Click to play videoOscar winning documentary Smile Pinki premiered in Delhi on Thursday. The documentary which won the Oscar for the Best Short Film in 2009 will also premiere in various cities across the country including Varanasi and Mumbai.
The documentary shows how Pinki, a poor rural girl who suffered from cleft lip, overcomes her deformity through surgery and gets a normal life.
Smile Pinki's director Megan Mylan joined CNN-IBN's India@9 and spoke about the film.
CNN-IBN: Was it a conscious choice or did you have to work with several other people to find out who would be the face of that documentary that you wanted to do?
Megan Mylan: I definitely thought we would focus on that one person going through this life changing moment so this story had to be told through the eyes of the child with the cleft and then be there in the moment and then a stranger comes from the city to the village and tells the young girl whose five years of life have been ostracised by her community and who has not gone to school. She's told to come with him. ‘I'll take you for a very simple surgery and in an hour your life will change’ and she travels to the city and meets the doctors. It relied a lot on just finding that one special girl or boy and as I said while accepting this award. It is a team effort and I had a lot of help in finding Pinki and specifically my film producer who is from Mumbai went out to the country side around Benaras looking for children with clefts, who had a special cleft and lucky for us she sparkled for us and carried the film. He happened to pass Pinki's village and found Pinki.
CNN-IBN: Are you taking this film to her home town as well? Is that right?
Megan Mylan: Actually the very first premiere of the film happened in Pinki's village and I think that was the first place where the film was shown. We took her from the hospital to her village. It is actually a very small village of about 80 people and a movie was going to be shown and 700 people showed up to see the film which must be the first film that Pinki or her father must have ever seen the movie which they were in. You cannot even imagine that sort of an experience but we wanted to get the story to not just Pinki's village but all of the villages. In India there are a million Pinkis living. I felt that we had a sense of obligation that my job did not finish when the film was awarded. It is going on now and connecting audiences to the story.
CNN-IBN:: Which is more gratifying? Was it the Oscar or was it the smile on Pinki's face?
Megan Mylan: I think honestly the thing I will be most proud of is if we can get the message all over India that there are a million children with clefts and all they need is an hour long surgery, and it costs less than a donation of Rs 10,000. It can be provided absolutely for free through hundreds of Indian doctors all across the country. Surgeons are doing this seven days a week all across the country. So I want every one to see Smile Pinki in the theatres. I hope they have a good time watching it. It is quite an entertaining film and they get the message.
CNN-IBN: It is cool that you have pulled this out in India. A documentary screening in our multiplexes is really a rarity. It does not happen too often.
Megan Mylan: We won Oscar and then I think people were moved by the story and here in Delhi we've been showing it at the PVR and there are these beautiful movie houses and as a film maker it makes my heart sing to see it on such a giant screen but I hope that when audiences come in they would open up a little more for Indian documentaries
CNN-IBN: Thanks very much Megan for joining us tonight on India@9.
Megan Mylan: Thank you for having me.
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