Meet a 14 –year old documentary film maker from Bihar: Akash Jha
Akash Jha, a 14-year-old student of St Thomas School, Ghaziabad, has made a short film — Ek Khoj: Bharat Ki-Swatantrata Aandolan 1857-1947 Ke Shahidon Ke Gumnam Jivit Vanshaj — on the condition of the descendants of the martyrs and forgotten heroes of the country. On how he got the idea to film a documentary, Aakash said: “I have seen my parents launch a nationwide movement, Andolan Ek Pustak Se, for the forgotten heroes and freedom fighters. They also released a book on them. Later, I suggested my father that converting the book into a documentary would make it easier for schoolchildren to understand. He liked my idea and gave me the go-ahead. I took two years to meet the families of the martyrs, gather information and then combined all the facts into a 90-minute documentary.”
The building block for Aakash’s documentary was his parents’ coffee-table book Forgotten Indian Heroes and Martyrs: Their Neglected Descendants — 1857-1947 released on April 13 last year by 58-year-old Jeet Singh, a daily wager and grandson of Shaheed-e-Azam Udham Singh.
While most students struggle to juggle studies and fun these days, Aakash managed his studies and research for the documentary. Accompanied by his parents, Aakash went to meet every person mentioned in the book to know their present condition and film them for his documentary. Some of the places he went to were Punjab, Calcutta, Midnapore (Bengal), Pune and Meerut. He also came to Patna.
Aakash said: “Like every child, I used to go out with my parents too. The only difference was I didn’t go for shopping or movies. Rather, I visited the families of Ustad Bismillah Khan, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Tantia Tope, Mangal Pandey and others to know their stories. I am thankful to my parents who took me to meet the families every weekend.”
On his experience, Aakash said: “It was great, as I learnt a lot and got the chance to interact with the families of the martyrs and forgotten heroes. The sources were more authentic than books written on them. I even read a lot of books and visited museums before filming the documentary.”
While filmmaking is Aakash’s hobby, he aspires to become an aeronautical engineer. He said: “Handling the camera was not difficult for me as most of the persons in my family are journalists. So I am quite familiar with handling a story or camera. I love to spend time learning the technicalities of filming and camera handling.”