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Director's
page introduction After completing graduation in Civil Engineering, Altaf Mazid, completed the Masters in the same subject to be an 'elite'. But the art of cinema made it otherwise. A passionate lover of Hollywood, he pursued his cultural enthusiasm first as a theatre activist and simultaneously worked for film society movement. He along with some others gave birth to Anweshak, an organization for viewing of the not-so-popular cinema of India that does not figure in the conventional film-society agenda. Also, he began writing on cinema, and he has a large number of articles to his credit. His onward journey with the medium enthralled him to perform as an occasional speaker of cinema, a self-styled festival programmer and an amateur video maker. He has made programmes for the regional television centre. While the first one, a short fiction feature, Byaktigata Aru Goponio (Personal and Confidential, 1992), was able to attract the critical eye, the other one (1994) turned out to be a flop, so much so that he does not even want to recall its title. Jibon is his first celluloid venture, funded by a couple of novice producers, personal loan and, donations and contributions from friends and relatives. Professionally he is a government employee.
Altaf on 'Jibon' "...How many words does a person know?... One hundred,
two or three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrows and joy
and sorts of emotion, the very thing that can't infact be expressed. Romeo uttered
beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they sure didn't say even half of
what makes his heart feel..." While this is true in terms of an artistic creation, it is valid in framing the posture of the creator. While the work of art is unthinkable of expression in words, so is the description of it's attitude. The situation gets aggravated when the creator faces a blank sheet of paper grasping for words so as to note down his mind. I don't know if I am a creator. What I know is, Jibon is life and life is cinema. The magic of cinema has mesmerized me from childhood. I am ardent Romeo of Hollywood, and have since long been looking for an arena for performance of the magic. But when the bell went, to my utter surprise, I found myself rendering a few items of my own life. Let alone Hollywood but no other cinema of any of any kind captured my vision. There were number of ideas, mostly political, but Jibon began to obsess me, possessed me as well, to such an extent that I continued to become it's paramour. Perhaps the genesis can be traced from the condition of my mother's decade-long illness. A rare disease converted her to a life-less vegetable. She met her death by inches. My wife Limu, took her under her wings, nursed mother taking care of every single need. A near-similar situation was simultaneously happening in proximity. Another mother was looking after her only son, suffering from another rare and critical disease, DMD. While mother's condition was largely predictable, here hope for life dominated the scene. My introduction to the family was after my marriage, Limu being a childhood friend of the boy's mother, Biju(Bondita). She often used to visit them to enquire the health of the child, Ron. The time almost coincided with the onset of my mother's deteriorating condition. Though I was touched by the courage, grit, and heroism of the family against all impossible odds, I never thought these elements to be the material of a film. Like many a film-buff, I was mulling over doing a film. But the concerns about my mother refrained me to take a start. Her demise threw me into a void, with lots of free time and space. The situation got replete with manisfestation of the film. Now I contemplate it as a tribute to mother mother as well as to people suffering from conditions barring them to lead normal lives. Also I idoloze those human beings who strain themselves to make these souls' life livable. Jibon, largely, is about an ordinary life transcending the borders of the mundane and seeking to rendezvous with greatness. It is drawn from Biju's outlook. She is the narrator, even in the conversation sequences. The basic material is documentary, shot in actual locations with real life charecters. So the film may perhaps be viewed as a 'Real-Life-Fiction-Feature'. Almost all the objects and elements inthe film were picked from the belongings of the family even the painting of 'mother and chlid' which was drawn by the mother long back. The location where the family usually goes, the things they do, day in and day out, were recorded. The conversaton sequences although enacted, were also filmed the way they usually sit and talk. But in cinema, because nothing can be potrayed as real, at best can be put as realistic, Jibon suffers from this inherent limitation too. At the early production stage, I wanted to make a fiction-feature with the material. Yet I found the content to be too large and complex to express in such a way. A a conventional documentaru on the conditions of the family is difficult to visualise because the matters of life and death or not mere data and document. Finally I approached it in a format which is neithrt a feature nor a documentary. The feature sequences are a link to the documents of the film. And the words of the scenes have supplemented the imagery of the series of sequences involving conditions of the mother and son. The film strives to be poetic and lyrical- a design in the stream of consciousness where music is a fundamental guiding element. The voice-over is limited to the innermost expressions of the mother.
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