hello and good morning so much like a
lot of you I grew up in a bustling
Indian city Calcutta is and always has
been home and we live in a regular
building on the 12th floor apartment
like a lot of other kids I went to
school with we lived in a very normal
regular Bengali building and lived a
normal life per se except that my life
always ever since childhood has always
been a little bit weirder than everybody
else’s when I was about 4 years old I
asked my mother for a dog she said no so
I said ok doc for some reason she said
ok
so while all my friends used to take
that dogs for a walk on a leash to the
club I used to take my duck for a walk
on the leash to the club even if you can
see that duck their bill is light on
yeah ok so that was just the beginning
of the lunacy over the next few years
I almost insidiously turned my parents
12 flow apartment into a what can only
be described as a fully functioning form
these are the sort of animals I had
living inside the flag and yard rows of
the numbers yeah so you know that
episodes from friends with the chicken
the dog that didn’t impress me at all
yeah so that is me after school with a
wild pigeon treating me once I came back
home and yeah that’s it goat I was
trying to bring back from a holiday in
North Bengal that’s when my parents
really drew the line a few years later
much to the disapproval of very stones
school authorities I became a child
actor and gal gadot so a large part of
my childhood was also spent on set
that’s where I fell in love with cinema
so when a time came in life and I had to
decide what I wanted to do with my life
I decided to put my two favorite things
together of films and animals and
emphatically declared that I was going
to be a wildlife filmmaker and with that
decision I basically gave up everything
that was stable safe secure predictable
conventional
and tumbled headlong into a life of
chaos but unimaginable fulfillment now
most of us live life on autopilot
because because it’s easy to exist in
neat little boxes we instead of living
life we let live live us instead of
doing things we let things be done to us
but do we really want to be going
through life doing that without without
actually engaging in something that we
love of course that we’re really
passionate about in some form or another
do we want to be waking up every day at
first thing in the morning brushing your
teeth checking the news update much good
that does and then rushing off to war
coming back home at 10:00 having a drink
growing middle-aged at some point you
might want to stop and ask yourself what
you did with your life but you won’t
have time to wait for that answer
because you know you have another
meeting the next morning and before you
know you’re 65 and it’s time to get a
heart attack
sure when I came to that crossroad in
life and I saw my peers beginning to
join that rat race of success of getting
jobs of getting rich getting married of
robotically picking the boxes that they
didn’t really want to be taking I chose
to pack a backpack and disappear to
Africa now Africa was the starting point
of it all for me
that’s where it all started and you know
it’s all very well to be talking about
fashions and things like that but as a
wildlife filmmaker looking at some of
the most amazing creatures on the planet
seems amazing and fabulous but there are
huge challenges that come with this kind
of a job and Africa taught me the
discipline of wildlife filmmaking that’s
where the challenges really started with
the jeune nature of the job itself just
to give you an example an average day
for a wildlife filmmaker starts before
the Sun has even begun to rise you have
to be on location by the time the light
even starts coming in
that’s how early you’ve got to wake up
and of course you’re the last person to
go to sleep and in between that’s the
fun part all you’re doing is really
staring at grass I can tell you
confidently that I’ve spent most of my
career so far staring at grass nothing
happens in the wild unless of course
you’re waiting patiently for that
wonderful magic moment but those magic
moments come after a lot of patience
perseverance and the and an immense
about amount of mental and physical
endurance but to be honest when you
really love something the challenges
don’t feel difficult for a lot of people
that might feel like oh my goodness how
do you do it
so me I took to it like fish to water
and that’s what I’m saying when you’re
passionate about something when it’s
right the challenges don’t really matter
so much and then of course child
interest came in other ways as well a
lot of we’re very well-meaning people
adults at that time thought that my
little African journey was just another
lovely little holiday and that I wasn’t
really planning to take this up
seriously I have to be joking and that
you know this is you know this is all
very wonderful that you’ve taken a gap
here and disappear to places that look
like that but that’s not somewhere a
girl should be on her own I mean you’re
a young Indian girl you can’t you can’t
just disappear to these places it’s
unsafe to be in these kind of places
this is not a conventional job it’s very
nice to it as a hobby but it’s really
not I mean something that’s a job that
looks like that can’t possibly be giving
you stability so do it as a hobby take
something out more serious become a
lawyer
save other people the money they should
have lost and so on take-up of slightly
more serious job but there were times
when I felt like it was sane advice and
for us probably you know that’s
everybody was doing that and I was
wondering should I really be you know is
this the right choice but then something
happened in Africa which what was the
first sort of you know first seal on it
it was the first deciding factor how did
you tell you I fell in love meat massima
she’s a two-year-old cheetah she is
an offering cheaper I happened to on my
journey go to this orphanage and I spent
two weeks with her this is not a petting
zoo
this is a real story of a cheetah that
lost her mother when she was very young
and was rescued by a couple of people
and she’s lived at the gate with these
caretakers since and having befriended
her and spent two weeks with her all
that same advice pretty much flew out of
the window because when you have moments
like this how can you turn back on your
love how can you not go ahead with it
back in India things were even harder
because in the beginning again when
you’re a woman doing something
unconventional not what women are
supposed to be doing there’s a lot of
skepticism there’s a lot of disbelief
and there were times when I was facing
you know when people would say yeah you
should you know what you’re a wildlife
filmmaker okay that’s nice and then I
would say okay let my work speak for
itself even that didn’t work because
there were times I would be showing
people the work that I had done things I
had short stuff I had written and they’d
still be looking at me and saying did
you actually make this did you actually
shoot this did you operate the camera
and I was like tearing my hair out but
the end of it so stuff like that happens
as well and it carried on and carried on
and there were times when there were all
kinds of it there was ideas I didn’t get
funding there were from commission
issues that didn’t happen so when you
asked like you know you might wonder why
did I stick with it despite all the
dissenting voices why did I stick with
it I stuck with it because of what I saw
the more I travel the more I realized
how beautiful and fragile the earth is
how there are places that we don’t even
know exist and that are in our very own
backyard my biggest problem was
indifference was Modern Life
indifference to the planet and that’s
why I started making films that were not
aimed at people who already loved nature
people who already inclined towards
watching Animal Planet watching
Discovery I made sense for people who
were indifferent who couldn’t be
bothered whether you know they’d flip
over to solids not something that they
love so I started telling stories that
would engage them more than anything
else and some of
became realities some of them didn’t
like I said though ideas sometimes never
got the funding to make them but there
was stories everywhere that’s what kept
me going and in between all those things
there were lots and lots of moments
where you feel like giving up but then
there again there were those amazing
magic moments like this one time in
Assam where Gibbon decided to become a
bit too friendly sit on my camera and
decide to look for lice in my hair well
he was actually she’s like spitting on
the 5d on the lens like all the lens a
repeat so we need to not do that she’s
like sitting on the 5d on the lens like
on the lens and repeat so we need to not
do that other time where I was filming
barriers and that Guardian thought it
could eat me as soon as it was out of
the egg it was a very cute moment and
there was also a time when I could well
interview the penguin
spit all sorts of these sort of things
go and I sorry can we yeah yeah but the
big turning point in my career came when
I went to New Zealand to do my post
graduation in science and Natural
History filmmaking now getting there
itself was a massive hassle because
first of all the prerequisites of the
course were quite tough getting in was
hard and to go through a whole lot of
interviews and all kinds of other things
then came the whole finding part it’s an
expensive quote so I had to apply for
scholarships and the amount of work that
goes into that so you got to have a
whole portfolio before you even started
doing your post graduation so all that
hard work finally got in there and then
it was the most incredible experience
because I learned the craft of
filmmaking and all of that and finally
it was time for me to make my first fake
real film and when I say big real film I
mean that my budget was $800 SEK 50,000
rupees
I was given $800 very generously and
said now make a film but that was not
the point the point is you I had an
opportunity and this limited amount of
money all I knew was this is what I have
this is what I never got I have got to
do the very best with what is available
to me so I kept searching and kept
searching for ideas until I found a
beautiful little story so there are only
125 powerful parrots in the world and
they all live on the side of this island
called the codfish island in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean
now that it sells was an amazing
conservation story but what’s even more
amazing is one among these hundred and
twenty five powerful parents is
convinced he’s a human being now his
name is Sirocco and he’s an absolute
superstar in New Zealand because he’s an
absolute character and he’s very
adorable they look like they look like
something between a cross between I mean
like blueprints with cross between a
teddy bear and a parrot really they’re
three kilos they’re nocturnal and they
don’t fly and that films Sirocco it’s a
rags to riches story about his life how
he became the superstar celebrity he’s
the only bird in the world with the
government job I’m going to show you a
little clip from the film before am
driven it’s a 60 minute drive to his
5-star high-security accommodation where
he can finally drop his guard
[Music]
mate his Excellency not human but parrot
[Music]
Sirocco is a very rare bird a cockapoo
it’s a privilege to see him in broad
daylight because he’s a nocturnal so
when I was making this documentary I
didn’t obviously have the slightest clue
how high it was going I was doing it
because I loved doing it and before I
knew it it had won the green Oscar it
went on to be seen in 80 different
countries in the world and is currently
traveling as part of the Jackson also in
Festival world two of the best films of
2015 to 70 it’s an $800 documentary
that’s how that’s what I mean by that’s
what I mean by just go for it when
you’re passionate about something and
you give it your absolute best somehow
success follows and with the click of a
finger
this film opened up many other doors I
got opportunities professional
opportunities in the UK to work with the
top Natural History companies and as an
unbelievable culmination of it all a
climax just last week I was working with
my absolute number one hero who pretty
much taught me how to dream Sir David
Attenborough himself I was on shoot with
him and I can’t tell you how amazing
that was so my point is quite simple
there’s going to be times where you are
going to if you’re going to follow your
passion there’s going to be times when
you’re going to want to quit there have
been times where I have felt I don’t
know what I’m doing I’ve driven blind
I’ve run on empty and I have never
almost never known what’s coming around
the corner but the one thing that I’ve
done is stuck it out I have stuck with
it because when you stick with it you
have what I call the massima moments and
those are the defining moments because
once you have those there’s really no
turning back so there’s nothing to be
intimidated by all the
setbacks that’s 100% going to happen if
you choose a career if you choose
anything not even a career any part of
your life to follow something
unconventional if you’re chasing of
course those setbacks 100% going to
happen the trick is to remember that
between those setbacks you’re going to
have those amazing moments and probably
you’re going to have a lot more stories
to tell than a lot of other people on
the planet
[Applause]
lot of you I grew up in a bustling
Indian city Calcutta is and always has
been home and we live in a regular
building on the 12th floor apartment
like a lot of other kids I went to
school with we lived in a very normal
regular Bengali building and lived a
normal life per se except that my life
always ever since childhood has always
been a little bit weirder than everybody
else’s when I was about 4 years old I
asked my mother for a dog she said no so
I said ok doc for some reason she said
ok
so while all my friends used to take
that dogs for a walk on a leash to the
club I used to take my duck for a walk
on the leash to the club even if you can
see that duck their bill is light on
yeah ok so that was just the beginning
of the lunacy over the next few years
I almost insidiously turned my parents
12 flow apartment into a what can only
be described as a fully functioning form
these are the sort of animals I had
living inside the flag and yard rows of
the numbers yeah so you know that
episodes from friends with the chicken
the dog that didn’t impress me at all
yeah so that is me after school with a
wild pigeon treating me once I came back
home and yeah that’s it goat I was
trying to bring back from a holiday in
North Bengal that’s when my parents
really drew the line a few years later
much to the disapproval of very stones
school authorities I became a child
actor and gal gadot so a large part of
my childhood was also spent on set
that’s where I fell in love with cinema
so when a time came in life and I had to
decide what I wanted to do with my life
I decided to put my two favorite things
together of films and animals and
emphatically declared that I was going
to be a wildlife filmmaker and with that
decision I basically gave up everything
that was stable safe secure predictable
conventional
and tumbled headlong into a life of
chaos but unimaginable fulfillment now
most of us live life on autopilot
because because it’s easy to exist in
neat little boxes we instead of living
life we let live live us instead of
doing things we let things be done to us
but do we really want to be going
through life doing that without without
actually engaging in something that we
love of course that we’re really
passionate about in some form or another
do we want to be waking up every day at
first thing in the morning brushing your
teeth checking the news update much good
that does and then rushing off to war
coming back home at 10:00 having a drink
growing middle-aged at some point you
might want to stop and ask yourself what
you did with your life but you won’t
have time to wait for that answer
because you know you have another
meeting the next morning and before you
know you’re 65 and it’s time to get a
heart attack
sure when I came to that crossroad in
life and I saw my peers beginning to
join that rat race of success of getting
jobs of getting rich getting married of
robotically picking the boxes that they
didn’t really want to be taking I chose
to pack a backpack and disappear to
Africa now Africa was the starting point
of it all for me
that’s where it all started and you know
it’s all very well to be talking about
fashions and things like that but as a
wildlife filmmaker looking at some of
the most amazing creatures on the planet
seems amazing and fabulous but there are
huge challenges that come with this kind
of a job and Africa taught me the
discipline of wildlife filmmaking that’s
where the challenges really started with
the jeune nature of the job itself just
to give you an example an average day
for a wildlife filmmaker starts before
the Sun has even begun to rise you have
to be on location by the time the light
even starts coming in
that’s how early you’ve got to wake up
and of course you’re the last person to
go to sleep and in between that’s the
fun part all you’re doing is really
staring at grass I can tell you
confidently that I’ve spent most of my
career so far staring at grass nothing
happens in the wild unless of course
you’re waiting patiently for that
wonderful magic moment but those magic
moments come after a lot of patience
perseverance and the and an immense
about amount of mental and physical
endurance but to be honest when you
really love something the challenges
don’t feel difficult for a lot of people
that might feel like oh my goodness how
do you do it
so me I took to it like fish to water
and that’s what I’m saying when you’re
passionate about something when it’s
right the challenges don’t really matter
so much and then of course child
interest came in other ways as well a
lot of we’re very well-meaning people
adults at that time thought that my
little African journey was just another
lovely little holiday and that I wasn’t
really planning to take this up
seriously I have to be joking and that
you know this is you know this is all
very wonderful that you’ve taken a gap
here and disappear to places that look
like that but that’s not somewhere a
girl should be on her own I mean you’re
a young Indian girl you can’t you can’t
just disappear to these places it’s
unsafe to be in these kind of places
this is not a conventional job it’s very
nice to it as a hobby but it’s really
not I mean something that’s a job that
looks like that can’t possibly be giving
you stability so do it as a hobby take
something out more serious become a
lawyer
save other people the money they should
have lost and so on take-up of slightly
more serious job but there were times
when I felt like it was sane advice and
for us probably you know that’s
everybody was doing that and I was
wondering should I really be you know is
this the right choice but then something
happened in Africa which what was the
first sort of you know first seal on it
it was the first deciding factor how did
you tell you I fell in love meat massima
she’s a two-year-old cheetah she is
an offering cheaper I happened to on my
journey go to this orphanage and I spent
two weeks with her this is not a petting
zoo
this is a real story of a cheetah that
lost her mother when she was very young
and was rescued by a couple of people
and she’s lived at the gate with these
caretakers since and having befriended
her and spent two weeks with her all
that same advice pretty much flew out of
the window because when you have moments
like this how can you turn back on your
love how can you not go ahead with it
back in India things were even harder
because in the beginning again when
you’re a woman doing something
unconventional not what women are
supposed to be doing there’s a lot of
skepticism there’s a lot of disbelief
and there were times when I was facing
you know when people would say yeah you
should you know what you’re a wildlife
filmmaker okay that’s nice and then I
would say okay let my work speak for
itself even that didn’t work because
there were times I would be showing
people the work that I had done things I
had short stuff I had written and they’d
still be looking at me and saying did
you actually make this did you actually
shoot this did you operate the camera
and I was like tearing my hair out but
the end of it so stuff like that happens
as well and it carried on and carried on
and there were times when there were all
kinds of it there was ideas I didn’t get
funding there were from commission
issues that didn’t happen so when you
asked like you know you might wonder why
did I stick with it despite all the
dissenting voices why did I stick with
it I stuck with it because of what I saw
the more I travel the more I realized
how beautiful and fragile the earth is
how there are places that we don’t even
know exist and that are in our very own
backyard my biggest problem was
indifference was Modern Life
indifference to the planet and that’s
why I started making films that were not
aimed at people who already loved nature
people who already inclined towards
watching Animal Planet watching
Discovery I made sense for people who
were indifferent who couldn’t be
bothered whether you know they’d flip
over to solids not something that they
love so I started telling stories that
would engage them more than anything
else and some of
became realities some of them didn’t
like I said though ideas sometimes never
got the funding to make them but there
was stories everywhere that’s what kept
me going and in between all those things
there were lots and lots of moments
where you feel like giving up but then
there again there were those amazing
magic moments like this one time in
Assam where Gibbon decided to become a
bit too friendly sit on my camera and
decide to look for lice in my hair well
he was actually she’s like spitting on
the 5d on the lens like all the lens a
repeat so we need to not do that she’s
like sitting on the 5d on the lens like
on the lens and repeat so we need to not
do that other time where I was filming
barriers and that Guardian thought it
could eat me as soon as it was out of
the egg it was a very cute moment and
there was also a time when I could well
interview the penguin
spit all sorts of these sort of things
go and I sorry can we yeah yeah but the
big turning point in my career came when
I went to New Zealand to do my post
graduation in science and Natural
History filmmaking now getting there
itself was a massive hassle because
first of all the prerequisites of the
course were quite tough getting in was
hard and to go through a whole lot of
interviews and all kinds of other things
then came the whole finding part it’s an
expensive quote so I had to apply for
scholarships and the amount of work that
goes into that so you got to have a
whole portfolio before you even started
doing your post graduation so all that
hard work finally got in there and then
it was the most incredible experience
because I learned the craft of
filmmaking and all of that and finally
it was time for me to make my first fake
real film and when I say big real film I
mean that my budget was $800 SEK 50,000
rupees
I was given $800 very generously and
said now make a film but that was not
the point the point is you I had an
opportunity and this limited amount of
money all I knew was this is what I have
this is what I never got I have got to
do the very best with what is available
to me so I kept searching and kept
searching for ideas until I found a
beautiful little story so there are only
125 powerful parrots in the world and
they all live on the side of this island
called the codfish island in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean
now that it sells was an amazing
conservation story but what’s even more
amazing is one among these hundred and
twenty five powerful parents is
convinced he’s a human being now his
name is Sirocco and he’s an absolute
superstar in New Zealand because he’s an
absolute character and he’s very
adorable they look like they look like
something between a cross between I mean
like blueprints with cross between a
teddy bear and a parrot really they’re
three kilos they’re nocturnal and they
don’t fly and that films Sirocco it’s a
rags to riches story about his life how
he became the superstar celebrity he’s
the only bird in the world with the
government job I’m going to show you a
little clip from the film before am
driven it’s a 60 minute drive to his
5-star high-security accommodation where
he can finally drop his guard
[Music]
mate his Excellency not human but parrot
[Music]
Sirocco is a very rare bird a cockapoo
it’s a privilege to see him in broad
daylight because he’s a nocturnal so
when I was making this documentary I
didn’t obviously have the slightest clue
how high it was going I was doing it
because I loved doing it and before I
knew it it had won the green Oscar it
went on to be seen in 80 different
countries in the world and is currently
traveling as part of the Jackson also in
Festival world two of the best films of
2015 to 70 it’s an $800 documentary
that’s how that’s what I mean by that’s
what I mean by just go for it when
you’re passionate about something and
you give it your absolute best somehow
success follows and with the click of a
finger
this film opened up many other doors I
got opportunities professional
opportunities in the UK to work with the
top Natural History companies and as an
unbelievable culmination of it all a
climax just last week I was working with
my absolute number one hero who pretty
much taught me how to dream Sir David
Attenborough himself I was on shoot with
him and I can’t tell you how amazing
that was so my point is quite simple
there’s going to be times where you are
going to if you’re going to follow your
passion there’s going to be times when
you’re going to want to quit there have
been times where I have felt I don’t
know what I’m doing I’ve driven blind
I’ve run on empty and I have never
almost never known what’s coming around
the corner but the one thing that I’ve
done is stuck it out I have stuck with
it because when you stick with it you
have what I call the massima moments and
those are the defining moments because
once you have those there’s really no
turning back so there’s nothing to be
intimidated by all the
setbacks that’s 100% going to happen if
you choose a career if you choose
anything not even a career any part of
your life to follow something
unconventional if you’re chasing of
course those setbacks 100% going to
happen the trick is to remember that
between those setbacks you’re going to
have those amazing moments and probably
you’re going to have a lot more stories
to tell than a lot of other people on
the planet
[Applause]
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