PANAJI: Film-maker Safdar Rahman described the experience of making ‘Ready Steady’ as ‘a privilege, and magical’, as the film’s real-life characters, who have written and performed, came in for lavish praise after the screening at Entertainment Society of Goa’s Cinephile Film Club at Maquinez Palace here on Thursday night.
The 90-minute duration feature film, ‘Ready Steady’ is a high school drama co-created by ten teenagers who come from low-income backgrounds and manage to get admission in an elite high school in a posh part of Delhi. The film is an unfiltered perspective of their lives from their eyes. The screening and the interactive session was hosted by popular film expert Sachin Chatte.
“In many ways, I see myself as an enabler of this story and as somebody who had the privilege to see something very magical happen in front of me and capture it,” beamed the film director Safdar Rahman, who is based out of Aldona, North Goa.
Describing the journey of ‘Ready Steady’ from the concept stage to the screen, Safdar highlighted the tremendous commitment from the children who have faced various challenges and yet shown the fighting spirit to overcome them.
“We just handed them the mic and told them to say whatever it is that they want to say,” quipped the teacher-turned-film-maker, whose first film ‘Chippa’ was also well-appreciated.
Adding further, Safdar says: “In that sense, the spirit of the film and authorship of the film so as to speak, clearly belongs to them. The bunch of 20 kids we threw into the writers role… and the stories came out where the major part of most of the stories, were from their real lived-experiences. This was not something that we started off doing. In fact, we started off with them being blank but ended up with all of them sort of, come on board to play themselves, their parents are their parents, their homes are their homes, their school is their school, their teachers are their teachers.
“Apart from them having written the film and of course playing themselves, they really were the biggest support system the film sort of stood on. Three-fourth of our crew were kids… there were 50 people at the end of the day and around 40 were teenagers. It’s not just them, it’s also their parents, friends, neighbours, who opened their homes and lives and let us be a part of it.”
