Films for Children - A TALE OF BHUTAN and MY FRIENDS
Robert Tyabji, New Delhi, 1980
I don’t exaggerate when I say that making a Tale of Bhutan changed my life. While I was pretty slick at photography and producing slide shows and had already gained a lot of knowledge and experience in 16mm production, specializing in location audio, sound design, and audio post, and Hootoksi had written scripts for TV shows, this was my first attempt at directing a film, and Hootoksi’s first shot at writing a full-on film script.
Let me rewind. Back in 1977, while participating in a regional meeting of UNICEF planning officers in Ootacamund, I was asked by Satish Prabasi, UNICEF's regional planning chief who was also responsible for overseeing the Bhutan programme, and who had convened the meeting, to show something in the evening to amuse the group. As it happened, I had just returned from my motorcycle trip to Ladakh, and had brought a set of slides of the trip with me, so I showed about 80 slides that evening. Satish was so impressed by the show that he asked me to help the Bhutan government produce a film to commemorate the coming International Year of the Child, 1979. So in late 1977 (or early 1978?) I travelled to Bhutan with some trepidation having never been there before.
I reached Thimphu via Calcutta and Bagdogra by air and two days’ drive up steep mountain roads through virgin jungle, temperate forests and snowbound passes. I was accompanied by Bhutan’s Director of Information Dasho Rigzin Dorji, who had come down to Phuntsholing on the border with India, to receive me. I was stunned by the untouched beauty of the countryside and the unique architecture. An aura of profound respect for living things pervaded everything and everybody. As a street-wise dude from the big city, I was quite disorientated by the unfamiliar atmosphere of peace and harmony!
The next morning, I attended a meeting with the heads of the Home, Foreign, Finance and Development ministries. I expected to be briefed on the government’s guidelines for the film so that I could go back to UNICEF with a framework. But to my surprise, I was asked to stay a few days longer at government expense to look around and then come up with my own proposals! Back in Delhi I found it difficult to adequately describe my impressions of Bhutan, its people and culture. But Hootoksi understood perfectly and in a few days conceived a beautiful, touching story for the film. So, I returned to Thimphu with it.
When I finished reading it to the assembled officials, expecting questions, comments or even outright rejection, I was greeted with complete silence. After what seemed an eternity everybody started talking at the same time. The jumble of Dzongkha voices froze me in my seat, staring at the paper in my hands! Then the room became quiet and Dasho Rigzin folded his hands and addressed me solemnly. He said the group unanimously approved the story! He told me that the story was very similar to a Bhutanese legend about a king who sacrificed everything for his people, and how had I known of this legend? I couldn’t tell him the answer, since I had none, but I knew that Hootoksi’s intuition had again carried the day!
Satish was thrilled at the news and lost no time in arranging funding for the film while I began assembling my film crew. I selected talented and highly experienced Amarjit Singh as the cameraman with Manjit Singh as his assistant. The four of us, Amarjit, Manjit, Hootoksi and I would comprise the main team from UNICEF while the Bhutan team was led by Tashi Phuntsog with Ms Nima Om assisting, along with technical camera and lighting staff, all from the Department of Information.
We shot the film in the summer of 1978, using the abandoned Drugyel Dzong as the main location and later moving around the country to get the background and development footage I needed. The film's story of a king and the moon was performed by local school children and narrated by a story-teller, Mingbo Dukpa, to his audience of children and villagers.
Fortunately, UNICEF came through with sufficient funding to cover all the costs - in Delhi, hiring David Dhavan as the film editor and composer Vanraj Bhatia to do the music; and in New York, I used some of the finest available mixing and rerecording studios and film labs. There was just one hurdle - UNICEF insisted that the ending of the English version of the film be modified to show that the King's limbs were returned to him as the Moon's reward for his dedication and sacrifice (however, the Dzongkha version was unaffected).
I mentioned before that this film was a turning point in my life. We also produced a second, shorter film called My Friends from footage left over. The following year, 1979, A Tale of Bhutan was shown in hundreds of Canadian and American schools under UNICEF’s development education programme and for fund raising. Both films were so well received in Bhutan and internationally that the Royal Government asked UNICEF to send me to Bhutan to on a long-term basis!
So in December 1980, Hootoksi and I packed our bags and with three kids and our dog Akbar in tow headed for the hills and a four-year Bhutan adventure we will always remember. And that is how my 30-year career with UNICEF was cemented.
... and information on the films A Tale of Bhutan and My FriendsI...
A TALE OF BHUTAN, 16mm, 27 minutes (English version), 40 minutes (Dzongkha version)
Produced by UNICEF in association with the Royal Government of Bhutan
Directed by Robert Tyabji; Edited by David Dhavan; Script by Hootoksi Tyabji; Director of Photography: Amarjeet Singh; Music by Vanraj Bhatia; Commentary by Roshan Seth (English) and Tashi Phuntsog (Dzongkha)
Rerecorded at The Mix Place, New York
MY FRIENDS, 16mm and 35mm, 7 minutes, English
Produced by UNICEF in association with the Royal Government of Bhutan
Script and Direction by Hootoksi Tyabji; Edited by David Dhavan; Director of Photography: Amarjeet Singh; Music by Vanraj Bhatia
Rerecorded at The Mix Place, New York
Letter from Donald A. Allan, Chief, Information Division, UNICEF Office for Europe, Geneva, dated 16 July 1980
Dear Robert,
Just a line of enthusiastic appreciation for the truly excellent job you and your crew did in creating the film A Tale of Bhutan. We showed it to the Office for Europe staff, who declared it one of the best UNICEF films ever seen. We know that it will be well received in Europe and I think it ought to be entered into competitions at the many film festivals held here.
We hope that language versions will soon be produced. As soon as we get copies, we will promote the film widely.
Congratulations on a fine, sensitive piece of work. We can’t believe it is your first film, and hope it’s not your last.
<Best regards,
(signed) Donald A. Allan
Following are a couple of press reports on these films.
Democratic World, 1 June, 1980
UNICEF has produced over two scores of films on a variety of subjects of interest to children. These films are meant to “help both children and adults gain insights into world problems at a human level”. A Tale of Bhutan is in the same mould. It tells of a noble king anxious to provide modern facilities “drinking water, medicare, education, roads, etc.” to make the life of the people economically better and richer.
Scripted by Hootoksi Tyabji, it has in interesting format: A group of children enact a pantomime through which the wish fulfillment of a wise and selfless King is narrated. His wishes are granted by the Moon but on one condition “that he will lose a limb for every wish granted. After he has lost his one arm, one leg, and his eyesight, the King’s three dreams come true for the welfare of his people, but he is not sorry for it. The Moon, the centre of Bhutanese culture and folklore, is a s generous as the King. She restores the King’s lost limbs and eyesight.
Between this pantomime play are intercuts of developmental activities to modernize Bhutan.
A Tale of Bhutan is Robert Tyabji’s first directorial attempt. He shows an assured talent. For the children, the film has a refreshing novelty about it. Through pantomime it informs them what a welfare should be, what a ruler’s prime concern is, and how self-sacrificing he should be. If taken as a parable, it says that Nature is here to be exploited and used for the welfare of man, only man must have the will to work for it.
Amarjeet has a keen camera sense and Vanraj Bhatia’s musical score is in accord with the Bhutanese folk music. Only if there had been a Bhutanese folk song, the film would have had much more fascinating appeal. But we are told that its Dzongkha version has one which is longer by 12 minutes.
Anil Saari wrote in the Financial Express, 1 June, 1980
“My Friends”, a seven-minute short film assembled out of ngs (the no-goods, the rejects, the cuts) gives UNICEF’s Delhi staffer Robert Tyabji perhaps the finest Indian short-film on people that this writer has seen during a faithful trooping down to short-films in the last decade.
Going up to Bhutan in 1979 to make a children’s documentary for the International Children’s Year, Tyabji has come back with two: “A Tale of Bhutan”, a twenty seven minutes long documentary for children which UNICEF’s Delhi office arranged to make with the Bhutan Government; and a short-poem seven minutes long film which they created out of the unused footage and decided to call “My Friends”.
Both these films are scheduled for international distribution by UNICEF and though they were shot by Indian cinematographer Amarjeet on 16mm and in colour, Tyabji is confident that 35mm blow-up prints which UNICEF would only too gladly arrange for, would be equally effective because of the film’s luminescent visual quality.
What makes “My Friends” remarkable is that it creates something new out of its material instead of merely imitating or simulating the world of children. Created at the editing table, “My Friends” is like a lyric about the gentleness of things; soft-focus close-ups of leaves are counter-posed to the faces of children; or the lush mountain scenery is brought alive by the brief pictures of children at play. Hootoksi Tyabji’s film has, in Indian context, the cardinal virtue of not over-stating its basic context. Instead of emphasizing the angelic qualities of children again and again, Tyabji intersperses their fleeting portraits with inserts of motifs from Bhutan’s resplendent nature. In terms of actual footage, pictures of children probably do take up more than 50 per cent of the film’s time; as Tyabji creates her own version of the mood created by children.
While most Indian short-films do project a reasonable amount of virtuosity on the visual level, they almost always make a mess out of the commentary, particularly with the voice-over in which the spoken word is supposed to describe the pictures and supplement the information that they impart. With children as the subject matter, most of our short-film makers tend to cloy around in their attempt to blend fantasy and realism.
The voice-over commentary to “My Friends” transcends standard Indian levels with a brilliant flash of creativity by script-writer Hootoksi Tyabji. Confining herself to a concise introduction to each child featured in the film, the script comes through like catchy captions to a series of photo-portraits. As one young boy is shown eating and then studying, the commentary says: “Watch my friend eating. He loves food. He says he wants to become a scholar”. The other poetic irony that the film comes up with is that of a toddler who is playing on a drain-like narrow stream with a hollow read and a stone.
He places the reed under the stone on one corner of the stream and then decides to go over to the other side and place the reed there. He is described as a friend who cannot make up his mind “whether to be an engineer or a major, when he grows up”. A comment that synchronises perfectly, in cinematic terms, with the little fellow’s jump across the rivulet.
Tyabji’s other, longer, film “A Tale of Bhutan” was designed as a documentary-film meant to serve informational functions for children. Since Bhutan is following an extremely careful road towards a planned economy, the new technology is only gradually making its presence felt in the more remote villages. Tyabji’s film would, therefore, serve as a major introduction to the country’s developmental schemes for a large number of Bhutanese.
The actual documentary shots are incorporated in a tale that Tyabji got enacted by the children of two village schools. Coincidentally enough, the story that Tyabji and his wife created on their own, as a vehicle for the international section that they wanted to project, happens to incorporate elements from a number of Bhutanese Legends about the moon and kings. This made it easier in persuading the children to act out the story, because the Bhutanese villagers have no tradition at all of the drama, music and dance being the dominant artistic activities they partake in.
“A Tale of Bhutan” is a developmental film and Tyabji does commit himself to a definition of modern technology as an omniscient messiah of prosperity. However, by giving its developmental message the format of a children’s play and because he mounts the play with finesse and sophistication, “A Tale of Bhutan” emerges a shade more interesting than the average documentary made by Films Division; and that includes films that win international awards. For instance, this year’s winner “Water, the Source of Life”, which jarred the viewer by its pedagogic sermonising against water pollution, Tyabji’s commentary scores over the Films Division’s award-winner because it does not let the developmental-message become more important than the children and their dramatization.
Tyabji’s considerable success with these two films leads one to hope that UNICEF and the Government of Bhutan embark on a series of documentaries for children, since “A Tale of Bhutan” itself contains the seeds of so many new films.