Short filmmaker Gaurav Bakshi hopes to find his niche with his first feature film in an industry that he believes has a ‘lottery-like nature’

Ruffling the reel raffle

Short filmmaker Gaurav Bakshi hopes to find his niche with his first feature film in an industry that he believes has a ‘lottery-like nature’

He may share his name with the man who fuelled an online revolution for Anna Hazare, but short filmmaker Gaurav Bakshi has a revolution of his own in mind – and that’s to make ‘thought-through, intelligent’ feature films. That ‘thought-through intelligence’ is something that viewers of Gaurav’s short films are already aware of. His first short film Reincarnation (2011) got rave reviews at international films festivals, and has been specially lauded for its originality and intrigue. When his protagonist (Sumeet Raghavan) begins believing himself to be a Mahatma Gandhi incarnate, it raises questions of the thin line that separates the real from the delusions, and also the need to deify a being. The irreverence with which he questions the abstract is hard to miss — in the choice of a story in Reincarnation or comparing a wife-beater’s perspective with that of a lawyer fighting against domestic violence in Choice. The veiled humour is the tone that the filmmaker adopts in his other short films (The Lesbian and The Lonely Man) too, even when writing a column as the insider-outsider in tinselville. The ‘outsider’ in Gaurav stems from the fact that he spent 14 years in the corporate sector — an IIM graduate who finally threw it all off for his creative instincts. He’s been an assistant director for films like Love Khichdi, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and Ishqiya, also had a brief stint with well-known film production houses before shooting short films. Ask him, how he now views the world of films vis-a-vis the corporate world, and he says it’s not very different. “Creativity is only a part of filmmaking, a large part of it is project management or man management. Having said that it is also very disorganised and unpredictable as it is network based if you need to get things done,” he explains. “The sheer lottery like nature of the industry also makes it an insecure and ego-based one.” Gaurav, who’s working towards his first feature film, says that the film will mirror society. Will that mean saying goodbye to short films? “No, I’ll keep making short films. At least one a year if I get too busy with features,” he says.