"I feel suffocated by the images of Islam that bombard me — 9/11 in NYC, the Afghanistan bombings, the war in Iraq, 7/7 in London. I bumped into the Bengali fakir in his own land and he made me think," says Amitabh Chakraborty whose film Bishar Blues won this year’s National Award for best non-feature film. The film also picked up awards in the Best Editing and Best Audiography categories and will be screened in Delhi next week.

Bishar Blues is a beautiful film on the fakirs of Bengal, examining their music and their deeply spiritual everyday life as living practitioners of radical syncretism. Bishar, the deviant branch of Islam is practised largely by the so-called lower castes and its history in Bengal is replete with the assimilation of Buddhist, Tantric and Vaishnavite traditions.

“The fakirs here are people who are following Islam in their own specific way for hundreds of years and generating values which are super inclusive,” says Chakraborty, 49, right after his first meeting, decided to make his film about them. It was a long journey across the state, through Birbhum, Murshidabad, Nadia, Burdwan. He visited the fakirs at their homes, at the mazaars and their festivals. “I would talk to them, argue perhaps, and film. Several fakirs travelled with us in our journey, they were also there at the edits sometimes and were active collaborators,” says Chakraborty, describing it as an experience of a lifetime. Music is central to Bishar Blues as the traditional knowledge of the fakirs is oral and the songs give movement to this knowledge.

Chakraborty shot over 55 hours of material but had no idea how the film would shape up. “At this juncture the Indian Foundation for the Arts stepped in and supported the film. After I finished it, I wanted to go back to the fakirs in the villages and screen the movie,” says Chakraborty who was able to do, so thanks to IFA. Currently he’s working on another movie, Cosmic Sex - A dialogue with Gandhi.