Rooting for Pavitra
This talented city-based filmmaker has just completed India’s largest crowd-funding campaign for a non-fiction film
By : sneha k sukumar
Update: 2015-07-27 00:49 GMT
Pavitra Chalam always believed that she could bag an Olympic medal in skating for India someday. Now, for nearly a decade, she rolls the reels instead and affects change one frame at a time through her award-winning films on social issues. Even as she becomes the voice of the underprivileged with her upcoming film, Rooting for Roona, this Bengaluru girl’s film, recently completed India’s largest crowd-funding campaign for a non-fiction film and is one of the six films chosen for India’s first GoodPitch event held in Mumbai.
“My dream has always been to eternalise issues that are important and bring them to the world through the magical and powerful medium of film,” says the graduate of New York Film Academy’s filmmaking program who began her journey into the celluloid as she represented India as a Peace Ambassador to Pakistan, making her directorial debut there.
“We decided we would put forward every misconception and historical error we grew up with and make it into a film,” she says about her first film Bus, which was shot entirely on a bus and something that meant ‘enough’ both in Hindi and Urdu. “I knew right then that my role in this life would be to tell stories and affect change through the powerful lens of a camera,” she says.
Since then, Pavitra has donned several hats — that of a journalist at the World Youth Congress in Morocco and travelling across Europe as an Ambassador of the Peace Child International. That, aside of being a kickboxer and winning several accolades including the Ability Media International (AMI) Award in London for Khushboo, a film about children with complex needs and the Asia Pacific Award for the Best Documentary Talent at the DocWeek film festival in Australia for her feature documentary on Down’s syndrome called Indelible. “It’s an affirmation of the work we do and the causes we are fighting for. It helps us get our work out into the world and that is always a big win,” says Pavitra, who is also the CEO of CurlyStreet Media —something that is being touted as one of the top 100 dream companies to work for in India. She along with her team of opinionated, avant-garde bankers, consultants, lawyers, musicians, editors and writers sizzle with films for social change. “We also created our first TV commercial that launched along with the IPL this year. We are also just entering the public service announcement space with a campaign for blood donation,” says the firecracker.
Like most youngsters today, she didn’t have to convince her parents about her career. “I remember when my parents were faced with criticism about my unconventional choices they would always smile and answer, “We want her to do what her heart tells her to. If you saw how happy it makes her, doing what she loves, you would never ask these questions,’” she adds.