Wanted to understand the evolution of Rajinikanth's fandom, says Joyojeet Pal

He is one Tamil star who has a fan following across the globe, from a small villages in Tamil Nadu to countries like the US and Japan. Superstar Rajinikanth’s life and career has fascinated many people resulting in lectures, books and documentaries on him. Now, Joyojeet Pal, a professor at the University of Michigan, and Rinku Kalsy, a filmmaker in Amsterdam, have come together to make a documentary on him titled For The Love of Man to be premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Professor Joyojeet Pal talks exclusively to dna about why Rajinikanth is a phenomenon and the documentary.

What was the inspiration behind For The Love of a Man?

The fact is that fandom is a very complex phenomenon. People easily take fandom for something crazy, but there is a lot of social, economic, and political explanation for why we see fandom in India the way we do. The inspiration was to try and understand how these various factors—ranging from devotional practices that derive from the Bhakti tradition to political practices that originate in the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu—play a role in the evolution of fandom.

Why Rajinikanth in particular? What fascinated you about him?

Because he is probably the biggest of all, in terms of mass appeal, but also because of how he spans generations. There are fans who are in their 60s who watched Rajini from his Avargal days and there are fans who are barely past their teens.

What was your research based on? Did you get to speak to Rajinikanth?

We have not spoken to Rajnikanth. We spoke to a number of filmmakers, film school professors, and people who have followed Tamil cinema over several decades, some of whom are featured in the film.

Are you a fan of Rajinikanth yourself? What's your favourite film of his?

Definitely. I even took my wife to a first day, first show of Sivaji, before she knew who he was. I'd say I enjoyed watching Thillu Mullu the most. 

Joyojeet Pal

You raised money for the documentary through crowdsourcing on Wishberry.

The film is partly paid for through our own life savings, and partly through a crowdsourcing campaign for the post-production. But, on the whole as a small production, the film is driven by passion rather than funding. Most of the crew have worked for a fraction of their usual salary. In fact, the director Rinku has worked on it for over four years without salary.

Rinku Kalsy

How did you rope in director Rinku Kalsy for the project?

I am actually a college professor and know very little about films. Without Rinku's creative vision and technical expertise, this film would be a non-starter. Rinku is my childhood friend and we lived in the same apartment complex in Mumbai. I had discussed the idea with her casually sometime in 2009. She immediately bit and pitched the film at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute contest where the idea immediately garnered attention. So even though we had no funding, she flew to Chennai and then ended up spending months in Tamil Nadu, following fans and their families. After a couple of years of doing it, we knew we had a very serious documentary on our hands.

The documentary is now premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

We are definitely ecstatic. For years, Rinku and I slogged away at the film without a sense of whether we would ever be able to complete it, and to find the work recognised at the top venue in the world is an incredible honour. This is the first time a Tamil-language documentary has been selected for a world premiere at the festival, so we are very hopeful that this ends up being an important moment for regional-language documentary cinema in India.

When is the documentary coming to India?

We don't have concrete dates yet. Unfortunately, documentary films rarely make it to the big screen in India.