Diverse Voices: Aditya B. Parige

Audio: My name is Aditya Parige. I go by Adi.

Visual: Aditya B. Parige (Adi) sits in a dark room with studio lights on him. He is wearing a grey hat, a bandana around his neck, and dark grey clothing. Throughout the interview, we switch from one camera angle to another, one where the camera is zoomed to focus on his chest upward, with his head being the focal point. The other is zoomed out more, showing a table with interesting objects on it, such as a pink spiky ball, teapots, oranges, and candles.

• The camera cuts from Adi’s face to a lamp, then to the table. 
• A gloved hand places a card on a silver platter with Adi’s name on it.
• Adi holds a branch and smiles at the camera.
• The camera cuts back to focusing on his face.

Audio: I was born in New Zealand, in Wellington. Before I was a year old, we moved to California. Recently, I’ve moved back to Wellington. My heritage is from India, a state called Andhra Pradesh. My parents are immigrants who kind of shuttled in different places around the world.

And I grew up in a really rich Indian American community in Northern California, in the late 90s, early 2000s. And that kind of foundation of growing up in a stronghold of the diaspora, of the Indian diaspora, had a big impact on me.

And now I’m kind of in a space where the voice that I’m trying to push forward as an artist is central to how I grew up, which is amidst a diaspora story. I’m currently in the process of making a film called ‘The Lascar’.

Visual: 

• A scene from his film ‘Lascar’ plays, in which a man is seen drinking from a flask in the hot sun.
• Two characters in another scene fight over guns wearing clothes from the 1700s.
• One character drinks another’s water.

Text on screen: 1799 Aotearoa.

• A Lascar is loading their weapon on the rocks.
• Two Lascars sharpening knives.

Audio: It’s about a sealing gang in Aotearoa, in the late 1700s. It’s a little-known fact that amongst the first sealing gangs to come to New Zealand were hundreds of Indian sailors known as Lascars. Really, these guys kind of, were kind of hidden in a corner of the history.

While they weren’t here to settle, their time in New Zealand was really fascinating because they worked closely with Europeans, but they also, you know, in a lot of situations, spearheaded the relationships with local iwi, depending on where they were trying to hunt seals.

So yeah, that kind of, like, cross-way of these three different cultures is really fascinating to me as a filmmaker.

Something I really thought about hard was like, how do I get people from the community that I’m representing to put into the film?

I got money from three different Indian organisations around Aotearoa, which wasn’t easy, but I’m really, it’s one of the things I’m really proud about with the film.

It’s the High Commission, it’s the New Zealand Indian Central Association, the Auckland Tamil Association who came together and basically gave me an entire third of my budget purely because they believed in the idea and they believed in me.

And that’s not, like, you don’t see the Indian High Commission logo before films. Like, you’ll see that in other countries, the New Zealand Film Commission, you’ll see different commissions around the world, but you never really see that. And I’m really proud of that fact.

Learning about diversity and inclusion in regard to my film was the fact that I really wanted a central point of the film to be this culture clash between these three different cultures. And that really got me focusing. Instead of indigenous cinema, like maybe there’s something after that? Like migrant cinema and intersectional cinema?

And that’s kind of where I’m really interested in — I think ‘The Lascar’ is an intersectional film. You’re talking about multiple cultures, multiple sexual identities even, coming into play and seeing how that... It’s kind of messy, but I think that’s fun.

Visual:

A clip of card paper shows, written on it the credits. These are written below:

• Producer, Writer and Director: Pachali Brewster.
• Director of photography, editor and colourist: Ben Dickens.
• Featuring:
  • Oriwa Hakaraia
  • Jade Jackson
  • Aditya B. Parige
  • Kathleen Winter
  • Laura Yilmaz
  • Casey Zilbert
  • Raqi Syed and Missy Molloy as the facilitators
  • and Glen McLaughlin as the butler.
• Special thanks to
  • Massey’s School of Music and Creative Media Production
  • College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi.
• Production manager assistant, 1st assistant director, and Unit: Anna Valentine.
• 2nd camera operator: Elise Lanigan.
• 3rd camera operator: Nathan Roys.
• Sound Recordist: Jessy McNamara.
• Sound Recordist Assist and sound mixer: Matt Asunder.
• Art Department: Glen McLaughlin.
• Hair and Makeup artist: Serena Parsons.
• Stills photography: Celeste Fontein.
• Runner: Ivy Robinson.