From memories to dreams: Dominic Sangma uses his past to pave the way to his future
By Preetty Chambugong Marak
Shillong, Oct 19: In a life filled with stress and momentary joy, most of us don’t even remember what our childhood looked like and even if we try to it’s just ‘faint’ memories that exist. But is it possible for anyone to carry their childhood memories and portray them through other means? Perhaps a ‘No’ for most of us, but for filmmaker Dominic Sangma, this is an exceptional innate ability. He lives, creates and again recreates his memories through films while reviving his childhood struggle and memories of innocence.
Born and brought up in a small village of Nongthymmai in Ri-Bhoi District, the Garo filmmaker Dominic Sangma has been re-living his childhood memories through his films. He says that his inspiration for making ‘Rapture’ comes from his childhood memories which can be witnessed in the film. Apart from this, his simplicity and unique perception of viewing minute details have contributed to his journey of making films and winning accolades globally.
Making Meghalaya proud, Dominic Sangma, the writer, director of the film ‘Rapture’ recently won the Cultural Diversity Award at the 16th Asia Pacific Screen Awards and premiered at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival. It is all set to be screened at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2023 (IFFLA). This is his second film after Ma’ama.
Talking about the film he says, “RAPTURE is the second part of the trilogy I am working on, the trilogy is based on my memories in the village. Rapture is about this young boy who is affected by a common decision taken by the adult”, says Dominic.
When asked about the difficulties in the filmmaking process, he said, “We shot just after the second lockdown, it was a stressful time, everything seemed difficult to execute, and our terrain is tough for the vehicle to take heavy equipment, so one day somehow one of the vehicles and a jimmy jib went up this slippery road and managed to reach the location, we set the camera on the jimmy jib and rehearsed the shot, somebody from the team ran over the switchboard that connects to the jimmy jib and there was a loud noise of something exploding inside the switchboard and to our shock we realised the remote control of the jimmy jib had stopped working, I was completely broken inside but thanks to my great team, both cast and crew, someone came up with this ingenious idea of tying a rope to the jimmy jib and operating it. If the whole team believes in the idea of a Director anything is possible. To back it up I had an amazing producer and executive producer Gunme R Marak during the shoot, who was the Iron Lady of Rapture, once she gave her word, there was no looking back for her. She even managed to train a horse to pull cart in just one day”.
Sharing a funny anecdote while filming ‘Rapture’, he said, “There are many funny anecdotes from the shoot, one among them was, my production designer team had to design and gather lots of props before the shoot. And these designs are circulated in our WhatsApp group of the core team for approval. One of the designs was a police warrant for one of the characters in the film, my executive producer saw it and she freaked out and gathered the core team in an emergency, I was very worried, she whispered and told us about it, the design was so realistic she thought that it was real police warrant but it was a just a prop for the film. We all burst into laughter when we found out that she was freaking out because of it”.
He believes in the sincere approach to telling stories while keeping in mind that audiences are a part of the film, he says, “As a director, we should be very sincere in our approach to telling stories, we should never underestimate our audiences and try to spoon-feed them. Trust their abilities to understand the film, maybe their interpretation will be more enriching than what we intended to be. And it is already happening with Rapture, so many people who have watched the film wrote to me about their experiences of watching Rapture. There is no spoiler for a good film”.
While talking about his inspiration for filmmaking, he says, “It goes back to the time when going to school was a herculean task. My school was 5 km away from my village, my village is on top of a hill, and going up and down every day was something I dreaded, I hated school, but in retrospect, I realised our education system is the place where all our creativity dies but somehow I manage to retain a bit of it by using imagination to get away from the reality of climbing the bad road to my village, I would make up stories to myself like I am some hero where I am fighting with bad guys and rescuing people from some bad events, I will completely be lost in the stories and forget the tiredness of climbing. Also when I was growing up, I liked to hang out with old people maybe because I lost some of my close friends very early in my life. My grandfather and grandmother would tell stories, I think these are the seeds that made me a filmmaker today. Another bad experience in school led me to join film school, I was studying in Higher Secondary taking Science just because I got first division and it was one of the most depressing two years of my life, there was no time for anything except for studying, so one day I bunked my class and went to attend a workshop of filmmaking conducted near my school, for the first time I realised there was a place where I can study film making in FTII and SRFTI, ever since then I put DIRECTOR on my study chair. I got into SRFTI and I discovered myself here”.
Regarding the film scenario in Meghalaya, he said there is a drift in film-making and “Yes, it is changing, there are many new talented filmmakers who are emerging from the state. Hoping to see more good films in the future”.
He concluded by saying “Gather lots of memories” as advice to the upcoming filmmakers.