Bina Bhattacharya is an award winning writer, director and producer and the creative head of Gemme de La Femme Pictures. Her work is both scripted and factual, focusing on characters who feel out of place. Bhattacharya, directed her first feature film last year – From All Sides, a dark suburban satire about a multi-racial family living in Western Sydney exploring race, class tensions and sexuality.
Bhattacharya is making waves in the industry with many accomplishments under her belt including independently funding her aforementioned feature film, opening the Sydney Film Festival as writer of ‘The Eternal Dance’ chapter for the collaborative feature Here Out West, and recently appearing on the Being Asian Australian’s 2022 list of influential Asian-Australians.
In this Colour Box Studio interview, Bhattacharya discusses the complexities of navigating the Australian film industry, how the people in the Western suburbs of Sydney influenced her work ethic and the ‘mystical inspiration trap.’
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
I’m a filmmaker (writer, director and producer) working across shorts, features, factual and scripted entertainment. I’m in post-production with my first feature film as sole writer and director. I also work as a Creative Producer – Youth and Emerging for PYT Fairfield – a youth theatre company in Western Sydney with a focus on multicultural young people.
How did you start your creative practice and why?
I’ve had a roundabout journey. I was always imaginative – I spent hours as a child wandering around the backyard inventing stories. When I discovered films as a teenager, I decided that was what I wanted to do and started working towards it in earnest. I studied film at University but my first foray in the industry was horrible – all white, inner city, private school educated whereas I was brown, from Western Sydney and public school educated. I found a job in the public sector, and worked across health, justice, universities and advocacy for almost ten years before moving overseas with my husband. The birth of my first child, two months premature and on the other side of the world to my parents, nearly killed me and my son. I was very depressed but, away from the pressure of working, I realised that I was only ever going to be happy if I returned to filmmaking. I came home to Western Sydney and decided to give filmmaking another try and made a short using my own money, “Wild Dances”. That was back in 2017. Soon after I responded to a call for CALD writers from Western Sydney which ended up becoming ‘Here Out West’, and this time I had ‘Wild Dances’ to my name.
Where did you grow up and how has it influenced your practice?
I grew up on the border of Sydney’s trendy inner west and the ethnic west, which pretty much summed up my whole identity. With a white mother and Indian father, I was too white to be brown and too brown to be white. I had little in common with the South Asian girls at my school because I had a rebellious streak and liked movies and wanted to be a filmmaker, but I never felt cool enough to fit in with my white friends who couldn’t relate to me being ambitious in a culture where not trying is a virtue. All my work features characters who don’t neatly fit into any category and are constantly making compromises. I think I got my relentless work ethic from going to a multicultural public school in Western Sydney where studying hard and doing well was prized among a majority migrant population, which has served me well to this day.
Tell us about your past creative projects. What has been your most treasured a highlight so far?
It’s like asking me to choose between children! I love every project I do! Opening the Sydney Film Festival with ‘Here Out West’ and getting messages almost daily from people who were touched by my writing is pretty special. I loved directing the music video for Parvyn, and of course, directing my first feature at the end of last year is a privilege I will never take for granted.
Tell us about your current project?
I have a fine cut for my film ‘From All Sides’, which is about a multi-racial family who are beset “from all sides” as they navigate work, school, sex, friendships, romances and their neighbours in Outer-South-West Sydney. It’s a dark comedy with a large Ensemble cast with sexy bits and South Asian dance. I told myself that if I was going to make one film in my life, it was going to be this one, and I can’t wait to share it with the world.
Who or what was inspires your practice?
I think because I lived the reality of not being creative for so long I never take a second of being able to make my art for granted. I make films simply because there’s no other option for me. I made films or I die by a thousand paper cuts, like when I worked in the public sector and I was bored and languishing and drinking a lot to manage the boredom. I make films because I have to, not because I want to. If I spend the rest of my life making them on iPhones on my weekends while holding down another job, then so be it, that sounds like a perfectly happy life.
Where do you feel most creative and why?
That’s an interesting question! I never ‘feel’ creative. I guess I never wait for inspiration to hold me. I just do the work. I think waiting for some mystical inspiration is a trap. If you cultivate the discipline to write every day and make time for it and get used to putting stuff on paper even if it’s garbage, then you will eventually get stuck into it and write something that’s of you. With my feature, I told myself I would get a babysitter for my daughter and spend four hours writing every Friday. Once I got stuck into it, I stayed up every night for three weeks straight finishing my first draft. It’s true that it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
What do you hope audiences take from your work?
All I can promise is that you will see the world as I see it.
What has been your biggest learning so far in terms of working in the Australian film industry?
Making a great film means taking risks, and unfortunately the film industry is risk averse, and the Australian film industry even more. The only thing Australians like to do is renovate houses. Even people in non-creative fields like tech and science get frustrated with how Australians don’t like to invest in anything other than buying and selling property. So, if you’re in any kind of minority, chances are no one will take a chance on you, so just make work however you can. If you wait for someone to take a risk on you you’ll be waiting forever. POCs and women are a huge part of the population, but we lack institutional power, so your best bet is to find other like minded creatives and work with them and find ways to reach your audience without the middleman.
What future projects are you looking forward to?
I’m hoping I get enough interest with my feature that I get to make another one!
Whose work are you digging at the moment?
I’m really inspired by Jim Cummings, Sean Baker, Desiree Akhavan and Gregg Araki, who make films on low budgets but maintain creative control and find their audience globally.