The Kathputli Colony has lived in these homes and alleyways for half a century and is composed of painters, folk singers, acrobats, jugglers, puppeteers, magicians, and more. Many inhabitants are well-respected artists both in India and abroad. In 2009, the New Delhi government sold<\/a> Kathputli to developers for a fraction of its worth and the land was set to be bulldozed to make room for the city\u2019s first-ever skyscraper. The film highlights the vibrant colony and focuses on three talented performers of different ages as they wrestle with the reality of the approaching eviction: Puran Bhatt, one of India\u2019s most talented puppeteers and whose late father was the first president of the Kathputli Colony; Rehman Shah, a magician who performs comedic and gruesome street shows daily; and Maya Pawar, a daring acrobat who feels that Kathputli needs to change and embrace a more modern culture.<\/p>\n The co-directors and co-producers Jimmy Goldblum<\/a> and Adam Weber<\/a> stated, \u201cour hope is that our audience gets to see the colony like the many artists in it see it: as a world with no distinction between life and art, where India\u2019s past, present, and future blur together, a home that somehow \u2014 impossibly, incomprehensibly \u2014 still brims with possibility.\u201d I was able to catch up with Goldblum and Weber, and the film\u2019s cinematographer, Joshua Cogan<\/a>, for an interview on their experience of\u00a0making the film.<\/p>\n Sarah Walko:<\/strong> How did you end up getting involved with the Kathputli Colony and was it through reading about it in Salman Rushdie\u2019s <\/em>iconic Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em> or was it something you had come across while working on other projects? <\/em><\/p>\n Adam Weber:<\/strong> Yeah \u2014 it was completely \u2014 Jimmy and I were college roommates and English majors together so Midnight\u2019s Children<\/a><\/em> was a book we were reading and we were completely motivated by that book. Neither of us had heard of anything that remarkable before and coming out of a magical realism story with this fantastical quality \u2014 the way he describes everything in the book. When I read it I was like there is no way that this could be real, it\u2019s got to be just an allegory, a metaphor. Jimmy had the brilliance to Google it and he found only one little blurb but that\u2019s really what started it all \u2014 that a place like this did exist. But even before we went we were really having a hard time finding out that much information about it. There were conflicting reports of what was there and what wasn\u2019t there. We contacted some journalists who wrote pieces about it and through them we found this magician on Facebook and through him we were able to contact the colony, and he\u2019s not actually even in the film. When we traveled there he met us outside of a metro station in Delhi and took us through the labyrinth of little pathways that led us to the colony. It was pretty wild.<\/p>\n Jimmy Goldblum:<\/strong> You can imagine the head state of two young filmmakers when they realize that the passage in one of their favorite books about a slum full of magicians, acrobats, and puppeteers \u2014 and walking in we found the passage \u2014 to be absolutely true.<\/p>\n Sarah Walko:<\/strong> Were you thinking \u2018I can\u2019t believe no one else has made this film before\u2019? <\/em><\/p>\n AW:<\/strong> It\u2019s true. At first it seems like such an exaggerated idea and such an exaggerated place \u2014 so many things that are separate from the world that we come from personally but the idea is that the film is very relatable. These aren\u2019t just magicians and puppeteers getting supplanted by a new modern high rise. This is the journey of all of us, which is: what value does where we came from play in the place that we\u2019re going? It was a bizarre place to be, and as artists especially, there was this identity crisis that Jimmy and I were going through already \u2014 what value does the work we do have and what value do all of these things have in a world that may or may not need us? And this is what they were going through, just at a much more extreme level.<\/p>\n SW:<\/strong> I recently read an article<\/a> in the <\/em>New York Times Book Review that said our \u201ccultural obsession with newness\u201d comes with a sense of loss, especially when that loss is something that our culture doesn\u2019t necessarily value. I thought you presented the story very neutrally \u2014 letting the audience continue the conversation once the film is over. I thought, for example, the choice to focus on the one young woman Maya was a good choice because her concerns surrounding some of the health conditions within the slum and the mistreatment of women were all very valid. <\/em><\/p>\n JG:<\/strong> I think, for us, the movie has kind of an interesting narrative arc in that we wanted to present this idea of how they might view themselves and how people might view them \u2014 that sort of inside\/outside perspective which felt very mythological: the traditional magicians, acrobats, puppeteers of India, the very sort of romantic notion, and as the movie progresses we wanted to slowly strip away the romance but still leave you with things that we consider very valuable, which is that for these people, even those who wanted to stay there, it all comes down to how you want to raise your children. And what you are actually left with is this the reality of these magicians losing their home, a father struggling to take care of his children, or the young woman who is coming from this culture and trying to find a way for herself while still admiring the values that this place had taught her. And I think the minute we were able to peel away the layers of what we might think of as mysticism and this orientalist idea of India, we were left with something very heartfelt and resonant, we hope.<\/p>\n SW:<\/strong> How did you decide which specific people to focus on in the film?<\/em><\/p>\n Joshua Cogan:<\/strong> It took a lot of time talking to people, exploring the landscape inside the colony, trying to figure out which people had the strongest stories to tell, and how we could weave together a tapestry of characters that best represented the diverse experiences of people in the Colony. Each of them represents a different approach to the transition: those that evolve their craft and adapt with great success, those that cling to the old ways with a certain conviction that may hurt them in the long run, and those that saw the challenges as an opportunity to come to a new way of life. We also fought very hard to represent both men and women, young and old in the film, so that we could capture as much range of voice as possible. The truth we tried to tell is that there are no easy answers, it\u2019s all very complicated and adaptation, albeit necessary, is a painful and difficult process.<\/p>\n SW:<\/strong> Yesterday when I was online researching the skyscraper that was supposed to be built I found a website that presents this as a very positive redevelopment project. The site uses language like \u201csquatters\u201d and \u201cslum,\u201d presenting it as a solution to people living in these circumstance while helping New Delhi get rid of its slums. I wanted to hear your thoughts on that aspect of the situation.<\/em><\/p>\n AW:<\/strong> That\u2019s a really good question I think on a number of levels. I think the scene that resonates the most with me is when Puran asks \u201care we artists or are we poor people?\u201d The fact that these new flats are being offered to many of these people for free adds to their identity crisis. If they were just being kicked out, they\u2019d still hold on to the shred of understanding that \u2018well, we are itinerant artists, this is just our path.\u2019 But this whole \u201cwe\u2019re going to give you flats for free in this slum redevelopment project\u201d \u2014 that communicates that \u201coh the government is trying to solve the problem of poor squatters on a piece of valuable land.\u201d On the one hand, they\u2019ve gone abroad to perform on behalf of India as representatives of the traditional culture, and on the other hand, they come home to a government that treats them just like any other slum dweller. There are efforts being made on the developers\u2019 side to take into account these things \u2014 everyone is trying to find a solution I suppose \u2014 but I think it\u2019s this question of self-identification that\u2019s really at the heart of all of it: should they just take something that accepts their fate as poor people? Should they just take whatever they can get? Or should they keep fighting to live like traditional artists?<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> As India becomes increasingly more capitalistic, its understanding of itself has changed. To the developers, this type of language helps support what they would like to portray as a form of social service or justice. While there in no doubt that the conditions of the Colony were unsanitary and crowded, these characteristics could have been addressed without completely destroying it. Communities have been redeveloped for millennia, but it takes intention and planning. By marginalizing the communities as \u201csquatters\u201d or \u201cslum dwellers\u201d there is an effort to delegitimize them, the basis of any campaign of land grabbing. We saw this in America as we took over native lands by calling them \u201csavages\u201d or \u201cuncivilized\u201d and we see this in modern America in the redevelopment of poor communities by using similar tactics to those seen in the film. The truth is, if we really wanted to help these communities, we would bring in resources and education, but help isn\u2019t really the true agenda in any of these cases.<\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/sarahwalko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Screen-Shot-2015-12-10-at-8.27.24-AM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"coverdisappear\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/coverdisappear.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"3bWXjkBU_E4NURkK_Z7dij2uxvp8rX7yT7Cb3zqk1jQ\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3bWXjkBU_E4NURkK_Z7dij2uxvp8rX7yT7Cb3zqk1jQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"hb_aMara4d1_OYK2uI1Q84aB00gt0qdYbs8jcPtyXzU\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/hb_aMara4d1_OYK2uI1Q84aB00gt0qdYbs8jcPtyXzU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"MCnXX8ZgOFd_LEGWlc3clX6c-qvg_AD1aq5_LOTxqaA\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/MCnXX8ZgOFd_LEGWlc3clX6c-qvg_AD1aq5_LOTxqaA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"8v_4tkB10bEGJmH06c-Hv3hrsuxNhMEZcHJ1n7miRrg\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/8v_4tkB10bEGJmH06c-Hv3hrsuxNhMEZcHJ1n7miRrg.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"H8W_KxkF5lprkykvQHy6Zzkq86wkmMGEO8nxBPhzacU\"](\"http:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/H8W_KxkF5lprkykvQHy6Zzkq86wkmMGEO8nxBPhzacU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n