It took a Canadian born American citizen to make a film on the Indian Pariah dog. He spent months in Kolkata making friends with the dogs and their care givers, invested hours observing and recording precious moments to create Pariah Dog, a film that recently won the best feature at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Uma Karve Chakranarayan talks to the director Jesse Alk. He says, "Making this film and living in Kolkata has been a defining moment in my life, I've back in the USA, and I miss Kolkata immensely. I'll be back as much as I can afford."
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Why did you think of a documentary film on India's street dogs?
A frequent visitor to Kolkata, what really drew me to street dogs was how lonely they seemed to be, and how they still craved human affection, despite living for generations on the street. I thought the film would be more experimental, strictly from the dogs' perspective. But as I met interesting dog feeders, it shifted to becoming more about the human caretakers and their lives.
Why Kolkata?
I shot in Kolkata because Kolkata was where I knew, and I was invited to stay with friends there while I made the film. These friends also became my local collaborators. I didn't pick Kolkata for any particular reason -that it had more or less street dogs than anywhere else, for example. But really the film is in some ways very much about the city itself, and Kolkata is a really special place, so I never thought about shooting anywhere else.
What is the message you want Pariah Dog to convey?
Pariah Dog isn't really a "topical" film in that it explains issues surrounding the street dogs, or gives solutions. I wanted to observe, and to give my take on what this moment in time is like, for these specific people who love street dogs. If there is any message, it might just be that compassion is something that can fill up and give meaning to someone's life, although it isn't always enough to do so.
How did you decide the name?
Actually, the name was one of the very first things that came to the film. As soon as I read that the official breed name for the majority of street dogs in India was the "Indian Pariah," that was the name of the film.
When we set out to find human participants to be in the film, we kept this idea of "pariah" in mind, and looked for people who didn't quite fit into mainstream Bengali society themselves. I wanted some parallel between the people and animals in the film, that maybe both were a little lost and overlooked.
Are the dogs the stars of the movie or are the humans caring for them?
The humans took over the film at some point. The dogs are always there, but unfortunately to make the film work and to move quickly from scene to scene, I had to remove some beautiful dog footage in the last stage of the edit.
I originally wanted to pepper the film with stand-alone vignettes of the dogs' lives on the street, and some of that remains, but less than I had originally intended. When you get into the edit room, things always shift, and that was one thing that happened with this film, definitely.
How easy or difficult was putting the film together, shooting on the streets, convincing people about it and the fact this is very real.
It was definitely a struggle. Being an outsider, it took quite a bit of time to develop meaningful relationships with the people in the film. I knew I wanted to get very intimate footage, and doing that with people from a culture so different than my own took quite a bit of time and patience. I had some advantages as a foreigner, in that people generally took me seriously, despite being a first-time filmmaker. Many seemed surprised that I came so far to make a film about street dogs, as well as that I stayed for so long.
The film took three years to shoot, so I think I earned some respect by proving that I was dedicated to getting it right, no matter how long it took. I think people may have started thinking I was a little crazy, actually. But the support I got was generally overwhelming. Shooting on the streets was a challenge, as crowds naturally form very quickly, which makes capturing dog scenes very difficult. We learned to move very fast, and travel very light. Usually we only had fifteen minutes somewhere before we had to stop shooting and move on.
Dogs with their individual personalities would have been interesting to interact with.
Despite the press about the "street dog menace," I never had a single scary moment working with the dogs. We were barked at a lot, and even surrounded by a pack now and then, but I'd studied some dog behaviour before I began to work on the film, and learned some basics of nonverbal communication that you can use with dogs. If we were able to make them feel that we were not a threat, they almost invariably calmed down immediately.
Just simple things like looking away as if you are disinterested, relaxing your body, not holding anything the dogs might view as a club, and especially finding a place to sit down. Doing those things calmed nervous dogs down immediately most of the time.
Indian street dogs are highly intelligent, in my opinion much more so than foreign breeds, so they were very quick to perceive the situation and to change their opinions of us.
Who is your target audience?
I think the film will appeal to people interested in street dogs, in dogs in general, and in animal welfare, and also people who love or are interested in Kolkata. It's definitely an "art film," but I think it's one that can be enjoyed by a larger audience than films that normally fall into that category.
Where will you be releasing Pariah Dog?
Right now we are focusing on film festivals until December, after which we will try for commercial distribution. We don't know what that will look like yet, but I'm assuming it will be heavily focused on online distribution.
We are trying for Indian film festivals, and hope to work out some sort of commercial distribution that will make the film accessible to an Indian audience.
In your travels, have you come across any other country with similar dog issues?
I was surprised to see how great the conditions of the street dogs in Nepal were. I had a hard time telling which dog was a pet and which was a street dog, that line seemed much more blurred there than I was used to. In Thailand I saw street dogs that seemed to be much more tolerated than they are in India, wandering in and out of shops, shopkeepers giving them water. That all happens in Kolkata as well, of course, but it just seemed to be a different atmosphere.
I am told that every film teaches you something new, what did you learn from this? Considering it is your first, it must be extra special. Can you share your favourite parts from the film?
It's impossible to say it in one quick answer. I went to film school, but shooting this film taught me exponentially more than I ever learned studying filmmaking. The most important things I learned came from just staying in India so long. I lived with the family of my executive producer in Kolkata. Becoming part of that family, watching the kids grow up, being involved in the family celebrations and family dramas, I got a look at life in another culture in a way that I'll always be grateful for.
There are a lot of tricky issues surrounding cross-cultural representation, but living in India and shooting this film in Kolkata for so long was one of the great experiences of my life. I expect the connections with people I made in the process to last the rest of my life.
Tell us something about you, where you grew up, why you like dogs (I'm assuming you like dogs) what pets you have or have had, what movies you want to make, what movies you have made etc.
I was born in Ottawa, Canada, but spent my childhood in Southern California and Washington State, in the USA. I always had dogs as a child, but as a single adult who has always had to work, it's difficult to impossible to care for one, so I have missed out on that for years. This is my first film. I did go to film school, but never released any of my short films. This is really an all a new experience for me.
I want to make lyrical films that are heavily tied to a sense of place, with a feeling for the small moments that puts those moments on an equal level with plot or character development. I want to try to transport people to a specific moment, in a specific place, with specific people, and try for an hour or two to put viewers in the shoes of someone completely different than themselves. Maybe that's why I was so drawn to making a film in Kolkata. I want to try to understand people different than myself, and as I filmmaker I want to continue to look outward and try to understand experiences that are different than my own. Hopefully that translates to viewers, and they get a bit of that from my films as well.
Did your father, Howard Alk, influence your work?
My father was an editor and documentary filmmaker, but unfortunately he passed away when I was still a child,. So I didn't get to learn anything about film making from him directly. I think I inherited a strong stubborn streak from him, and a determination to do the kind of work I wanted to, even if it was the more difficult road. I'd like to think he would have enjoyed the film.
I'm guessing you have a strong connection with India. Would you like to tell us what it is?
My father actually made a film in West Bengal in the 1970s, LUXMAN BAUL'S MOVIE, which was never released, but some of those connections were still waiting for me when I first came to India in 2010. I was shocked to encounter old men who did not speak English approaching me as I travelled around the countryside, who recognized that I was my father's son just from the physical resemblance. I kept coming back to India for several years before I started making PARIAH DOG as I was involved with a website devoted to Baul music, www.baularchive.com. Through that project I made several friends who were crucial to making the film, and without whose invitation and encouragement I would never have had the courage to come and follow this crazy dream of a film about Indian street dogs. As I said earlier, making this film and living in Kolkata has been a defining moment in my life, I've been back in the USA for six months, and I miss Kolkata immensely. No matter what happens with the film, I'll be back as much as I can afford.
Have you planned any other movies in India?
Not at the moment. Unless I can seriously improve my Bangla (I studied for a few months when I first began the film, but stopped when shooting got very busy, and never started up again) I think I would prefer to make my next film in English. Dealing with translations was one of the biggest obstacles I faced making the film. As an independent filmmaker, there is no guarantee I'll get financing to make another film, but I would love the opportunity to keep working in West Bengal, and India in general if the opportunity arose. But as a filmmaker with limited means, I think my next project will most likely have to be based in my own country, where I can try to earn a living and film at the same time.
