Our education system is like a rough book which needs to be faired,” director Anant Mahadevan says, adding that it was this thought that made him name his newest film Rough Book which is slated for an April-end release.
It was Aakash Chaudhary who sowed the idea of making a film on education. looking at the vast subject, Mahadevan was baffled about which issue to rake up. “I’m always on a lookout for subjects that will push my limit as a filmmaker. Rough Book is one such film that delves into what ails our education system, be it teacher poaching, money-making, rankings or coaching classes. It’s a frightening world out there. The challenge was to make a film which was not preachy or moralistic and at the same time not as boring as education sounds,” Mahadevan tells you.
As he was researching for the film, he came across startling facts which became the central theme of his film. “We interviewed students, parents and teachers and observed how teachers looked at educating students. It’s a totally new system and parents didn’t know how to tackle it. How students came up with bizarre thoughts like they don’t need teachers anymore because there’s Google. This actually became the basis of my film,” the director says.
“I was amazed to know that there was one teacher who teaches Physics with a guitar in hand. Another teacher teaches trignometry on a basketball court! They made the process of learning so interesting and broke away from the rigid class system,” Mahadevan explains.
The 65-year-old filmmaker has experimented with this film in many ways. For the first time, he has roped in amateur students to play roles. “The characters are crackling. None of the students have faced a camera before. They form this class of duffers and show how the teacher tries to instill not just confidence but a new thinking in them. I wanted the rawness in the characters,” he says.
Tannishtha Chatterjee was the first choice for Mahadevan to play righteous teacher Santoshi Kumar who goes all out to bring in the change in the education system. “Tannishtha plays a teacher who wants to live life on her own terms. But the politics and the system don’t let her do that. Having worked with her before in Gour Hari Daastan, I found her an accomplished actress. I got a convincing, mature and honest portrayal from her. She is a thinking actress difficult to find these days in Bollywood,” he says.
With this film, Mahadevan has kickstarted a new distribution model for a release and special screenings that are working out well. The makers are planning to go for crowd funding for Rough Book’s promotion and release so that it reaches a wider audience.
“We had a platform release in Kota which had 12 housefull weeks in Fun Cinema. That’s when I realised that this film can go beyond a lot of things. The response we got from students and teachers was unexpected. It suddenly became a cult youth movie. Everybody related to Rough Book in some way or the other,” he says.
Asked what prompted him to go out of the way and explore a new distribution model, he said: “When we take the film to distributors, they don’t have the foresight to see its future. Even if the movie is good, they relegate it to bad show timings so even if had been breathing, it would die. That’s what today’s cinema system does to us. I don’t want this film to die. I want it to get every possible chance to spring a surprise. People should realise that there is an alternate distribution system,” he explains.
Through this model, the makers have already collected around `60 lakh without spending a penny on publicity.
“During the release of Gour Hari Dastan, I told my distributors to put `100 ticket as it wasn’t a Shah Rukh Khan film but of Vinay Pathak. If you do that, there are chances that 100 people would come in your 200-seater audi. If you put `300, there are chances of getting 100 people there. Where do you see the benefit. They said no, it’s not in our system and policy to do that. So people waited till Monday when the ticket prices came down. They destroyed the chances of the film collecting money. You first kill a product and then say that there is no good cinema in this country and no good thinkers. You kill the product and its creator both. I didn’t want to get into that suicidal model anymore,” he says, adding that the multiplexes have fallen prey to a faulty system.
