Mumbai 26/11 – To Cut A Long Story, Short
Print
Director’s Notes by Mayurica Biswas
I remember getting a call from my mother well past midnight on 26th Nov, last year. ‘Take a look at the news, Mumbai is being attacked, again!’ The horror had just begun.
Leopold Café where I’ve ‘hung out’ as a fresher in the city was under attack. VT, the train station where I got off every morning at 9:50 to take the over-bridge to the old Lady of Bori Bunder (TOI) had been devastated. Taj and Oberoi were burning. Mumbai looked straight out of a conflict zone on tv. For the next 2 ½ days, I didn’t leave the news. Like everyone else in India. And perhaps, the rest of the world!
The front
Three months later, I was staring at one of my most challenging assignments – a documentary on the Mumbai Terror Attacks. Where do I begin? 60 hours of live television. Followed by a years’ investigation and analysis. I had 50 minutes. There was work to do!
For many reasons! This was a dream project – my first film commissioned by the National Geographic Network. Exacting editorial, taut story-telling, a sensitive approach, stiff timelines and most importantly – an unbiased narration of events! Expected of any journalist, but prejudices creep in when you are trying to document something as complex as 26/11. Here I was, an Indian, and someone who has lived in and loved Mumbai. Can I pull it off? Thankfully, I had 17 years of Miditech’s documentary experience backing me.
It began with miles and miles of newsprint, and conversations with several survivors, victims, cops, analysts and journalists. So many stories, so many people, so many places, so many theories! At this point 2 people became very critical to this film – the Associate Director Ramya Ramamurthy with a brilliant knack of finding people and cracking access, and a Mumbai crime journalist who is easily an Encyclopedia on 26/11. What do you keep? Who do you leave out? That’s when Niret Alva, the creative guide on this project told us, ‘There are 50 ways of narrating the same story. You need to pick yours. And stick with it’. A simple, but brilliant insight!
Jannat!
Soon we found ours – a complete story of the event, told through characters who were inside the action – the fisherman who saw the terrorists come ashore, an American couple who witnessed the shooting in 2 venues, a banker who came face to face with the attackers as he was taken hostage, a mother whose daughter was shot next to her, the police officer who first fired at them, security officials that engaged the terrorists, experts in defence analysts.
But what would be the tone of our film? It’s a fine line that divides an eye-witness account from a voyeur. And Empathy from schmaltz! We took a conscious decision to not dwell on people’s pain. We’d rather they ponder on the ‘What Ifs’ of their split-second decisions. Because often, that was the difference between life and death!
Our base was soon ready… we had found our stories, and our people…it was now time to connect the dots. But how do you re-create the attack all over again? We had hit a roadblock with the Taj, who didn’t want painful memories dredged up again for a film. We also had to contend with Mumbai’s monsoons – how do you match Mumbai in November with the wet Mumbai of July? That’s when I met Ashish Shukla, a young, passionate & aspiring feature film-maker in Mumbai. He had answers. So did someone I had worked with in the past – Hemant Bhalla, the DOP of the film.
The Story-tellers
Together, we worked out the style of shoot. We knew we wanted the viewer to be transported into the heart of the action. How do we do that ? We were working with a docu budget, not a feature film. So, we couldn’t go around building lavish sets. Our only hope was to get permissions to film at the real locations of the attack. It’s true. If you want something really bad, the forces conspire to make it happen. We didn’t get the Taj, but we got the rest – all the other scenes were filmed at real locations, from Leopold Cafe to Cama Hospital & BT Road to Chowpatty.
How do we match the scale of the terror attack? The only way to do it was to seamlessly integrate reconstructions with the archival footage. The treatment had to be edgy, hand-held & candid. As in-obtrusive as possible! Capture the action, the way you see it, as if you were in there. But this shooting style was risky – it could either look very amateurish and untidy, or very real and gritty.
I remember the night we were filming the Kasab capture scene – the cops who were involved in the original encounter on 26/11 were on duty that night at Chowpatty. We were trying to shoot a ‘nakabandi’ in action with our fake cops. Suddenly, a few of the real policemen there came up to us and volunteered to direct the action of our actors, to ensure authenticity. The scene turned out to be so realistic, that a local news channels rushed to film us for some ‘breaking news’.
Fake cops who capture Kasab
Realistic reconstructions meant hard work for our fiction team in Mumbai who painstakingly matched every aspect of production with the original – from costumes to props and casting. It was all about details – for instance, the terrorists trousers had to be just above the ankle, the Police Control Room in the film is identical to the real Mumbai Police Control Room including the software applications on their desktops, Leopold Café’s trademark Beer Towers were specially made for our shoot.
But I think ‘Kasab’ was a good accidental find. We spotted him while recee-ing at the Leopold Café, where he works as waiter. Incidentally, he was at the Café on the night of the shootout and had seen the terrorists in action. He agreed to play Kasab. Speaking of recees, we had a very interesting supernatural experience while recee-ing Nariman House in the middle of the night, but that’s another story for another film.
I discovered that Mumbai’s stunt masters are a breed apart. They speak a different language – where every line is invariably a combination of sound effects. ‘dishkao, dishkao… aur yeh goli lagi… dhoom, dham, yeh gira… phachak, woh glass toota… you get the picture’! I was amused by the costing – you are charged by the number of bullets you shoot. Or the bullet wounds you need. Or the number of glass vases you crack. Or the windshields you break! They liked scale. They liked style. They always wanted their stunt boys to ‘die’ in Bollywood style. It was quite a task to get them to tone down for some modest, realistic action.
Pack-Up!
We wrapped up a very tiring reconstruction schedule in less than a week. Our film was now in the hands of Sanjeev Nag, an experienced documentary editor. This is also when my co-director Chandramouli Basu joined the team. We began interviewing the big fish. Stories and conspiracy theories tumbled out. Intelligence and administrative lapses were revealed. Some on-record. But most were off-record and off- limits. Sub-judice videos, transcripts and interrogation reports came to us. We discovered how this attack was planned – how thousands of prospective young men were screened in Pakistan and almost like a reality show, through stages of elimination, the final 10 were chosen to execute the show.
We spent many days & long nights crafting our material. With developments in the story regularly, our final segment of investigations and analysis looked different everyday. But our interview of the Indian Home Minister turned out to be a coup – he was honest, forthcoming and candid, we couldn’t ask for anything more !
Story strands were drawn out, clipped, inter-played and braided, untangled, snipped, re-attached… fashioned and re-fashioned till they looked good to us and to NGC in Washington. It was a laborious effort, but the end was satisfying. Though, sadly we had to leave out almost 40 minutes of content. We always knew we were going to have a problem of plenty.
So, to cut a long story short, Inside: Mumbai Terror Attacks is now ready. It premieres on the National Geographic Channel on this Thursday 26/11 at 8pm and repeat telecast at 11pm. Does it make the cut? You tell me.
Inside Mumbai Terror Attack
A National Geographic Channel India (NGCI) and Miditech Production
Telecast Timings – Worldwide
Nat Geo India
11/22/2009 – 22:00
11/26/2009 – 20:00 & 23:00
Nat Geo Italy
11/19/2009 23:10
Nat Geo Latin America
11/22/2009 21:00
Nat Geo Germany
11/26/2009 21:10
Nat Geo Australia New Zealand
11/29/2009 20:30
Nat Geo Iberia
11/29/2009 21:00
Nat Geo Turkey
11/29/2009 21:00
Nat Geo Central Europe
11/29/2009 21:00
Nat Geo Asia Taiwan
11/29/2009 22:00
Nat Geo France
12/06/2009 20:40
Nat Geo Benelux/Africa
12/06/2009 23:00
Tags: 26/11, Ashish Shukla, Documentary, Mayurica Biswas, Mumbai Terror Attack, Trailer, Video
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Ashish,
Congrats!
You guys could not cut an exclusive trailer for PFC?
Or if it is on Youtube, include it
or National Geographic Channel does not allow it?
loading...
Wow, some journey! Congratulations. As RK Said, a trailer would have been good, if possible. Will try to catch it.
loading...
Ashish, thanks for sharing Mayurica Biswas’s notes. I think you can see the trailer on this Australian NatGeo site: http://natgeotv.com.au/programmes/mumbai-terror-attacks
loading...
do you know if its going to be broadcast in the US?
loading...
Hi
This is Mayurica.
Prabhu, this film will not air in the US for the moment. Will keep Ashish & PFC posted once the US tx dates are in.
Look forward to everyone’s thoughts on the film.
loading...
Welcome to PFC Mayurica! Waiting for the US release. Meanwhile HBO just released it’s own documentary Terror in Mumbai last Thursday. Hope NatGeo releases this very soon.
loading...
Terror in Mumabi can be viewed online at
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e4_1246490858
loading...
Thanx RK…the trailer is updated in the post now!
Thanx a lot Evelyn for the link…I got the trailer from that link itself.
loading...
Hey Mayurica
You been working too hard. Take a break & come to LA.
My neighbor is going to New York to do a broadway show. So he is subletting his apartment.
Lets be neighbors again & discuss cinema
loading...
It takes a good feature to understand how the events unfolded. LAkshya told us how kargil happened, Black Friday told us how mumbai blasts were orchestrated and perpetrators caught. Though we have read enough about the attack, am sure your docu will provide us with new insights.
loading...
I hope NatGeo shows this in North America soon, too. Is there a place we can lobby for it?
Starting this week in the U.S., PBS is showing a doc called “Mumbai Massacre” as part of a series called “Secrets of the Dead.” In New York, it premieres at 8 tomorrow night. Aseem Chhabra interviewed the Australian director, Victoria Pitt: http://aseemchhabra.com/2009/11/21/a-chilling-journey-mumbai-massacre/
Be sure to click through the multiple parts.
loading...
Will definitely watch! Thanks for the detailed “Behind the Scenes”.
loading...
Evelyn, we’re hoping there will be a tv release in the US soon.
In the meanwhile, our film is expected to screen at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Boston on 2nd Dec. If you’re around, I guess you catch it there. Will post the details once I know more.
loading...
Mayurica, Boston is five hours north of here but I’ll tell some friends who may be interested.
loading...
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=218858733237&ref=share
Here’s a link to the screening at the Maikin Penthouse,
Harvard Kennedy School, Boston. At 4:30pm, 2nd Dec, 09 (Wed)
loading...