Done by God’s grace
written, edited, camera, directed and produced By Sangeeta Angela Kumar
Masalsa takes a look how at how salsa is growing in its popularity in India—not just for working professionals but even housewives, children and senior citizen are catching on to the fad. Everybody wants to dance, everyone wants to salsa.
I call Masalsa my no budget documentary! I had no money and somehow I made this film! Actually the back story is that this documentary was made while I was on a break from my job as an anchor in NDTV. I had traveled a bit of the North east of India and decided that after my backpacking trip I would learn how to dance.

I enrolled in the Salsa-India classes with a friend Rhema from June to September. And I began seeing so many different kinds of people studying salsa. One of my class mates was a 10 year old kid who would come because her mother. We had a lawyer, a bpo head, an accountant the list went on and on!
Everyday we had new students joining and finally at the anniversary bash for Salsa India there were over 400 people who had been affected by salsa. My news instincts kicked in. I wanted to make a documentary.

Both my parents are from the media, so I was fortunate that my parents allowed me to used their PD150 (it’s a sony) and a broadcast quality Sony handycam. Thank you mommy and daddy! I wrote the script with the help of a friend of mine in MTV. Funnily after the first day he didn’t want to associate himself with the project because he didn’t think I would be able to pull it off (especially not without lights, and a big budget production bang wagon!) I showed him didn’t I!
Anyhow so I began shooting in October. All the actors from the documentary were my class mates (from salsa class). And I really made them to the craziest things. For example: Rhema and Rodman are the most shy people I’ve ever met in my life! I made them dance in the train, in the first class compartment in the morning with a crowd around them. It didn’t end there, I made them dance at Gateway of India and Marine Drive: they very sweetly indulged me!
Daisuke the Japanese man who dances at Zenzi was kind enough to let me take his byte at his office in Andheri but I made him dance with one of my friends just to show the office atmosphere! I made Kineri dance in my friend’s kitchen and we made two pots of tea trying to make her do salsa in the kitchen.
Everyone helped in ways they didn’t know how, and I never expected! And by God’s grace, in 10 days we completed Masalsa.
Then came the editing. My friend from NDTV Abhishek Mehrotra had recently moved on to greener pastures and was working with a few friends. They had transformed an apartment into a editing studio.
They generously allowed me to edit my documentary for free. And graciously installed Avid for me to edit (I was actually being choosy about not editing on Adobe can you believe that)
I had about 13 tapes to sort through, and again I would say by God’s grace, I edited the whole 9.57 minute documentary in 9 hours! (I actually called my parents to gloat because they had taken a week to edit their 10 minute documentary!!)
After that I did the smartest thing. I made a DVD and a jpeg file. The jpeg file I uploaded on youtube.com and the DVD I gave to close friends.
Uploading my docu onto Youtube.com exposed my documentary to the world. Even my school friends in the US were able to see my film. I’m presently sending that links to international film festivals maybe someday one of them will take note of my documentary film. Plus my docu is uploaded on my person blog (planetsang.blogspot.com) so that also has enabled family and friends from all over the world
But still, through the internet version, people got an idea about the documentary film. Since then I’ve been interviewed by a national newspaper DNA and magazine Timeout (still to be published), and recently my whole documentary was aired by national news channel Aaj Tak and Headlines Today.
But all this apart, my biggest compliment is when someone watches the film and feels like dancing.
Trivia
MASALSA made in under 500 rupees
Filmmaker and team traveled in local transportation bus and train (cheapest forms) to save the money they didn’t have!
Totally shooting time: 10 days
Edited in 9 hours