With his first Punjabi film Jaspal, Narinderpal Singh Chandok has eschewed the tried-and-true comic genre in favor of highlighting the somber side of Punjab
With his first feature film, Jaspal, French-Indian documentary filmmaker Narinderpal Singh Chandok celebrates his Punjabi heritage. Recently, the movie was shown in Chandigarh’s Alliance Française (AF) Art Gallery. His film is being discussed for distribution to Punjabi people on the regional OTT platform Chaupal. It will also be shown at the AF centers in Kolkata and Lucknow.
Chandok, who was born in Delhi in 1971, relocated to France with his family in the 1980s. Over the last eighteen years, he has directed up to thirty-five documentaries. Every one of them was shown on many TV networks, including TV5 Monde, Discovery Channel Asia, Ushuaïa TV, and France 5.
When asked whether working on a feature picture was different from filming documentaries, Chandok describes it as being much more difficult. “The goal of approaching a topic from a documentary perspective is to provide the facts, so you just need to get started. A feature film, however, requires collaboration with several individuals, such as writers, producers, and technical personnel, making it a whole other animal. Handling everything is difficult.
extended travel
After spending five years finishing Jaspal, Chandok received mixed reviews when he uploaded the teaser on YouTube. He clarifies, saying, “I wouldn’t stop myself from doing what I want since there would always be individuals who wouldn’t understand where you are coming from and what the tale wants to portray. It would be difficult for me to accept that spending time away from my family, filming in Punjab, India, and putting in this much effort on a project aren’t worthwhile. Although change is often resisted, this film is undoubtedly not like the typical Punjabi films that are shown in theaters.
As Chandok found out while naming his first feature film, selecting a person’s name for a movie’s title is never easy. The name I want needs to sound the same in all major languages, including Punjabi, French, English, Spanish, and others. Jaspal seems to be one such name.
Expanding internationally
Chandok is motivated by the desire to see a Punjabi movie make waves at the global box office. Even though we have immigrated to other countries, many people throughout the world still see us as pendulums and are unaware of how closely we are tied to our culture. I’m tired of Korean and other language movies becoming very successful outside. Instead than waiting for Bollywood to adapt a great Punjabi narrative into Hindi, we can pick our own language and tell it ourselves.
For Chandok, shooting in Punjab was a whole other ball game. The local staff was surprised to learn that I prefer to start and finish on schedule. I want to treat everyone equally, therefore it took me some time to tear down the barriers between the crew and the director,” he explains.
