Rajkot: It’s literally year-on-year joy for Rajkot boy, 24-year-old Rohan Rao, who will showcase his second documentary film, ‘Viseltear Violins’, in the second consecutive year at the non-fictional film festival and America’s largest event -- the DOC NYC – to be held online from November 11 to 19 in New York City.
Son of Rajkot-based orthopedic doctor Srinivas Roa and dietician mother Rima Rao, Rohan’s five-minute documentary talks about ace violin-maker Jason Viseltear whose sublime sense of the instrument, from wood to sound of the strings and the raw smell of polish – a sensory amalgamation for a perfect symphony.
“I want to bring about change in the society with my films,” asserted Rohan, adding that his goal is not just earning money but bringing about a difference by showing real life events within a captured time frame on a bigger stage.
While ‘Viseltear Violins’ makes it to the prestigious global screen in the festival, what is more interesting here is the fact that it all began for the filmmaker as a wedding shooter in Mumbai.
The journey from the frozen lenses to the evocative art of making documentary films is as interesting as his documentary that glorifies the hands that creates the unique string which has its place of pride in most genres of music.
“I want to shoot real life in real light and I like documentaries,” Rohan told TOI over from New York, where he is pursuing his masters from the School of Visual Arts’ Social Documentary Film since 2018 and has so far made around six films.
He said that he learned about shooting real-life events mainly from wedding shoots he did in Mumbai as an under-grad student of English literature in St. Xavier’s College around 2014-15, under Rahul Sharma, an event photographer.
“I shot about 11 weddings with him and five concerts, which too had no retakes, nor could you risk missing anything which taught me about time rules that I applied in docus. There is a script in fiction film but there is no script in real life film, so I follow the subject for months and years till the time I don’t get the story,” explained the budding filmmaker who also had his first film ‘Drive’ screened in the same film festival in 2019.
Drive was the story of Jacob Brooke, a taxi driver for the past five decades. In both these documentaries, Rohan did everything – from shooting, editing to scripting and selecting the topics all by himself.
“What actually kicked in me the love for documentary films was my stint with Oscar winner cinematographer Benjamin Wolf as an assistant at a production house in Delhi in 2014,” said Rohan who had shot another documentary titled “Three threads’ based on the life of a Dalit Kutch weaver of Bhujodi village which will release in April next year.
“Rohan has been interested in photography since his childhood, ever since he had a point and shoot camera,” said mother Rima Rao.