Archana Phadke Talks About Her Debut Movie ‘About Love’, Says ‘Wanted to Create a Memory Box’
First-time filmmaker Archana Phadke says that her documentary About Love, in which she captured the everyday moments of her family members, made her see her loved ones as individuals with their own dreams and ideas. The incredibly personal documentary, which currently streams on MUBI India, follows three generations of Phadke’s family who live and work together in their five-storey building in South Mumbai. After Succession Season 3 Finale, Fans Share Funny Memes on the HBO’s Hit Show (View Tweets).
“About Love” was a part of a specially curated list of seven movies that were specially picked up by filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane for the streaming service. Phadke, who earlier worked as an editor for National Award-winning documentary “Placebo” (2014) and cinematographer for “Raghu Rai: An Unframed Portrait” (2017), said the process of her looking at her family as a group of people started when her mother had a breakdown and she filmed it. KBC 13: Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan to Appear on the Season Finale of Amitabh Bachchan’s Quiz Show.
“I was shooting this film for a long time and there’s always one moment that impacts you a lot. For me, that scene was when my mother had a breakdown and then she talked for ten minutes. While making the documentary, I knew that I had to film this moment. Because in that moment, my mother stopped being my mom, this role that I have assigned to her, and she became more than that. “I suddenly started seeing her as a person, as an individual. I started thinking about her dreams and aspirations. And the moment I started seeing my mother as a person, I also started seeing my whole family as people,” the 35-year-old told PTI in an interview.
For Phadke, it was the 2013 South Korean documentary “My Love, Don’t Cross That River” that pushed her to direct her first documentary feature film. “I believe that all films begin through some sort of inspiration. That’s what happened to me. I saw this documentary and it was about this nonagenarian couple who were so much in love despite being married for 75 years. “While watching that movie and even afterwards, I wondered if I have seen this kind of love in my family. So I set out to make this film, something that plays with the banal moments of everyday life and tries to understand whether it is love that actually ties families together. That was my intention when I started the film. I wanted to capture the nothingness of everyday life,” Phadke said.
The director hopes the documentary serves as a time capsule, bridging the gap between the past, present and future generations of her family. “When you’re making a personal film, you’re always caught between the role of a filmmaker and being a family person. So the family member side of me was always excited about making this film. I thought that ten years down the line, when I will watch this film, it will be a different experience. It also goes for other members of my family.”
Asked whether there were any apprehensions in her family about getting filmed, Phadke said her family understood her intentions and her passion for cinema. “A lot of time in documentaries, what happens is that you have to spend at least a month to get people to feel comfortable with the camera because otherwise the moment a person comes in front of the camera, they change. They become aware of how they are being perceived and might act.
“But I used to hang out in my house with a camera always and my family were aware of my passion.
They saw the camera as an extension of me. So when I started the documentary, I was lucky that I didn’t have to break that wall. So there was no apprehension, they were just being themselves in front of the camera.” There were moments when Phadke struggled to balance her role as a family member and as a filmmaker. The filmmaker, who has a biotechnology degree from Mumbai University’s Jai Hind College, said she filmed the situations that often left her feeling conflicted.
“When my grandfather passed away, I filmed those moments and it was quite difficult for me. When I was filming, I felt conflicted. I didn’t know whether what I was doing was right or not. But the filmmaker part of me suddenly stepped in and the idea was to film with dignity. “You cannot do it insensitively while filming a situation like this. So these kinds of moments were very difficult. Even during editing, I was in two minds about whether it should be there or not.”
Throughout the 90-minute-long documentary, Phadke trains her camera on several of her family members, including her house, the Phadke Building in South Mumbai, which also comes across as a character in the film. “I started shooting with my grandparents first and they can’t step out of the house as it doesn’t have an elevator. So this building is their whole world. Now, it’s all they have and all they know. “When it comes to my parents, the time they spend together is in this space. They also hardly took vacations or went out. So the building kind of lends itself as a character in the film. That’s why I decided to keep the story inside the house,” she said.
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