AMERICAN SIKH Trailer from Ryan Westra on Vimeo.
Oscar-qualifying short animation American Sikh is the personal story of cartoonist, author, activist - and now co-director Vishavjit Singh - so it seems appropriate that he should introduce it during a roundtable to discuss the film.
“It's kind of centered around two tragedies, one that I think globally, everybody knows about, 911. And then there's one from 1984, hen I was a young boy in India, and these two tragedies had a huge impact on me and took my life on a very different course in interesting and unique ways. So the film kind of picks up on my response to these two tragedies and the work that I do now, which is I am an artist, a performance artist, cartoonists public speaker, diversity inclusion equity activist and now a filmmaker.”
One of Singh’s forms of activism is certainly unique. He dresses up as Sikh Captain America in order to challenge received ideas and start conversations. His co-director Ryan Westra says: “I was totally blown away. By the way Vishavjit addressed people in the streets and, as Captain America, got people from all different backgrounds to open up about their biases, and their stereotypes.”
But Westra also relates the “shocking moment” when, right after Singh had taken off his outfit, someone called him Osama Bin Laden from across the street. He adds: “To see it happen immediately after a full day of only positive experiences was something that really stuck with me.”
This film, which had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, is the result of four years of working together. On the subject of approaching Singh’s life by way of animation, Westra explains: “Animation has this special kind of characteristic, which is it allows you to take subjects that are heavy, difficult to talk about, difficult to get audiences excited about and present them in a way that honors those tragedies but also communicates them in a way that is digestible for audiences.
“And since we are covering, you know, 40 years in 10 minutes, and we also include, you know, a huge tragic genocide in India as well as a wave of post 911 hate crimes in the US. animation was a beautiful way to communicate such a broad story in a short amount of time and keep it fun and interesting.”
The filmmaking duo made 30 cuts of the animation before they got it down to its current form. Westra explains why they opted for the short form.
“Firstly, it was a practical issue because we are dealing with animation and animation is so expensive. We felt that hitting that 10-minute mark would be just enough time to communicate the story we wanted to tell while also making it an achievable number that we could actually raise the money to make happen. But more importantly, we really wanted to make sure that as many people as possible saw this film, and we felt that making it a short 10 minute project was the best way to do that,” he says.
“We want to make sure that we can get as many people as possible to see this film because there's just such a lack of representation for people with turbans and beards and the American media.”
Speaking about the striking colour palette of the film, which plays out like a superhero comic book but has moments in pure black red to mark out tragedy, Westra explains the process.
“We reached out to more than 20 animation studios on this project and ended up working with this incredible studio in Australia of all places. So it ended up being kind of a very strange production process and one that ended up being absolutely perfect for Covid because I'm here in LA working on the film the shoot was in New York and then we had the studio in Australia. And actually the first time that all of us ever met was at the Tribeca premiere, so this project was done entirely remotely.
“But the color palette was one that we came up with working closely with that Australian animation studio, they’re called Studio Show Off, and our goal was to kind of have a bright color palette that's exciting, interesting, captivating, and also is a slight homage is it kind of 1950s comic book superheroes as well as the Watchmen series. I know it was a series that the Studio Show Off was especially intrigued by and so we landed on that color palette and as you kind of go through the film, the color palette changes in big ways depending on what the subject matter of the film is.
“When you go to those really heavy parts, the 1984 genocide in India, as well as the person that live in hate crime montage, all the colours are stripped back and you're left with black, white, red and blue. So the colours I think, even without the sound on in this film, you can understand what the story is just by the colours and the visuals, which is something that, again, is amazing about animation.”
Speaking about the film’s impact, he adds: “Something that I learned through this project is just how powerful and impactful it can be to have stories represented where there haven't been stories represented before.
“Our Australian team didn't really know much about Sikhism and hadn't really seen Sikhs before. But through the process of making this film and drawing turbans, they told us that they started noticing that there's actually lots of Sikhs in Australia. And just the power of seeing that image more frequently is all it took to kind of open up their minds and see things that weren't there before. And, of course, our hope with this film is to do that same thing on a broader scale. Because a lot of the issues that the Sikh community faces in the US is just because of a lack of understanding of who they are.”
Watch the film online at americansikhfilm.com
