This interview at The Sorority is reprinted with the express permission of its subject, Sarah Singh. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

New York based filmmaker Sarah Singh was born into India’s royal family as a Princess of Patiala before relocating to America when she was two. Sarah has travelled across dangerous territories to highlight the story of partition in her award-winning documentary The Sky Below, a contemporary exploration of the creation of Pakistan and the 1947 Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Here, she reflects on her personal and professional journey…

I was very young when we left India in 1974, so there isn’t much I remember. Somehow the word “babu” seemed to stick in my young mind though because shortly after arriving in the US, I renamed my maternal grandmother’s poodle ‘Babu’. Babu means several things (father, clerk, or a moniker for an educated fellow) but it’s unclear in what regard I – as a two year old – might have thought it meant, especially since my grandmother’s poodle was a female.

As a child, I was sometimes singled out in class by both teachers and students because of my different name or because they wanted me to give a kind of show-and-tell about such a faraway land. Once, to my utter fright as an eight year old, my mother actually dressed me in a sari and put me on a float in a Christmas parade. So, sometimes it was purely by default in terms of reconnecting as a child.

Below: A 50-second silent film by Sarah Singh featuring never before seen footage taken in 1967 from her parent’s Royal Wedding and of her childhood in India.

In the subsequent years since 1974, we visited India often. I immediately loved the food. My father’s home is well known as a haven of extraordinary North Indian (and traditional English) food. Mohar Singh, my father’s cook for decades, had been trained by my father’s prior cook who was one of the best cooks in all of India. So, my introduction to Punjabi food was amazing.

Food can be so evocative of a place-especially in India where the colors, textures, smells, and flavors of edible items can be intensely striking. I’ll never forget the first time I saw jalebis, a traditional sweet. It was our first trip back in 1982, and my mother was walking us through the bazaar in Patiala so we could know what it was like. We passed many things one had never seen before, but it was a huge iron pot of bright orange pretzel-like shapes sizzling in a vat of hot oil with a thick swarm of flies hyperactively floating just above this sugary sweet that really stood out to me in the layer upon layer of activity in this open-air marketplace. Of course we tried the sticky, syrupy sweet fluorescent colored treat; I thought my teeth would fall out then and there from this sugar overload.

Before becoming a filmmaker, I took pictures and drew since childhood, so going into the arts was practically a given for me. There was a time when I thought about both professional tennis and becoming a chef, but this early inclination for visual expression prevailed. About fifteen years passed where I exclusively focused on painting and photography. My first solo show was in India in 1996, and thereafter, in the US. Film was always present as a ‘hope to someday’ kind of sentiment, until I hit my mid-thirties and decided to just go for it.

I think my true unfulfilled desire is to be a classical musician, though.

I thrive on the unexpected, the historical, the overlooked, the complex, and the incalculable prospects the world of artistic investigation provides.

There are many reasons for creating The Sky Below, but perhaps the need to understand the region better, both on a personal level and as a global citizen, were the original catalysts. There is no denying the import of South Asia in our global structure both on an economic and ‘war on terror’ front. Their regional instability and regional development is no longer simply felt regionally.

The world is a complex, powerful web of rivers: individual realities in continual flux rushing inevitably into the same larger body of water. As an independent filmmaker, this ever-changing network of realities is endlessly compelling: to represent this without relying on mainstream methods like reductive reasoning or entertainment driven information is more challenging in the short term, but more interesting in the long run.

Making this film was like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute, but not really knowing how or where to land (i.e. passion and skills but no script). It was the best approach though, since I knew I wanted to rely on a process of discovery and the ethereal results that only luck would bring.

The aesthetics of this endeavor required intense flexibility and constant reflection despite being overwhelmed by the subject matter or exhaustion. Perhaps most importantly, the prolonged creation time (while frustrating) added to the final film’s complexity both in terms of content and form.

Functioning in so many capacities at once (particularly as the Producer) was in some ways the biggest obstacle but also the biggest opportunity. I had complete creative control in the production and post-production but the flip side was that I also had to be unrelentingly self-reliant and deeply motivated because there was no one else to hand the work off to.

On one occasion, I happened upon a beautiful field of yellow flowers (of the mustard plant) which I immediately started filming. A worker suddenly appeared in the field and came right up to me, warning me with a bit of admonishment to “leave-this is danger area”. Nearby, my driver was holding my tripod and I noticed he was shaking. Even though I wanted to continue filming, his nervousness made me realize that I really must leave. I learned later that it was an area where Al Qaeda or Taliban-types where known to be.

A shepherd I met by chance near Baisaran, Kashmir guided me into the forest to a spectacular view of the valley. When we returned, he invited me back to his modest home on a hill for what turned out to be one of the best cups of tea I’ve ever had. This memory haunts me with its opposing scenarios, of which people living there must deal with everyday: a troubled state heavily occupied by armed forces contrasted with the Subcontinent’s legendary hospitality as experienced through this spectacularly simple but profound gesture.

Sometimes it was really difficult to know when to trust a stranger; but then why should they trust you, either?

Many of the challenges I faced were the usual suspects of independent film, and film in general: lack of funding, knowing when to stop filming and when to start editing, how to keep true to the original framework but flexible enough to embrace the unexpected, how to develop as neutral a narrative as possible when the material is so complex and the story so politically and emotionally sensitive, knowing when to step back and when to push, and on and on…

By creating The Sky Below, I helped to give visibility to an under-documented subject of such critical and historical magnitude: the Subcontinent’s political earthquake of 1947, whose aftershocks extend well beyond the region today, needs to be better commemorated and understood.

The biggest lesson I have learnt? Keep an open mind. It’s much harder than you think, particularly when one’s vision is so strong, but the nature of this type of documentary filmmaking is such that you have to move on from missed opportunities and be ready when new opportunities emerge.

Q & A

1. What advice would you give to anyone interested in pursuing a career in documentary filmmaking?

Watch as many films as you can to understand the variety of narrative frameworks people have already explored in creating films, both documentary and fictional. Find ways to craft your own vision (aesthetic) but also question your own notions of what a film should be. Work in as many capacities as you can in the filmmaking process because it will help you to better understand the medium’s expressive potential on a technical and artistic level.

Documentary in particular would ideally spring from the need to discover, using a kind of ‘shovel to the ground approach’ in the hopes that somewhere in the landscape things would be found and revelatory.

Focus, focus, focus and-don’t give up- because the next day just might be the critical content you’ve been searching for.

2. What words of wisdom can you give to young women aspiring to follow their own path?

As a filmmaker and artist, that sense of accomplishment when the painting or film emerges is worth all the difficult travel on unpaved roads that it might’ve taken to get to where you wanted to go in the first place. Having a final output is not the goal, however. The goal is to challenge yourself.

Figure out your goals and just go for it. There are many things you can strive for and many things you just cannot plan for. After you’ve jumped from that plane with your parachute on, sustain your motivation by continuing to imagine a safe landing.

As many others have said (paraphrased): the 21^st century will be the century of Women.

www.theskybelow.com