N AN INCANDES-
CENT moment in
Indian moviemak-
er Rima Das’
third feature
Bulbul Can Sing, the titular
character, an Assamese teenage
girl, is guided onto the bough of a
tree by her pimply budding poet
of a boyfriend. In this moment,
Bulbul breathes the excitement
of being courted by someone
who she thinks is free to express
himself—the first boy to write her
a love poem. His words are song
to her ears.
Just as Bulbul grows to under-
stand her individuality within
society in the wake of the film’s
tragic events, so did Das find her
directorial voice by drawing from
the struggles of her years as an
outsider in Mumbai—the mega-
metropolis and moviemaking hub
where she’s made her name.
Das hails from Chhaygaon,
a northeastern Indian town
that’s both the native village of
Bulbul Can Sing’s protagonist
and the setting of her 2017 film
Village Rockstars, India’s entry
for the 2019 Oscars’ Best Foreign
Language Film consideration.
Though she and the locals had
access to one television in the vil-
lage, “The power always cut out,”
she says. “It was always dark, so
I mostly remember the oil lamps
and the stars.” Her journey from
Chhaygaon to Mumbai provided
the spiritual balance she needed
to be able to return to her roots in
her work—to re-grasp the essence
of an adolescence spent fishing
and swimming, and ultimately, to
see beyond its ordinariness.
At the same time, Das was COURTESY OF CINANDO / FLYING RIVER FILMS
WORLD CINEMA
84 WINTER 2019 MOVIEMAKER.COMI
OUT OF THE ORDINARY
Indian moviemaker
Rima Das’ move from
Chhaygaon to Mumbai
shaped her eye for finding
beauty in everyday life
BY RITESH MEHTA
being opened up to the realistic,
naturalistic aesthetic of what she
calls “world cinema”—arthouse
indies and festival darlings.
That’s when her shift in identity
from actor to moviemaker com-
menced: Even as the Mumbai-
based industry rejected her face
as not “Indian” enough, her de-
meanor as not confident enough,
and her facility with Hindi and
English as too off-mark, she
became mesmerized by such
classics as Children of Heaven,
Pather Panchali,Cinema Paradiso, and the
films of Majid Majidi and
Terrence Malick. She concluded
that even without going the film
school or assistant director route,
she could make movies.
“It is only because I am in
Mumbai that I am making
movies,” Das says. “In Mumbai,
I became very independent. I
understood the complications of
life.” As her worldview matured
soon after she moved to the
city, Das says that she began to
see more value in the everydaysymbols of the natural world she
depicts in her films. “When I was
a child, trees were just there...
It was a very ordinary for me to
see trees. In Mumbai, I could see
my village with some perspective,
and I found it much more beauti-
ful and exciting.”
Das had to work through
culture shock when immersed inL TO R: BONNY (BONITA THAKURIYA),
SUMAN (MANORANJAN DAS), AND
BULBUL (ARNALI DAS) ARE NO STICKS
IN THE MUD IN WRITER-DIRECTOR
RIMA DAS’ BULBUL CAN SING