Meet Rohit Gupta whom AR Rahman called to make a film on Nagaland's music, now set for world premiere

Rohit Gupta, 'Headhunting to Beatboxing' director, at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. (Photo: Stephanie Cornfield)

Shah Rukh Khan’s Swades had just released in 2004, when Rohit Gupta, who was on the cusp of choosing a life path, would pick up the camera, don check shirts inspired by SRK’s character Mohan Bhargav, and go meet villagers in Delhi’s outskirts in a bid to go back to one’s roots and meet people whom the city boy otherwise would not have crossed paths with. Years later, he’d do the same but in the north-east state of Nagaland.

Rohit Gupta, the co-maker of The Creative Indians docu-series has made a music documentary film on the Naga tribes, who were once headhunters and have been making music as a way of healing from a bloody past. Music genius  AR Rahman has produced this film, Headhunting to Beatboxing, which he announced at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May. “Cannes was a great opportunity to unveil and release the trailer and poster of the film and connect with a diverse audience,” says Rohit. The film is now ready for its world premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), Australia, from August 15-25, where it will compete for the Best Documentary category.

AR Rahman launched the film's poster and trailer at Cannes, along with Rohit Gupta (extreme left) among others.

Rohit grew up in Lucknow but, to professionally pursue cricket, he moved to Delhi in 1998, where the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya student played for Delhi School Nationals and captained the Railways U-19 Cricket team, for whom he’d also design the track suits and arrange video recordings for team practice. But cricket took a backseat once his photography landed the English Literature student from Delhi University a job with a news magazine in 2008-09.

The artist sibling duo Manil Gupta (left) and Rohit Gupta with their mobile art: 'The Holographic Love Machine'. (Photo courtesy Rohit Gupta)

He’d next dabble in painting. Together with his painter-brother Manil Gupta, as the duo ManilRohit, he exhibited works across India, including a show titled Eco-Friendly Hornification at gallery Nature Morte. But it bothered him how art was niche, inaccessible and classist, closed within the four walls of private galleries and museums unlike, say, films and music. Art in public spaces has the power to sensitise, he says, “so, we put art on our SUV car, called it The Holographic Love Machine, and drove around Delhi documenting people’s reactions.”

First Cut

Next, the sibling duo started documenting artists, across fields, in their studios talking about their work, their process, their life and journey. In 2014, Manil and Rohit hosted a show called The New Creative India on NDTV Goodtimes. “I imagined artists to have a superhero presence in public space, just like actors and cricketers. So, we rechristened the idea into The Creative Indians in 2016, directing and producing the show. That’s how I started making films, driven by the need to bring these stories to people,” says the self-taught filmmaker, photographer and painter.

The Creative Indians “started with the need to create a public document about the artists of our times,” says Rohit, who started professionally within the art market of Delhi and was never inspired by “the over-intellectualised, ambiguous and lofty ideas of artists… I wanted to break that ambiguity, dive into the mind of the artist, deconstruct the process (art and life) and present the document to the audience. Each artist (Anoushka Shankar, Boman Irani, Rahman, Irrfan, among many others) has an incredible story and a unique visual landscape. We started with Season 1 and 2 on television (NDTV Goodtimes), Season 3 on TLC (Travel and Living Channel), the same season 3 landed on Netflix, and was followed by Season 4.”

Shooting on iPhone

In 2017, after The Creative Indians Season 3 was picked by Netflix, and with the content industry rapidly transitioning to digital streaming OTTs, television was becoming obsolete with TRPs dropping, and it was becoming harder to bring in brands to fund your content, says Rohit, “subscription-based streaming with their advertiser-free model was great as it allowed the content to be more edgy and pure. But who’d pay for my next Season?” So, to cut corners, Rohit decided to man the camera. “I started experimenting with iPhone. Everything I needed for documentary storytelling was in there: 4k resolution, multiple aspect ratios, multiple shooting modes like slow motion, timelapses, multiple still camera settings with various magnifications with the ability to view the output right then and there. Also, the documentary subject is not intimated by the phone lens,” he adds.

Meeting AR Rahman

A portion of the poster of 'Headhunting to Beatboxing'; (right) producer AR Rahman.

It was the soundtrack of Roja (1992) and Rangeela (1995), the first cassette he played on his Walkman, that stopped a young Rohit in his tracks. Years later, he’d meet the person behind that music.

Rohit met Rahman in 2017 to film The Creative Indians episode on the music legend. The two crossed paths again during a campaign for Apple in 2019, for a live jam with him and his son AR Ameen. The eight hours spent with Rahman, he describes as “enchanting” and “blissful”. In December 2019, on the invitation of the Government of Nagaland, when Rahman arrived at the Hornbill music festival as the chief guest, he dialled Rohit’s number and beckoned him to reach the venue. On arriving, Rahman shared his own experience of Nagaland’s music at the two-day festival and egged Rohit to document the incredible music scene there. Thus the seed for Headhunting to Beatboxing was planted.

A still from 'Headhunting to Beatboxing'.

The film aims to showcase Nagaland’s rich and vibrant music which transcends the scars of the past. It is Rahman’s third attempt film production, after the musical romance 99 Songs (2021), which he also co-wrote, and short film Le Musk (2022), an Indian virtual reality thriller, which he also directed. “Music has this transformative power to change a society and to connect and bring relevance to existence. Headhunting to Beatboxing is a celebration of this universal rhythm that unites humanity in its diverse expressions,” Rahman said in Cannes.

Music of Nagaland

“They say, every second person in Nagaland can strum a guitar or hum a tune. Music is that fundamental for them. They sing in celebration, in sorrow, when in prayer or in protest, even as a code sound during warfare. It’s a part of everything they do. They are truly a sample of a tribe which has healed through music,” says Rohit.

Roupfu Whiso in a still from the documentary.

“We wanted to present this new sound to the world, and the incredible story of transformation. A state once engulfed in violence and bloodshed finds healing in music and nature and emerges through a musical renaissance. Most north-east states are incredibly musical but little do we know about them. Most people in Nagaland are Christians, so while each tribe has their own unique dialect of a language called Nagamese (which doesn’t have a script), English is their most commonly spoken language,” says Rohit, “It’s a region with a complex geopolitical history. Understanding what exactly we wanted to tell through the film was important and took time.” About four to five years.

A still from 'Headhunting to Beatboxing'.

“Many tribes were headhunters, that was the law of the land. Konyak tribe was one of the fiercest and the last surviving headhunters. Some of the older headhunter folks of Konyak tribe are still living in the eastern part of Nagaland in a district called Mon. On a deeper note, the rules of the game are still the same. Most conflicts and wars in the world are a form of headhunting, essentially fought for land. Warfare is just more sophisticated now. It’s a primal instinct. And that’s where the film has relevance as a global story,” he adds.

Nagaland's Tetseo sisters.

Rohit was drawn especially to folk fusion, “bands like Tetseo Sisters, Eastory Project are some truly unique folk/country and folk/gospel sounds. They use many locally made instruments, one of them being the Tati instrument famously used by the Tetseo Sisters, a single string attached to a unique head sometimes made of a horn, and goes down a wooden stick. Then they have this unique percussion instrument called the log drum made of a tree bark hollowed from inside, which can be played by many people simultaneously. The headhunters used to bang the log drum together in celebration on a feasty night after a kill. Log drum is still used in their folk sounds and celebrations.”

Headhunters Logdrumming in a still from the documentary.

“Singer-songwriters Jonathan Yhome, Pelenuo, Imliakum Aier are some magical country voices, Run Monday Run, a folktronica band is truly unique, veteran band Purple Fusion has a fun folk reggae song in the film, dreamy pop rock of Mengu Suokhrie and the Band, and the genius virtuoso violinist Nourhe Khate and his young brigade of children from an orphanage who he is training into professional violin players as part of Sunshine Orchestra, an initiative by AR Rahman foundation, KM Music Conservatory & Task Force for Music & Arts (Tafma).”

AR Rahman's Sunshine Orchestra.

Nagaland is a “cradle of young musical talent and there are many music schools in Nagaland teaching all kinds of music”. Tafma is a “unique music and arts department enabled by the Government of Nagaland with a vision to build a new creative economy. That for me is something truly progressive to see a state government putting their energies behind the music and arts. For me, this collective healing and transformation gives a graph to the story,” he says.

Musician Jonathan Pelenuo in a still from the documentary.

Music has a way of getting passed on “through our DNA. But it’s important to document these crafts not because we think they are dying, but because folk music is incredibly edgy and artistic and rich in sound and experience,” says Rohit, “And it’s important to build markets and ecosystems for music and arts to thrive. Like we need doctors, engineers and scientists, we also need artists.”