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Sapna Agarwal / Pune March 7, 2006
Information technology (IT) is their bread-and-butter business, yet they nurse an irrepressible urge to communicate in the form of art.
The art form they have chosen is not painting or singing, which are largely solo pursuits, but the very complex one of making films!.'.
What L C Singh, president and CEO of Nihilent Technologies, Uma Ganesh, founder-CEO of Kalzoom Technologies, and Abhay Patil,
director (Indian Operations) of CXO Systems, have in common is that they fall in the league of film-makers who head respectable IT
companies.
Another commonality, which may be purely incidental, is that all of them are based in Pune.
Singh, who lived in Benaras as a student at the Benaras Hindu University, is so deeply impressed by the historic city that he has
made a full length feature film - Benaras: A Mystique Love Story. Singh says: There's something divine about the place - it epitomises
India and Indianness."
The soon to be released film - starring Urmila Matondkar, Ashmit Patel and Naseeruddin Shah - "was made to express my thoughts
on Indianess and philosophical understandings to a wider audience."
For Uma, her decision to foray into filmdom was also triggered by a deep interest in communicating a message about women and
relationships through a medium that has a wider reach. She, along with four of her techie friends based in different parts of the world,
is jointly producing a movie which has Amol Palekar and his wife Sandhya as director and script writer.
As for Patil, who returned to India after a nine-year stint in California, film-making and businesss make an interesting combo. Patil,
along with five of his friends from the Bay area, have incorporated a company, California Arts Assocation (CalAA), to archive and
promote Marathi theatre and artists and to produce plays, music and dance programmes.
While it was an interest in art and theatre that prompted Patil and friends to setup CalAA, the organisation, however, isn't a
commercial venture. "It was formed for historical reasons of preserving the work and taking it to a larger audience," Patil says.
CalAA has already archived two popular Marathi plays - Anand Owari and Surya Pahilela Manus - which had Shriram Lagoo in the
lead. It has also made a documentary on Vijay Tendulkar and violence in his plays. "In the pipeline is a play called Begum Barve,
which has Satish Alekar as play writer and director," says Patil.
He is also optimistic of the future as distribution challenge will go away. "With Google becoming popular and video streaming coming
of age, we will be able to reach a larger number of people easily," he says.
Like Patil, Singh as well as Uma have floated companies separate from their business enterprises. Singh's production house - Setu
Creations - is the film's legal owner. Uma and friends have formed Ganesh and Uma Friends International (GUFI) to produce movies.
Can they do justice to both work and the passion to make films? All answer in the positive, saying one gives strength to the other. Of
course, some time off work is necessary, but the activity does not hinder the professional responsibilities significantly.
Singh wrote the script for his film over many nights using his laptop or while travelling, using a palmtop, and spent three weeks with
the film's crew at Benaras where most of the film was shot. He intends to publish the story in a book form soon after the release of the
film.
© California Arts Association 2006