NEW DELHI: During the shooting of a documentary film on veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, he had given complete freedom to the crew to showcase the journey of his life and exuded “overwhelming warmth”, recalls its director.
Delhi-based filmmaker Meera Dewan, who helmed the film – ‘In his Inner Voice: Kuldip Nayar’, commissioned by the Films Division, said, “Nayar sahab fully trusted us during the making of the project.”
“He gave us complete freedom, to touch his books in the library, arrange and rearrange the papers lying on his desk, as we wanted or the setting we wanted to shoot him in. He obliged us during the filming in the most humble way,” she told PTI.
A portion of the nearly hour-long documentary, completed earlier this year, was screened at the Press Club of India during a memorial meet. Dewan, who attended the meet, said, in the hindsight, it was a comforting feeling that “Nayar sahab saw the film and liked it”.
“The premiere had taken place at the IIC and the auditorium was jam-packed, people sat on the aisles. His instant reaction on seeing the turnout was – ‘How come so many people here?’ Such was his humility,” she said.
Ajmal Jami, veteran cameraman, who did the cinematography for the film recalled the ease with which he shot the film, thanks to the “trust” the eminent journalist and author had in the team.
“I have shot so many well-known personalities and multifarious subjects. But, in very few cases, the subject is such that the camera is able to gracefully capture the person filmed. In Nayar sahab’s documentary the feeling that exuded from his side was of overwhelming warmth,” he said.
Jami said the film draws a trajectory of life, from his birth in 1923 in Sialkot, Pakistan to the brunt of the partition his family suffered and also shines a light on his career as a journalist, his arrest during the Emergency and his works as an author.
“Lot of old, black and white footage and photographs have been used from the archival records, to portray the journey of his life. Besides, there are interviews of Nayar sahab, and few other eminent people,” he said.
Nayar, a fierce crusader for press freedom and civil rights, died aged 95 on August 23. Incidentally, in the film, he narrates a poetry, in which one of the lines read ‘I had to sacrifice this life, for yet another span of life’. PTI
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