Standing on a busy curb clutching a flexible tripod with an iPhone mounted, Malaysian documentary film-maker Indrani Kopal makes a rare appearance in front of the camera in the final moments of Allons-y (Let’s Go), a four-minute montage capturing her impressions of the French Riviera town of Cannes, during the two-week long film festival. It was her first trip to Europe. “Okay,” she says breathlessly, winding up the shot, before pressing the pause button on her phone. “Got it.”
Filmed two years ago while attending the Cannes Film Festival, Indrani, then a Fulbright scholar at Hofstra University, New York undertaking a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking, left her judges breathless with her short film The Game Changer. Winning Best Student Documentary at the prestigious American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, the 17-minute film tells the story of Susan Slotnick, a dancer and choreographer, who teaches dance to male prisoners at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility, New York.
“It was a pretty big deal for me,” begins Indrani, recalling her win. “But to have even been selected as one of 20 films from thousands of submissions was a real achievement in itself and totally unexpected.”
We’re sitting in a coffee shop in PJ on a particularly unforgiving hot afternoon, ahead of the release of her latest documentary-film, Teacher, The Tradition Bearer.
“How are you? What have you been up to?” she asks, her dark discerning eyes burrowing into mine. I’m taken by surprise on two accounts. Firstly, I’m hard pressed to remember when I was last asked this question, and secondly, she has rather skilfully thrown out all conventional notions about conducting interviews. We’re going to have a conversation and my painstakingly written questions are out the proverbial window.
Indrani has a gift for making others feel comfortable in her warm presence. Her welcoming energy combined with her trademark soft, hypnotic voice, has led to some of the toughest characters entrust her with their personal stories.
From men who have spent up to 30 years incarcerated for violent crimes, to the members of Sarawak’s enigmatic Penan people struggling to survive amidst a frenzy of illegal logging; from a transgender woman’s journey to becoming accepted by her mother, to an erotic photographer wrestling with the perception of her art: Indrani has become synonymous with providing a voice for the voiceless.
“What I’ve learnt over the years working as a video-journalist, and much later as a student, is that all over the world people want to share their stories,” she says, before adding: “For some, it’s a way of establishing a connection with the mainstream, a way to be heard, while challenging our assumptions and prejudices.”
DEFINING THE 'SELF'
“It’s a long process” she says, comparing documentary-making with video journalism, which is straight up reporting and time ordained. “Documentaries span a period of time, which partly explains why they take longer to make. Also a number of issues arise so there’s quite a lot of troubleshooting involved which draws out the process even further.”
Indrani is unsure of the exact point when she became a documentary-maker. She is My Son based on the life of a transsexual named Suganya earned recognition nationwide when it won the Freedom Film Festival (FFF) award in 2007. It marked a significant departure from her video-journalism work. “It was a natural progression,” she says.
But her journey toward becoming a documentary-maker was anything but ‘natural’. It’s a hard-won tale reminiscent of some of the world’s greatest filmmakers who dropped out of college and began working, with experience proving to be the better teacher.
“When I finished school, I had no idea what I really wanted to do,” says Indrani. “Undertaking an IT degree at a local university was the most affordable, sensible option at the time but my heart wasn’t in it and I left before completing the programme.”
For the next five years, Indrani worked as a lab technician for the film department of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, slipping into lectures on film theory during her free time. Self-taught by the internet, Indrani would spend hours learning how to use the first edition of Final Cut Pro, sharing her knowledge with students who entered the lab full of theory but unable to edit their footage. “I don’t believe in fate, yet I can see how one thing has led on to another,” she says, adding: “While there are choices that come with every decision, I appreciate their significance in defining my present sense of self.”
Returning to Malaysia from the US at the beginning of last year, Indrani founded her own production company, Far East Documentary Centre, with her close friend and long-time collaborator, Maran Perianen, a regionally-acclaimed video and journalism trainer.
IT'S A WRAP!
Teacher: The Tradition Bearer, set to be released at a private gala next month, is an intimate portrait of Malaysia’s legendary bharatanatyam teacher Indira Manikam, the founding principal of the Tanjai Kamala Indira Dance School (TKI), which was established in 1966. Filmed against the backdrop of a rehearsal for a production to mark the school’s 50th anniversary, the documentary is an exploration into the transformative power of art as well a tribute to the resilience, courage and triumph, of one woman’s journey toward becoming the tradition bearer.
“I’ve often said that she was my ‘Susan Slotnick’,” says Indrani who met Indira more than 17 years ago at a time when she was lacking self-confidence as the result of acute hair loss during her teenage years. “I was virtually bald by the time I took up bharatanatyam lessons at the age of 21, but Indira gave me confidence, and my hair slowly grew back,” she confides.
“Do you like yourself?” Indrani quizzes me.
Once again, I’m caught off guard and stare into my limau ais, stirring the ice cubes with a straw. “I can’t imagine being anyone else but me. I’ve never wanted to be anyone else,” I eventually reply.
“Oh, so you do like yourself?” exclaims Indrani conclusively.
Suffice to say, Indrani instinctively knows how lack of confidence can have a detrimental effect on a person’s life. For four years she has been working on a feature length follow-up of The Game Changer, concentrating on those six men released from the Woodbourne Correctional Facility.
“One of the most challenging aspects of making a documentary is working out which angle to approach a story,” she confides. “The Game Changer is Susan’s story, but when I was filming the six ex-prisoners I could see they had their own stories.”
Due to be released at the end of the year, Indrani’s first full-length feature, Incarcerated Rhythm is an emotional roller coaster into the complex lives of these men who have been given a second chance through dance.
When Indrani is not putting the finishing touches to Incarcerated Rhythm, or is working on privately commissioned pieces, she’s collaborating with her partner, Derek Burrows, a master storyteller and musician from The Bahamas. Indrani is the editor for Burrows’ autobiographical meditation on race and cultural identity in Before The Trees Was Strange (2016), which was recently chosen as an Official Selection of the 12th Caribbean Tales International Film Festival (CTFF) to be held in Toronto next month.
With two extended documentaries under her belt, more than half-a-dozen shorts and countless journalism videos behind her name, Indrani’s body of work is vast and varied. Never one to miss out on an opportunity, and forever gracious for all that has come her way, you sense Indrani Kopal will be breathlessly calling out, “Okay. Got it!” from behind the camera for many years to come.