Dastoor

Dastoor is my first film. And in many ways, it’s not a film that I’ve made- in the traditional sense of making films, but a film that I’ve observed, a film that I’ve listened to. Listened to, because it’s a film dealing with stories of people as told by themselves. It’s a document of people going on with life and its many shades before the nation wide elections. Hundreds of films are made on poverty, what good will yet another film do? Can the human condition of poverty be eradicated? What is it to be homeless? To be hard up and broke. Earning sometimes from somewhere, a family to feed, but there is no door to your home, there is no window at your home, because there is no home. How does one go on with life? Being like that. I met all kinds of people during this film- a wandering soul, a philosopher, a poet, an actor, a saint. All talking about the same thing. A united states of affairs. And what are they talking about? Poverty. Poverty is the most urgent issue that we as a country face. And i have tried to reflect upon the ocean through the bubble of my own life. By taking the camera out and pointing it at the my own city of Thane, whose native i have been since childhood. Under a bridge, near a hotel, as the city keeps pulsating and moving, going up and down in trains, some static lives keep repeating themselves.. The film can only be relevant with time. Since it questions. It questions what is to come? What will the lives of children turn to. Can we reconstitute our-self as a society? Or do we keep repeating the same old.

Niranj menon