What do books mean for Mumbai? For its writers, for its readers, for its booksellers? Books in the Big City, an extraordinary documentary by Sayalee Karkare pans over the lives of some of the people in the city with a mad passion for books.







Karkare speaks about the making of the documentary.



On her inspiration



There are a few things that come to mind. When you do something, you want to make sure that you understand at least a little bit about what you are attempting to do. We felt fairly comfortable with books and reading, and felt we knew and understood something about this world. This gives you a feeling that you have something to say, something to communicate which gives a kind of legitimacy, above all to yourself, that what you are attempting to do is worth doing.



The second point is probably more perturbing: what makes you think you can make a film about books? What makes you think you can make a film at all? Here, the films of Werner Herzog and Errol Morris were hugely inspiring. Their films often don’t seem to be championing anything, they are just studies of human nature. For instance, Errol Morris’ documentary film, Gates of Heaven, is about pet cemeteries and is told solely through interviews. Most of Herzog’s earlier work was self-produced and self-financed. They seem to explore the minds of people and that is exactly what we wanted to convey with our film: the inner world of readers. Their work made us feel that making this film was okay, that it could be done.



On her objectives



We wanted to see if this was possible at all – to make a film from start to finish, that has something to say, and show it to people. The other goal was to start a dialogue around reading. Ever since passing out of college, I meet fewer and fewer people who read, and each time I meet a reader, I am always a little bit amazed.



On the reception to the film



The reception has been surprisingly great. We’ve held screenings mostly in libraries and colleges, and people seem to have really enjoyed the film. Perhaps because the audience is self-selecting, and only people who value reading come to attend such an event – who knows?



Another possible reason probably is that in India people have certain expectations of documentaries. For most people, documentaries tend to be about really serious issues like war, water shortage, health issues, basically films that make you feel bad and helpless in some way. We were very conscious that we did not want to make of a film of that sort. So people are surprised that documentaries can also be about relatively mundane, harmless topics like reading. They are expecting to come out feeling really horrible, but they don’t.



It is a cheerful little film that simply celebrates the act of reading, which is probably why they really like it. At a screening at the University of Mumbai, a kid told us that he decided to do his Bachelor's in Library Sciences because he read an article about the film.



Originally the plan was to make a 90-minute film, but we thought no one would want to see that, so we brought it down to 40 mins. But there was all this other material that had lots of conversations about books. And eventually the screenings, which people feel is a little short, devolves into all those other topics. People start sharing their personal stories of reading, we discuss reading habits and whether people prefer kindles or physical books.



Surprisingly, this is the discussion people respond to the most, with everyone wanting to voice their opinion. Whenever the film has been screened, it has fostered an hour of intelligent discussion on the nature of reading and what it means. So eventually, it has come to around 90 minutes running time.



We had 40 hours of footage, which we chopped to 40 minutes. The film was made on a no-budget basis. We paid our cinematographer in books. Before the making of this film, the film-makers had not gone to film school, they hadn't dropped out of film school. This film was their film school.



