Rashed Zaman’s Journey with Camerashram

The atmosphere inside Camerashram was designed for learning and practice. Students spent long hours experimenting with lighting setups, camera movements, and visual storytelling techniques. The space was controlled, patient, and deliberate. As Rashed Zaman prepares to pause Camerashram’s current operation, relocate, and hopefully restart it on a much smaller scale, the story feels less like an ending and more like a moment to understand what a 17-year journey - beginning with Sandbag in 2009 and continuing through Camerashram - has already given to Bangladeshi cinema.

That journey began when Rashed proposed the idea of Sandbag to his colleagues Kisloo Golam Haider, Kamrul Hasan Khosru, T. W. Sainik, Piplu R. Khan, and Nehal Quareshi. They immediately understood the philosophy behind the initiative. Sandbag was never meant only to support their own professional careers. Its larger purpose was to help build the capacity of Bangladesh’s film industry by training the next generation and contributing to an international-standard film culture.

From the beginning, Rashed was responsible for the day-to-day operations and training programs. His partners continued to support the initiative with guidance, advice, and encouragement. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the partners made the difficult decision to close Sandbag because of severe economic challenges. But Rashed did not want the philosophy of social responsibility behind Sandbag to disappear.

Determined to carry the mission forward, Rashed founded Camerashram as his personal initiative. Although the former Sandbag partners did not become involved in the new operation, they made an extraordinary contribution by donating Sandbag’s valuable camera equipment to support the greater purpose of Camerashram. Their generosity helped the work continue and allowed a new generation of cinematographers and camera crews to keep learning and growing.

Camerashram is not simply a camera rental house. It is an ashram for aspiring cinematographers in Bangladesh. Alongside renting out state-of-the-art movie camera equipment, Camerashram is dedicated to building international-standard camera crews and cinematographers. Passionate individuals from all backgrounds - regardless of religion, education, gender, or race - are welcome to use the residential facilities while learning cinematography firsthand and free of charge under Rashed’s direct guidance. The rental proceeds support the living costs and salaries of apprentices, making Camerashram a self-sustaining creative hub.

The current pause in Camerashram’s operation is therefore not simply the end of a physical address. It is the completion of one phase of an experiment that changed how many young Bangladeshi cinematographers learned to think about light, camera, preparation, and responsibility. Rashed has decided not to close Camerashram permanently. Instead, he plans to shut down its present operation for a short period, relocate, and restart it on a smaller scale when he can arrange the necessary funds. It remains a serious financial and personal risk, but he feels he has no other choice if the purpose of the institution is to survive.

To understand why Rashed continues to carry that risk, one has to return to the years before he became a cinematographer. In 1993, he left Bangladesh for Turkey to study architecture at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Architecture taught him how space works, how light moves, and how a frame can be built before a camera is placed. Still, film kept pulling him from underneath.

“Deep down, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Rashed recalls. His family history with cinema was complicated. Khaled Salauddin Ahmed, one of his maternal grandfathers, was a pioneer in early Bangladeshi cinema who had seen the difficult side of the industry and was cautious about the path. That hesitation stayed in the family, but Rashed’s attraction to cinema only grew stronger.

The turning point came in Los Angeles. Rashed had gone to the United States with the intention of pursuing a master’s degree in architecture at Ucla, but life there became a mix of survival jobs, architecture work, and film classes through Ucla Extension. In a class taught by Italian cinematographer Charlie Rose, he watched Mikhail Kalatozov’s Soy Cuba. The film’s moving camera and impossible long takes opened something inside him.

“I walked out of that screening crying,” Rashed says. “I knew right then that it was impossible for me to remain an architect. I had to switch to film.”

But switching to film was not easy. In 2001, the Ucla Mfa program required thesis films to be shot on 35mm, which made each project extremely expensive. For an immigrant from Bangladesh, that financial demand was out of reach. Years later, when digital formats became more acceptable in film schools, the path became easier for many students. In Rashed’s time, the gate was much narrower.

Instead of stopping, Rashed chose another path. He joined an intensive diploma program through Ucla Extension and threw himself into real set work. He worked as a lighting technician, grip, production assistant, and anything else that kept him close to the process in Hollywood. On one production, he even spent time taking care of the director of photography’s dog. He remembers the experience with humor because, even then, he was studying how a set moved, how lights were rigged, and how a crew functioned as one body.

When Rashed returned to Bangladesh in 2007, he carried more than technical knowledge. He had made a personal commitment that he would not focus only on his own career or individual success. He wanted to devote a significant part of his time and energy to helping others grow through capacity building. For him, that was a way of serving the country - his own expression of patriotism.

That spirit came partly from his Cadet College education, but mostly from his father. His father always used to say, “একটা ছেলে বা মেয়ে নিজের পায়ে দাঁড়িয়ে গেলে, একটা পরিবার দাঁড়িয়ে যায়।” From his father’s life, Rashed learned that one of the greatest ways to help people is to empower them to stand on their own feet. That belief became central to the way he thought about teaching, mentorship, and nation-building through cinema.

The industry he returned to was full of ideas and energy, but technical training was still uneven. Film circles were rich with discussion, criticism, politics, and appreciation of world cinema, yet many productions needed stronger visual discipline and more structured preparation. Rashed saw an opportunity to help build confidence from the ground up.

At the commercial level, large companies often brought foreign cinematographers for major television commercials because they assumed local crews could not always handle high-end work. Rashed entered advertising not as a final destination, but as a training ground. Commercials had budgets for 35mm stock, better lenses, advanced lights, and proper preparation. Through that space, he pushed local crews toward a higher standard and helped create trust in Bangladeshi technicians.

He also believed that knowledge should circulate more openly. “In any creative industry, knowledge-sharing is not always easy or automatic,” Rashed says. “But I always felt that cinema grows when experience is passed on generously. Tareque Masud was one of the people who showed that spirit most clearly. Tareque bhai wanted to share, wanted to build collective capacity. That generosity strengthened my belief that I needed to help create capable people around me, even if they later became my competitors.”

That belief shaped the training culture of Camerashram. Rashed has always believed that cinematography is a “military art.” It demands discipline, precision, teamwork, physical endurance, and professionalism. That is why he trained young cinematographers and camera crews with the same level of responsibility expected on a professional film set. Students had to learn that cinema is not only personal expression; it is also a collective practice. Before touching expensive tools, they had to understand responsibility, timing, respect, and the physical reality of a shooting floor.

At Camerashram, discipline was physical as well as mental. Students followed set protocols, wore proper shoes, and learned to prepare themselves for long shooting days. Morning runs, push-ups, and football were part of the routine because cinema demanded stamina. A cinematographer or lighting crew member had to carry stands, move fast, think clearly, and survive pressure without losing focus.

Inside the residential space, Rashed created an unusual social mix. University graduates lived and trained alongside young people from villages and remote districts. Theory met instinct. The urban student could share academic knowledge, while the rural student often brought practical intelligence about land, weather, light, water, and movement. Rashed believed both kinds of knowledge were valuable for cinema, and Camerashram brought them onto the same ground.

Camerashram’s philosophy can be seen clearly in Aynabaji. In that film, light does not simply show faces. It builds mood, pressure, and psychology. Rashed avoided flatness and used bounce, diffusion, and spatial planning to turn Old Dhaka into a living maze. His architectural background shaped his process: he drew frames in sketchbooks and built small models to study shadows before shooting. The result was planned emotion.

The same philosophy guided the way he invested in equipment. Serious tools were placed in the hands of people who would rarely have access to them otherwise. Camerashram did not only talk about democratizing cinema; it created a practical route into the craft by combining professional resources with direct mentorship.

The cost of maintaining such a space was heavy. As Camerashram grew, Rashed spent more time maintaining equipment, training students, managing logistics, and carrying financial responsibility. His own creative life often had to share space with the demands of building an ecosystem for others. That tension is part of the emotional weight of Camerashram’s story.

Still, Rashed does not see the journey only through loss. Many of the students who passed through Sandbag and Camerashram became cinematographers, Steadicam operators, lighting experts, camera assistants, and respected crew members. Some are now working in films, television commercials, and other visual fields. Their presence in the industry is one of the clearest signs that these initiatives achieved something lasting.

The influence, however, was not limited only to those who trained directly under Rashed. Many other young filmmakers and technicians in the industry were indirectly inspired by the culture of learning, discipline, and knowledge-sharing that Sandbag and Camerashram helped create. In that sense, the institutions affected not only individuals, but also the larger professional attitude around cinematography in Bangladesh.

Rashed remains hopeful about both his former and present students. He believes the people trained through Camerashram can carry its values forward in their own way. Not everyone may be able to return to the institution physically, and not everyone may contribute in the same form, but he hopes the spirit of discipline, generosity, and technical courage will continue through their work.

The market around him has also changed. In a fast-moving industry, high standards can sometimes be difficult to sustain, especially when time, budget, and preparation are limited. Rashed’s insistence on craft sometimes made the path harder, but it also helped define why his work and teaching mattered. He wanted cinema to be treated not only as enthusiasm, but as a serious professional practice.

He could have taken outside funding or turned the space into an Ngo-style institution, but he chose to keep Camerashram independent. That choice came with financial pressure, yet it also allowed the place to remain guided by its original intention: learning, discipline, and collective growth. For Rashed, independence was not only an administrative decision. It was part of the institution’s identity.

Now the equipment is being packed away from the current space, and the rooms that once held students, lights, lenses, sweat, arguments, football, meals, and ambition are becoming quiet. Yet this is not the end of Camerashram’s purpose. The present operation may pause, and the next version may be smaller, but the work has already changed the Bangladeshi film set. Local technicians now carry more confidence. Younger cinematographers are more aware of light, optics, blocking, and preparation. Camerashram lives on through the hands it trained.

“I can see my students out there in the market, shooting films and commercials, often executing work that makes me proud,” Rashed says. “That gives me peace. I did not teach them only to sit in a room and talk about cinema. I wanted them to survive the battlefield of filmmaking with real technical strength.”

Rashed is not finished. As long as his health allows him, he wants to continue Camerashram in whatever form becomes possible. The next step may be quieter, smaller, and more financially uncertain, but the impulse remains the same: to share knowledge, build capable people, and contribute to Bangladeshi cinema through capacity building.

Rashed Zaman may feel that Camerashram demanded a great deal from his own artistic life. But the institution itself became one of his most important creative works. He did not simply compose images. He shaped people, habits, tools, and professional imagination. The light it taught others to control will keep moving through Bangladeshi cinema.