What Kind of Access Did AAP Give to the Makers of ‘AIM’? Find Out

Did AAP or Arvind Kejriwal put up any conditions before allowing the makers of ‘An Insignificant Man’ to shoot?

The much-awaited documentary, An Insignificant Man (AIM), finally released this weekend. The 100-minute film has a fly-on-the-wall approach in getting viewers an inside view of Arvind Kejriwal and the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party. Filmmaker Jaideep Varma (Hulla, Leaving Home, Baavra Mann) got into a free-wheeling chat with the makers of AIM - Vinay Shukla and Khushboo Ranka, about the making of the film.

Here are excerpts from the conversation:

Jaideep Varma: As far as the footage is concerned, I have to ask if they were self-conscious about it at any stage. For example, some parts don’t necessarily show Arvind in the most magnificent light, which is great for the film, but it is also great for him, because it humanises him. For example, that moment when his authority is questioned and he is uncomfortable, as any founder of anything would be, that is human. So, I want to ask if you really were flies on the wall, or were they tolerating you in the room, and being self-conscious themselves?

Vinay Shukla: It was a process really.

Jaideep Varma: How did you approach them in the first place?

Vinay Shukla: We wrote to Arvind; he used to be quite active on his email then. Within two days he replied and said he had no problem and to come to his office and meet him. There, we also met Manish, who said they were all open to this, we can start shooting right away.

Jaideep Varma: Were there any conditions?

Vinay Shukla: I think the only condition, implicitly, was…decency. Besides that, they told us clearly that they had too much on their hands so we couldn’t expect any co-operation from them. Basically, we were on our own once they agree to letting us film them.

Jaideep Varma: Did you ever say that we’ll show you the stuff before you put it out or something?

Vinay Shukla: No. On the contrary, we told them in the first meeting that we’d have all creative control and we wouldn’t show them anything. We were clear about that.

Jaideep Varma: I can’t imagine a single political party that would agree to something like this.

Khushboo Ranka: Not to take anything away from them, but they were not like a political party then, I mean, just in terms of optics. It is very different now, where people throng their offices.

Jaideep Varma: Did they ever get self-conscious, change their behaviour or ask you to leave the room?

Vinay Shukla: Whether they changed their behaviour or not, we can’t really know. But they never asked us to leave the room. Even when things got a little hot, like when Arvind got angry with his volunteers, and all kinds of things were said, they never asked us to leave the room.

Jaideep Varma: Credit to them for that.

Vinay Shukla: Absolutely. They thought we were doing a home video kind of thing so they probably didn’t care after a point. And, that was kind of our approach too,actually, at the time. And we were also very anxious about whether we were getting the important stuff or not.

Jaideep Varma: Can’t be an easy time for you guys emotionally, as you have to be on your guard all the time.

Khushboo Ranka: It was tough. And Delhi is a brutal city. It is a hard city all round the year and that takes its toll.

Jaideep Varma: Oh yes, a good part of Leaving Home was shot during the height of Delhi’s summer, and I remember some of us literally had salt formations on our body, given our exertions.

Khushboo Ranka: It is brutal. Also, power is such a tangible thing in Delhi.

Vinay Shukla: Gradually, Khushboo also had the instinct to realise that we needed to expand the crew from just the two of us. Initially, we were shooting sound entirely on the camera mike.

Jaideep Varma: Did any of that make the final film?

Vinay Shukla: Oh yes, it did.

Jaideep Varma: And it’s fine?

Vinay Shukla: The first shot in the film where Arvind is talking to a volunteer is shot on the camera mike. We had to clean it of course, but it is fine. But all that happened much later after we found people to back us. No one said clean it up and then we will consider backing you.

Jaideep Varma: Did you have any films that had inspired you to make this? Not as something to emulate creatively but just as…

Vinay Shukla: Ambition. Yes, the last great film I saw. In the sense, whenever I saw something I loved, I would say what if we did something like this. Overall, I guess two of my favourite filmmakers are Joon-ho Bong and Nuri Bilge Ceylan and everything in between that was an inspiration too.

Khushboo Ranka: While we were making this film, The Square had just come out (an Oscar-nominated film on the Egyptian crisis till 2013, starting with the Tahrir Square revolution). We said to each other, look, even this film has come out.

Jaideep Varma: So, why did your film get so delayed? If your film is of an urgent nature, like this is, it has a direct relationship with what’s going on. If AAP’s fate changes, the importance of your film changes, regardless of how good the film is. Also, since the media is not going to cover AAP fairly, this film becomes a crucial addition to the discourse.

Don’t get me wrong, not for a second am I saying this should be an instrument of propaganda, your own treatment and approach is far from that. But any little thing that contributes to the discourse is so valuable, isn’t it? Did you feel this urgency also? Was the film more important, or was the importance of the film more important?

Khushboo Ranka: All these goals were linked to each other. The quality of articulation also matters. We gradually realised that we wanted to say something really, really well. More than the person (Kejriwal), we wanted our take on the ideas to come out clearly, because that is what will endure, the conversation around that will evolve. Also, we learned filmmaking and understood storytelling while we were making this film, so it was a multi-tasking process for us. We wanted to foreground the politics and we had no precedent in the telling of this story, no references, to tell a story through the politics. If we were to do this now, it would take much lesser time.

Vinay Shukla: And we kept pushing our deadlines, and kept getting dejected at having pushed our deadlines. Our team also comprised of completely fresh people – the final editor of our film had joined us as an intern, with no sense of filmmaking, he didn’t even know how to turn on a Mac then, but he is one of the two final editors of the film – Abhinav Tyagi. The other editor is Manan Bhatt, who had helped us with some promo videos on Ship of Theseus – he came on later. The four of us basically moved into a house and began editing extensively.

Jaideep Varma: I love this and totally understand. Leaving Home was also made by a team of entire first-timers, every one of them. Perhaps it takes that urgency and hunger to get through projects like this. But was it giving you heartburn, the delay?

Vinay Shukla: Every day.

Khushboo Ranka: A lot.

Jaideep Varma: Were you also scared that the film may become irrelevant?

Khushboo Ranka: Yes. In fact we used to ask this in every feedback screening…if the film was dated. Initially, people would say that sometimes, but once we reached the sweet spot in our edit, that doubt went away.

Vinay Shukla: Also, the advantage or curse was that everybody knew the story.

Jaideep Varma: That’s more of a curse, probably.

Vinay Shukla: Or it can be an advantage also, because everybody wants to know more of the story.

Jaideep Varma: Somewhat, but it is more of a curse because they are matching expectations of what they believe the story to be to what you are showing.

I experienced that with my second film, Baavra Mann, - I remember doing the screening of my first cut with maybe ten people – handpicked people, most from the media and entertainment fields. And they trashed the film, absolutely savaged it. My colleague Dhruv Sehgal was traumatised – it was his first film too. We went out for dinner, just the two of us, and I asked him to chill. He said, but ten people saying they hated it can’t be wrong. I said, but if you notice, except for one thing that both you and I partly agree with, everybody is saying different things. They are bringing their baggage or expectation into it – all those people had a view on Sudhir Mishra. And they were only focusing on the negatives in the film, so the room became like that. Dhruv said, but there was so much negative energy, which I laughed off.

Now, usually, I anyway have this attitude toward criticism, when beyond a point (that point is important, of course) I just say – you don’t get it, and just move on. It is impossible to function otherwise. Also, I would have been much more insecure if this had been my first film, as it was his, so I totally understood why he was reacting like this. Anyway, we went back, made a few changes, really small ones, and did another screening with people who did not know him, or have a background to him, and it went brilliantly. Literally, the other extreme. So  often, it is baggage and the energy in the room – they make such a difference.

Khushboo Ranka: Very true, the energy in the room is critical. And, we also used to focus more on the unanimous opinions – some critique that is coming again and again. And that’s what we chipped away at.

Jaideep Varma: But I have to ask you this. It is hard enough to make a film on your own. But when there are two of you, how complicated was it? How did you make decisions? The extra conversations you had to have and convincing you had to do would have also taken a lot of time and energy also, right? Did that also delay the film?

Khushboo Ranka: It was more a force of nature project, in the sense, there were just two forces here that were hitting at each other and eventually one has to kind of step back, off and on. We have had terrible fights and terrible days but beyond a point you realise that getting personal is not the way forward. You figure out rules for yourself as you go along.

Vinay Shukla: And there is also that insecurity as a first-time director of hearing your own broken voice in some way coming through in the film. Both of us wanted our own imperfections to be somehow relayed in the film too and not just the synergy of two people making a film. It’s a balance between a lot of forces. On various days, you learn to take command, or hand it over to the other person by just gauging. On the question of whether it took more time because of two people working, I have no idea. Maybe on the next project, if we do one together, it will be much faster.

Khushboo Ranka: It is really hard to say, I cannot look at this objectively at all.

Vinay Shukla: This is the first project of this scale and ambition for us individually anyway. When we do our own such projects, maybe this would become a bit clearer.

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