SESAME STREET

I worked as a scriptwriter for Sesame Street's Indian co-production- Galli Galli Sim Sim.

Here's a showreel.

Galli Galli Sim Sim from shagun rastogi on Vimeo.

Before becoming a scriptwriter, I first joined them as a Live Action Director and the following pilot is from that time:

Many months. Countless briefs. The 'final' draft that would always end up as 'pre-final' before too long. Grover and Toto. No No. Toto and Grover. What are you saying, people? Grover and Toto. After multiple shifts in personality, histories ( of the muppets) and gender ( of the muppeteers) I am told that Grover and Toto came out with flying colours and no psychosomatic disorders. Which only goes to show that i need to develop a thicker skin since I couldn't have said the same about myself. So here's the pilot episode on Grover and Toto's visit to the bookstore, as part of the longer episode with one continuous story-line.

Role: Conceptualizer, Director.

THE LAW OF LOVE

A film about a peace initiative between India and Pakistan.The project involves the children of India and Pakistan in writing letters to each other, so that feelings of hostility are replaced by those of friendship when this generation grows up
Role: Editor

RECOGNITION: Best in Fest, My Hero Film Festival, USA

GE HEALTHCARE- REIMAGINE

India is a nation experiencing growth at unprecedented rates. It is a country at the frontiers of the IT revolution, with dynamic urban centers where no dream is impossible.

India is also a nation of 638,000 villages with 700 million people. And while urban India has access to world class healthcare and medical facilities, it is in semi urban and ruralIndia that both need and opportunity lies.

Wipro GE in India is providing healthcare solutions to more people at lower costs. 

Producer: QED Communications

GE- Reimagine from shagun rastogi on Vimeo.

DELHI MUMBAI INDUSTRIAL CORRIDOR

A film made for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, 

a mega infra-structure project of USD 90 billion with the financial & technical aids from Japan, covering an overall length of 1483 KMs between the political capital and the business capital of India, i.e. Delhi and Mumbai.

OBJECTIVE:  Attract investment in the project Producer: QED Communications Citizen of the Future from shagun rastogi on Vimeo.

GULABI GULABI

SHORT FILM CORNER, CANNES 2009 'The Gulabi Gang' is a documentary on a social movement in the villages of Bundelkhand- a group of women committed to protecting themselves and other women against social malpractice, abusive husbands and corrupt administrators. So called because of the bright pink saris they wear, the movement is led by Sampat Pal, a forty five year old semi literate village woman who was married at twelve and became a mother at fifteen. Since 2006, when the Gulabi gang gave themselves a name and an attire, they have intervened in several cases of domestic abuse,prevented child marriages and exposed governemnt scams. As a young woman having grown up in urban India, I am keenly aware of the privileges that have been mine by virtue of birth. However, I also question the freedom that is apparently mine, wondering if a scratch in the surface of my thoughts and relationships will reveal old beliefs that I and other people around me have applied coats of unconscious polish to. To travel then, from the urban landscape to the rural, in the face of the ever growing urban rural divide, is to travel, in a way, from the present to the past, to wonder what the future holds. To travel is to negotiate the space that stretches between 'us' and 'them' in order to know if we really are different, irrespective of the glaringly obvious gaps in terms of the externalities. For me, this film is an act of love. Love for women who are fighting against the odds in circumstances I can barely even begin to imagine. Therefore, it is also important that this film be, not just a work of art for my own self, but a film that communicates clearly who these women are and what they are fighting for, in order for it to be a useful tool.

Role: Producer, director, editor.  on CURRENT TV : MORE: I am now working on a follow up documentary on the Gulabi Gang. Visit: www.thegulabigang.blogspot.com ( in progress )

MUSIC VIDEO FOR TATA MOTORS

A music video and short fiction celebrating 25 years of the Tata 407.

Music Video for TATA 407 from shagun rastogi on Vimeo.

SERENITY VALLEY

This film was made for Createum, an environmentally conscious land development company. Createum is developing an eco resort in Solan valley, in the lower Himalayas. The communication objective of this film was to present Serenity Valley not just as an eco-resort with an innovative concept but as a project that will have a positive long and short term impact on the lives of the local Himachali people and generate revenue for the state as well as for its residents. For an environmentally conscious city dweller it will be a meaningful getaway. For the local residents, it will be a source of sustainable livelihood. Serenity Valley stands at the meeting point of these two lifestyles. It lets these two worlds overlap, so that each learns from and mutually benefits from the other at both a personal and societal level.

Role: Conceptualizer,Script writer, Co-director, Post-Production Supervisor.

IT'S AN AMAZING DAY

GHAZAB KA HAI DIN Screened at Ability Fest, India International Disability Film Festival, 2007 "We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can only fly by embracing each other." Ghazab Ka Hai Din is the story of 29 year old Koku. He lives in a small town in India with his parents and goes to a special school. Koku has Down's Syndrome which means he has one extra unpaired chromosome. This has slowed down his mental and physical development, so that at 29, he is both child and adult, with bits of the teenager thrown in.He loves TV, music and dance and his great passion for the Bollywood blockbuster, the 'masala' film has also inspired this film, so that there are songs and dances,excitement, a whiff of romance and of course, a happy ending. The film also shows how a supportive community adds love and meaning to Koku's life. Click here to read : HOW TO MAKE A GHAZAB KA DIN

Role: Director, Editor, Camera

BEFORE EVENING FALLS

Runjhun, an eleven year old girl, the only child of working parents, comes home everyday after school to an empty house. And lets her imagination take over.
A face in the window of an abandoned house sets her off on her own exploration and leads her to a journey of discovery where she encounters a girl her own age, and receives broken fragments of the violence she has been through. At the end, we do not know whether it was her imagination or a reality of a different kind. And there is no way of knowing.

Runjhun is not unfamiliar to urban India. More and more single children are finding themselves alone at home in the afternoons, their homework and exam preparations monitored by regular phone calls from the parents. But it is only children who have stayed alone in their childhood who know how much time they actually spent in their homework and how much in storybooks, in daydreaming and in television.Not that I do not see the positives in a situation like this. A free rein on your imagination, a sense of independence found early in life and the infinite possibilities of an unsupervised house all to yourself.
But like it cannot be all bad, it surely cannot be all good.

Is letting a child be alone at home for an extended period an act of violence, however minor? Is pressurizing a child to do well in class, to the exclusion of other forms of 'useless' explorations also an act of violence?
And does the child repress this 'violence' within her own psyche, refusing to acknowledge it, possibly never even knowing that it was committed against her?

Would such a child ever imagine another girl, trapped in a huge house, as a victim of violence that she is unaware of in her own life? If she would, then that is how Runjhun meets Nazia. If she wouldn'nt, then perhaps there is another story.

A story set in a city which has a recent past of Hindu Muslim violence, and an abandoned house which belonged to a Muslim doctor. When Runjhun steps into that house, perhaps she leaves the safe boundaries of her own imagination behind and enters anothers. Another's memory, another's fantasy, whether the other is even a flesh and blood human being, or a memory that the house remembers, I do not know. Runjun does not know. And her parents will not tell, choosing instead to ask her if her tuition teacher had come.

Role: Writer, Director, Editor

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT for LOKDARSHAN

for Lokdarshan. Lokdarshan is a community video unit which creates content on socially relevant issues. Lokdarshan is associated with Manav Sadhna,one of the largest NGOs in India.

Read about Lokdarshan HERE

Role: Writer, Director, Editor

TRAVEL SOMEWHERE EVERYDAY

An Ad Spot for the new Google phone. For Current TV VCAM.

Two sleepless nights for me and Bhavana.

INDIA: THOUGHTS ON FREEDOM

Made for Current TV, an international Emmy award winning news channel, ( www.current.com ), this short piece is a look at the urban youth in a small town in India and what freedom means to them on the occasion of India's sixtieth Independence day.

Role: Producer, Director, Editor

On CURRENT TV :



the original:

NO MORE TO SEE ( music video)

For a workshop in Production Design.

Films for the Commonweath Games 2010

These are films made for the Commonwealth Organizing Committee for promotional purposes. You can watch these films on the Commonwealth Games official website here

Go to video gallery.