“I’m a Bharatnatyuam dancer”

“Excuse me, what did you say??”

I was responding to a muffled response from the second from the left lowest box on a very crowded Zoom meeting in the middle of the Pandemic. Everyone was talking at once and I couldn’t properly hear the quiet voice coming out of the cacophony.

After hearing my friend Ryan Singh’s brief overview of Rathika Sitsabaiesan’s harrowing story of escape from war, struggles and resilience, and deciding I had to help tell this compelling story, it had been time to meet this amazing woman.

Though I would have wanted to meet her in person, I was in quarantine in Toronto during the Pandemic and this godsend thing called Zoom was the only way to bring people together. Ryan wanted to get as many brainstorming people on the Zoom as possible, so there were 12 – 16 creatives from various communities – all throwing ideas out excitedly. It was hard to keep up with the noise, and my hearing disability didn’t make the muddled-together voices any easier to understand.

Then, from the din, something I recognized, and it was coming from Rathika herself.

She repeated “I’m a classically trained Indian Bharatanatyam professional dancer”. “No!” I shrieked! When I studied this very specific and rare form of Indian dance in London so many years before, almost no one had heard of it. And I certainly had never heard of it again when I came back to North America and continued choreographing and performing as a modern dancer in New York and Canada before moving into film production. I had learned from my lovely Indian teacher that the “Dance of the Enchantress” had fallen into disrepute for about a hundred years and only then had it been making a comeback. What are the odds that this form of (indeed) enchanting and dramatic dance was being performed by the person whose story I was so interested in?

Bharatanatyam is particularly detailed in every part of the body. Even eye movements are choreographed in specific detail in this very expressive form of storytelling.

“That’s It!! It hit me like a thunderbolt that the way into this important story would be to tell it through dance – and this dance in particular. Rathika’s story involves, by necessity, a lot of violence and horror – I had been pondering how I was going to get through months of hearing and editing stories of rape, genocide, and deep human tragedy. “Violence porn” is not my thing and I certainly didn’t want to impose it on any production or editing teams I might be working with.

Classical Indian DANCE gave us an inroad to the story in a way that wouldn’t traumatize an audience while still getting at the depth of the tragedy. I was in!

It was the early days of research and there still wasn’t any money to do any proper pre-production but, as is often the way with independent filmmaking, the project has a way of telling you what needs to happen next. At this point, Ryan continued to look for funds having carried the story for more than nine years as lead producer and director. Satisfying the request of potential funding sources caused us to acquire various roles in the production and I came on board as co-director, co-writer and eventually co-producer.

Because neither Ryan nor I are members of the Tamil community, it was clear that we would need to work very closely with that community and that would require trust. And a lot of it. The subject matter was deeply personal, painful, and as it turned out, dangerous for Canadian-Tamils to speak about since the war and genocide were still ongoing in Sri Lanka.

Ryan had already spent years getting to know the community after he had dangerously captured footage of Rathika on her return to Sri Lanka. Dayana Stanislaus served as the cultural consultant, functioning as a surrogate to Rathika’s contribution, making sure we got every fact, date and issue sorted out correctly before we began filming. Where Dayana lacked in first hand experience, Rathika confirmed or directed us to elders in the community. Mukunda Muralee would later join bringing a fresh energy, unbiased commitment and more intimate knowledge further confirming our copious research or correcting missing facts.

AND….we were in the middle of Covid! How the heck could we shoot and put our vulnerable participants and crew in the middle of danger? Fortunately, our union, the Directors Guild of Canada, had come up with a solid set of guidelines which we would utilize while shooting. So, armed with daily Covid tests for everyone on set, along with correct PPE and protocols regarding water, snacks, food, etc., we proceeded.

Working with his credit card and line of credits, Ryan invested every cent of his income and credit while continuing to pursue additional funding. Unwavering was his commitment to make this film, so we decided to make the documentary, while he unrelentingly continued to hit the pavement to get support and other funding. Soon he secured a license with Tamil Entertainment Television which triggered the Canadian Media Fund all while continuing to develop the  story through research across the community and interviews with Rathika. When we finally got into principal photography, my interview with Rathika alone would take two days as we wanted it to be thorough. Exploring such a personal story rife with painful emotions would be challenging for everyone, yet Rathika submitted to the process to dig deep into very powerful and dark memories and trauma while maintaining her inner sense of hope and faith.

It was hard to find other people to interview at first because fear of exposure was so great. Ryan and Dayana kept searching and gradually, people began to come forward. Word started to spread that we were embarking on telling this story and soon other members in the community volunteered to share their accounts of what happened. We agreed to maintain a wide range of gender and ages. As we began to dig deeper into the stories, we came across new issues every day like intergenerational trauma and the effect it has had on the next generation as well as differences within the community itself.

Two people agreed to speak on camera as long as they could do so anonymously. One person, Collins Perinpanayagam offered to meet us and would decide then if he wanted to do the interview. He was worried about the safety of his family. Agreeing to this was hard – having an entire film crew come out and then not being used (you have to pay them regardless) is quite a gamble and it could have gone very badly if Collins had decided not to participate. We met him in the company of his family. Luckily for us, he gave an amazing interview with a deeply personal tribute to his father.  His two sisters and mother, who had been sitting and watching, prompting any forgotten moment while he spoke, decided they wanted to be heard too. Their footage was extremely moving, as was everyone’s and the interviews kept leading us on to tell these untold stories to the world.

Our actual first day of filming was of the dance segments of the film, three weeks after our decision to go ahead. I was concerned putting it together so quickly because I knew that this traditional form of dance is very wary of modern interpretation. I wanted to see the story of the war and its aftermath unfold symbolically. It wouldn’t be a typical classical format about ancient stories but one that was relevant today and only happened recently. But it turned out that Rathika’s guru and choreographer Nirothini Pararajasingam was very open to the idea. Whew! But she was adamant that the costumes and music be put together in India. Having been to India, I knew that this could take weeks, if not months. But Niro prevailed, and she had the dancers, music, and costumes together in two weeks! And it was all stunning!

Sidebar: this all came together very quickly once Ryan went into gear and magic began to happen. In the middle of the buzz and crazy fast prep time, he and I didn’t think to sit down and actually talk about what co-directing meant to each of us. For some reason, we assumed that the other thought similarly, especially as we had known each other for several years. Duh!! I was up to direct the dance sequences and we had very limited time, the studio fell through at the last minute, the crane I had ordered never materialized, and we were filming kids so we were very restricted as to their hours. Ryan and I had to sort out our different approaches at warp speed while not triggering each other and needless to say, it was challenging! But we worked it out, our wonderful crew led by Roger Singh (no relation) pulled everything together, and the dance sequences in the film became a huge hit and a very important and unique element in the film that we are all very proud of.

We were still being rejected by every mainstream source of funding. “This isn’t relevant”. “No one will want to watch”, “it won’t impact the average viewer”. You get the picture – yet we felt in our bones that this was a very important story that Canadians and the rest of the world needed to see. We continued….

Ryan shot the bulk of the B’roll and supporting footage, and did a beautiful job (he’s a wonderful cinematographer as well as director) and I filled in when I could. Ryan and I were both dedicated to working with underrepresented communities on the crew right from the beginning, and I was constantly amazed at the talent and dedication of all of the people Ryan was able to bring on board.

Everyone worked tirelessly to create an amazing story. Ryan went to Europe to capture Rathika speaking at the United Nations. What began as a 15 day shoot soon ballooned to a 40 day production over a year’s time as we painstakingly pieced the story together and adjusted as we learned more from the people who were there on the frontlines.

It was time to edit and post-produce. But with what funds? And how?

Part 1 – We Only Want Rom-Roms!