From Architect to Auteur: Kamar’s journey into filmmaking

In the late 1990s, a young Kamar Ahmad Simon was studying at Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (Buet) to be an architect. 

One day, he chanced upon a Chinese film screening event at TSC, Dhaka University.  

"For around 12 hours every day, for five or seven days. I stayed there and watched every film screened. Between every film, I'd step out to enjoy a Tk10 meal and go in again. Cinema dawned on me and I made up my mind to become a filmmaker," Kamar recounted.  

I recently met Kamar, in person, for the special screening of 'Shunte Ki Pao' (Are You Listening?) that he had arranged for a select few people in his residence before the film's release on the OTT platform Chorki. 

The film had its theatrical release, albeit to a limited audience, in 2012, only making rounds at special screenings around the country and abroad. This year, the film made its first landing on the OTT platform.  

Kamar's other films, 'Neel Mukut' (2021) and 'Anyadin…' (2021) made it to the public before his first film 'Shunte Ki Pao.' 'Anyadin…' also won the Harrell Awards for Best Picture at the 18th Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), a leading film festival in North America.

The Business Standard sat down with the filmmaker and spoke about his introduction to filmmaking, his journey and beyond. 

Kamar's story parallels his favourite film Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 masterpiece Cinema Paradiso, where the protagonist falls in love with cinema and eventually becomes a filmmaker himself. 

After the Chinese film screening event at TSC, Kamar enrolled in film appreciation courses at Bishwa Sahitya Kendra to acquire an academic approach to filmmaking.

Normally, to become a director one first has to learn the ropes of filmmaking as an assistant director, which is not unique to Bangladesh. But sometimes some do it themselves, just like 48-year-old filmmaker Kamar Ahmad Simon. 

Kamar graduated from Architecture in 2001 but did not pursue a career in it in favour of cinema. Filming of his first feature 'Shunte Ki Pao' began in 2010 and would not come out until 2012. So, what was he up to in the decade in between?

The short and simple answer is he was learning cinema. "If quality is not a substance to be delivered, then what is to be delivered?" asked Kamar at the very beginning of our conversation. 

Right after Buet, he launched his own production house titled 'Production Limited' for advertising and for a few years worked with it. Soon, he was overseeing the payroll of 25 people, far from what he wanted to do initially. 

Unhappy and still fixated on the idea of filmmaking, Kamar soon walked towards cinema, again. "But the journey with Production Limited did help me as well."

Kamar began "consuming" cinema then. I quickly recalled hearing what director Roman Polanski once said, "To be a filmmaker, one must watch at least one cinema a day, without fail and exception." Kamar could not agree with this more. This was exactly what he was doing after he, voluntarily, moved away from the production house. 

"Not just one film, I watched two, three, even four films a day or maybe I watched each film that many times to get a feel of it," he said. 

But in recent times, he has taken a sabbatical from it. "A sabbatical is the right word for it! I went on this break because I got into learning and scrutinising cinema profoundly. I needed to find myself again." So for the past few years, he kept himself away from foreign films.

"One litterateur I always look up to is Rabindranath Thakur. The more I explore this great man of literature the more I feel lost but I find this act of losing myself in it very emancipating. I call this self-indulgence. It's also like looking for answers in the vast ocean floating on a tiny raft, you know like in the film Life of Pi?" he said, alluding to how literature and cinema affect him.

'Shunte Ki Pao' is based on cyclone Aila which ransacked the coastal areas of Bangladesh back in 2009. At first impression, the film may seem like a documentary, as not a single known face is seen in it. However, as the plot moves along, the traditional trappings of a documentary are not seen in it.

It was an entirely made-up script that Kamar installed seamlessly into the lives of Rakhi who lives in a small village named Sutarkhali, Khulna with her husband Soumen and their six-year-old son Rahul. 

'Shunte Ki Pao' is about Rakhi's hope to ensure a dignified future for her son Rahul. It's about her jobless husband Soumen's frustration for failing to provide for his family and about a community's struggle to get back the land they have lost. 

The non-professional actors' true-to-life performance aside, the film was shot in real-time during the formation of a ditch that was built through the entire village's joint effort. "I could not have created the circumstances surrounding the film with all the money in the world," Kamar said.

After a nearly decade-long wait 'Shunte Ki Pao' is finally getting a public release. The only downside is watching the film on a small TV screen instead of the big screen.