit of a woman who refused to be treated like a rape victim and instead became a rape activist, was fascinating, because a film needs a protagonist to root for and here was a real life Heroine. The subject was pretty much conceived by me after researching innumerable news clippings, articles and documentation of court proceedings, I listed a chronology of events in a capsule form from her being inducted into the Saathin program to one year after the judgement was delivered and media hoopla had finally subsided. I listed seperately all the players who were a part of this drama, the family, the villagers, the prosecutors, the defendents, the social workers, the politicians, the medics and the journalists. After going through this exhaustive secondary research, one thing became clear to me. I was not going to mae a documentary, nor I was going to make a bio-pic. She was an icon, a symbol of courage, and her story could be the story of many rape victims who encounter attitudinal roadblocks in their path in search of justice. I hired Sudha Arora, a well known literary figure in Hindi and an activist for women's issues, to write the first draft on the basis of my research. She would bring a woman's point of view to the story. Then for the second draft I hired Ashok Mishra, a National Award winner for the screenplay of Shyam Benegal's Samar. I sent him to Jaipur for primary research and to meet in person some of the characters of the story. I wanted him to give an alternative structure to the story instead of having a straight linear narrative, as he had so nicely done in Samar. Once I got the two seperate drafts, I sat down to write a third draft which was not only a cut and paste from the first two drafts but which truly reflected how I had started seeing the movie in my minds eye. For the dialogues and final polish, I took my third draft to Jaiput to Dr.Hariram Acharya, a Sanskrit scholar and a linguist in Rajasthani dialects, who with the assistance of Deepak Purohit,a Jaipur based business man having a flare for Rajasthani idioms, wrote the final script with dialogues. I was clear in my mind that I wanted all the characters in the movie to speak their own languages, to capture the reality of a multi-lingual society and authenticity of the region where the story was based.It was not difficult to interpret anything because I was there at every step of the way in writing the film.

Even though on surface we were shooting a regional film, I knew that the appeal of my film will be global. So I decided not to skimp on raw-stock and equipment, and produce a film which should stand up to the best of world cinema in terms of technical quality.We decided to shoot sync sound with silent camera and silent generators and use a sound mixer on the set with multiple remote controlled lapel mikes and direction sensitive boom mikes.The film had no dubbing at all for dialogues.I brought gold-diffusion and polarising filters from America to capture the color of golden sand dunes of Rajasthan against clear blue skies. I had a remote controlled Jimmy Jib with monitor on the set to get interesting high angle shots. I had a panther dolly with tracks to get various moving shots in the film. I always used a video assist to monitor composition, action and visual elements of each frame. It was a conscious creative decision to keep vibrant primary colors like a picture postcard to contrast against the starkness of the grim incident and the dark realities beneath the surface.

I used only primary lenses for sharpness and depth-of-field . We used Kodak 400T and 800T vision stock for candlelit night interiors and 5245 for Day exteriors. The look was low contrast, even lighting which brought out richness in color and background detail.

I didn't want a straight forward narrative structure in the story because I wanted to draw parallels between the attitudes now versus then at the time of incident seven years ago. I also wanted the audience to know the current status of the case. So we chose a story told in flashback bookended by our "sutradhars", played by Laila Rouass, a journalist from England who comes to Rajasthan to research the story in todays time and uses her Indian ex-boyfriend played by Rahul Khanna as an interpreter. There relationship gave me another layer in the story when contrasted with the relationship of Nandita Das and Raghuvir Yadav as the village couple, and Deepti Naval and Mohan Bhandari as the middle-class city couple.The other layer in the story was exposing the agendas of various people; not only those who want to hurt her but also those who want to help her. It was also my point that people with personal agendas which are not really altruistic can sometimes end up helping a person more because of their practical approach regardless of its ethics; as depicted by Lillete Dubey's character in the movie.To bring about a multi-layered story in narrating an incident which was highly publicised and where the protagonist doesn't even have the satisfaction of victory, was our challenge in writing the screenplay. even though the tale is grim, I didn't want the audience to leave with a sense of despair. Instead, I wanted them to be moved by the triumph of human spirit against man made odds and leave the theatre with a sense of hope. Even though the antagonists of the story are men who brutally rape a woman, I didn't want this pro-women story to become anti-men.The character of Raghuvir Yadav as the supportive husband ( again inspired by the real husband in the case) ensures that. We also tried to inject some situational satirical humor in the story in the characterisation of city socialites and the small town cop played by Ravi Jhankal.Most important of all, I wanted a well paced story where no scene overstays its welcome, and is there because either it gives you an insight into characterisation or it contributes to a forward thrust in the story. In a 125 minute film, there are 118 scenes, most of them no more than one page long ( as a rule of thumb, one type written page amounts to one minute of screen time). I am also a great believer of coverage ( various camera angles resulting in many different shots to piece together in a scene). The nuances of a great performance can be lost in a scene, if the shots are too wide or too far; and audience gets no sense of time and space if the shots are too close.So, the form I like is where you build a scene with a combination of master shots, over shoulder mid shots, close ups and inserts; with fluidity of camera movements. A well edited scene is where it all fits together so well that the total becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

I was absolutely clear about one thing. If Nandita Das said no to this film I wouldn't make it. I was fortunate to get all my first choices for all the parts, but in the case of the main protagonist, I had no other choice. Ever since I saw her in Fire and Earth, I knew that this was an actress I wanted to work with. When I decided that I didn't want Bawandar (Sandstorm) to be a documentary bio-pic, I could visualise no one else but Nandita in the lead role as the rustic, beautiful in an unobtrusive way, feminine yet strong personality. Her winning the best actress award for this film at the Santa Monica Film Festival was a reaffirmation of my conviction. Deepti, who I had worked with 15 years ago in Kamla was my choice to play Shobha Devi because of her genuine sincere eyes and an extremely caring and sensitive face.As an altruistic social worker who has no personal agenda of her own, she was totally believable. Since Cinema is about suspension of disbelief, it was very important that the actors chosen for the role looked the parts and their body language and speech wouldn't jar in the context of the story. Star appeal was not important to me. What was important was a solid body of professional work on stage or screen and a passion to be in an ensemble cast consisting of 72 speaking parts to tell the story. Most of my principle cast consisted of actors with that kind of passion. Actors such as Govind Namdeo, Lalit Tewari, Yashpal Sharma, Ravi Jhankal, Anupam Shyam and Ashok Banthia had worked in realistic parallel cinema.Two actors from the mainstream commercial cinema who showed that kind of enthusiasm and passion were Ishrat Ali , and Gulshan Grover. Rest of the cast was assembled from theatre actors from Jaipur,Bikaner, Bombay and Bhopal. I chose most of my grip, lights,sound and camera crew from Madras. My director of photography is national award winner Mr.Ashok Kumar who had his own team. My production designer Jayant Deshmukh and Dress Designer Mala Dey had both worked in Rajasthan before and could identify with the sensibilities of this film where authenticity was foremost. For two hours, we wanted to transport every one in the darkened theatre in any corner of the globe to the sights and sounds of Rajasthan, so I chose for background score, a highly respected and knowledgable musician from Jaipur, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt who has the distinction of being the only musician from India to have won a grammy award. For Rajasthani folk songs in the background, I chose the compositions of a veteran music director Mr.Daan Singh, who also lives in Jaipur. Lyrics were written by Mr. Hari Ram Acharya who also wrote the Rajasthani dialogues. Even though the songs in the movie are only partially in back ground as a part of the sound track, full seven songs were recorded digitally for the accompanying album with authentic Rajasthani instruments such as Rawanhattha, Morchang, Bhopa and Saarangi by well known musicians under the arrangements of Bhavadeep Jaipurwale and Bhoomanand Bogam.

Shooting was completed in two shedules. One in January 2000 and the other in April 2000. Total number of shooting days was 55. Post production took from May 2000 to October 2000 when the first copy of the film came out. Since October 17, when we appealed the decision of the revising committee to give the film 5 cuts with an A certificate, we are waiting for our turn for the Appelette Tribunal to see the movie so I have an opportunity to plead my case. I don't see why after accepting an A certificate, I still have to submit the cuts. To think that our movie going audience who patronises this kind of a film is not mature enough to handle some of the scenes is undermining their intelligence. Festival audiences around the world has seen the uncut version and given the film a standing ovation. There are many interesting experiences during the shoot; specially realising that casteism and child marriages are still alive and well in rural Rajasthan in this millenium, and most people who live in the cities are oblivious to that reality. Most kids who used to hang around our sets were already married, and when we were shooting on the parapet of a village well, many of our women extras from the village were not allowed to stand on it by the Sarpanch because they were from lower caste.

On 4th March, when the film was voted as the best film by audience choice, at the Cinequest San Jose Film festival, I felt vindicated. A film which does not have the hottest box-office stars and foreign locations shot songs and dances, depends on good word of mouth to find its audience.It needs clever positioning in the market place and patience to build its clientele. I have never seen this film as a regional film with regional music, I see it as a film with global appeal, because whether you are in Rajasthan or Rhode Island, issues facing women are universal.

Jagmohan Mundhra has made more than twenty two features in the past twenty years most of them in English Language. Bawandar is his second film based on a true story following Kamla (1986). For more on Bawandar go to http://www.bawandar.com