Click-bait central—if I didn't include the word "best" preceding friend– there's no way you'd read this film director's fascinating profile. This is a strictly no Dharma vs Nepotism argument zone. We have other important things to discuss.

If you were to ask me to name one person who’s had a solid run in 2020, without a doubt, I would say it’s Ashmita Guha Neogi. For the uninitiated, Ashmita’s film Catdog is the only Indian film that made to the Cinéfondation Selection at Cannes in 2020, out of thousands of entries worldwide.

“It’s no big deal ya, it’s a student film. I am sick of talking about Cannes. Let’s talk about something else.”

I forgot to mention the (most) critical bit here. Ashmita and I made our first audio/visual project as a part of our MA mid-semester practical together. It is also one of the only two projects she worked on before leaving AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, to join the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in December 2013.

I’m fairly certain that if the Cannes jury were to get their hands on those iconic media products, they’d be screened there as well. However, you are in for luck and goodies, if you get till the end of it.

Thanks to my annual research sojourn at the National Film Archive of India while pursuing MPhil/PhD in Cinema Studies from JNU, I was in Pune regularly between 2014-2019. Unlike our other classmates and friends from Jamia, I saw Ashmita quite often between those years. When all our other friends elevated to the level of tax-paying responsible adults, both of us were still broke cinema students, studying through our 20s. Our respective institutes (JNU for me, FTII for her) were embroiled in controversy alike, on aged students “wasting time and resources” of the taxpayers' money repeatedly between these years. It’s also perhaps the reason, I find it easier to count her as a friend. She’s been subjected to the same sense of public scrutiny, as I have over these years, justifying our work and worth every step of the way.

“There has to be something you did not tell the press?” I was trying my best to push Ashmita, my friend, to reveal something “risqué” that would be damaging to her budding credibility. However, she was every bit measured, not her usual lackadaisical self.

“I can tell you something, it’s not fun though. Weeks before we started shooting the film, every single day I’d walk out of the institute to the road, hoping some car would run over me. I’d then land up in the hospital and maybe get a 2-3 month extension to work on the film later.”

On a personal note, if this is how someone’s lived through in the last few years, it’s good that they have made 2020 their year. There’s no way we can argue with that.

“You can’t possibly want to kill yourself because of your film. Why did you not work on it in time?”

“Dude, where was the time? We were down to shooting in no time. Between the allocation of dates and the amount of work that was required, there was not a minute to breathe. We (my team members and I) were spending all our time working on whatever was a priority and somehow, everything from hunting the actors to finalizing locations was the priority.”

Well, the taxpaying audience on the internet would disagree with her.

Ashmita spent six years in the film-school, a move, most of our friends questioned at the time of her making it. As well-wishers, we couldn’t quite comprehend how one could justify six years of their life in one place for a piece of paper claiming, “Diploma”.

In 2015, after the students at the FTII went on to protest against the appointment of the controversial chairman, I could already imagine the frothing hate pieces on the far-right publications, going out with the hypothetical headline,

“Urban Naxals can’t make a film in six years—Shame!”

Regardless of these arguments and hot takes, it remains a fact that the creation of good art takes time. You cannot make a film on a deadline and expect it to be true to preserve the sentiment of the filmmaker behind it. Wong Kar-Wai went as far as making the critically acclaimed (also, my favourite) film Chungking Express (1994), to take a break from his existing film Ashes of Time (1994) cause he was exhausted and wanted to do something "light".

Although I’m pretty certain, the far-right will find a way to criticize Kar-Wai’s skills much the same and call him out on wasting time.

What stands as wasting time for, say, an IT professional, is equaled as productivity for an artist. “Fursat”, Urdu for “leisure”, somehow captures the essence behind the craft of filmmakers rather well. It stands true for the art of cooking and for those who carry that art out, aka, chefs as well. Anything that is done with a sense of leisure, usually carries a breathing room, a vacuum that can contain the reaction of the consumer, the audience. It can be a “wow!” to “what on Earth was that?” However, this is something you cannot quantify in words. Not unless you're an aesthetician prescribed to Delhi University undergraduate student for BA (Hons) Philosophy, for a supplementary reading on Aesthetics for the third year.

Who is to define and explain, what accounts as the optimal usage of time versus terrible usage of time?

Craftspeople including potters, painters, embroidery artists among others take years to hone their skills. You don't see people questioning a bronze sculptor producing 1-2 stunning works of art by age 30-40 on their lack of productivity and output; why must there be a need to deploy different standards to hold a filmmaker accountable, especially when filmmaking, as an art, takes about nearly the size of an army to fulfill a project?

There are other schools of thought in this debate, the most popular being, you can’t learn how to make a film at a “school”. You have to get down and get your hands dirty. However, there are virtues to learning the craft and honing the skill, even if it means you pay four semesters worth of fee somewhere. Speaking from personal experience, I learned more about ways of life, during my film school stint than anywhere else in the world. It condensed a lifetime worth of experience in a capsule, a hard to digest pill, even, at times. It worked as a cure, bitter as it may have been at the time, to teaching me lessons that would last me my entire life.

From time to time, I return to a text that another friend studying a Humanities programme at Columbia had sent over six years ago, when I was on set, shooting my first (and the last) film on 16 mm,

“Today during masterclass, paul cronin said that by the time you make your first film, you'll have a degree in deal-making and hustling. (sic)”

While I stand positively next to Paul Cronin's theory of hustling, Ashmita's working motto is something else altogether.

“I live by the idea of beg-borrow-steal. We did this in our film ever so often. We found hacks, ways out in the most unbelievable ways. For example, when we were house hunting for the shoot, we literally decided to knock at every door in our radius of the shortlisted spot. We were reprimanded almost everywhere. If someone was vaguely interested in allowing us to shoot in their house, (after listening to the script) we were told we are doing "bad things"  and how the plot of the film was “corrupting morals”. I was told I’m a "characterless" individual who wanted to explore incest as a subject. At every step of the way, we were beaten down, sometimes, chased with animals even. Yet, somehow, we managed to convince a rather nice lady to allow us to shoot the film in her house.”

After all the hustle and begging, is it too early to ask what next, then?

“I’m a one-hit-wonder right now. Don’t jinx me. It’s nice to have all this attention and accolades my way but it’s quite sad to see the number of people who slide in my DMs to ask me how I did this or even ask me for jobs. But the truth is, I’m far poorer than most of them and definitely not even close to giving any of them work, as per their requests. It’s cool on the surface but it’s not, especially when you see so many of them trying to get there so hard. I feel if I beg them for money to finance my next film, they may just agree.”

There’s every bit painful self-awareness in each sentence we exchanged on this subject. For an artist, self-awareness is crippling; it hinders your creativity and gnaws on your motivation ever so slowly. How does someone like Ashmita, justify that in her work?

"In the opening shot of the film, there's a giant tree. It took us weeks to find that before the shoot, but we couldn’t. Finally, on the day of the shoot, Prateek (the DoP) and I set forth on a scooty at 7 am, braving the torrential rain that morning. At call time, 9:30 am, our bus full of the crew with the production manager was frantically trying to reach out to us to tell them the location. We did eventually find the spot, but it was all a result of last-minute panic. There's no amount of training and time that can take you to the right spots or the ideas. It all has to come together, somehow. You work towards it until it all does, whether you are feeling it or not."

Even for me, that’s rather brave, finding location during the shoot day. I say this with experience but then, there’s something that serves as a reminder of having worked with Ashmita before.

Somehow, Ashmita’s approach to work is unique, that's as politely as I can put it. She takes time to ease in and own the project. Unfortunately, most institutes that harbour the public sentiment of how a “course” ought not to take anything over “two years” disagree with her style.

On our first day of the shoot together during MA, we landed at the venue and Ashmita exclaimed how she forgot to carry the camera. She did not feign any remorse nor did she try to cover that goof-up.

If there was ever a time to “beg-borrow-steal” it was then, but alas.

Of the three days allocated to us, our group spent a whole day sitting at the famed Sam’s Café, one of our shoot locations in Paharganj. A fact that nobody, but the team, was privy to. It was Ashmita’s recommendation, pre-shoot, how we should treat ourselves to a meal after the shoot. Since there was no shoot, we decided to treat ourselves early.

“Do you remember how you took us to Sam’s and wasted the entire shoot day when you forgot to carry the camera to the shoot?”

“Oh man, I had repressed that memory. But in hindsight, it all worked out, no? You got to work at a pace your college demanded and I left to work at a pace mine allowed. You go to a film-school with an idea and spend years working on it, learning the craft and honing your skill to shape that idea. It’s something I did. You can't put someone on a leash or a deadline and expect smashing results.”

Right, moving on to the most important question that no sane/serious journalist would dare ask a student filmmaker.

“If Cannes had not been canned your actual visit, who would you be wearing for your screening? Would it be (from) Colaba or Sarojini?

“See, all the students who represent their film come dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I should have done the same but I did get a friend to sponsor me a gown.”

 “A gown?!”

“Yeah, you see, my beg-borrow-steal mantra? Made it work to my advantage!”

 “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”

 “Only you do. Just don’t make me look bad in your piece.”

 Okay.

(At present, Catdog is unavailable for public streaming, since it is still doing the festival circuit round. However, you can follow their Instagram for updates. Once in a while, they allow the audience a time-bound link to watch the complete film. Look out for that and maybe, you'll find yourself getting lucky to treat yourself to this stunning work of art.)