The experience of making the film for four years, has been tedious but extremely rewarding. What a movement can do at local levels for sustenance of its people, the film wishes to exhibit to the world as a model of a revolution.
Director Shaharbin Aboobacker in conversation with EARTHAMAG on his experience with making Jal Hai Toh Kal Hai.
Some excerpts:
It was nothing short of a stroke of luck that took me there and I felt that I had to use my skills to tell their story because if not me, this story would never get told.
Because of its inaccessibility and inhospitable terrain, Karauli has hardly received any government aid. In fact, no collector has visited the place since Independence. The residents are cut off from the mainland with only sporadic electricity, and the radio as the sole connect with the outside world. Road networks are poor so only one or two modes of transport ply in the region. The closest hospital is more than 20 kilometres away and most children don’t go to school. In such a harsh scenario, the scale at which the people have transformed the landscape just blew me away.
We chose to focus on the people and the movement rather than on “the problem.” I began filming in 2012 and went back to Karauli for four years to film in multiple schedules and seasons. The film captures the progress of the water conservation movement, which has grown organically over this time in the face of extreme natural pressures.
We are staring at a game-changing water crisis, so it is the right time to use the film to start conversations about water conservation.
Read the full story here.
JAL HAI TOH KAL HAI 