http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5387630-111087,00.html
Veteran actor, 10, writes and directs his own film
Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Tuesday January 31, 2006
Guardian
A 10-year-old Indian boy is close to becoming one of the world's
youngest directors with his first film being prepared for an April
release.
Writer, actor, director and still not yet a teenager, Kishan Shrikanth
spent yesterday on his film set putting the final touches to a song
and dance sequence in his first movie. "It took three days to shoot.
But I am happy with it," the 10-year-old prodigy told the Guardian.
Once the choreographer had "got the concept" behind the song it was an
easy job, he added.
Known as Master Kishan, the young man is a local hero in his home city
of Bangalore, the country's information technology capital. An actor
for the past six years, he has already appeared in 24 films and 1,000
episodes of a local-language popular soap opera.
The storyline to "C/O (care of) Footpath" with a faint echo of Oliver
Twist, is about the life of a street urchin drugged by a woman who
uses him as a begging prop. It impressed Bollywood enough to attract
big names including the actor Jackie Shroff, who comes from a humble
background.
Kishan said: "I saw the kids selling newspapers on the streets at the
traffic lights and felt sad. I asked my dad why they had to do this.
He told me that they were not like us. They did not go to school or
study and they had to work for a living. I wanted to talk about their
life."
Kishan, whose script grew out of a short story he wrote, said he hoped
that the film would encourage "slum children to go to school", and
that Footpath was "for all the underprivileged children of the world".
The £90,000, 135-minute film is being produced by Kishan's mother,
Shailaja, who is a movie music director. It is being shot in the
southern city of Madras and in Mumbai, home to Bollywood, the world's
most prolific film industry. Kishan's film will be dubbed in Hindi and
in the south Indian languages of Tamil and Kannada. "I'm ready with
85% of the film and looking at an April release," he said yesterday.
Kishan, who says that Bollywood's Amitabh Bachchan and Hollywood star
Arnold Schwarzenegger are his favourite actors, is on the lookout for
new material. "Actually I do not have time at the moment for school. I
think I'll go back in a month after this film is done. But I do not
miss it."
--
"Bart! With $10,000 we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of
useful things... like love." -- Homer J. Simpson
