There was a little buzz around a film on Jawahar Lal Kaul, a visually challenged man who made light of his own limitation to dive into social work. As he strived to make the lives of those around him in Kashmir better, Kaul himself was awarded the Padma Shri.
Kaul’s incessant struggle inspired Bilal A Jan, a documentary filmmaker from Kashmir, to make a film on the man who lost his eyesight in tragic circumstances. An attack of smallpox at the age of five left him visually impaired.
Jan cannot stop talking about Kaul and his work and what motivated him to direct J.L. Kaul: A Man of Action.
“I was moved by the unending struggle of Kaul not because he is a native of Kashmir but because of his enthusiasm for social work, despite being visually challenged. He is a goal-oriented person. Internal and external conflicts and heartbreaking hardships have not dimmed his enthusiasm or vision of the world,” says Jan in a telephonic chat.”
Social worker J L Kaul with filmmaker Bilal Jan | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The film was shot in Srinagar, Amritsar and Delhi, where Kaul had set up Training and Rehabilitation Centre for the Blind in 1967. Today, the All India Conference of the Blind, which he founded, helps run a modern school for visually impaired children, an audio library besides Braille equipment, banking and pension for the elderly.
The 30-minute documentary took a year to complete. The reasons for the long gestation period are attributed to dearth of finance and the challenges in working with a visually impaired person.
“The biggest challenge was to find a financier. The second challenge involved interacting and understanding the life and struggle of a visually impaired man, and managing visually impaired individuals during the filming process. For me as a director, it was the first time I was tackling a subject around disability. In the past, I have worked extensively with social issues,” says Jan.
Of course, it did not help that Kaul, the protagonist of the film, was based in Delhi. “Kaul sahab’s work is spread across India. So I had to cover other locations too. I shot the film in phases rather than at one go,” he adds.
Kashmiri documentary filmmaker Bilal Jan | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The film, produced by National Film Development Corporation, Mumbai, has been selected for the 16th International Documentary Film Festival of Kerala, in the short documentary focus section.
The festival opens on July 21. For Jan, it is a homecoming of sorts. His film, Daughters of Paradise, had also been at the Kerala Film Festival in 2018.
Visually challenged social worker Jawahar Lal Kaul | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
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