international salesinternational sales · sharad kalawar future east film 8 carmichael road bombay/...

PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS CONTACTCONTACTCONTACTCONTACT Sharad Kalawar Future East Film 8 Carmichael Road Bombay/ Mumbai 400026. INDIA [T] (91.22) 2352.4576 [F] (91.22) 2352.5310 [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL SALESINTERNATIONAL SALESINTERNATIONAL SALESINTERNATIONAL SALES

Annie Roney Ro*co Films International 20 Hillcrest Rd. Tiburon California 94920 USA [T] (415) 435-4631 [F] (415) 435-4691 [email protected]

FUTURE EAST FILM 8 Carmichael Road Bombay (Mumbai) 400026. INDIA. [T] +91.22.2352.4576 [www] FUTUREEAST.COM

CREDITSCREDITSCREDITSCREDITS

Director Ashim Ahluwalia

Production Company Future East Film Associate Producers Shumona Goel

Ashim Ahluwalia Executive Producer

Anand Tharaney Camera Mohanan

Mukul Kishore Location Sound Mohandas

Editor Ashim Ahluwalia Associate Editors Shai Heredia

Meghana Manchanda Music Masta’ Justy

Metamatics Thomas Brinkmann Minamo

Sound Design Ashim Ahluwalia Sound Engineering Tarun Bhandari

FEATURINGFEATURINGFEATURINGFEATURING

Glen Glen Castinho Sydney Sydney Fernandes Osmond Oaref Irani Nikki

Vandana Malwe Nicholas Nikesh Soares Naomi Namrata Pravin Parekh

TECHNICAL DETAILSTECHNICAL DETAILSTECHNICAL DETAILSTECHNICAL DETAILS

INDIA 2005, 35mm, 1:1.85, Colour, Dolby SRD, 83 mins Language: English


SYNOPSISSYNOPSISSYNOPSISSYNOPSIS

In vast, fluorescent rooms, thousands of ambitious young Indians talk to people in Kentucky, California or Idaho. Bridging continents by telephone, they pitch products and soothe frayed consumer nerves. As they troubleshoot, they dream of America. As they dream, they change. What is it like to transport yourself to a remote land you've never even seen? How does it feel to live so far outside your own body? Welcome to the world of offshore call centres. John & Jane is an astonishing look at the souls of the outsourced. Shot on 35mm and composed with unsettling grace, this documentary finds an entirely original and fitting language to express the eerie dislocation of virtual work. The lives it depicts are real, but the film's approach gives those lives the scope of speculative fiction. Glen and Sydney have taken Western names, partly for convenience, partly for their own pleasure. They sleep during the daytime and work in the middle of their night, following American business hours. Neither of them has ever left India. As part of their training, they learn the meanings that work, money and God hold for Americans. In classes that could be read as satire or tragedy, they study shopping flyers as though they were textbooks. Some begin to adopt American values as their own. One dreams of buying his own Spanish-style villa. Another notes, "Everyone who's ever gone to America gets rich." When their shifts end, Glen and Sydney go back to traditional Indian homes, with simple amenities and mothers who urge them to eat. Director Ashim Ahluwalia builds a story of transformation that becomes more and more engrossing - yet Naomi still comes as a surprise. Blonde down to her eyelashes, she speaks with a kind of cyborg-Midwest accent. "I'm totally very Americanized," she asserts. Ahluwalia's resonant portrait shows Naomi and her coworkers to be products of America, yes, but also of India and of their own satellite fantasies. ---- Cameron Bailey, Cameron Bailey, Cameron Bailey, Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival 2005Toronto International Film Festival 2005Toronto International Film Festival 2005Toronto International Film Festival 2005


SHORT SYNOPSISSHORT SYNOPSISSHORT SYNOPSISSHORT SYNOPSIS A fresh new blend of observational documentary and tropical science-fiction, JOHN & JANE follows the stories of six “call agents” that answer American 1-800 numbers in a Mumbai call center. After a heady mix of American “culture training” and 14 hour night shifts, the job soon starts to take its toll. Counter pointing the fluorescent interiors of late night offices and hyper-malls with the uneasy currents swirling around the characters, JOHN & JANE discovers a young generation of urban Indians that are beginning to live between the real and the virtual. However, this futuristic world of American aliases and simulated reality is not science fiction, these are the times in which we live. JOHN & JANE raises disturbing questions about the nature of personal identity and what it means to be “Indian” in a 21st century globalised world.


FILMMAKERFILMMAKERFILMMAKERFILMMAKER’S’S’S’S STATEMENT STATEMENT STATEMENT STATEMENT

I first heard about call centers in 2001. There had already been some TV documentaries and news reports on the subject, but most of these were occupied with business advantages and technological growth. Nobody seemed to be curious about the kind of people who worked there; for me, the idea of virtual “call agents” with fake identities seemed like science fiction. Who were these Indians that became “Americans” at night? I grew up in Bombay in the ‘70s and ‘80s which was a different place. There was one B&W channel on television, and you had to book a “trunk call” a couple of hours in advance to dial internationally. India mainly exchanged technology with the Russians and Coca - Cola wasn’t available -- only the Indian version, Thums Up! I went abroad to study for a few years and returned in the ‘90s to a new, post-liberalized Bombay – now Mumbai. The socialist feel was gone, and there were new landscapes of malls and multiplexes. The government had finally opened the country to investment and people were having their first taste of McDonald’s. I wanted to document this transition, because I knew this awkward moment would not last very long. Like elsewhere in Asia, this universe of Amway and discount coupons would soon become commonplace. Shooting a film set in a call center seemed like a natural way of looking at this new generation – future Indians who live in India and abroad simultaneously. What we discovered while making this film was incredible – characters who had a hard time separating the real from the virtual. The strange nature of this world of replicas dictated the structure of the film. It seemed meaningless to make a cinema-verite portrait of a call agent, who fakes his identity -- that’s fiction already! It also seemed futile to focus on just one character, when the agents already exist in the most fragmentary ways: One collects only names, the other only numerical data, etc. Since the call center functions like a hive, with agents assigned to teams and leaders, it seemed more appropriate to make a film about a network of individuals – six, the number in a team. In the film, there are 3 sets of Johns & Janes – who appear in order of their team’s ranking. In that sense, the film documents the transition from Indian (worst sales ranking) to American (highest sales). The cosmos of call centers was weirder than we imagined. Shooting inside was not easy, particularly with a 35mm camera and very heavy restrictions on what we were allowed to shoot. Shooting video would have been much easier, but we gained something interesting by choosing to shoot film and shooting static, rather than hand-held. The film feels almost fictional at times – and makes you wonder what kind of “documentary” this is.


ABOUT THE FILMMAKERABOUT THE FILMMAKERABOUT THE FILMMAKERABOUT THE FILMMAKER

ASHIM AHLUWALIAASHIM AHLUWALIAASHIM AHLUWALIAASHIM AHLUWALIA Ashim Ahluwalia was born in Bombay, India in 1972. He studied film at Bard College in New York. In 1999, Ahluwalia set up Film Republic, dedicated to producing Indian independent cinema outside the traditional “Bollywood” system. A year later, Ahluwalia completed THIN AIR, a documentary that followed the lives of three magicians against the backdrop of contemporary Bombay. The film won the Best Film Award at Film South Asia. Its radical treatment of the documentary form prompted The Times of India to write: “… films like THIN AIR are redefining the sub-continental documentary… ” FILMOGRFILMOGRFILMOGRFILMOGRAPHYAPHYAPHYAPHY John & Jane, 2005 (Best Film Award – Dialogue Prize/ European Media Art Festival) (Winner of Jury Award – VC Filmfest) (Honourable mention – Maysles Brothers Award) (Best non-fiction film – National Film Award) Thin Air, 2000 (Best Film Award/ Film South Asia)


ABOUT THE CREWABOUT THE CREWABOUT THE CREWABOUT THE CREW

MOHANAN MOHANAN MOHANAN MOHANAN Director of Photography Mohanan is one of India’s new generation of cinematographers. His projects have spanned a wide range - from art house films like Mani Kaul’s Naukar Ki Kameez to high end commercials and Bollywood films.

MUKUL KISHOREMUKUL KISHOREMUKUL KISHOREMUKUL KISHORE Director of Photography

Avijit Mukul Kishore is a cinematographer based in Mumbai. He is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He has worked mainly on documentary films. He has shot one feature film, works with visual artists on video-art installations and recently made his first film as director, “Snapshots From A Family Album”.

MOHANDAS MOHANDAS MOHANDAS MOHANDAS Sound

Mohandas studied sound recording and sound engineering at the Film and Television Institute of India. He has worked on numerous feature films, short films, documentaries, television serials and game shows. He is currently working on a documentary on gold workers in Kerela.

TARUN BHANDARITARUN BHANDARITARUN BHANDARITARUN BHANDARI Sound

Tarun graduated from the School of Audio Engineering, London, in 1995. He subsequently worked with IBF, a subsidiary of Paramount, before going freelance. He has since engineered albums, West End theatre (Cats, Blood Brothers, Grease) as well as numerous films. His last project was the epic Bollywood film “Rang De Basanti.”

MASTA’ JUSTYMASTA’ JUSTYMASTA’ JUSTYMASTA’ JUSTY Original Music Masta’ Justy is Jatin Vidhyarthi –composer, producer and DJ. He works primarily with electronic textures, building abstract soundscapes for films, installations and digital art projects. He was co-founder of Bhavishyavani, India’s first electronic music collective, and has been invited to DJ his unique mix of Indian electronica around the world.


SHAI HEREDIASHAI HEREDIASHAI HEREDIASHAI HEREDIA Associate Editor

Shai studied film at Goldsmiths College, London. She established Filter India, a platform for experimental filmmakers in India. She has curated Experimenta, India’s first festival for experimental cinema for the past 3 years. She lives and works in Bombay, where she teaches film studies, produces and directs short films and videos.

MMMMEGHANA MANCHANDAEGHANA MANCHANDAEGHANA MANCHANDAEGHANA MANCHANDA Associate Editor Meghana’s first full-length film was “John & Jane”. Soon after, she was chosen to edit ‘Omkara’, a Bollywood adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. A moody and carefully paced film, its editing style is a fresh departure from most Bollywood extravaganzas. ANAND THARANEYANAND THARANEYANAND THARANEYANAND THARANEY Executive Producer

Anand Tharaney worked with Film Republic as their in-house executive producer between 2002 -2004. During this time, he oversaw numerous documentary projects for the company including THE VULTURES (co-produced with The Discovery Channel) as well as ASIAN VIBES, commissioned for French television.

MINAMOMINAMOMINAMOMINAMO Music The electro-acoustic group MINAMO was formed in 1999 by Keiichi Sugimoto and Tetsuro Yasunaga. Their first album was self-released in 2000, and they have released six albums since. Minamo create a universe that is entirely their own, fusing electronic atmospheres, psychedelic, folk, and free improvisation. THOMAS BRINKMANN THOMAS BRINKMANN THOMAS BRINKMANN THOMAS BRINKMANN Music Thomas Brinkmann is a highly regarded German producer of minimal techno music. Experimenting with records since the early eighties, Brinkmann founded the Ernst record label and introduced his own productions on a series of 12" records taking their titles from female names. The track “Olga A1” features in the final nighclub sequence of “John & Jane.”


CALL CENTER FACTSCALL CENTER FACTSCALL CENTER FACTSCALL CENTER FACTS

� ”Whether you know it or not, when you call Delta Airlines, American Express, Sprint, Citibank, IBM or Hewlett Packard's technical support number, chances are you'll be talking to an Indian.” www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/23/60minutes/main590004.shtml

� “Call centres work 24 hours in a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year…holidays are on the Fourth of July, not during prominent festivals or national holidays of India.” Geeta Seshu - www.indiaresource.org/issues/globalization/2003/midnightcoolies.html

� “According to McKinsey & Co., human resource costs in India are 70-80 % less than in US and UK.” Geeta Seshu - www.indiaresource.org/issues/globalization/2003/midnightcoolies.html

� “For many companies, the entire call center environment constantly functions as a sort of perpetual bubble of quasi American-ness. Some centers hang American flags around telephone stations, some continue to screen Men in Black, Pretty Women, and other assorted Hollywood blockbusters and Fox TV sitcoms on a weekly basis for their employees' continued cultural exposure. And many offer their staff free coffee from a store like Barista, India's latest ultra-hip urban chain that bears an eerie resemblance to our American favorite, Starbucks.“ Priya Lal - www.popmatters.com/columns/lal/030820.shtml

� “Many end up marrying someone within the office, and managers oblige by giving the same shift, etc. “ Geeta Seshu - www.indiaresource.org/issues/globalization/2003/midnightcoolies.html

� “Every Saturday morning, Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It’s the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders....”””” LA Times - www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/001868.html

� “The London Guardian reveals that employees are so closely monitored that even going to the bathroom can affect their pay, which is often linked to their job performance. "In call centers, a half-hour lunch break and two fifteen-minute snack breaks each day are considered a generous benefit," the paper notes.” Amitabh Pal - www.thesouthasian.org/archives/000315.html


REVIEWSREVIEWSREVIEWSREVIEWS


Inside a Mumbai Call Center

Indian by Day, American by Night By Susan Stone

A new documentary turns the camera on India's prosperous call center

industry -- ground zero in the international debate over outsourcing and

globalization. Call center workers are asked to adopt Western accents and personas, but are they putting their lives on hold?

Nikki Cooper loves her job. She sells low-priced,

long-distance phone plans to people in the United

States -- and she feels like she is really helping

people.

Meanwhile, ambitious Osmond is already making a

list of the things he would like to buy when he gets

rich: first a motorcycle, then a BMW and eventually

a villa in faraway Spain. He knows that each Amway product he sells will get him

one step closer to realizing his consumer fantasies.

Cheery Nicholas, who met his wife at work, says he wouldn't change a thing. This

is despite the fact that the couple have opposite shifts and only get about 20

minutes together a day, which they often spend at the local McDonald's. Fast food

for a fast new world.

Nikki, Osmond, and Nicholas epitomize the American spirit -- they are hard-

working, career obsessed and driven by consumer desires. But in reality, this isn't

how they started life -- all have new personas that they have adopted as part of

their jobs in India's call centers. Before adopting their new American skins, they

were Vandana, Oaref and Nikesh. Teachers armed with catalogs and snapshots of

shopping malls helped them to adopt Western personalities in order to make

them more successful call center workers. Americans and Europeans are unhappy

that local call center jobs have been relocated to lower wage countries, and the

more Western the call center workers seem, the less likely they are to get any

friction from the other end of the line.

The call center workers are the subjects of Indian filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia's

new documentary "John & Jane Toll Free," which puts faces to the voices

Europeans and Americans often get when they call customer service and are

patched through to an Indian call center. The film recently screened at the Berlin

International Film Festival and will run in New York later this month and

eventually on the cable channel HBO in the United States.

It's estimated that 400,000 Indians are employed by the multi-billion dollar call

center industry, where they serve as a telephone-wielding army standing by to

answer questions and complaints from consumers in the United States and

Britain. India's educated, English-speaking workforce has been a big draw for

business process outsourcing, or 'BPO' firms, and economists point to call centers

as one of the success stories of globalization.


Blurring identities and social alienation

Ahluwalia says he began following media reports about the growing call center

service industry in 2001. After absorbing an avalanche of positive, "this is great

for business," stories in the Indian press, Ahluwalia decided to step back,

examine the human impact and explore how a new generation of Indian workers

is straddling nationalities -- living as Indians by day and as Americans at the call

center by night. "For me it was always about these characters and the transitional

lives they lead as Americans by night and Indians by day," Ahluwalia told

SPIEGEL ONLINE.

In preparation for filming, Ahluwalia spent a year following 45 call center workers

with a video camera. In the end, he settled on six subjects -- a small team of

"Johns" and "Janes" -- for his film, which is as much about the blurring of

identities, social alienation and the upheaval caused by globalization, as it is

about call centers.

Ahluwalia's call center workers are living virtual lives over the electronic signal

exchange as self-created avatars, basking in the blue glow of monitors at the call

center in the futuristic "Fourth Dimension" building in Mumbai. "It reminds me of

one of those 1970s science fiction B movies you would see as a kid, like

'Brainstorm'," he says. "Their lives are closer to science fiction."

Mumbai (Bombay), where the documentary is set, is one of epicenters of the

cultural and economic shift globalization is creating in India. It's also a city of

contrasts -- modern buildings and highways are sprouting up, but if you drive

through the urban area in one of the old Fiats that is common here, you're likely

to have to dodge livestock or other animals in the roadway. The scenes here are

a mix of "Blade Runner" and the impoverished landscape of India's rural farmers.

But it's the new Indian fantasy landscape of high tech and consumer culture that

dominates in "John & Jane Toll Free." "I might be the last guy who's nostalgic,"

Ahluwalia says wryly. He says most people are happy to move on, leaving behind

Third World images of cows on the streets.

But India's transformation is one that is happening in fits and starts. Studies

suggest the country may be running out of friendly voices to fuel the growth of

the call center industry. A report released in December 2005 by global consulting

firm McKinsey and Indian IT watch group NASSCOM warns that fewer and fewer

educated English-speaking workers are available to do these jobs. In an unusual

twist in globalization, some Indian call centers have even begun recruiting

European and Scandinavian college graduates to spend a year getting work

experience in New Delhi or Mumbai. Pay is decent and the cost of living is low.

Technovate eSolutions in New Delhi boasts that 10 percent of its call center

workers are from the European Community.

At the end of "John & Jane," we meet Naomi (formerly Namrata), who has wavy

blonde locks and an English rose complexion. Although she looks like she has

bleached her skin and hair, she won't discuss it. Naomi is in the final stage of the

process of Westernization that Ahluwalia has documented with his film. "I'm very

Americanized," she says in a strange accent that seems vaguely Texan. Namrata,

it seems, is an identity lost to the forces of globalization in the new India, with its

skyscrapers, call centers and consumerism.

"A lot of people say, 'Oh, it's so sad, they're losing their identity, can't they go

back to a time of Indian tradition?'" says Ahluwalia. "But we were colonized for

200 years. What are they going to go back to?" The call center workers may have

to give up a part of themselves, but in the end they get well paying jobs, safer

workplaces and opportunities in a country that is plagued with abject poverty.


Fest Dispatch: Young Americans in Toronto; from

Canada to India, New York to Los Angeles by Anthony Kaufman (September 14, 2005)

Those living in the United States often forget that “America” encompasses a much

wider swath of territory than the 50 states. There’s Canada, of course. And even

in certain parts of India the residents call themselves “American.” For powerful

evidence, see Ashim Ahluwalla’s “John & Jane,” one of the most fascinating

discoveries at this year’s festival. An observational documentary about 1-800-call

workers in Bombay, “John and Jane” exposes the insidious reach of the so-called

American Dream, as experienced by six phone agents who peddle odd products

and services to callers throughout the U.S.

Without any direct comment, Ahluwalia's camera captures the workers' strange

surreal lives as they leave their small cramped flats for the clean, immaculate

hallways of their offices and take on fake American names to interact with their

customers. More intriguing and alarming, however, is the workers' "cultural

training" -- where they learn about "the pursuit of happiness" and other distinctly

"American" fundamentals.

Inspired, one man buys self-motivation tapes in order to realize his dream of

becoming a billionaire, like Elvis and Englebert Humperdinck; a woman refashions

her identity around her phone alias "Nicky Cooper"; a blonde girl prides herself on

her light skin and Westernized looks. Utterly blind to the cultural imperialism

overtaking their existence, the film's subjects are among globalization's most

tragic offspring. After watching "John and Jane," you'll never think the same way

again about calling customer service.

Befitting an international film festival, Toronto also featured a few entries in the

emerging genre of the globalization movie. Ashim Ahluwalia's documentary JOHN

& JANE meditates on the split identities of Mumbai call center workers, the

outsourced masses touted as beneficiaries of globalization by the likes of Thomas

Friedman. "At the end of the day," Friedman declares in The World Is Flat, "these

new jobs actually allow them to be more Indian"—apparently because they can

eat rice and curry after a long night hawking phone-service plans to cranky

Americans. John & Jane undermines this blinkered boosterism, evoking the glassy

near-future nowhereness of demonlover and Jem Cohen's recently released

Chain. Ahluwalia eavesdrops on accent elimination classes and cultural-training

seminars that teach "American values" ("individualism," "achievement in

success"). The depressing results—a self-help fanatic, a vaguely mutant specimen

who claims to be "naturally blond"—suggest that the brave new globalization

indeed promotes a form of flatness: a kind of two-dimensional man, programmed

to buy into and blindly serve the capitalist dream.

The Young and the Restless by Dennis Lim

September 20th, 2005

international salesinternational sales · sharad kalawar future east film 8 carmichael road bombay/...

Documents