Sunday, August 6, 2000		Article

IN filmmaking the length of the film is in no way proportionate to its quality. On the contrary, the statement that ''brevity is the soul of wit'' is even true of cinema and for that reason short films are even more difficult to make. They must make their point in that minimal time span. Animation films come under this category and the man who is now a veteran in this genre is Arun Gongade who heads the animation department in Films Division.

Slim, moustachioed and quite unobtrusive, 49-year-old Arun Gongade could pass for Mr Anybody. And being an introvert he makes his presence even less felt. When he applied for a job in Films Division and had to give his biodata, he didn’t even mention his strong points. He said he had entered poster competitions but had to be asked if he won any prizes. When he said yes he was asked why didn’t you say so (by the then director Prabhakar Pendharkar), he countered "but you didn’t ask me?". Such is the extent of Gongade’s simplicity.

Having joined Films Division in 1975, it was by sheer dint of hard work that he climbed to the top of his section. Refusing jobs in the ad world, he sharpened his animation film skills and is today one of the top professionals in the field. But it is not easy to get things out of Gongade. One has to ask him a lot of questions to get one’s story.

Born and brought up in Nagpur he came to Bombay to do his commercial art course at the J.J. School of Art. "It was a four-year diploma course when I did it," he says shyly. He also won the CAG (Commercial Artists Guild) Gold Medal and while in college he had won an award for a state poster competition.

It was a picture of a girl who was a victim of dowry-burning. Later he made a film on the same poster by panning on it and the climax shows the very poster going up in flames. This film won him a special mention in 1983. Since then Gongade has been winning awards with regularity. In 1987, his film on eye donations A B See won a national award. End Game (1988) is about nuclear disarmament, Last Horizon (1996) is about the displacement of the Warlis, She Could Do You Proud (1997) is about female foeticide and Education Her Only Future (1998) is about education for the girl child and for this he dabbled in clay animation, a technique he learnt in Russia.

These are the films that were screened at the Films Division but there were a couple of prize-winners not available at the time. Yes, he agrees, it is more difficult to make short films. "One has to get the concept right and one must think of the subject visually," he says, though not verbatim.

How did you acquire this talent for sketching, I ask Gongade and he says it came from his mother’s side. "My mama (mother’s brother) was the chief artist in Hindustan Times," he says. May be his talent for cartooning had to be curbed once he got into films but he enjoys doing sketches. No, obviously, he hasn’t to do all the sketches (24 drawings per second), there are other artists to do that, but he has to capture the key movements.

On his desk are the clay figures of the father and the girl in Education Her Only Future and he speaks of the tedious process of working with clay figures. "It is the first time it has been done in India," he adds shyly. The five-minute film shows how a poor farmer, inspired by successul female role models, especially Kalpana Chawla, the astronaut, sends his house-bound child to school. It opens new vistas for the female child.

End Game is about the futility of war and is visually rich in its depiction of death and disaster. "Who is the winner?" it asks. Yes, Gongade has to read a good deal of the subject and must be able to condense it in a few minutes. All his films range from two to five minutes. But at times it can be quite trying.

He gives an instance of how when making She Could Do You Proud, about the termination of pregnancy in case the foetus is female, a doctor asked him to see some of the slides or pictures connected with this process. "It was quite terrible, I couldn’t bear to look at them," he admitted, horror writ large on his otherwise placid and genial face.

If not pure animation, Gongade makes films which capture action through photographs, like Remember Sacrifice, about the role of the jawans on the borders and though it isn’t anything sensational, it surely makes a point in just two minutes. Another short film, of just three minutes, is Shanti, about giving something back to the planet we live on.. Green is the Hue of Life is a five-minute film which deals with ecology. How long does he take to make a film?

"From concept to completion about four to six months," says Gongade though not in as many words. "I am from Nagpur, so Hindi comes to me more fluently," he admits. Quite often the subjects are given to him by Films Division but at times he himself puts forward a concept, is what his mentor Pendharkar tells me. It was Pendharkar who advised him not to join an ad agency when he had the chance, but to continue in Films Division where he has made a niche for himself.

"Do you have any regrets for not joining an ad agency?" I ask.

"No, none at all," says Gongade. "How much does one need to live life comfortably? How much can one spend on food?. One’s needs are limited," he goes on.You see in him a simple man with the values hardly to be found in today’s world. A man who has achieved his goals by sheer hard work and is not interested in the image he projects.

Gongade is all praise for Ram Mohan, one of the high priests of animation in India. "I always consult him on issues, he’s a great man and very helpful," says Gongade. Prabhakar Pendharkar is another great for him. "You must read some of his novels," he tells me, his face glowing with admiration.

Being head of the department in Films Division does entail a good deal of paperwork which no real professional will appreciate but he realises he must put up with it. "But I still devote enough time for my creativity," he says and that is important because one doesn’t want to see his talents hidden under a bushel. For those who have seen his films know that they speak for themselves. And like Oliver one would always ask for more.