J Paul Johnson
In his new documentary Pink Belt, John McCrite tells the story of Aparna Rajawat, a former national karate champion in her native India who is now an internationally known motivational speaker, women’s rights advocate, and philanthropist. Her foundation, Pinkbelt Mission, focuses on empowering women by teaching them the art of self-defense and the practice of self-determination. Rajawat is, in her adulthood, a practiced, confident public speaker, committed to her mission, and motivated still by the misogyny and abuse she experienced as a young female athlete.
But that’s not all that McCrite delivers in Pink Belt. While on the surface the film’s narrative recounts Rajawat’s attempt to set a new Guiness World Record for the largest-ever single-session self-defense class, it’s also a narrative that burrows slowly into the complexity of its protagonist. Rajawat is not just a public speaker and leader: she’s a complex and sensitive woman whose own past experiences deeply impact the difficult work she’s undertaken. To discover and present that side of Rajawat was, for McCrite, the most challenging part of the project.
Had it not been for a chance meeting between the two, Pink Belt might never have happened. But for McCrite, meeting Rajawat lit a dormant spark of inspiration in his filmmaking and set him on a transcontinental journey he had never imagined. Pink Belt has now won jury and audience awards at multiple festivals, and as the film continues its journey, McCrite spoke with Film Obsessive’s J Paul Johnson about meeting Rajawat and making the film. The transcript below the video has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: John McCrite is the director of a new documentary called Pink Belt, and it tells the powerful story of Aparna Rajawat. It has screened so far at the Palm Springs International and Chicago South Asian Film Festivals. Welcome, John, to Film Obsessive.
John McCrite: Thank you. Actually in Palm Springs, it was Craig Prater, who programs used to program that festival. He discovered the film through a mutual friend, and he actually asked us if we would do a sneak preview for a benefit for a museum there in Palm Springs, he did it because he loved the film so much and he wanted me to have a chance to see it with an audience so I could make changes if I needed to. And that was a life altering experience to finally hear it with a large crowd and to hear where they reacted, because I think when you sit with a film for so long, you start to lose objectivity and you think, Oh, my God, I should cut another 50 minutes, you know, you’d have no film left if you cut everything out, by the time you start to get used to it
And so the other thing that it really did for me was, whenever I have doubt now, whether it’s a good film or not. I think as an artist, every artist goes through this because I don’t want to say the word bored, but you start to get impatient with it, and you’re like, Oh, does it resonate? When I heard it with that audience, I realized it was moving. Again, if they reintroduced me to the film, And when I get rejections from film festivals. I think back to that audience, and I still know in my heart it’s a good film.
Well, John, I’ve watched the film and reviewed it myself, and it’s a good film, and I’m not at all surprised to hear that story of the reception of the audience at Palm Springs. And part of this, of course, is due to you and your talent as a filmmaker, and we’ll talk a little bit about your process. First, I should probably ask you to talk about your subject Aparna: who she is and what she is doing in your film Pink Belt.
Aparna Rajawat is India’s 16-time national champion in Martial Arts. She was the first woman, and I sound like I’m doing a promotional, but this is how she talks too. I’m imitating her. But she was the first woman to win an international medal. This was before the Olympics had it as a sport. Nepal was where everybody would go and that’s where you would test your medal to see who was the best. And she was 14 years old. The newspaper started calling her the Wonder Girl of India. She became a huge celebrity there and the film crews were following her. She said she knew that she was famous when she went to go use the bathroom and there was a crowd waiting for her outside. And she ended up getting the silver medal and at 14 years old, she was competing against twentysomethings at the time.
So it was really big at that time in India. And basically what happened to her was her brother came to her and said, All right, kid time is over. You had your fun with this little sport you were doing, and it’s over. You’re going to learn to be a woman. And I think at that moment, her dream of becoming the champion, because you don’t want to just de your career at the silver. She wanted to go back and she wanted to claim the title that she believed was hers, and she was 14. Just imagine had they not done that, and they locked away all of her karate clothes. They made her grow her hair long.
It’s not in the film, but they actually took her to a therapist, a gynecologist, and they had the gynecologist check her out and say, is there something wrong with her because she likes short hair, and she fights like a boy. This doctor said, well, make her grow her hair out, make her wear women’s clothing, and beat her if she doesn’t do this. That was from a professional!
So when I was in India, I was on tour. I was on a vacation, and Aparna was the tour manager of that tour. We call it a tour guide. She says, I am not a guide. I am a manager. She managed the whole thing, all the hotels. But also she has a microphone, and she stands at the front of the bus, and she tells you all of these stories about India as you go from city to city. And in between, she would tell stories like that. Now, she told me the one about the gynecologist privately, but she told us the story about the brothers stopping her with her career.
A little insight about myself: I had done a lot of short films, and I had one that was really successful. I sold it. It was on Amazon. It was in the top five of the LGBTQ+ charts back in the day and did really well. I didn’t have anything after that. I kept doing them, they would get into festivals, but nothing had happened big. I had a feature film that fell through, I was supposed to direct it. I was in India on the bus and I thought, you know, my career is really not taken off. I just had this moment where I was at peace with it. I said, All right, if this is how it’s supposed to be, I understand, but just give me something to do because I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something. I’m supposed to have some purpose.
I am not kidding you, as soon as I had that moment of surrender, she picks up the mic and she tells the story about having to pass as a boy to take karate lessons because they didn’t have enough tournaments for girls. She moved in with her cousin and her nickname was Gunna, which is gender neutral. She went by the name of Gunna and cut her hair off, wore boys clothing, and everyone thought she was a boy. She competed in boys tournaments and won the gold medals in those tournaments against boys. She said, when she had to go back home, because she would train with him on the week weekdays and live with him at his karate studio. She had to go back home on the weekends and the brothers wanted her to be a woman, a girl, and serve them and she realized that boys at that time, and probably still in some villages, are treated better than girls. She said, boys are treated like kings and girls are treated like servants and she wanted to be a king.
That is the hero’s journey right there. When you learn something, you go into the world; in Shakespeare all the time, he would have gender swapping, and you learned something and you can no longer go back to the old way without questioning it. From that point on, she always questioned things and she would get beaten by her brothers for questioning. She wanted to fly kites, as seen in the movie, and her brother said, no, and she asked where it was written. Where are these rules written that girls can’t fly kits or play with marbles? He was older, he was like 21, and she was like ten. He punched her so hard. She told me she saw stars, like you see in the cartoons. She said, I saw stars spinning around, and it knocked her down.
I think after getting to know her, I think the reason that she wanted to learn karate wasn’t so that she could beat people up. It was so that she could survive living with that kind of abuse in her household. So, that’s Aparna in an nutshell from what I learned from her.
It’s such a remarkable story. It is kind of a hero’s journey and what she’s doing with her adult life now that she’s no longer competing, but she’s working as an advocate for victims of assault and harassment? She teaches self defense classes. And in your film, for her foundation, the Pink Belt Mission project, she is working towards a world record, right?
Yes. So after we did the tour with her, she had such great stories. I said she came to the United States and she stayed with me and my husband and she said, I said, Do you mind if my next door neighbor happens to be an amazing cinematographer, and he’s done a lot of documentaries. I said, Do you mind if we just film you telling your stories? She sat down and we did it in one afternoon, and she said in the interview, I really would love to bring attention to my cause by breaking the Guinness World record for the most women ever gathered in one self defense lesson. As soon as she took the mic off when we were done, I said, that is interesting. We went to my business partner, Dana Dewise Jackson. We told her what she was going to do. My business partner, she was like, we have to go to India and film this.
That’s easy. That’s simple. We’re going to go to India to make a film!
My business partner green lit it and another friend was with us, and he was like, Oh, we should do it in another year. Well, if we had done it in another year, we would have been full on in the pandemic. So we shot the majority of the film was shot one month. It was shot in February, and we went down into lockdown in March. So we had a month there shooting. We came home, went into lockdown, started editing, and we had a cut of it, but it just didn’t go into her personal stories enough because we really were doing the follow about her organization. We were getting a lot of the professional Aparna, the spokesperson Aparna. What I like about the film, it’s hard to get [through] because she’s such a powerhouse. It was hard to get in there and get into the real feelings of her. We filmed her being her professional self because that’s part of who she is. That’s part of the character of her. Then, as the film goes along, you get into a little bit deeper and the onion starts to peel back.
To me, the scene that’s the most pivotal scene in the movie is when she’s on the couch with Mansi, the factory owner. Mansi says, You present yourself as the strong, powerful woman, but these young women need to see you. They get into it back and forth, and she goes, but who are you? You look at her shocked reaction to that question, and Mansi really gets into the core of who she is. In the next couple of scenes after, you find out the real reason Aparna started Pink Belt. To me, the fact that she starts off this professional hero, in the film, and then it just peels back to that one moment where Mansi calls her out on it. She gets real. In the third act of the film, you’re all in, like, Okay, I’ve seen the public her, I’ve seen the private her. I want her to win, and then, of course, as you saw, everything goes wrong.
Well, there’s some real challenges to making a film like this. I joked a bit a second ago about, well, let’s go to India and film this. I mean, that alone is very complicated. And I assume that there’s complications in that, you’re a Western male and filmmaker, and she’s an Eastern female and athlete. And I’m imagining that there are points at which you’re operating from, you know, slightly different world views or assumptions, but there are also probably places of connection as well.
Well, to be honest, the reason the film is what it is is because of the connections, and we are an unlikely duo. You just called it out. We are an unlikely duo. But when she was talking to me, she would tell me about, you know, that she wasn’t allowed to play boys games, like marbles. And I wasn’t allowed to play with an easy bake oven or Barbie dolls. I didn’t understand how cake had anything to do with gender. Cake is cake. I didn’t understand why and she had the same questions. I was more shamed. I wasn’t really beaten, but my uncles would say, Well, that’s a girls’ game. I felt shamed by the desire.
I understood that. I was also an athlete. I was in track and I did the Junior Olympics. I got a blue ribbon in the Junior Olympics and then went on to state. I related to that element of her liking to compete. The thing that really bonded us was her mother had just died of cancer and my mom died of cancer. Our shared mutual grief of our mother’s deaths really kind of bonded us. I just started sharing this a couple of weeks ago, but I’m going to say it here. The thing that interested me about it was when I was 16 years old, I was raped by a teacher. First of all, it’s been hard. I’m 60 years old. It’s taken me this long to just even say it publicly because I think with anybody who survives, something like that, there’s shame, right? I think in particular with men, like we hold it in.
When the #MeToo movement happened, I had so many friends go on social media saying it happened to me, and I wanted to, too. I thought about doing it then. I still was dealing with the shame of it, you know? Like, perhaps I asked for it or just so many questions that I hadn’t really dealt with. When she was telling me her story, I don’t know what it was, but some intuition, I had some intuition that something must have happened to her to be this professional stopping rape in young women and young girls in particular. I took her out to breakfast. I just told her what happened to me. She was one of the first people [I told]. Maybe a few of my best friends before, but she was one of the first not in my circle that have known me forever that I told and she listened. She acknowledged it and said, I’m really sorry.
Then we went to go film the sister scene where she talks with her sisters, which is a really I think that’s the toughest scene in the whole movie, that and the acid attack survivors. She got the courage to tell her sisters. I knew in my guts, just being a survivor, I knew we were connected somehow. Then in that scene, when she told it on camera, I realized it was that’s the real reason I made Pink Belt.
That’s what bonded us. We had a lot of things in common and I have a lot of feminine qualities. Growing up, I only wanted to play with the girls on the playground. I know that she played with boys. I think in some crazy way, somewhere in the middle we meet, you know, and we just have this connection. Sometimes I feel like I’m the brother that she wished she had growing up.
And she had brothers, but she did not have you.
No. No, she did not. They were abusive definitely. We fight like brother and sister, too, sometimes, especially when we’re trying to figure out PR. How are we going to do this? You know, that character that you see of Aparna fighting for injustice, she brings that to everything. She wants everything to be done correctly and to be done right, you know? So sometimes we both have different ideas marketing-wise, but I love her like a sister. So it makes sense that we do that.
You mentioned the victims of the acid attacks. I think including them is a moment in the film where the consequences of domestic violence become, not just verbal, but they become really visual and really visceral. That group of young women that we see in the film, did they have any anxiety or ambivalence about wanting to be on screen or were they nominating themselves to get their stories out in front of the world?
Aparna is the one that, you know, we were just following her. So she took us there because that was one of her stops that she was going to go to she really wanted them on stage at the world record event with her. She thought it was important to give them voice and to give them the power to teach other women safety. We went to this cafe of acid attack survivors and they make it very clear they’re survivors. That they want to bring the strength to it. So they call themselves acid attack survivors. And what they do for a living at that particular cafe is tourists come and there’s information given on acid attacks in India.
They tell their stories for a living, and it’s part of their purpose in life. I don’t—I can’t—speak for them, all of them, but I know for some of them, it has become their purpose and their spokespersons. My biggest concern in shooting that scene, to be quite honest, was, being a survivor myself, not [of an acid attack] but of rape. I wouldn’t want to re traumatize someone. So Mansi, the factory worker, because of that particular portion is in Hindi, they didn’t speak English. She was sitting with me right next to the camera. She and I were here, and she asked the questions. She became like the mother figure in the film, and she really wanted to make sure that they were comfortable. She made sure that everything was the way that they wanted to do it.
I have to say this out of all the days of shooting, my heart hurt the most that day in anticipation of shooting. I was afraid. I actually was afraid to shoot because I didn’t know if I could take the stories because they were so horrific. When we got there, they were laughing, joking, and playing around. They wanted to see the camera. At the end, we were laughing and joking, too. And as you see, when Aparna trains them, they’re having fun with it. There was so much that went into that one day.
I would say that was one of my favorite days of shooting because it was Rose Day. That’s the week before Valentine’s Day where, in India, you give out roses. It was kind of a celebration day that day. The thing I love is she teaches them and she taught them self-defense for a while, longer than it shows in the film. Then, she brought them to the world record event and the moves that she taught them, they showed that whole entire crowd. So really, it’s a full circle moment because I think a lot of the film is about empowering and it’s about overcoming and healing through having purpose. I think it falls in line with what the cafe does, which is to have the purpose of healing through talking about what happened.
Being at the World Record event did that. Also, if you notice, the factory women are in the very final scene of the night march, which is also a very empowering moment in the film. It’s a full circle moment to where they take back the night. The thing I found interesting and I wish I could say I was brilliant enough to think this, but this is how it happened. That Gandhi quote Aparna has on her website, I loved it because I thought that’s the seed of what she’s trying to do. Gandhi said “India won’t be free unless women can walk freely on the roads at night.” Because I found it on her website, we opened up with that quote. At the end, who’s fulfilling that? It’s Aparna. They do that night march with the torches and they take back the night. I wished I could tell you that I plotted to do that through the whole thing, but when was when I was watching it and I saw it, and I was like, Wow, she really fulfilled the prophecy.
I got goosebumps when I saw it. I hope I answered the question about that day of shooting.
To watch it unfold on screen, there is a moment of some shock, and then also some kind of relief, if you will, to see them together, enjoying their lives, working hard and reclaiming that act, you know, for their own purpose and their own intentions. And I will just say, of course, that I admire Aparna so much. You’ve characterized as her as a bit of a force of nature, which you know, she clearly is, but you did the work, of course, of getting her to open up to you, and that’s not something just anyone with a camera could have done. So I want to compliment you for that.
Talking about getting her trust, we had a very small crew. There were two camera people, one sound person, and me. When we found out that her bike had been burnt—you know, the motorcycle had had been burnt and somebody threatened her. We got actually two more people to kind of be crew for safety in numbers, but also, they could help us navigate India a little bit better. We were such an intimate group. We would have dinner with Aparna. Her sisters would make us dinner and we all got to know each other really, really well. It was the intimacy of it. Mansi would have dinners made for us in her home. You get to know people and you forget that you’re filming.
That’s why I think, in the film, and I kept it this way, is that the onion peels as we get to know her behind the scenes she feels more comfortable. Then the guard’s down and in that scene with Mansi and Aparna on the couch, at one point, we kept the cameras rolling and she didn’t know we were filming. That’s how we really got some of the most intimate parts of it. When you’re dealing with a person with the character that Aparna has, it’s all about defense. It’s keeping a posture. I know anybody that can get in through that armor, you really have to earn it. I felt our crew earned it, too.
She’s clearly become very good at that public stance, right? It’s an aggressive stance. It’s a confident stance. She speaks in perfectly complete sentences with charisma and intention. And I imagine that it’s hard, very difficult to pierce through that at all.
It is. You have to be very patient. An acting teacher said, to get to the subconscious, it’s like going to a forest with a piece of sugar and trying to coax a deer out. You just have to be quiet. You have to be patient, and I feel like that’s what it was like, trying to get to the real thing. I actually like the fact that it starts off with the public persona because she also does it in another scene too where she says, what I told people was it was a motorcycle accident, why I quit Karate.
That’s the public armor self. I’m the hero. I was hit by a motorcycle, my leg was nearly severed. But then she goes deeper later on and she says, Well, the real reason was my brother made me quit. I felt like that was kind of a theme filming was like the public self, but how do we get to the inner self? There were many times where I doubted, like, am I, by showing her promotional side, does this look like a promotional piece? But that’s who she is. I made the choice, and I hope it’s a good one, but I made the choice. I think it’s a good one, actually, to show that first and then work your way down into the private person.
She’s clearly very good and very practiced at it. I mean, I haven’t seen her as a motivational speaker, except for in your film, but I imagine she would be like, as good as one can possibly be.
Oh, it’s like watching Elvis Presley!
I mean, they go nuts, you know, the crowd. You can see that whole group of girls, just going yeah, yeah. The one that makes me laugh is that scene with the society ladies where they all want to get the selfie with her. That made me laugh so hard because I was like, the movie is always about the public self, and then it always works down to the more private self, right? Those ladies in that scene, they’re all posing and everything. Then all of a sudden, after they see her, they’re like, Can I get a selfie, they get down to the excited part. So even in that, you see that kind of peeling of the onion.
Where is the film going to be next? I know it was at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival last month. Do you have other festival appearances lined up?
We just played at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, and it won the Audience Award there. In Chicago, it won the Jury Award, and in Jaipur the 16 International Film Festival. That’s the name of it. It won the Jury Award for Best Documentary. So I just I can’t say whom, but a festival after seeing one of the reviews, they just happened to see a review. That’s why people like you and what you do is so important because that’s how we get into festivals, people will read a review, or sometimes critics will say, hey, hey, Mr. Programmer, you should really take a look at this. I mean, it doesn’t mean that it will get in, but you at least you put it on the top of the pile to get seen because I think that’s the hardest thing.
I can’t say anything yet because he said we’re going to be most likely in it, but it’ll be a nice festival on the East Coast, which I can’t wait for. We’ve just started the submission process. So those were our first three festivals that we’ve done so far, and there’s more to come. Knock on wood. The ironic thing is is for everyone you get in, you probably get about 40 rejections. So you know the PR team that we work with our filmmakers also, and they said, a lot of times your film doesn’t even get seen because there’s so many submissions. They just read about it and think, this would work in our festival or this wouldn’t.
I always go back to that Palm Springs audience, where they had such a great reaction to it, and then I’ve seen it at two other festivals. I’ve seen other audiences have similar reactions to it. I never lose faith because I’ve seen it with an audience. If I got as many rejections as you get in this business, I think I don’t know how honestly, I applaud anybody that stays in the business because there’s just so much rejection. But I just believe in the message, and I believe in the audiences.
Yeah. Well, it really is an astounding film. I’m so glad audiences are having some opportunity to see it. I hope they have more in the future. Aparna’s is a remarkable story, but I also appreciate your talents in bringing it out and unfolding the layers of the onion. And I’m glad that a few years back, you took that tour, and you happened to have her as your guide or across that out manager. And to see that relationship blossom and to have this film as the memento of that, and as the document of her hard work in reclaiming what’s happened to her and her own mission and foundation is truly a remarkable story. So thank you, John, for telling it.
Thank you for having me and our film. I mean, I can’t thank you enough.
