Yearly Archives: 2013

WHEN SANJAY MET PANDEY

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Palash Krishna Mehrotra on Khal Nayak, Sanjay Dutt and the Bad Boys of Allahabad

 

Received wisdom says that Hindi cinema is fantasy-laden and escapist. Growing up in Allahabad in the 1980s and nineties, my experience of it was vastly different. Bombay films were, for the young men in that town, so real that the cows and motorcycles and colonial bungalows outside the theatre could have existed in a world of make-believe. What happened in the darkness of a single screen hall in the old part of town was what the world was really like— the world as it was.

 

Young Allahabadis copied the hairstyles of their favourite film stars. Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt and local boy, Amitabh Bachchan, were the most popular ones at barbershops. Rahul Roy’s foppish hairdo was considered too wimpy for macho eastern Uttar Pradesh and never took off, even though Aashiqui was a super hit. They mugged up dialogues from these films, played film music from loudspeakers mounted on electricity poles, and fantasized about Bollywood heroines in wet saris. But then, this could have happened anywhere in north India. There was something else that made this connection with Hindi cinema unique and vital for Allahabadis in their teens and early twenties. It was the violence. There was plenty of it in films of that period.

 

Allahabad (and eastern UP as a whole) was known for gangsters and low-grade violence. Getting access to crude bombs and kattas (country-made pistols) was easy and people made use of this. In a town with few opportunities in pre-liberalization India, there was really nothing to do. Everyone had a big provincial ego (matched by a paranoid provincial imagination). The thing to do was to pick fights, often over imagined insults. “He was staring at me.” “I saw him talking to a girl I fancy.” “Who does he think he is?”

 

Being a gangster was glamorous. They came in different shapes and sizes. To do anything in the town you needed the ‘backing’ of a goonda. If you were a crow, you needed a friendly buffalo on whose back you could hitch a ride. Some buffalos were modest, while others claimed the backing of bigger hoodlums— those who were part of the university students’ union, or the youth wing of a political party. Your stature was decided by the number of followers (muscle power), access to bombs and kattas (firepower) and how much ‘area’ you controlled. As one of the small-time gangsters explained to me, his area ran from the cycle repair shop in Rajapur to the cycle repair shop near Boys’ High School. A bigger fish would, say, control all of Attarsuiya, a large neighbourhood in the Muslim part of town.

 

The police were held in contempt. They were there to be made fun of. There were stories of skirmishes between the two sides where the gangster always came out on top. In some, the policeman would fall at the gangster’s feet and beg for mercy. Much of this was apocryphal, mere bravado, but it was certainly the way people spoke about cops. The allure, for us, was always to be the goonda who exercised feudal control over an area, in complete contempt of the organs of the state. The cop’s only hope lay in being a gangster’s stooge.

 

It was an absurd, desolate and violent landscape. It was not all talk. People actually did get their arms blown off in crude bomb attacks. And in this landscape, violent Hindi films about angry young men who lived on their own terms, and cocked a snook at the police, had an immediate connect. The celluloid world put together in faraway Bombay was palpably real, more real than the hot winds that blew through the streets of the town every May and June.

 

* * *

 

Subhash Ghai’s Khal Nayak released in the summer of 1993. I was 16. The film went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters of Hindi cinema. It was also the year that Sanjay Dutt was in and out of jail in connection with the Bombay Blasts case. In the days leading up to its release, anticipation had reached fever pitch in Allahabad. After all, the movie was about a real life bad boy who played a reel life bad boy. The bad boys of Allahabad couldn’t wait to enter the theatre; the film promised to tell their story.

 

By 1993, Palace and Plaza, the two theatres in downtown Civil Lines had gone to seed. They’d been reduced to showing re-runs of Bollywood films; the projection was shaky and the audio muffled. As a child, I’d gone to Palace with my parents and watched The Godfather, Kramer vs. Kramer, 36 Chowringhee Lane, The Jungle Book and Bugs Bunny. Now, if one wanted to see a new Hindi film, one had to make the trek to Chowk, the ‘black’ town.

 

One afternoon, Aditya, a friend from school, turned up at my place with two tickets for Khal Nayak. He’d bunked school, stood in a long queue, been lathi-charged by the police, and finally emerged with two tickets bought in black. There was little time to lose. I decided to bunk tuition, hopped on his Luna, and off we went to Chowk, zigzagging through the usual traffic of cycles, cycle rickshaws, Bajaj scooters, TVS Suzuki motorbikes and Maruti 800s.

 

There was a huge crowd of men outside the theatre, some holding hands, some walking around with their arms slung around each other, everyone greeting everyone with a cordial “Kas be bhosdi ke!” There was a posse of policemen with lathis standing on the sidelines and watching this gathering of aspiring gangsters. It looked like a riot would break out any moment.

 

We entered the lower stalls in a frenzy of pushing and shoving. It was like boarding a Borivali slow train at Dadar, Mumbai, at 8 pm. You did nothing. You just went with the flow of the crush. The hall was packed to beyond its capacity. Men walked in and out at will, their narrow chests puffed out. Some had seen the film earlier and only wanted to watch a particular song or catch a dialogue again. Sunlight streamed in through the open doors. Mongrels squatted in the aisles. And almost everyone was smoking a Capstan cigarette.

 

Sanjay Dutt’s entry was greeted with hooting, whistling and clapping. When Choli Ke Peechey (banned on Vividh Bharti) came on, they showered the screen with coins. There was a lot of noise in general and the conversations didn’t cease right through the film. People passed loud comments, scratched their balls and told the cop, Ram, (played by Jackie Shroff) to get out of their faces. The loudest cheers were reserved for the scene where Ballu (Sanjay Dutt), a gangster, escapes from jail.

 

Sanjay Dutt’s jail stints that year had been all over the papers. For the audience, what was happening on screen was like reality television. It might be edited and doctored but it was still very real. Sanju hadn’t just emerged from jail in the movie; he had done so in actuality. He had fooled the police and walked to freedom. He was once again in a world which he could control. The invincible Ballu could go back to doing what he did best: impose order on chaos or vice versa, depending on which side of the divide you were on. And do so on his terms. This called for celebration. Crackers went off in the theatre; loud bombs that filled the hall with thick smoke and momentarily obscured the screen. We didn’t know if the bombs were real or not. There was a stampede. Strangely, people giggled as they fell over each other. My friend and I clambered onto our seats and continued to watch the film. After all, we had bought the tickets in black, at a price that was way above our weekly pocket money. After a while, the celebrations subsided, the smoke cleared and everyone went back to watching the show, hooting, and puffing on their Capstans. Their man Sanju (not Ballu) was safe for the moment.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, back in school, we waited for assembly to begin. The only talking point was Khal Nayak. Those who had seen it wore a distinctly superior air. We were all terribly distracted. It took us two false starts to get the Lord’s Prayer going in unison. We’d just about reached “Give us this day our daily bread”, when someone at the far corner of the field caught our eye. As the looming figure came closer we recognized him to be our classmate, Rakesh Pandey. This was sensational.

 

Rakesh Pandey had seen Khal Nayak, first day, first show. We respected him for pulling that off, but that wasn’t the only reason we held him in high esteem. His father had recently bought a new Maruti Omni. After watching the movie, Pandey had decided to take the van for a spin, and in a moment of gangsta inspiration, had impulsively kidnapped a boy in his neighbourhood. Over the years, the Omni would earn itself a reputation for being the favoured vehicle of kidnappers in UP and Bihar, its sliding doors making it easy to pull the unsuspecting victim in. Pandey was one of the first in Allahabad to notice and tap this potential in the car. Unfortunately, the boy he’d kidnapped belonged to a powerful family, and his father promptly got Pandey arrested and thrown in jail. He’d managed to get out, just like Ballu, just like Sanju, and now he was nonchalantly making his way to the assembly, a full ten minutes late. He walked with deliberate slowness. He wasn’t carrying a bag, just a register to write in. He had emerged from a real prison while we were still imprisoned in a fake one.

 

At that moment several images merged in our minds. These were separate to begin with, but over the previous week had coalesced into one: reel had become real and real had become reel. Sanju Baba in and out of prison, Ballu, the khal nayak, in and out of prison, and now Rakesh Pandey. When we saw him in the distance, in our mind’s eye we saw that long shot in the movie when we see a clean-shaven Ballu walking, his silhouette framed against the sky, a free man again, a gangster in complete charge of his destiny. Pandey too saw himself in the same way.

 

The Books Keeper

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Filmmaker V. Shantaram’s library is not as well known as his movies but it has a story to tell, all the same

 

A middle-aged bespectacled man is sitting at the desk. He scrutinizes a poster for a Marathi film. He consults some printed pages before him, before making handwritten notes in Marathi on another page.  He re-checks it. Satisfied, he moves onto the next poster. He does this with a stack of roughly 100 other film posters. The room is cool with the blast of two large air conditioners and two small fans. Yet the strong musty smell of old books sits heavy in the air. We are in a library. A very unlikely library.

 

This library, at Rajkamal Studios in Parel, Mumbai, is part of the legacy of a legend of Indian cinema— the V. Shantaram Motion Picture Scientific Research & Cultural Foundation. It was once Shantaram’s personal library, which he opened up to the public in 1981, nine years before his death. He was 80 years old at the time. The foundation was set up by him in 1977 with the objective of creating a space that would encourage technical innovation and foster an interest in Indian cinema both in the creative and the research spheres. His son, Kiran, 70, remembers his father as an avid reader. “Whenever he got some spare time, he’d always go through books,” he says. “(He read) books on filmmaking, editing, photography, sound recording, all technical books. He didn’t kill his time, sitting idle, doing nothing.”

 

After Shantaram’s death in 1990, Kiran, then 48, took over as Chairman of the foundation. Over the years, Kiran remembers a few well known filmmakers using the library when they came to shoot at the studio. Yash Chopra, who started Yash Raj films from the offices of Rajkamal Studios after leaving B.R Chopra, as he didn’t have an office to work out of, was an occasional visitor. As was Subhash Ghai. Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Tarun Majumdar were more regular visitors.

 

In the early nineties, Kiran invited Sanjit Narwekar, film historian and journalist, to help create a research centre for Indian cinema. “At that point in time, interest was shown by international academics in the study of Indian cinema. My dream was to build a centre that would attract people doing research, or simply those interested in Indian cinema… to read, discuss films, talk to one another, or network,” says Narwekar. The research library’s vast archives and eclectic collection owes its existence to Narwekar and his team who worked for 3 years to expand Shantaram’s original collection of film related books. They even organized a research conference in 1994, just after the centre was inaugurated. Research papers were presented and talks were held. The conference was well attended by several research scholars, archivists and cineastes from across the country. P.K. Nair, the eminent film archivist, was one of the attendees. They began a database of films from various regional film industries. “From 1994 when it was formally inaugurated by B.R. Chopra till around 1996 to 1997 it was ok. After that I don’t know what (happened),” says, Narwekar. The foundation found it difficult to find adequate funds to sustain the library and Kiran and Narwekar’s plans fell through. The foundation’s activities at that time included financing the manufacture of magnetic tapes, an electronic footage counter and other technical developments, as well as cultural activities like exhibitions, film screenings and the V. Shantaram Awards. Narwekar moved on and the trust continued to buy books, albeit infrequently. It also continues to buy trade journals and magazines such as Screen India and Filmfare. Now they are looking to start a DVD library.

 

The foundation and its libraries were located in a building separate from the main studio offices until the surrounding area was sold for redevelopment in 1995. Now they share a building with the studio. The foundation still brings out a booklet with details on every Marathi film produced in a given year. The man at the table is doing just this. The slow struggle to hold on to a glorious past.

 

“Now nobody (uses the library). There are very few, only one or two come regularly. Now these film producers are not interested in classical films, artistic films, at all. Whatever films they are producing now, they are… I don’t think they are films. They are just like a nautanki,” says Chandraram Patil, a long time employee with Rajkamal Studios, and currently Kiran’s personal secretary. “Students (come here), because it is part of their education. We also give the books out.” One can avail of the library’s facilities by becoming a member at Rs 1750 (this is inclusive of a Rs 1000 refundable deposit) per year, or paying a daily reading fee of Rs 50.

 

The library is a treasury of archival material. Perfectly preserved copies of the now defunct Film India magazine line a glass paneled book shelf. An editorial by film journalist and publisher Baburao Patel in the January 1943 issue of Film India reads, “The year 1943 will become a memorial milestone in the history of the Indian film industry… And that memorial milestone will also perpetuate the memory of Mr. V. Shantaram, India’s greatest director… The one big thing he had himself sworn to do was to found the Film Academy of India where the future youth of the country may get the right training to fulfill its aspiration in art… ”

 

The editorial outlines Shantaram’s rise from poverty (he went without lunch for years as he could not even spare six paise for a cup of tea), his desire for creative fulfillment, and his eventual success as a director and producer. “What use is my success and money, for that matter my very existence, if I cannot help others along the journey and make it a bit easier for them,” Patel quotes Shantaram as saying.

 

A few pages down is a double-page advertisement for the Indian Film Academy, announcing admissions. The Academy offered practical training and lectures by film personalities. The courses lasted for two years (four terms) and accommodated only two to four students in a course. The only exception was the acting course, which allowed for up to 50 students. The costs ranged from Rs 100 to 600 per term. The lucky few would have been taught on the sets of Shantaram’s award winning Shakuntala (1943). This was 17 years before the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) was established in Pune. “The Film Academy ran for only one year before it shut down,” says Narwekar. The only person of note to emerge from it was documentarian and film historian B.D. Garga.

 

The books in the library reflect Shantaram’s continued quest for the modern, the latest developments, the need to constantly innovate and create. The introduction to From Script to Screen by Sir Alexander Korda reads: “There can be no resting on our laurels, for in the film industry, above all others, to rest is to rust.” The book is a look at the production process of the British film industry during the 1930s.

 

Shantaram lived by these words. At the grand age of 90 he had planned a 100-episode-long epic movie series titled Uttar Mahabharata. The series would pick up at the end of the ancient epic Mahabharata and stretch over 5000 years of human history, ending with the turn of the 20th century. The plan was to enlist 10 new directors from the Indian film industry, and each director would make 10 films. Shantaram would produce the films and guide the directors. “That would have been huge,” says Kiran. “He had said: I’d have to take a rebirth for this.”

 

One can imagine Shantaram consulting H.W Hellyer’s Tape Recorder Servicing Manual (1973, 2nd edition), while arranging for the manufacture of indigenous magnetic tapes, sync cassette tape recorders and building the four-track stereo in his studio. The book shares shelf space with books on schizophrenia and rural women’s health. This is not peculiar to the ‘sound-recording’ section.  Mythology— An Illustrated Encyclopedia rests incongruously among books on Goya, sculpture and graphic art, instead of in the ‘reference’ or ‘epic’ sections.

 

“Mr. Shantaram was very particular about everything,” says Chandraram Patil. “When I joined him I used to come early and clean the desks before he arrived, and sharpen the pencils. He used to come in the morning and do this… ” Patil wipes his hand over the edge of the desk to see if it’s dust free.

 

This was then. Today, this is a library without a librarian. In a studio with barely any staff. Empty corridors stretch on— clean, smelling of institutional phenol after a thorough swabbing. Shantaram’s presence lingers on in these corridors, along the marbled floors, in the intricate brass work, in large monogrammed Vs on frosted glass doors. A building steeped in the ceremony that recalls the golden age of Bollywood. A large brass bell hangs from the security counter near the front gate. It still tolls every day, at the start and end of work and to signal the beginning and end of the lunch hour. The punch out clock, a wooden box like contraption still functions. About 20 punch out cards lie, to the side, in a wood rack. This is the studio that had a staff of over 100, which worked three shifts, 24 hours a day. Now it simply seems to lie in wait. Perhaps, of the second coming Shantaram spoke of at 90.

 

We are awaiting that second coming Mr. Shantaram.

Amitabh Bachchan – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

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Amitabh Bachchan wanted to be an actor. He became more— he became a star; the brightest of them all; the star that leads the way from one era into another. Bachchan was born into the literary elite at a small town in Uttar Pradesh called Allahabad; a town which gave India some of its finest thinkers, politicians, writers and her first Prime Minister. In that milieu it was unthinkable to harbour dreams of becoming a star in a megapolis, a lowly calling to the minds he grew up around. But the world was changing and his choices reflected those changes before they were visible. Bachchan would travel to Bombay and bridge the gaps between commercial art and high art with his films.

But the path of the leader is neither well-trodden nor easy. He was rejected by All India Radio for the very baritone that is now the most iconic voice in Indian pop culture. He also failed his first audition. But the industry was changing and he knew that before they did, so he made his way to Bombay regardless. His rise to superstardom came after 12 flops but the young actor kept his faith.

India was changing again. The promises of independence had begun to fade. Corruption, political turmoil and ideological bankruptcy had disillusioned the youth and Bachchan resurrected himself by tapping into this disillusionment. He became the angry young man everyone wanted to see; giving voice and emotion to countless seething citizens. He survived accidents, illnesses and political scandals but began to lose his place as the people’s hero in the late eighties.

The film industry was in a dreadful limbo— at its lowest low creatively. But once again, it was he who could see beyond the despair. Having realised that corporatization was the way out for the industry, he set up ABCL (Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd.). However, it was an idea whose time had not yet come and he suffered huge financial losses. But just when we were about to write his career off as yet another tragedy of time that takes no one along, Bachchan began to rise again, like the old nation that was beginning to assert itself on the global stage financially and creatively. He led the way for younger superstars to television by signing on India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire— Kaun Banega Crorepati and forced filmmakers to rethink the role of ‘character’ actors. He led Bollywood as it captured international imagination. He stood proud in the forefront as the Indian film industry reorganized and corporatized itself, started reimagining its content and strengthened itself financially. What does him real proud is that today cinema is no longer the ill-considered job he once kicked up a respectable career for. And Amitabh Bachchan, has played no small role in its turns. In this interview he talks about the journey of Hindi movies and his own passage with them.

 

An edited transcript:

 

What is the first film that you remember watching?

The Flying Deuces, Laurel and Hardy film.

 

How old were you?

I was, as you know, born in Allahabad. Capital Cinema hotaa thaa ek wahaan. Civil Lines was the main area. And that’s where I saw it.

 

Where did the fascination come from? Were there any particular actors or movies? How did it occur to you that you would want to be a part of the movies?
I was never inclined to join the movies. There was no such planning or anything like that.

 

Do you remember the first seed or the first idea?

When I look back I would imagine that… I was always very fond of stage. And right from the kindergarten to the time that I was working in Kolkata, I cannot remember a single year when I wasn’t on stage. I guess that was the only fascination with acting, in a sense— theatre. Then while I was in Kolkata after finishing my graduation, one day my brother showed me an advertisement of The United Producers Filmfare Talent Contest. And there was a whole procedure where five or six very prominent producers—Shakti Samanta, Pramod Chakravorty, B.R. Chopra, you know, all the big people—they had formed this group called The United Producers and they were looking for talent and they had a contest and they would do a regular screen test. They would give you moments to enact. And I felt that this was a very professional, right way of getting into the film industry. So, he said that you know you should apply for this if you are fond of acting. I said: Okay fine. So, he went in and took some photographs of mine with a still camera and sent it in. But we were rejected in the preliminaries. I think there were 10 or 12 cities from the North East.

 

And this was while you were in Calcutta, right?

Yes, while I was in Calcutta. So that was a little disappointing. And then you know I just felt that now that I have applied for it, I was kind of interested in going into it, so I resigned from my job, which was kind of a horror story for my parents. So I left my job and landed up in Bombay at that time. And went from door to door looking for a job. Cinema was something that was not appreciated very much by the family. We were allowed to see only cartoons like Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But Laurel and Hardy was the one film that somehow we were allowed to go and see because it was a comedy.

 

Other than that what are your earliest memories of cinema?

I think I saw a film in Allahabad itself. It was a Hindi film. It was one that had Dilip Sahab and Dev Anand (Insaniyat). It was the first and only time they worked together.
 

Okay. What film was that?

I forget the name now. And we all went in there to see because air-conditioning had arrived for the first time in Allahabad theatres. So just that attraction, of what an air-conditioned theatre looks like, was the reason.

 

Your milieu of professionals, your father’s literary set, I am sure movies were at least slightly looked down upon. How did they take it all?

I think it’s the overall attitude towards cinema in general. That’s not just my family, my father or my mother. It was general conditioning for everyone: movies were considered not ethical, not worthwhile, people from ‘not good homes’ were associated with it. And therefore, if you saw one, you were likely to get polluted or corrupt. And that’s what the attitude was. But my father and mother were very liberal. They have always been very understanding. And the moment I said that this is what I want to do, they absolutely agreed and accepted my desire to join the films. One of the things my father said after I got rejected in the preliminaries was: “Agar kisi ghar ke andar ghusna ho, aur uska darwaaza band ho, aur jaana hi jaana hain, aur darwaaza na khul raha ho, tho deewar fhand ke chale jaana chahiye.”

 

 

Who is the first film star you remember meeting before you became an actor?

Oh gosh, I can’t remember. I know the person I admired the most was Dilip Sahab. And he always remained with me, from then, and still is.

 

Did you ever meet him before you joined the film industry, just as a fan?

I made an attempt. I was once on a short holiday with my parents in Bombay. In around the 1960s which was about eight to nine years before I came into the film industry. And I had no idea that I would join the film industry because I was still studying and I wasn’t in Kolkata and I hadn’t come across that advertisement. Our hosts once took us to a restaurant somewhere in the main area of Bombay where all the big restaurants were.

 

Was this in ‘town’ (South Bombay)?

Yes, in town. And we walked in and there he was— Dilip Sahab, standing and talking to somebody. So, I quickly ran outside and they said you must get his autograph. So I got an autograph book and was waiting and hoping… when is he going to turn around so that I will ask him. But he just walked away, and I couldn’t get his autograph. I was very disappointed. And then when I got an opportunity to meet him and talk to him, (and) eventually did a film with him, I told him of this and we had a good laugh. But yes, he has been my idol ever since I started seeing cinema and has always remained one. The other film that we all remember was…. Ah! Gosh, I am getting old. It was a film on children in a school and…

 

An English film or Hindi?

Hum Laaye Hain Toofan Se Kashti Nikaal Ke— that song was there.

 

Yes I know. Aadmi? Was it Aadmi?

No, no. Something starting with P… And we remember it because it was very educational because the kids were asked to be patriotic.

 

This is not Dedi Humein Aazadi Bina Khadag Bina?

Haan, yehi wali. That was with…

 

No, Aadmi was Dilip Sahab. I know which film, but I can’t remember. It will come to us at some point (the movie is Jagriti). Can you think of one thing that we don’t celebrate enough about our movies?

There are people I think who have manufactured a certain terminology about Indian cinema. And I think that those adjectives need to be cleared up. One is the very name which is now being commonly used and I don’t even want to utter it because I don’t believe in it. It was I think created by an overseas group that was here which wanted to make a documentary. And I feel sad to say that most of these groups that came from overseas to make documentaries were actually not wanting to record our history. They were, rather, here to make fun of it. And in that moment, I think this word got coined and now it is being shoved into the Oxford dictionary. And it’s going to be there for time immemorial. That’s horrid. We need to get rid of that. The other word that is commonly used is ‘filmi’. “Wahaan nahi jaana hain yaar, woh badi filmi jagah hain“— as though it’s something very rotten and negative, below any kind of class, decree or whatever you may call it. Why are these adjectives on filmi? “Woh aisa ek ghar tha, woh bada filmi tha isliye maine kharida nahin usko“. So it’s used as a bad adjective to describe cinema. I think these are some of those things that need to be forgotten.
And despite the criticism, despite the cynicism, despite whatever the elite may think about cinema in India, there is a need for the star everywhere today. I am not just talking because I am an actor but in recent years, say the past 15 to 20 years, you will find that the star-value has played a very important role in most socially promoted ideas. Whether it is polio or cancer, everywhere you require that face and that value. And they never want to acknowledge that fact. But yet they can’t do without it. I often wonder why we are invited. Because, you know, we are barely learning how to act and then suddenly we have to make a comment on the political system, on some social norm.

 

And be de facto ambassadors of the country.

Yes, but that is all right. But, you know, to certainly give an opinion on some kind of a political change that is taking place or a social reform that is taking place, one asks us: “Sir, what is your opinion about that”. You know, we are just actors. We are not here to change the Constitution. There are many other brilliant people who can do that. But the reason why you come to us is because that, perhaps, is what is going to get quoted. That, perhaps, is going to bring you your headlines or is going to be the attraction for a reader or for a listener or for a viewer to catch the attention.

 

Can you think of a couple of people, movies… or anything… which you feel that our cinematic industry didn’t give its due?

The entire cinema industry in India has a huge number of examples where none of them have received their dues. And I really don’t know what do we mean by a classification called ‘given their due’. I think for an actor, his greatest achievement is the love of the audience.

 

Perhaps memory. Memory is a good example of….

Yes, but if he is remembered and honoured by the people, and if they recognize him, then that is his biggest achievement. I don’t know in what other way you can give them their due. Many actors have been honoured through the National Awards (for) their films. They have been rewarded by the Padma awards and there many such examples.

 

But it could be something small like somebody who’s been a brilliant filmmaker but his films are not as widely discussed, or in the mainstream?

Well that is one of the reasons why I felt that this medium that you are starting now, and why we are sitting here, is helpful in promoting all that. Unless you get to hear these people, what they did and what their contribution was… other than the film industry, the rest of the world is never going to hear of them. And most of them do not. Because the common man is still just interested in his three hours of entertainment and how it got there. Who worked behind it, sometimes, is not important for them. And that’s a tragedy because no film is made without the extreme contribution of the people that work behind the scenes. They are the real people. We are just fronts.
 

 

Can you think of a couple of ways in which the industry has changed in the last 40 years that you have been around? Not the movies itself, but the industry.

Well, the working systems have changed. They have become a lot more professional. I am not saying that they weren’t professional back then, but certain American systems…

 

Have they become more formal? Is that what you mean?

No, not formal. There are certain systems in place which are akin to perhaps what Hollywood uses. A lot of our directors, actors and producers are now training abroad at a very young age and coming back with some sense of management, some sense of production, or how they should approach a film, or how it needs to be made, through some very recognized institutions overseas. That is good and those practices are now coming into place. Whether it is right from drawing your contract to how your production is going to take place, what the actors are going to do on the set— these are several little things that have now been coming and that is very good for the industry.

 

Is this also the good side of corporatization, you feel?

I am not so sure whether corporatization actually brought this on. Corporatization came on because it saw the potential of the corporatization of the Indian film industry.

 

And the government incentive, of course.

Of course, yes. But I doubt very much if there is going to be any government incentive that comes across to the corporates. The film industry in India is very unique in many ways. I formed a corporate once. It’s still present there. But as a pioneer who started this concept, I was laughed at in the beginning. You know, “How can you make a film wearing a tie? Ye suit-voot pehen ke log aa gaye hain, ye inse picture kahaan banegi?” That was the idea but today it’s the corporates that are ruling. It’s unique that Indian cinema is more or less shrouded under one umbrella. You want to make a film— you get a story, you get a producer or become the producer. Then you get it directed. Once it’s made, you must have a distribution wing. Each of our films have six or seven songs, so there is an audio side to it. 82 percent of film content is for the television, so there is a television side to it. And all of it is under one roof. You have these various tributaries, which are all commercially viable entities, but they all emanate from that one product— which is that film. And in that sense it’s very unique. That doesn’t happen in the west. The west has its own system of pop or rock music or whatever else. But our pop music is the one that comes out from the cinemas. So, that’s very unusual. That is why there is a need to corporatize it, bring it all under one roof, have professionals looking after it and the ideas, and so on and so forth. Now with the cyberspace and the Internet, it’s even more, sort of more versatile, as far as the spread of cinema is concerned.
CDs have disappeared. Everything is now available on the net. What is most important is the content. If you have the content, you are okay. The whole idea of corporatization was formed when I was on a holiday in the United States of America. I was there to do a concert. I pioneered these stage shows right from 1981 to 82. Obviously we had lawyers and stuff, because nobody moves without a lawyer in America. One of our lawyers became very friendly with me and around early 90s he said, “Amitabh, you should go back and start corporatizing and get your house in order because the Americans are coming.” And I used to get letters from various big studios like Warner, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony wanting to meet me. And I wondered why do they want to meet me if they don’t even know who I am. I am just another citizen of my country who is here on a holiday. One day I just visited Warner Brothers and one of their executives sat and spoke non-stop for two hours about cinema in India. He brought out a dossier which had every detail about me— where I was born, what I did, what films I had done, who directed them. They had everything. And that’s the time this chap said… And when I formed/ did the corporatization in ABCL, I had told my executives that this is what is going to happen. No one believed it then. But look what’s happened now. We have every possible major studio functioning here and this is the way they will enter. Every time I meet these big corporate heads, I tell them that: You have destroyed cinema in Europe. You destroyed it in the UK. You got rid of Italian cinema, French cinema, German cinema—everything they have destroyed—Japanese cinema which was so prominent. And now you have come here to destroy us. But I think, that it’s going to take them a while and it’s not going to be that easy because our cultures differ.
If they were to bring one of their family dramas here, they’d have had a problem. So, only their Titanics their sharks and their Robots will work.

 

How is the experience of stardom? I can’t think of anyone else who has been a star for this long.

I don’t believe in this. I don’t believe in stardom.

 

Sure, but it is an experience yet. I mean, sure you have…

I am just lucky that I have had a fairly long period of time. It’s 43 years and it’s very heartening to know there are still people who…

 

Sorry to interrupt you, but I want to explain this. Because maybe you don’t believe in it so much, that gives you the objectivity to look at the phenomenon.

I really don’t know whether that is the right attitude, to look at it that way. I wonder how others look at it. I have never spoken to them about it because this is not something we talk about on the set. I wonder what they think. Perhaps you would know better of what they think about it. If you were to brief me on that then I would be able to react to it. On my own, I just feel that I am committed to a profession where I am an actor. Somebody comes up with an idea, a story. I look at it purely from the point of view of what I am going to be doing in it and whether it’s going to be a good story to make into a film and I just go ahead and do it. Now, all the other things are frills which I am really not interested in. I would rather be concentrating on the character, the role—what I am doing—and look at the fineries of it right then. Whether this is going to make me a star, or whether I am going to be in some number-race or what not… I have never looked at it that way because I don’t know what it means.

 

Clearly the media is proliferated, manifold. Films are all over the media. Other than that, can you think of a way in which the interaction between the stars and the media has changed for the better or for worse?

The stars were more elusive in the early years because of the lack of communication through the medium of media. Perhaps there was just one magazine that wrote about cinema. Now we have millions of them. There used to be one Filmfare Awards, after so many years. Now you have one every…

 

Every month…

No, every other day. You have a billion cameras following you wherever you go. One billion cameras. Every phone, every mobile, is a camera. So there is a record of you, irrespective of whether you want it or not. You step out of the house and you are sure to be recorded. So it’s a problem for us because if they don’t have information of your activity, they will take out special magazines on your dress, or the shoes that you wear: “Hey look, I don’t think I like his shoes very much.” And they have a close-up there. So, when somebody is following you, they used look at your face first but now they start from the shoes, and they go up onto the trousers and the shirt and the jacket. That’s become a value to the media. There are special magazines which have special issues which only talk about dresses that people wear.

 

Yes, they do.

So, it’s painful because every time you go out in public you have to make sure, “Gosh, where did I wear this before.” Because they are going to comment on this and say: “He has only one pair of shoes.” Intricate it has become, this whole business of media attention. Cyberspace. You know, whatever we are talking of now will be out in a couple of hours. I will do it myself. And that is one of the answers that you are looking for— the celebrity never had an opportunity to make a comment.

 

Yes, in his own space.

Obviously. (Earlier) whatever was conveyed to the public was done through the medium of media. And if the media like you, you are a good guy. If they don’t like you, you are a bad guy. It was all dependent on them.
But now, I write my own news. I went here, I did this, I didn’t like this, I like that— and that becomes a news item. So fairly, it’s become easy for the media because they don’t have to visit me to know what I am doing. They can just read my blog or my twitter and make news out of it. That’s how things have changed. I don’t think media is going to die. I think it’s going to survive and it’s going to progress even more greatly. I think everybody needs them because no matter how interested you are in the cyberspace and no matter how many millions of people are on it right now and if there are millions more… for some reason or the other, the morning paper is a document which kind of justifies everything that is happening in the country, and with individuals, and therefore that is believed. The only thing that has changed, as I said— I now have an opportunity to contradict something which has been wrongly interpreted. Whether it is believed or not is another point or story, but at least I have the satisfaction of having clarified myself for a given contrary statement.

 

Can you name three film songs that have always stayed with you? Hindi film songs, that are not yours?

I have always liked Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam from Guru Dutt’s film Kaagaz Ke Phool. Most of Guru Duttji‘s songs in all his films have been simply brilliant. The whole history of music in cinema has been filled with such great lyrics and music that it’s very difficult to spontaneously come up with three songs. But songs of that nature have always…

 

Okay, and one of yours?

I have hated all of them so it won’t be proper to name them.

 

All of them? What about something from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s film Mili?

They were all beautiful films. Abhimaan had perhaps some of the best music that you can hear. And that was because of the great genius of S.D. Burman. And it’s still alive, and still relevant. We, in a sense, are perhaps more remembered than a couple of generations before us because the television keeps us alive by showing our old films and that’s how we are still around.

 

You know we spoke about so many changes. Were there any changes in particular that you found it harder or longer to adapt to?

There have been many changes and I think that they have all been for the betterment of the industry. Certainly the professionalism, the managerial capacity of all production houses and most importantly the opening of doors to the ladies, to the females in our industry. That was never seen before. Earlier on in the sets, you never saw any ladies working on set, other than the hairdresser of the leading lady, or her companion. The woman power in cinema has become huge and their percentage is a lot more than the male fans, which I appreciate greatly because I think that women are 50 percent of the force of our country— their strength, their power and their thinking. And they need that position and they need to be encouraged and they need to be there.

 

But I was wondering, were there any changes in particular that you took longer to adapt to? As the changes came, were there any changes that you can think of— that you were not very comfortable with and so took longer to adjust to?

No, I never took…

 

Long to adjust to the changes, I would imagine.

But it’s okay. I accepted it and went ahead with it.

 

But when you look back, we are talking so much about 99-100 years back, what do you think were some of the turning points in Indian cinema, off the top of your head, that you can think of?

Its acceptability— first. Its great acceptability now. As one that has somehow been able to cross all these social barriers and now become so acceptable that every second youth in the country wants to come and join the movies. Families are more accepting of cinema. If not cinema, then television… or whether it is modeling or whether it is theatre. Theatre was always there. It was considered a more refined art, it still is. But just the fact that it’s moved away from that stigma of being looked down upon, that perhaps is one of the biggest achievements. I personally believe that every generation or decade or 15 years gives us an opportunity to look back and admire what happened. 15 to 20 years ago, those people were being looked down upon as doing something wrong by the ones that came 20 years before them. So, let us say, for example in the late 60s or the early 70s, when the so called ‘Angry Young Man’ came it was really looked upon as a social revolution— not by the actor but by the writer, because Salim-Javed thought that it was the time of great unrest and great upheaval within the country. And therefore the creation of this one man who would take on the establishment, and so on. I am merely a guy who was just passing by and was asked to act in it. I never deliberately went up, telling them that we should change social norms. We are not those people, we are just actors. It so happens that the writers think like that. And the writers are impressed by what happens in the country.
So when that happened there were many purists of that time, or 15 years before that time, who felt that this was a lot of rubbish and the kind of films we made were not good and not of standard. We admired them, we still do. I would regret the fact that I never had an opportunity to work with a Guru Dutt, a Bimal Roy, or a Mehboob (Khan). As would perhaps some of today’s generation regret the fact that they were unable to work with a Manmohan Desai, a Prakash Mehra, a Ramesh Sippy or a Yash Chopra, who were of the times when I was working with them. And this is going to happen in another 10 to 15 years time. People will say, “Gosh, I wish I worked in a film with Sanjay Leela Bhansali or with Tigmanshu Dhulia or Anurag Kashyap.” So many great films have been made now. All these big commercial hits that Shah Rukh (Khan), Salman (Khan) and Aamir (Khan) are churning out every six months. I am sure that they will have the same kind of reaction. But for that moment and for that year there is that initial hesitation of not acknowledging them because they are doing something new and fresh. We talk about that today— the language not being there, the written work not being there. But if you talk to a modern filmmaker; modern meaning the filmmaker of today’s times; he will say that this is the way our youth are talking. This is the way people are communicating with each other. And what has actually come into cinema is a certain sense of reality. Of late, within the past one or two years, a few directors have brought in a certain style of cinema, still keeping in mind the box-office but with a lot more realism. So you have Vicky Donor, Paan Singh Tomar, Gangs of Wasseypur and Barfi! which is so exciting. I always feel that this is a fantastic period and I consider myself extremely fortunate that I have been able to be a part of each phase and enjoy what comes my way.

 

The one thing that is most remarkable about you is the way in which you have never let your legacy become a trap, you have never let it imprison you in the past. Younger directors and actors who work with you today are perhaps much more hung up on your past than you are yourself. This is a very difficult baggage to shed for anyone, let alone someone like you, who has been part of such exquisite glory. Was there any mental rigor involved in constantly shedding that baggage of the great past?

I don’t know if it’s great. You are talking about it.

 

But it’s spoken of as great. You know that.

Yes, but I don’t talk about it because I just feel that its time is over. Then I must look for a job tomorrow. How can I look back on it and say, “Yes, I did some fantastic work.”  That would be so stupid of me.

 

It’s not so easy because you know that lot of your contemporaries, for example, they couldn’t move on, they couldn’t reinvent themselves… It is not an easy thing to do for anybody, not just actors.

I think that this is a fallacy. I don’t think that this is entirely correct. All my contemporaries. Shashi Kapoorji of course is indisposed. But Shatrughan Sinha, Vinod Khanna, Dharamji (Dharmendra), Jeetendra they have all moved on and they are still functioning very well. Shatrughan and Vinod still do films. They not only did films but went into politics and they achieved heights by becoming ministers in the Cabinet. Dharamji is still working in films and has just given a super-hit with his two sons. Jeetendra has established this massive TV company, which is incredible. So you can’t really say that…

 

That is a very optimistic way of looking at it.

No it’s not. It’s a fact.

 

But what about what (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez calls “the charitable deceptions of nostalgia”— we are all prone to that. It’s not just about stars, it’s not just about past glory. Are you completely immune to that?

I can talk about it. If you were to ask me…

 

But does it affect you? Is it something that you go back to?

Affect me in what way?

 

Nostalgia is the longing for a past.

No, I would love to work with the younger generation now. I would love to work with some of the new stars. I would love to work with Ranbir (Kapoor), Parineeti (Chopra), and all the youngsters. I have already worked with Sujoy (Ghosh) and I hope he takes me in his next film again because he made a wonderful film— Kahaani. Shoojit (Sircar) and me have already done a film, which unfortunately is not getting released. But he did a wonderful job with Vicky Donor. I would like to work with Anurag Kashyap, Tigmanshu Dhulia and all these wonderful people. I look forward to that. I don’t go back to see because that is not going to be relived again. I can’t go back in age. I am now 70.

 

Is there anything that you miss at all?

Of course I will miss my association with the film industry and the times that we have spent together but not in the way you are wanting me to miss them.

 

I am very glad that you don’t miss them and that you are in the future, not even in the present. That apart, you know I remember watching an interview of yours in BBC. I think it was in 1983. You were talking about how it could be really dangerous for cinema if there wasn’t any proper legislation. Do you remember any points where you were concerned about the future of Indian cinema?

No. I have never been ill-concerned about the future of Indian cinema. I know that it is such a potent force that it will survive irrespective of what happens. Many obstacles have come up but we have always ridden them (out) and that’s primarily due to the fact that the people of our country are so fond of this medium that they will keep it alive. We will just have to keep moving with the times and keep producing films.

 

Are there still any cinematic aspirations that remain unfulfilled?

I would rather pass this question to a future producer or a director. I don’t have the capacity to be able to tell them, “Hey let’s do this,” because I haven’t done it, or something like that. I would rather hope that some director thinks about something that he would wish me to do and then throws it to me as a challenge. It’s a gauntlet that I would love to pick up. When Sanjay Leela Bhansali proposed Black for me, it was a huge challenge— to work, to learn the language, to study the characters and so on. When (R.) Balki did Paa with me, I came to know about progeria while playing a 13 year old. These are all experiences that make it very exciting and I shall always look out for such instances. I never knew what Balki was thinking or what Sanjay was thinking beforehand. I didn’t go to him and tell him to make a film on progeria or let me play a 13 year old kid. He did. And thank god for that because I don’t really have that capacity but I would love to have a challenge thrown at me and see if I can handle it.

 

As much as you love challenges, how come you never tried your hand at direction, or writing a movie?

I don’t know direction. I still marvel at the fact that some of these youngsters… and how well equipped they are, and how knowledgeable they are about cinema. Where to place the camera, where to edit, and how long the shot should be. It’s a marvel. I will not be able to do that. I need to go to a school to train.

 

What about writing a movie?

No, never. I don’t have that capacity. If there is something that is already written and if I am going to discuss it with the director, before going on set, of course. Then I would love to discuss it and give my point of view but most of the time it gets rejected, so I stopped doing that.

 

In an interview which you had given to CNN you had said that one thing that distinguishes our industry is that it’s like a fraternity, it’s like a family. The fact that everyone is tightly knit with each other. Does it have its downsides as well?

I don’t see why there should be a problem there.

 

It’s very unique to us. Isn’t it?

I would look upon it as another challenge. To be on back-slapping terms with your colleague, yet when the camera goes on you would not hesitate to slap him if you were required to do that and how to convert that emotion so quickly, so rapidly, and so effectively, I think that’s a quality in itself.

 

You said that you couldn’t think of cinematic aspirations that you have for yourself but if you were to wish something for our movies what would you wish for them? I mean, somewhere you would like them to go, or something you would like them to achieve?

I think that we are moving quite well. I am happy that our products that were looked upon very cynically and negatively, by the overseas audiences in particular… The Americans and people in the United Kingdom have now changed their mindset about us. Things that we would never imagine are now virtually being considered and looked upon by them…
I don’t like the word ‘crossover’. There are films where Indian artists are being taken in their films and vice versa. One of the largest stores in London, the United Kingdom, Selfridges celebrates Indian cinema for one entire month by decorating their entire store and their windows depict the theme of Indian cinema. Where would you ever have imagined this in the 1940s, fifties or even in the sixties? These are things that make me happy. I like the fact that if I am travelling abroad and I meet somebody who doesn’t look Indian, doesn’t speak the language, yet he recognizes me, and that’s a great achievement. These are all very heartening things that are happening to us and I would want it to spread even more.
I was at an event in Jaipur couple of years back, I was stepping out of the hotel. And there were many tourists that were about to leave the hotel as well and there was a huge group of Chinese tourists who were on their way to see some of the sights. And all the girls broke away from that group, came and touched my feet, said Namaste. I said: “Gosh, where are you from?” One of the girls said: “I’m from China and I watch your films and we love them. These are some of the customs and traditions that we have picked up after seeing your films.” That’s very heartening to know. It’s not just the star value but it’s some of the other traditional values of our country and also the culture that has also been imbibed by them. I remember after Baghban was released, which was, as you know, made by B.R. Chopra and directed by Ravi Chopra, and had a story about children who had maltreated their father. And at about 3 o’clock in the morning, Ravi Chopra got a phone call from an absolute outsider and he said, “Mr. Ravi Chopra, you don’t know who I am. I am so and so and I am calling you from London. I have just walked out of the theatre after seeing Baghban. I want to tell you that my father and me had a dispute. We both live in the same city but I haven’t seen him for 25 years. I have rung up to tell you that I am going straight to my father and telling him I’m sorry.” That was just so moving. So when you have these incidents happening, you feel good about what you’ve been doing.

 

I think this will be a good note to end the interview on.

THE CENTENARIAN

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Filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s lecture on a hundred years of Indian Cinema delivered at Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

The Beginning

When cinema was brought to India three years after its invention, in 1896, for a demonstration at the Watson’s hotel in Bombay, no one would have predicted that within a period of 75 years India would become the largest film producer in the world with films regularly made in over 22 languages every year. Soon after its first demonstration, several technologically minded Indians were already tinkering with film cameras of the time. The first known film was actually a filmstrip shot in 1901 which showed a mathematician, Wrangler Paranjpe, coming down the gangway of a ship at Bombay’s Apollo Bunder. From the novelty of recording live moving images on film to using film technology to tell stories and complex narratives was a fairly short step.

Among the pioneers were a number of theatre entrepreneurs both in Bombay and Calcutta who attempted to make films specially for Indian audiences. Eventually it was Dadasaheb Phalke who preceded all others with Raja Harishchandra which he released in 1913.

Barely a year after Raja Harishchandra was released, Mahatma Gandhi returned to India.

Early 20th century was a period when the nationalist movement gathered steam. The demand for swaraj or self-rule became the anthem. Among the political strategies, and actions that nationalist groups undertook, was to boycott British-made cloth and other goods. Large bonfires would be made of videshi or foreign goods. The word swadeshi gained currency. To rely on oneself and to be self-sufficient, became an integral part of the nationalist agenda. Gandhiji’s political strategy aimed at regaining Indian self-esteem with the privileging of the charkha as the symbol of resistance.

Indian cinema in many ways grew in size and strength much like the freedom movement. Making films indigenously, like the setting up of the steel industry by Jamsetji Tata, could be seen as a nationalist act. When Dadasabeb Phalke chose to make films on mythological subjects, consciously or unconsciously he was asserting the primacy of Indian traditions and culture. Even films that dealt with contemporary and topical subjects, tended to be critical of the slavish adoption of colonial fashions and lifestyles. For instance Dhiren Ganguly’s film Bilat Ferat, or ‘England Returned’, satirized people with westernized tastes. It became the first film to be caught up in colonial censorship. A few years later, Bhalji Pendharkar’s Vande Mataram Ashram was banned, evidently viewed as a threat to the British government. This led to the creation of a censor board for cinema by the colonial government which ironically continues to this day, nearly 66 years after India became independent.

Ideas of social reform influenced by the nationalist movement often found voice in films, both in Bombay and Calcutta. Filmmakers like Baburao Painter in Kolhapur and Pune, and later the legendary V Shantaram who learnt filmmaking from Baburao Painter, made several films that critiqued caste attitudes and adopted reformist views when it came to traditional inequalities in both caste and gender relations. Quite a number of filmmakers chose stories of medieval saints in order to cleanse what they considered were corrupt social practices in contemporary Indian society.

By the time sound came to cinema at the beginning of the 1930s, cinema had established itself as a prime entertainment medium in the major cities of India. Soon it would cover all of urban India.

The Advent of Sound

With sound, came song and dialogue. Both these elements were to become integral to Indian cinema. Alam Ara— the first ‘sound film’ made in 1931, had over 30 songs.

Songs and rhetorical dialogue, which were the staple of successful theatrical productions, were taken wholesale by Indian cinema. This gave it distinct character. It was around the same time that films in regional languages started to be made. Unlike silent films, which could be shown all over the country, regional films could not be shown beyond the regions where the language was spoken. It was also during this time that the freedom movement under the Congress had resolved to make Hindustani the national language of the country. Thus films made in Hindustani could see themselves as ‘all-India films’. To succeed they had to design themselves for pan-Indian appeal.

Strangely enough, Hindustani films were produced in cities such as Bombay and Calcutta where the commonly spoken language was neither Hindi nor Urdu. As a consequence filmmakers had to opt for an idiom that was simple and easily understood across the board. Both these cities had a flourishing theatrical tradition from the mid-19th century that was patronized by the urban elite— the Parsi-Urdu theatre. Combined with local theatrical forms this had become the basis for Indian cinematic form. In Bombay there was a flourishing Gujarati Bhangwadi theatre and the musical Natya theatre in Marathi. Both these forms went on to become models for the unique character that popular Indian cinema would take on.

While mythologicals and costume dramas were easily made with clearly set models from urban and rural theatrical genres, the real problem for Hindustani cinema lay in handling subjects of a contemporary nature. Making a pan-Indian film meant the construction of an environment and a culture that would be acceptable all over the country. Clearly, this invented national culture was a construct that glossed over a great deal of the diversity that was part of India. People were presented in a generalized and eventually standardized way that would not identify them with any recognizable region. They were quite simply urban or rural, rich or poor, or identified by the social class to which they belonged, though admittedly the standard Hindi-Urdu idiom of these films marked them in unacknowledged ways as upper-caste, middle-class, and ‘North Indian’. They only had first names and no surnames. Surnames would give away their caste, community and their regional origin. The only other identification was their religion. Hindustani films represented India in much the same way the nationalist movement did, identified mainly by the two communities, Hindu and Muslim. Regional films, on the other hand, were far more culture specific and rooted in their communities in terms of subjects and their treatment. They could use their local idioms, customs, manners and conventions to make a greater claim on realism. Interestingly, successful regional films would often be remade in Hindustani, after being culturally transformed to make them accessible and acceptable in all parts of the country.

Most Hindustani films that were part of the genre of family socials were domestic melodramas or love stories set in a familial milieu. The stories they told were more like parables rather than realistic narratives. In the pre-independence era a fairly large number of films dealt with socially relevant subjects such as untouchability in Achhut Kannya (Franz Osten, 1936) or the emancipation of women in Duniya Na Mane (V. Shantaram, 1937). In Achhut Kannya for instance, the glamorous Devika Rani played an untouchable girl. However, there was no attempt at credibility or realism in making her look the part. What is more, the film was directed by a German filmmaker, Franz Osten, whose ignorance of Hindustani was only matched by his lack of knowledge of local customs. The theatrical tradition of suspension of disbelief and the disregard for the historical context continues in popular cinema until today. Take a recent film like Black, released a few years ago. The family is identified as being Anglo-Indian because they speak English. Beyond this primary identification everything else is invented. An invented world, an imaginational culture devised by the director. Audiences, however, did not find this unacceptable and the film went on to become a great success. Hindustani films were accepted not because they created a credible milieu, but because they legitimized traditionally accepted social values that extolled the sanctity of the family and its primacy over the individual. Sacrificing oneself for the family—renunciation leading to redemption—were common themes in films of the time. Traditional culture as presented in popular Hindustani cinema was not so much what existed in reality as much as it represented a normative ideal, although reformist ideas would often be introduced in these films unlike in their counterpart, the ‘Muslim socials’.

Often seen as a twin of the Hindu family social (yet not quite a twin), the genre of Muslim socials presented a flattering image of the Muslim community as cultivated and essentially feudal, extolling virtues once again of self-sacrifice, loyalty, friendship and family honour. Hindus and Muslims as either twins or brothers in the family of India would eventually become a recurring motif in several Indian films before and immediately after Indian independence. Films of the period like Padosi (made by V. Shantaram, 1941) and Hamrahi (by Bimal Roy, 1945) echo the theme of twins.

Secularism in Indian Cinema

Interestingly, the separatist politics of the Muslim League never seriously found a voice in the popular cinema, and, indeed, found ideological opposition in the cinema of the forties and fifties. For example, Prithviraj Kapoor’s play Deewar, which was subsequently made into a film by him, represented Partition as a threat to the unity of the family. It is not insignificant that writers and poets belonging to the Progressive Writers Group and the Indian People’s Theatre Association came into the cinema at about that time. Writers like Saadat Hasan Manto, Ali SardarJafri, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and others brought a politically left-wing and overtly secular outlook to the films they were associated with. While most of them remained active in the cinema over the years, their early attempts were largely unsuccessful at the box office because of the radical views they propagated. Popular cinema could not afford to give up the traditional values that were part of its appeal to the mass audience. Thus for example, when the eminent novelist Premchand wrote the script for Mazdoor (made by Mohan Bhavnani in 1934), it sank without a trace. Similarly, Saadat Hasan Manto’s attempts to subvert the Muslim social with films like Najma (Mehboob Khan, 1943) and Naukar (Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, 1943) did not meet with commercial success.

With Partition and Independence, a substantial section of the Muslim population became citizens of Pakistan, and India found itself with an overwhelmingly large majority of Hindus. One significant and far-reaching consequence of the division of the country along religious lines was that there was an increased ambivalence towards the minority Muslim community. Indian Muslims were perceived as continuing to have a choice in the matter of citizenship— they could either remain in India or emigrate to Pakistan. Their allegiance to the country was not taken for granted as easily as it was with the other religious groups; thus their nationalism was always suspect and needed to be ritually reaffirmed or proven. Simultaneously, the protection of minorities, a commitment under the Indian Constitution, became the most important aspect of the newly affirmed secular State. This posed several problems for the Hindi cinema. How were Muslims to be depicted in the Cinema? There was an awkward formality and a great deal of self-censorship in the way they were shown. Part of the problem had to do with political correctness and a desire not to offend— Muslim characters were routinely shown as sane, sensible, good and devout. During the Nehruvian era, many films, especially those that were written by progressive writers, strived to create the image of a secular Muslim. For instance in the 1959 film, Dhool Ka Phool (late Yash Chopra’s first film), an old Muslim adopts an abandoned child whose religious antecedents are not known and sings a song to the boy, which in effect goes, “You will not grow up to be either a Muslim or Hindu; you are the son of man, so a human being you shall be”. There was a great deal of tokenism as well with Muslim characters playing walk-on parts in attempts to represent the diversity of Indian society in cinema. Such sanitized representations were also due, in part, to the constraints of the Government’s Censor Board, which would come down heavily on what it interpreted as negative characterizations of members of any minority community (Christians, on the other hand, were often depicted as good-hearted drunks, presumably because Christianity had no strictures against drinking alcohol).

Communal harmony thus became a kind of signature in a large number of films during the fifties and the sixties. Hindi cinema soon came to be seen as a socially integrating force and the National Awards instituted for films by the Government of India included one that was given for promoting national integration. Interestingly enough, while Hindi films found it difficult to deal with ordinary Hindu-Muslim relationships without sanitizing them, there was no such inhibition in the regional cinemas. In Kerala, where there is a sizeable Muslim and Christian population, inter-communal relationships were depicted in a far more direct and credible way. Ramu Kariat made films like Moodupaadam (1963) and Chemmeen (1965) that centered on inter-communal love stories. This was possible because Kerala had not been affected by the trauma of Partition despite having communal and caste-based parties and associations, and perhaps, also because Malayalam films did not seek to represent themselves as ‘India— the nation’. Muslims in Kerala did not experience the kind of social insecurity and diffidence that sections of the Muslim community felt in northern India after Partition. By contrast, Hindi cinema was self-consciously secular in its attempt to make the minority Muslim community feel accepted and socially secure, yet it often reflected and performed a paternalistic duty of the avowedly secular Indian State towards Muslims. Consequently, benign as it may have appeared, the secularism of the Hindi cinema of this era reflected to a large extent the secularism of the State, which was at best patronizing. This formulaic representation of Muslims and other religious minorities continued through the fifties and the sixties.

It was not until the early seventies that things began to change and Hindi cinema found it possible to tackle subjects related to Partition and the contemporary Muslim experience, which until then were considered awkward subjects liable to inflame communal passions. Two significant developments paved the way for an alternative politics of minoritarian representation: one— the creation of State-established institutions like the Film and Television Institute and the Film Finance Corporation that enabled the emergence of the ‘new cinema’, two— the second partition of the subcontinent in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

Let me lay out some of the material conditions that led to the emergence of the new cinema, and then provide a brief survey of some of the more important films that placed minority communities at the center of their narratives. I would also like to examine the significance of the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and how it made possible the production of films like Garm Hava that treated the subject of Partition in a realistic manner for the first time in Hindi cinema.

To understand the importance of the new cinema, it would be important to situate some of the developments that took place in the cinema of the post-independence period. Indian cinema was already a flourishing industry at the time of independence. It was totally market driven and unregulated. Financial booms and busts were quite frequent. This prompted the Government of India to set up a committee to look into the affairs of the film business. The committee made several far reaching recommendations that would set the course for cinema in the next fifty years. Among the recommendations were the setting up of a fund to finance films, an institution for teaching filmmaking, a children’s film society to encourage filmmakers to make children’s films, the creation of a national film archive, and so on. There were other recommendations too, which were not particularly helpful to the cinema, such as the levy of an entertainment tax on film screenings. Since cinema was not understood to be socially productive by the State, the tax was somewhat punitive in nature. Moreover, since the state governments (not the central government) levied the entertainment tax, it varied from state to state— 55% of the price of a ticket in Maharashtra, going up to 132% in Uttar Pradesh and 146% in Bihar. (The centre is now recommending a 30% Tax across the country). The government, in effect, ended up by earning much more from films than either the film producers, distributors or exhibitors. As a result, the old studio system became unsustainable and gave way to independent entrepreneurs and speculators. Filmmaking became a far more speculative and high-risk business than it had ever been in the past.  In spite of this, the film business grew by about eight to 10 percent each year due to the phenomenal growth of cities, towns and new urban townships in the wake of industrialization and other programs of economic development. The complexion of the audience too began to change. The older middle class was no longer the arbiter of taste in the cinema. A growing new middle class, an increasing working class and vast numbers of recent immigrants from the countryside into towns started to play their part in determining the aesthetics of the cinema. Films had to meet their entertainment needs since they constituted the largest segment of the audience. The effect of all this started to be felt in the popular cinema of the sixties. The common denominator of films got lowered, and widened to appeal to the largest number of people. Consequently, there was a growing concern in the State establishment that the increasing number of films being made each year did not indicate any improvement in the quality of cinema. The most frequent criticism was that the popular cinema aped and plagiarized Hollywood films and was not Indian enough. This concern paved the way for State sponsored funding agencies that would help promote a different kind of cinema, one which was not necessarily designed to meet the perceived demands of the marketplace.

By this time Satyajit Ray had arrived on the scene with his highly celebrated cinematic works. His films were not only successful at the box office in his native Bengal but were critically acclaimed all over the world. Ray’s films along with those of his two other contemporaries Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen were not simply vehicles of mass entertainment. Apart from their artistic qualities, they were seen as closer to Indian reality and life. Ironically, given Ray’s own resolute sense of Bengali identification, for cineastes and critics outside India, Ray’s films represented India. Ray’s cinematic aesthetics thus set the tone for the various institutions that the State established for the cinema. The most significant of these were the Film and Television Institute and the Film Finance Corporation. By the beginning of the 1970s graduates from the Film Institute were making films funded by the Film Finance Corporation, which attempted to provide a more realistic depiction of contemporary Indian life. Moreover, after 1971, another factor helped in boosting the prospects of such films. The import of foreign films was cut down drastically, leaving a large number of cinemas, particularly in metropolitan cities, with available playing time. These cinemas catered mainly to a niche audience whose taste did not extend to popular Hindi cinema. Encouraged by the response, several private producers began funding films of this kind. All my films made in the seventies and the eighties were funded by such producers.

If popular cinema worked on the basis of tried and tested formulas in which religious and ethnic minorities rarely, if ever, took centre stage (if a Muslim was to be the protagonist in a film, it could only be in a Muslim social), what was specially significant about the new cinema was that, freed of the constraints of the marketplace, it was able to take on a variety of complex social subjects. In 1969, Mani Kaul, a graduate from the Film Institute made his first film Uski Roti in which the central character was a Sikh, which in itself became a political statement against the unmarked Hindu hero of much popular Hindi cinema. One of the most significant films to be financed by the Film Finance Corporation was M.S. Sathyu’s Garm Hava (1973). It was the first film to grapple with the experience of Indian Muslims in the immediate aftermath of the Partition. As I mentioned earlier, until Garm Hava was made, Muslim characters in popular Hindi films were routinely depicted in token roles, and often without blemish. In this way they were separated from the community, effectively making them the “other” and not part of us.

Based on a short story by Ismat Chughtai and written by Kaifi Azmi, Garm Hava attempted to recreate the predicament of a North Indian Muslim family reacting and responding to the extraordinary circumstances during the time of Partition. The family has to make the painful choice— whether to stay on in their ancestral home in Agra, or leave for Pakistan. The film’s narrative maps the gradual break up and division of the large joint family as individual members depart for Pakistan for various reasons; however, unlike his relatives, the protagonist Salim Mirza refuses to migrate to the new Muslim nation given his attachment to his place. The film traces the gradual breakdown of Salim Mirza’s fortitude in an atmosphere of growing distrust and suspicion against Muslims in post-Partition India, leading to his eventually painful decision to emigrate along with whatever is left of his family. However, inspired by a communist procession affirming the solidarity of the oppressed, the film’s final sequence has Mirza and his younger son Sikandar reversing their decision in spite of all their travails. Despite its affirmative secular-nationalist closure, Garm Hava remains the only film to address the plight of Muslims in post-Partition India in the early years after independence. Ironically, the film found itself in a great deal of trouble with a section of the Muslim community who appealed to the government to ban the film. The censors themselves could not make up their mind; it was a number of years later that the film was finally released. When it did get to be seen all over the country it was via television.

If the establishment of State funded agencies aided the production of films like Garm Hava, it is my suggestion that a historical moment was also an important contributory factor that enabled the film’s production. It is not insignificant that Garm Hava was produced after the 1971 creation of Bangladesh. While the first two decades after Independence continued to be a period of migrations for Muslims, as Pakistan was still an option, this option effectively disappeared after the creation of Bangladesh. In addition, this new partition—this time of Pakistan—along linguistic lines also aided in containing some of the anxieties around Indian Muslims. The commitment of Muslims to India was suddenly no longer a matter of doubt or nationalist anxiety, and therefore Sathyu could choose to take on a topic that until then had been avoided or only referred to in oblique gestures by most popular filmmakers. A film of this kind would have been impossible to make before 1971.

Several stories dealing with contemporary Muslim experience found articulation during the seventies and the eighties in the new cinema. Muzaffar Ali made Gaman (1978) and Anjuman (1986): the former about a Muslim taxi driver in Mumbai and the latter documenting the life of Muslim chikan workers in Lucknow. Satyajit Ray made Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977) set in 1857, based on a Premchand story, and I made Junoon (1978) on incidents in an Uttar Pradesh cantonment town that related the experiences of various communities— Hindus, Muslims, Anglo-Indians and the British who found themselves caught up in the uprising. Soon after, Saeed Mirza made the film Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai (1980) about a Goan Catholic family in Mumbai, and later made Salim Langde Par Mat Ro (1989) on a young thief in a Muslim ghetto. I made a film called Trikal (1985) on a privileged Catholic family set in a Goan village at the time of the liberation of Goa. The earlier diffidence that filmmakers felt in tackling subjects dealing with minority communities was replaced with a new confidence. Sterile representations of the minorities, very much a part of the Indian cinema before 1971, were replaced by films on ordinary people grappling with the problems of life and change in a modernizing world. Several of the films I mentioned earlier had a favourable audience response and some of them were reasonable box office successes.

However, the first film to take up the issue of the Hindu-Muslim divide during Partition was a mini series based on Bhisham Sahni’s novel, Tamas by Govind Nihalani (1987). Fortunately for the series it did not require to be cleared by the Film Censor Board as it was made for television, otherwise the censors would have banned it on grounds that it showed hostility between the communities. While the national television channel Doordarshan was considering telecasting it, militant Hindu groups and some of their affiliates and other constituents, objected violently to the screening. Nihalani’s apartment in Mumbai was attacked and threats were issued against his life. As a result, Doordarshan decided against showing the series citing a threat to peace as right-wing Hindu organizations had also threatened to burn down the television station. Nihalani went to court and the Bombay High Court, after viewing the series, directed Doordarshan to show it as there was nothing unconstitutional in the film to warrant a ban. It was shown in its entirety on prime time to a record audience over three evenings and passed off without incident.

Form and Idiom in Popular Cinema

Indian cinema in many ways is unique to itself. It has a form and idiom that is distinct, and different from all other international cinematic forms and idioms. This has a great deal to do with how and what we in India popularly consider as entertainment.

In all our traditional arts, particularly the performing arts, entertainment is quantified as a combination of the essences of nine basic emotions or navrasas. Complete entertainment is possible only when the nine emotions of love, hate, joy, sorrow, pity, disgust, fear, anger and compassion are blended in different ways around a predominant emotion. The main emotion could be love or valour but without being complemented by the others neither is it defined, nor experienced. Popular Indian Cinema like other traditional arts is an heir to this tradition. The plots and story lines are used as pegs to hang various emotional ingredients that make up for entertainment.

Until fairly recently, most narratives in popular cinema had plot lines largely taken from traditional romances and melodramas that did not require any specific context. Since most plot movements were known, they tended to be predictable. What made one film different from the other were largely the improvisatory elements that came in since most scenes and dialogues were written as the film was being shot. Since film lends itself to spectacle more easily than theatrical productions, it became an integral part of popular cinema. The unfolding of the story itself took place through a series of incidents which were woven together by means of co-incidences, accidents and through songs and dances. Audiences in India have always been accustomed to this form of cinematic narrative almost since the very beginning of cinema.

The psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakar, says, (Popular Indian) cinema presents a collective fantasy— a group daydream, containing unconscious material and the hidden wishes of a vast number of people.

I quote: “The depiction of the external world may be flawed; their relevance to the external life of the viewer remote, yet the popular Hindi film demonstrates a confident and sure-footed grasp of the topography of the changing circumstances of desire… It is the world of imagination fuelled by desire. The relationship between collective fantasy of Hindi films and Indian culture is complex. Though itself a cultural product, Hindi film has shaped culture in an unprecedented way.”

As I said earlier, for many years most popular Hindi films were peopled by characters who had no surnames that would give away their caste and region. This lack of differentiation, except when it came to religion, was designed to create a larger homogenous Indian identity that could be identified by people in different parts of India. Suppressing traditional identities was seen as helping to create a single national identity and inculcate a patriotic spirit. Most film narratives, were broadly speaking, either rural or urban morality tales in which good overcame evil at the end with all the turns and twists in the tale. Traditional morality was sacrosanct even if only lip service was paid to it.

Ashis Nandy has an interesting observation to make about the duality of the rational self (which is modern) as against the secret self (which is traditional) in contemporary Indian literature and films. He suggests that the secret self represents the deep-seated traditional attitudes that appear as subtexts in contemporary works. The rational self would be conscious and overt while the secret self would be unconscious and covert or, as the philosopher Dr Akeel Bilgrami reminded me, may even be the disowned self. I would rather call it the unacknowledged self. This exists in all of popular cinema. I am personally of the opinion that without the subtext of the secret and covert self no film can strike a chord in the Indian audience, nor would it have a chance of popular success. Often what may seem simplistic and banal may possess a complexity that may not seem obviously evident.

A few years ago, the eminent film critic, the late Chidananda Dasgupta wrote: “The Indian cinema never succeeded in emerging into the area of national resurgence in the way painting, dance, drama or music did… (The language of the cinema) was held back by the very fact that it is a modern, industrial, technological medium imported from the West. Not being a traditional medium, there was no ready base for an understanding of it as a new language. The absorption of the cinema into Indian culture was made difficult by the absence of an industrial-technological culture. Grafted on to an agricultural country, it failed to develop a valid artistic form, a cultural contact point with tradition or with reality, it subsisted on an imitation of the West, mainly Hollywood, without producing the fusion of art and box office that Hollywood often represented… The cinema lived in partly enforced isolation (in British India), enclosed comfortably within its own standards. The absence of film culture was as marked as the physical spread of commercial formula-bound cinema.”

Even earlier, speaking on Indian cinema in 1929, Rabindranath Tagore commented, ‘Form in Art changes according to the means it uses. I believe that the new art that could be expected to develop out of the motion picture has not yet made its appearance. In politics we are looking for Independence, in Art we must do the same. Every Art seeks to find its own independent manner of expression within the world it creates; otherwise its self-expression is undermined for lack of confidence in itself… No creative genius has yet arrived to deliver it from its bondage. This act of rescue will not be easy, because in poetry, painting and music the means are not expensive, whereas in the cinema, one needs not only creativity, but financial capital as well.”

While agreeing with several assumptions made by both Dasgupta and Tagore, one cannot brush aside the incredible hold that Indian cinema has not only on the Indian population but on the entire region of South Asia. It is true that Indian cinema developed in a largely agrarian society in a somewhat enforced isolation from the industrial-technological society of its origin. It was taken to enthusiastically by its early practitioners who were part of a newly emerging urban middle class in the commercial cities of Bombay and Calcutta. And it was the urban middle classes who owed their origin to the colonial policies of British India that determined the agenda for Indian cinema in its infancy.

Although the urban middle classes have grown exponentially in the last hundred years and their cultural characteristics have become far more complex, they have continued to remain the predominant influence in the shaping of Indian cinema. Initially, Indian silent cinema was imitative and mimetic of the form it was taking in the West, but soon enough, filmmakers started to look at the existent theatrical entertainment forms that were most successful in urban India at the time. Having appropriated this form, Indian cinema did not have to look any further. This is probably what prompted Chidananda Dasgupta to remark as I quoted earlier, “(to remain) enclosed comfortably within its own standards” and Rabindranath Tagore to bemoan the fact that “the new art that could be expected to develop out of the motion picture has not yet made its appearance.”

By and large, film critics in India have claimed that the forms of popular Indian film did not emerge from the aesthetic and narrative capabilities inherent in cinematic expression as much as it did from Indian theatre prior to the arrival of cinema. Therefore it was difficult to explain in post renaissance western aesthetic terms or in the context of international cinema.

The classical definition of entertainment in Indian aesthetics is a blend of nine rasas. This has always been integral to Indian film. In some way this has inhibited the development of genres in Indian films. All this was soon going to change.

Indian Cinema Today

The last decade and a half has been a time of great change in the cinema as it has been in Indian society. Economic liberalization has led to growth that was unthinkable earlier. A much greater confidence in the nation’s ability to survive and the widespread acceptance of democracy in the body politic, despite pockets of extreme dissatisfaction, can be attributed to the phenomenal growth of the middle class— at last count a larger community than the entire population of the United States. The dissatisfaction of the urban young has more to do with a demand for better governance rather than a rejection of democracy. Alongside, print and electronic media has grown exponentially, saturating the entire media space of the country. From being part of popular culture, cinema, like soap operas and other forms of entertainment and current affairs programming on television, has become a part of mass culture. Film as a cultural artifact has gotten subsumed by its value and worth as a commodity. The effectiveness of cinema in persuasive communication makes it an ideal vehicle for promoting lifestyles. Popular film stars become brands. As brands they promote the sale of any number of products and services often overshadowing their primary profession as actors. They are often valued more as brands than as actors.

Like all aspects of mass culture, it thrives on standardization, inevitably leading to the creation of a single dominant culture. With cultural homogenization and the growth of consumerism, a new set of values has come into being that equates moneymaking with success; media exposure with fame. To be a celebrity you do not need any kind of achievement. Making money is at a premium. Those who cannot make money are automatically excluded.

Mainstream films in recent years have begun to reflect these views. Many of them are peopled with characters that live trans-nationally in considerable material comfort. The only requirement is the ability to accumulate wealth. With wealth you have great social and political influence. The pursuit of these attributes becomes the highest aspiration for the young. Well-being is portrayed in terms of expensive cars, five star comfort, travel in private aircrafts and so on.

While this may be so, there is at the same time, an emerging group of young filmmakers who do not wish to be part of this cultural hegemony. They are making films that are neither imitative, nor are they unconcerned with reality. They are contextual, rooted, identifiable often using language and expression that belongs to the region where the film is located, choosing material often not seen as possible in film entertainment. They have become far more inclusive, both in content and form. In many ways, their postmodernism has made them uninhibited and willing to deal with subjects unthinkable earlier.

Finding Ebert

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The 15th Roger Ebert’s Film Festival is the first to be held after the passing of its founder. Here is an account of the legacy of a man who was one of the most important voices on cinema ever

My only connection with film critic Roger Ebert is tenuous and insignificant— we both graduated from the same university: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, his love for movies, and the fact that Urbana is also his hometown, has made that connection a tad more tangible. For 14 years Ebert visited his hometown every April to host a film festival which was originally known as Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, then Roger Ebert’s Film Festival or simply: Ebertfest.

Like countless other cinephiles, my movie watching experience was incomplete if I did not Google ‘Ebert <insert movie name>’, after watching a film. Ebertfest was a chance for me to see the man whose exhilaration, disappointment, anger and anguish I had experienced only through his words. I wanted to know how he was in person. Would his disappointment with a movie be visible on his face? Would he furrow his eyebrows or shake his head? Was he as compassionate as his writing showed him to be? Was he really as enthusiastic about the movies as his monumental archive of writings would have us believe? How could he be? How could anyone be?

But, in my two years at the University, I did not attend Ebertfest even once. The first year I missed it because of my unrelenting academic workload and, in the second, because of my indolence. “Next year,” I had said. “Roger Ebert isn’t going anywhere.”

This year, in March, I finally decided to redeem my promise to myself and began making travel plans. On April 2, 15 days before the festival was scheduled to begin, Ebert wrote on his blog: “Last year, I wrote the most of my career, including 306 movie reviews, a blog post or two a week, and assorted other articles. I must slow down now, which is why I’m taking what I like to call ‘a leave of presence’.”

Did this mean he wouldn’t be at Ebertfest this year? I grew anxious at first but was relieved to read further on: “Ebertfest, my annual film festival, celebrating its 15th year, will continue at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, my alma mater and home town, April 17-21.” Things were in place. I would travel, watch films, watch Ebert watching those films. Maybe meet him even.

Two days later, Ebert was dead, at the age of 70, at the end of an 11 year long battle with cancer.

 

***

 

The 15th annual Ebertfest would go on as scheduled, announced the organizers. I did not cancel my plans to go.

On most days of the year, travelling from Denver (where I live) to Urbana takes five hours. Yet on this occasion it took me 37— thanks to multiple flight cancellations due to a turbulent snowstorm, and torrential rain. I was two days late for the festival. Two years too late for Ebert.

 

***

 

The venue, the Virginia Theatre, is located on the outskirts of the University town. It is quiet outside. There are a couple of tents selling refreshments and street lamps with small signs saying ‘Welcome to Roger Ebert’s Film Festival’, but the grandeur on the inside belies this modest exterior. Opened in 1921, the theatre is expansive— offering a seating capacity of more than 1500. The architecture is traditional and ornate and intricately painted canvas murals with extensive stenciling adorn the ceiling. Parts of the sidewall give way to small balconies, embellished by ornamental iron railings, and strategically placed lightning fixtures bathe the room in elegance.

Unlike other film festivals, Ebertfest does not accept submissions; the movies screened used to be personally selected by Ebert— particularly from amongst movies that had not got their due (hence the initial tag of ‘overlooked’ to the festival’s title, which was later changed as current and even unreleased films were chosen). Films at Ebertfest don’t compete for awards or deals from distribution companies. But the festival does give them one thing they have usually been denied— an appreciative audience.

This year, every movie at the festival is introduced by Ebert’s wife Chaz, followed by the filmmaker speaking for a while about the movie, and its making. As I take my seat for my first screening, I overhear a lady say, “Just look at the number of people present here. Today is Friday. How many people would have taken time off from work to be here?” Her friend replies: “I have met many people who have come from out of state.” The theatre is full.

The experience of Ebertfest is sacrosanct not just because it is hosted by a legendary movie critic, or because the festival truly celebrates the indie spirit, but also because of the people who support the festival— its audience. The movie watching experience is not just about the people on the screen, or the ones behind it, it is also about the people in front of it. The Ebertfest audience not only loves movies, it reveres them. The audience here is focused and participatory. At opportune moments during a film the laughs are raucous, the applause deafening and the sighs audible.

Every day at the festival begins with panel discussions held in one of the rooms of a student activity centre— the Illini Union. Once the panel discussion concludes, people head towards the Virginia Theatre, which is a mile-and-a-half away. For an audience that’s both eclectic and well informed, there are as many opinions as the number of people at the festival. “To me, Ebertfest is like Roger sitting in his living room and saying – ‘Hey! These are the movies that I really want you to see.’ In this case, his living room happens to be the Virginia Theatre. It’s a wonderful way to remember Roger’s taste; it’s a reminder of what good taste he had. Most film festivals don’t have that feeling of one person’s curatorial vision,” says Michael Phillips, the Chicago Tribune’s film critic.

This is the first time ever that Ebert is not at the festival. But his absence makes itself felt as grace, not melancholia. This has a lot to do with Chaz. When on stage, she reminisces about Roger Ebert with palpable joy and playful excitement. During one of her introductions she laughs about how, of late, she has become foolhardy; she speaks first and then thinks about what she has said: “And I am getting a lot and lot like my husband, who would spring a new surprise every day. He would just say anything. He was so enthusiastic about life that he didn’t care.” Chaz looks up at the ceiling here, smiles a little, shakes her head indulgently and says, “Roger, you’ve had a great influence on me.” And in this moment you feel, suddenly, that you are listening in on what is actually an intimate conversation; as though Ebert were actually listening to her. Chaz must feel this too. In a later speech, while speaking about how Ebert’s team of far-flung correspondents came together, she says, “As you know, if you write to him, he writes back.” She still uses the present tense for him.

The movies this year span many different genres, countries and themes but as, an Urbana local at the festival, who introduces himself only by his first name, Michael, notes: “It’s interesting, how a lot of movies at the festival deal with death.” In the Family, (directed by Patrick Wang), is about a homosexual couple and their six-year old child, and when one of the partners dies, it leaves the other to grapple with the meaning and purpose of his new solitary life. In Blancanieves (a Spanish film directed by Pablo Berger), an excellent silent movie, different characters deal with the deaths of their loved ones in different ways. In a particular disturbing-yet-heartbreaking scene, one character refuses to come to terms with the fact that his lover is no more and sleeps next to her dead body. And then there is Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 Japanese classic, The Ballad of Narayama, a bleak movie based on a Japanese folk legend that is about sending 70-year-olds to the mountains to die, especially in times of food scarcity, so that the younger generation has enough to eat. David Bordwell, a film historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, concludes his introductory note about this movie with these lines: “You probably know that this essay, which is in the [film festival’s] catalogue, is Roger’s last essay for his great movies series. And I am told by Nate Kohn [the festival director] that three weeks before his death, Roger asked that this movie be added to our schedule.” At the movie’s Q & A session, someone from the audience asks Bordwell: “After both watching the film and listening to the discussion I keep thinking about Roger, and his being 70, about the tension in the film between the sort of rage against the light and this acceptance and grace on the other side, and I wondered if there’s a possibility that there’s any message for us in the selection of this film, in the addition to this film, at the last minute, to the schedule.” Bordwell, who’s usually very articulate, struggles to answer this question. “Your points are quite valid, but I can’t go further,” he says. “Probably… he wanted us to think about that.” The grief of Ebert’s death and the joy of cinematic brilliance mingle bafflingly at the venue. Ebert, who was said in a 2010 Esquire profile by Chris Jones to be “dying in increments”, is no more, but he has left us handpicked movies that interpret his final departure; enable us to mourn it, as only art can.

That same night, after the last screening, I see a group of people crowding around something, taking pictures. It is close to midnight and the temperature has dropped to below zero. As I go closer I see an easel with a beautiful hand painted portrait of Roger Ebert in black and white. “I painted everything right here,” says artist John Chansky as he struggles to hold on to the canvas, against the ferocious wind. “There was no plan. I just wanted to come out and pay my respects, and wanted to say thank you for all the years of great entertainment.” People come forward to shake his hand but he can’t as it is soiled with paint. They bump their fists instead.

On an average, there is a gap of an hour or two between the films. In the intervals, most people prefer to lounge in or around the theatre, participating in question and answer sessions with filmmakers, chatting up other attendees or grabbing a quick lunch. They leave whatever they can on their seats— scarves, jackets, handkerchiefs, so the theatre never really feels empty. Most people tend to know one another here. If they don’t, they get to know each other during the festival. Not long after the first screening, faces begin to become familiar. They smile and acknowledge you. The ushers begin recognizing you too; the feeling of being a stranger dissipates quickly. “What I love the most about Ebertfest is that there are no parallel screenings and everything happens at one place. I went to a film festival at Vermont, and they had a total of 85 screenings at three to four venues; it felt very fragmented. On the contrary, Ebertfest has this community feel to it,” says Robin Shelly, who travels from New England every April to attend Ebertfest.

At Ebertfest, movies are not about glamour. There is no red carpet, no paparazzi hounding celebrities. At the last panel discussion of the festival I spot, sitting a few chairs away from me, in the last row, Academy Award winning actress Tilda Swinton, whose film Julia (directed by French filmmaker Erick Zonka, the film is in English and Spanish) was screened at the festival. She seems to be taking notes. It is a luxury for someone like her to watch movies without being hounded in the hallways. “Everybody comes here in this state of security, trust, and company and it’s a community,” she says. “And that’s the best thing about this film festival. He [Ebert] was, and he still is, great company. He knows that cinema is all about company, community, communication, and conversation between people.”

What further strengthens the feeling of community is the fact that people have come together here not only from the different states in the US, but also from different parts of the world— Canada, Norway, Mexico, Brazil and so many other countries. Krishna Shenoi, from Bangalore, India, came to Ebertfest for the first time two years ago, when he was 17 years old. The student and amateur filmmaker’s relationship with Ebert began in the way Ebert’s relationships with so many others began: he wrote to Ebert. “The second I would finish any movie, I would send it to him, because he would tell me something about the movie that would make me want to go out and make the next movie. He was very encouraging, more encouraging than even my parents or my best friends,” says Krishna. A few months ago, he created an animated tribute to Spielberg. Ebert loved it, wrote about it, which resulted in Krishna receiving a hand written reply from the filmmaker.

Everyone at the festival recounts a different Roger Ebert story. Some remember him as a generous colleague, as Phillips does: “My first time at the Cannes film festival, I had no idea what the hell I was doing – where to go, what line to get in, I was getting no sleep, I wasn’t eating regularly. And he just helped me out. He would tell me, ‘These are the people who will fix your tickets, these are the people who will arrange your interviews, you don’t have to go to this screening, don’t leave this event to go to that screening— you can catch it when it plays at 11 o’clock at night.’ A marvelous mentor figure for a lot of us.” Others recall his extraordinary enthusiasm for the movies. People discuss the times gone by. Times when Ebert was healthy. There used to be a midnight movie screening on Saturday. After this, film viewers would stay back to discuss the film at a local diner called Steak ‘n’ Shake. I hear that he would lead all these discussions, till well past 2 am, and be up for screenings early in the morning.

 

***

 

The golden days are over but golden moments are still up for grabs at every screening. Moments in which flickering images in a dark theatre stun us; exhilarate us; deliver us. Moments in which Ebert found himself. Moments in which we will continue to find Ebert. Because there is only so much death can take away.

TBIP Take

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Things That Go Bump in the Movies

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Sometimes the lost possibilities of a movie are more depressing than any poignancy the movie set out to achieve. There is a half hour stretch in Ek Thi Daayan in which everything comes together to show you the movie it could have been. Bobo (Emraan Hashmi) has the feeling that the hauntings have begun again and goes to a therapist he knew as a child. Under hypnosis he remembers a time when he lived with his younger sister and nerdy college professor father (Pavan Malhotra). 11-year-old Bobo (Vishesh Tiwari) uses parlour magic to charm adults and entertain his adoring sister Misha. He is curious, chatty and quite confident. He plays around with an old lift to see whether hitting ‘6’ three times would actually take him down to hell, and only succeeds in scaring the pants off himself and his sister.

Into this wonky life comes Diana (Konkona Sen Sharma) who Bobo immediately suspects is Diana-the-daayan. Why? Just. For a while a delicious tension ensues while Bobo tries to protect his family from the double whammy of Diana’s sex appeal and maternal pretensions. Is she really a witch or is Bobo just terrified of stepmothers? Is his father just happy to be getting an afternoon quickie or is he under a spell? It’s all quite tantalizing, primarily because young Vishesh is superbly convincing. Also, I’ve never liked Konkona Sen Sharma as much as the fork-tongued moment in which she says to Misha, “So sweet. I could just eat you up.”

There is a kind of goofy-yet-thoughtful Wes Anderson air to the flashback (where young Bobo thinks viciously in the backseat that his father in the driver’s seat needs a roundhouse kick to stop letching at Diana, or when his curly head bobs disembodied above a fish tank) which is very appealing. If the register of this flashback had been the whole movie, director Kannan Iyer would have had the kind of movie that terrified generations.

The problem with the rest of the movie is not that Hashmi, (who has that Keanu Reeves blank canvas persona, which makes him quite replaceable but not objectionable) replaces Vishesh. The problem with the rest of the movie is that it is just not scary. It does not tap into any lode of fear that we carry around with us.

The irrational, ancient fear of the stepparent or any manner of attractive cuckoo (such as Diana/ Daayan) that will ruin the picture-perfect family has genuine power. Rising divorce rates in India bring us new versions of this terror. Aatma recently made a ham-handed attempt at exploring the fear of custody battles. The exorcist that Maya Verma (Bipasha Basu) consults to get rid of the ghost of her ex-husband tells her that she can only fight her husband Abhay’s (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) attempts to kill their daughter (from beyond the grave) with love. In one unintentionally hilarious sequence Bipasha finds her tiny daughter Niya on the railings of the balcony of their high-rise apartment. Her homicidal ghost husband at ground level is holding out his arms and urging Niya to jump. Bipasha is edging towards Niya begging her not to jump. Meanwhile Niya is bargaining with ghost daddy: “Mujhein Barbie Doll nahin milin. Main nahin aaoongi.” If Doyel Dhawan, who plays Niya, was a better actor (like Sara Arjun who plays Misha in Ek Thi Daayan), her mouthing the jealous, possessive insults of her dead father would have genuinely creeped parents out. Sadly, Doyel is not scary even when making demonic leaps for her mother’s throat.

An unscary child in demonic possession is an achievement by itself given how pop-culture has trained us to be scared of children (Witness this Spanish Candid Camera style show which plays a brilliant trick on hotel guests with a child actor). Really, the only moment in Aatma which is worth it is when the dead Bipasha gives dead, evil, yet hot husband a jolly good shove across the railway tracks. Why hasn’t anyone made a superhero movie with Bipasha Basu? She could save my life anytime.

But back to the missed opportunities of Ek Thi Daayan which for most of its running time wanders about. And loses an excellent cinematic head start it had in Bobo’s adult career: high-octane, spectacular magic. In one of his opening tricks in front of a huge audience, Bobo sends his assistant up a very high, mildly phallic rope and sets it on fire until she apologizes for coming late— all part of the act. His lover Tamara (Huma Qureshi) is the producer in a glass cubicle enjoying his prowess but also watchful so the show is on track. We never quite return to the flair of this sequence or ever use the exciting world of the magician to plumb our fears. What is adult Bobo scared of? Women with long plaits. I wondered whether the long plaits would resonate again in the sinuous, braided rope he makes his assistants perilously climb, but no luck there.

It is too much to expect Ek Thi Daayan to be the kind of psychological thriller that Malayattoor Ramakrishnan’s Yakshi was— where the hero disfigured by an accident wonders whether the only reason a beautiful woman is in love with him now is because she is a blood-sucking yakshi. The movie could have explored (a tiny bit) the life of a man with a difficult childhood, still stuck with his juvenile nickname (Bobo’s real, adult name Bejoy Charan Mathur is mentioned only once), who hides his fear of women under his shiny shirts, and sexy backchat with his girlfriend. Since he must be the only Hindi film hero whose dead mother does not make an appearance even in a framed photo we would have been (a tiny bit) interested.

This is a country where women and young girls are regularly murdered after being branded witches. It is a widespread, violent paranoia that the movie fails to plug into, regardless of what the Censor Board thinks. The movie instead just has a kind of mealy-mouthed, ambient fear of women that only seems like a variation of the money-grubbing, husband-oppressing viragos of Indian television ads. They can’t be zapped with credit cards but those sinuous, threatening braids can be cut off and then they will be dust. Ek Thi Daayan just mucks about in unreconstructed pentagram-waving, candle-lighting waffle about witches who return on lunar eclipses on Februrary 29 in leap years. Who knew that even Indian witches functioned according to the Gregorian calendar and had a Judeo-Christian Satan? The rules of this fictional universe are so sloppily tacked down, there is no chance for our terrors to take root. (Unlike Ragini MMS with its Marathi-spouting daayan which scared the atavistic pants off me, without ever losing its grip on the Zeitgeist— a young, horny girl, her smart-talking, horndog boyfriend, a dirty weekend away in a lonely house. And the daayan disapproves. Specific. Funny. Terrifying.)

In the one of the last sequences we see Bobo and his adopted son (Zubin, a son acquired without Bobo mixing genes with a woman) doing that ultimate act of cinematic male bonding: barbecuing outside. Bobo tells Zubin that everyone has power in them and we just have to choose whether we use it for good or evil. Sadly, Bobo’s recapturing of his inner power under a full moon and defeating of the many avatars of the daayan, in this less than enthralling context, again seems like an ad for some forgotten branch of the 1970s Men’s Movement, which practised primal scream therapy.

***

I must confess I was often distracted from the collective hotness of Bipasha Basu, Huma Qureshi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui by the alternate-universe real estate on view in these two movies. Did anyone track the square feet of Bobo and Tamara’s aalishaan bungla? Or the size of Maya Verma’s flat (“change the font and background on this design” must be a very well-paying job)? And when someone offers to pay Rs 2 crore in white, by cheque, for a Bombay flat you should call an exorcist.

To Bollywood or not to Bollywood

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A report from the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, 2013

There’s no doubting the clout of the Indian diaspora in the United States when it comes to Indian movies. This diaspora has molded the box-office results of many commercial Indian releases in the past, so much so that it is recognized as a legitimate market now. But far from the bustle of mainstream entertainers, which the aforementioned audience usually endorses, every year in April the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) showcases, over a span of five days, diverse Indian films— mostly ones made on modest budgets, whose paths to theatrical release are littered with commercial diktats.

ArcLight Cinemas, a multiplex on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard, has been hosting IFFLA for the past 11 years. The festival logo—a grey and black sketch of an ‘Indian’ woman’s head, her hair in a bun, a flower near her ear and a red bindi, the only dash of colour in this portrait, on her forehead—can be seen on signs affixed to steel street lamps a few feet from the multiplex entrance, and on stands near IFFLA’s information booths. But the multiplex’s façade is too imposing, so the signs don’t quite stand out in their milieu, and are quietly absorbed. As you enter, on your left, is a sprawling yet makeshift stage, mostly used for live music and dance. On the right is a café that doubles as a sort of open lounge for the festival’s attendees to loll about in. The crowd comprises amateur filmmakers, actors, film school students, or just regular cinephiles. This is a nice place to strike up breezy conversations with filmmakers before a movie screening. It has a cosy feel. People seem accessible here, and devoid of pretence and formality.

***

Contrary to what one would expect, the IFFLA was not conceived by an NRI, rather a woman who hails from Greece, Christina Marouda. Cinema has often been extolled for its power to transcend geographical and cultural boundaries; Marouda’s story serves as a fine example. Growing up in Greece, she was enamored by Indian cinema, and did not shrug her passion even after she moved to the United States. “I had worked at a couple of international film festivals in Los Angeles, and was surprised that India had been overlooked at film festivals in the US. Considering that there’s a large South Asian population in Los Angeles, I felt Indian cinema needed a platform,” says Marouda, IFFLA’s chairperson. One fortuitous afternoon in 2001, she walked into a crowded theatre, in the heart of Los Angeles, screening Lagaan, and was convinced that Indian cinema had a market. Her interest in Indian cinema and the confirmation of its demand culminated in IFFLA. Established in 2002, the festival is now among a handful in the US that focus exclusively on Indian cinema. It is the second film festival in the country to do so, the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) being its senior by a year-and-half. Outside India, the idea of an Indian film festival is still in an inchoate state. USA is the only country where Indian film festivals have begun to mushroom, albeit at a sluggish pace. Besides IFFLA and NYIFF, there are three other Indian film festivals in the US: the South Asian International Film Festival, the Indian Film Festival of Houston, and the India International Film Festival – Tampa Bay.The festivals at Houston and Tampa Bay have been around for less than five years.  

***

Filmmakers are integral to any film festival. Filmmakers who screen their films at a festival, or those who simply attend it. It would not be amiss to say that the significance of a film festival is largely a function of how it supports the film community. This year at IFFLA, filmmakers such as Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta were present for their respective movies’ screenings. Also, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap. In fact, quite a few of those present at IFFLA this year have been involved in some way or the other with Kashyap’s production house Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt. Ltd. (AKFPL), that has been credited with being at the helm of a new kind of Hindi cinema, often called ‘New Bollywood’, and whose movies have been visible of late at key festivals around the world. There is Guneet Monga, Producer at AKFPL, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Manoj Bajpai, who have acted in AKFPL’s Gangs Of Wasseypur (directed by Kashyap) and directors Hansal Mehta and Vasan Bala, whose movies AKFPL has produced. “IFFLA is very relevant for us Indian filmmakers. It’s a place where you come to discover new Indian filmmakers. Initially, when all my films were banned, I screened Black Friday and Paanch here, and they drew a lot of attention,” says Kashyap, whose Gangs of Wasseypur opened the festival this year.

Also, the credibility of a film festival hinges a lot on the kinds of movies it espouses. The relationship is symbiotic— the films feed off the visibility gained at the festival; in return accomplished movies elevate a film festival’s stature as few other things can. In the past, IFFLA has done a fine job of culling interesting, independent movies: Supermen of Malegaon, Sita Sings the Blues, Leaving Home: the Life and Music of Indian Ocean, Patang, among other notables. However, this year’s lineup is disappointingly lopsided: on the one hand, there are unreleased small independent movies that have been lauded across a wide spectrum: Miss Lovely, Ship of Theseus, Celluloid Man, Peddlers. And on the other hand, there are movies that were released commercially almost a year back: Gangs of Wasseypur, Arjun: The Warrior Prince, Eega. Film festivals are pivotal in providing visibility to movies that are still getting discovered, still finding their audience. So, it’s a bit difficult to ascertain what these done-and-dusted movies bring to the festival.

Film festivals are also significant because they facilitate a much required confluence of art and commerce. They provide many emerging, independent filmmakers the coveted opportunity to network and find suitable buyers for their movies. “Being in the heart of Los Angeles, IFFLA puts the filmmakers in touch with so many people who are looking for new interesting voices. For instance, on the first day of the festival, there were seven studio representatives and many producers,” says Kashyap. Andy Bird, Chairman, Walt Disney International (in charge of Disney’s business outside the US) had been honoured by IFFLA in 2008. This year, just over a year since Disney acquired UTV (one of India’s biggest motion picture producers), he is the keynote speaker at the festival.

IFFLA had also instituted a Film Fund Development Grant that awarded $10,000 to Kranti Kanade for his script, Against Itself, which was made into a feature length movie, Gandhi of the Month, starring Harvey Keitel. This was in 2009; since then, the award has been discontinued due to a lack of sponsorship. “I would love to see more funding coming through, more funding from India. To this date, we have hardly received any funding from India,” says Marouda.

ArcLight Cinemas is a 14 screen multiplex that usually screens mainstream Hollywood releases. During the course of the festival, two to three screens are reserved for the movies screened at IFFLA. IFFLA hardly commands any exclusivity at this venue. Its three small booths in front of the multiplex are rather inconspicuous, and the buzz around them insubstantial. Also, its efforts to attract the spotlight appear rather frivolous: Bollywood songs blare unabashedly from the booth, at times the stage is occupied by an A cappella group, and at times by a bunch of dancers prancing to the music. The dance, the music, and the overt familiarity of the set up; do you need a film festival for these bubblegum exotic reaffirmations? Especially since, ultimately, all this hoopla achieves little. Minutes before the Peddlers screening, I found myself talking to an American moviegoer outside the multiplex’s entrance. “So, are you here for the film festival?” I asked. “What film festival?” he replied.

It is not uncommon for people to equate Indian cinema to Bollywood. This parochialism is heightened outside India, where disparate regional movies seldom release. Film festivals like IFFLA can do their part to dispel this perception. But has it? In terms of its cinema, how indicatively, if not comprehensively, ‘Indian’ is IFFLA? Despite its assiduous efforts, it could do a lot more. Shrugging the Bollywood hangover could be the first step. For IFFLA, a film festival primarily interested in promoting Indian cinema, its oft-recurring feature ‘Bollywood by Night’—an event that showcases Bollywood movies—seems to be at odds with the festival’s own ambition. For those few screenings, the spotlight shifts to Bollywood; this constricts the festival’s focus, and veers it away from its original purpose. “I don’t understand some of their past movie choices. What were movies such as 3 Idiots or My Name is Khan doing at a film festival?” says Aman Segal, an independent filmmaker and a regular attendee at IFFLA.

IFFLA has also paid tribute to film personalities over the years by screening their movies at the festival. But these too have been centred around Bollywood, which is as confounding. Why would a film festival that intends to reach far and wide within the domain of Indian cinema choose to pay tribute to mainstream actors like Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit? Not that their contribution to Indian cinema should be undermined, but when there’s a host of Indian film personalities to choose from, some of whom have provided a radically different dimension to the Indian motion picture, why restrict such tributes to those in the mainstream?

One can sense that IFFLA is trying hard to find a balance— between being frothy and sincere, between hosting Bollywood and truly Indian cinema, between being visible, and spoken of, and being niche, but relevant. It’s never an easy thing to do. You win some, you lose some. But the important thing is to fret over the right choices, because being small and being insignificant are two very different things.

filmflam

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filmflam is a new monthly column on the most exciting things to do with the movies online: photographs, art, writing, blogs, websites, trailers, films, tutorials, archival material. Our custom-made curation of cinematic coolth. 

 

Ebert on a shirt, hot wheels and Punjabi pixies

 

The Roger Ebert Review I’d Like To Wear On A T-Shirt

Ten days ago, Roger Ebert left us for that great aisle seat in the sky. It’s hard to speak about the impact Roger had—on all of us who read about film—and the Internet is justifiably flooded with eulogies, tributes and lists quoting from his extensive library of reviews.

This piece from Forbes, for example, sharply highlights what makes Roger’s legacy so vital while (perhaps too snarkily) putting down other obits. And this bit by Jim Emerson, who worked closely with Roger on his website, provides some telling detail about the man— most importantly that he’d prefer we not gush maudlinly about his passing.

So we should smile. At Roger’s deliciously heady and unbelievably profane ‘interview’ with Lee Marvin; at a slugfest of an interview Playboy did with Ebert and Gene Siskel; and at that 2010 Esquire profile of Ebert which filled us with hope and wonder while snapping our collective hearts like twigs.

Like I said, there are lists everywhere: of his best reviews, his meanest putdowns, the best of his sentences, and yet more of his harshest. Heck, you probably have your own lists. We all do.

Which brings us down to my pick for The Roger Ebert Review I’d Like To Wear On A T-Shirt.

It’s for a 2004 movie called Shaolin Soccer.

You remember Shaolin Soccer, don’t you? It was that hyperkinetic Stephen Chow film about a ragtag bunch of misfit loony tunes who could make the X-Men feel unspecial. I don’t love the film (and feel Chow’s next, Kung Fu Hustle, was far more stylish and satisfying) but Roger did. But that’s not why I think this is one of his most important reviews.

I think this review matters massively because in it Roger breaks down that bane of a film critic’s existence: the star-ratings system. A film we rate three stars isn’t automatically better than a film we rate two stars; it’s apples and oranges; films are rated not merely on a sliding scale, but on one that bends and timewarps and shapeshifts and rollercoasts.

Like Roger says while giving Shaolin Soccer three stars, “it is piffle, yes, but superior piffle. If you are even considering going to see a movie where the players zoom 50 feet into the air and rotate freely in violation of everything Newton held sacred, then you do not want to know if I thought it was as good as Lost In Translation.”

It’s priceless. Trust me, if there is only one movie review you read today (and then pass along to everyone you know), make it this one. Here you go.

This subjectivity—of how there are different standards for different films—is something most people who read reviews fail to understand, and it kills those of us forced to boil our paragraphs down into an empirical ranking. (How I can possibly rate, for example, three episodes of a television sitcom better than the year’s Best Picture winner on my annual English movie list, for example.)

In 2008, Ebert wrote wonderfully about star-ratings again, unashamedly putting down purely personal reasons for giving “too many stars”, before pointing us towards a truly inspired visual rating in The San Francisco Chronicle that he called the only system that works. And, as was the norm, Roger ended the piece immaculately.

 

~~

 

Trailer of the month: Rush

(Or, if you so prefer, Thor-mula One)

I can’t believe I’m this kicked about a film directed by Ron Howard. Look, I’ve nothing against the guy; I dug Happy Days hugely in the day and think he’s incredible as the deadpan narrator of Arrested Development. But to queue up for the man who made The Da Vinci Code and Cinderella Man?

Yup.

Because this time he’s taking on Formula One. And, from the looks of it, he’s on the right track. (Sorry). In Rush, coming to theatres this September, Howard takes on one of Formula One’s most dramatic, most scintillating true-life battles: the fight between James Hunt and Niki Lauda for the 1976 World Championship. The word ‘epic’ comes to mind… and then exits mind immediately for not being nearly bombastic enough. It’s a scorcher of a story.

The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Hunt, the most glamorous and eccentric Formula One champion in history, a true character. And opposite him is the stoic Austrian hero Niki Lauda, played by Daniel Brühl, who most of us remember from Inglourious Basterds.

Perhaps most importantly, Howard’s got the right guy to write the film. British playwright and super-scribe Peter Morgan, the man behind The Deal, The Queen, The Special Relationship and—the last time he collaborated with Howard—Frost/Nixon. Oh yeah.

Shot by the ever-striking Anthony Dod Mantle (Dogville, Slumdog Millionaire, Antichrist), Rush is looking mouthwateringly good. Here, after all that ado, is the trailer: the US version gives away a bit too much, so try not to click on that, but the international version is delicious. Vroom.

 

~

 

Tumbl this: Vol 1

There are too few truly incredible tumblrs to do with Hindi cinema. There’s a smattering—Paagal Subtitle is grand, and moments of genius can be found at the irresistibly titled Feminist SRK—but all in all, the insanely amazing, amazingly insane world of Bollywood is woefully underrepresented on Tumblr.

To that end, I propose to suggest one Tumblr topic each month. One with enough meat on it so you guys can roll with it and turn it into something flabbergastingly great.

Here, then, is the one this month, taking a cue from a review I wrote a couple of days back for a trashy film. You all know what a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is, right? (Okay, it’s a highly overused character archetype, one who sassily storms into the hero’s mostly sedate existence and whirlwindily brings him to life.)

What we need to look for? The Manic Punjabi Dream Girl.

Like Kareena Kapoor’s Geet from Jab We Met. Like Kajol from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

Basically everything a standard MPDG is, just dialled up louder, with an exaggeratedly heavy accent and (much) flashier clothing. Go on, bring forth thy kooky kudis.

Shahid Azmi Haazir Ho

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A murder, a movie, and the man in between the two

 

What’s in a name? The name ‘Shahid’ could mean ‘witness’ or ‘martyred’ in Arabic. In Urdu, Shaheed means martyred, Shahid— witness.

 

On February 11, 2010, 32 year old lawyer and activist Shahid Azmi was gunned down by four men in his office at Taximen Colony, Kurla, Mumbai. He left behind a wall riddled with bullet holes and splattered with blood.

 

Next day morning, filmmaker Hansal Mehta read of Azmi’s killing in the front page of The Times Of India. A photograph of that wall, with blood and bullet holes, is all he can remember of the article today. An hour later, Mehta had tweeted: “I have found the subject for my next film.”

 

It had only been a few days since Mehta had moved into a new flat in Oshiwara, Mumbai. Two years ago, his last film, a Bollywood potboiler called Woodstock Villa, had led Mehta to claim he was “creatively dead”, and move to a house in Lonavla, a hill station a couple of hours away. But the distance from the city wasn’t allowing him to “do justice to his work”. “Also, I was getting very retired with my whole approach to life.”

 

So Mehta bought his first house (he had lived with his parents before this) in Bombay, the city he had been born and brought up in, or Mumbai, the city it had become. Mehta claims the reason Azmi’s story appealed to him was “a growing concern about the polarized world we live in. Mumbai’s second largest community is that of Muslims. And yet Mumbai is so deeply polarized, that the attitude towards Muslims is that they should be bracketed. They’ve also begun to take this bracketing very seriously— to live in this bubble.”

 

In 2000, after Mehta released his second film Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!, Shiv Sena workers stormed into his office to teach him a lesson for a dialogue from the film that they felt was ‘anti-Maharashtrian’, because it described Khar-Danda, an area in Mumbai, as a place where there was “loot-maar, chori (robbery, thievery)” and “ladkiyon ka adda (which implies prostitution)”. “They vandalized the office. I was thrashed,” is all Mehta says about the incident today. There is more in reports from the time and a blog post written by Mehta himself. His face was blackened with ink. He was summoned to Khar Danda to apologize to 20,000 people and 10 politicians and to kneel and touch his forehead to the feet of an elder there. (They threatened that such assaults would continue if he didn’t do this, they threatened to burn down the home of Kishore Kadam, who had acted in his movie). “There was no one to take up for me,” Mehta says. “(Mahesh) Bhatt Saab called me the day after this and said: We are with you.” The state government then was run by a coalition of the Indian National Congress (INC) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal called to say: “We will protect you,” to which Mehta replied: “The time to protect me has gone.” He felt “really let down by Bombay.”

 

***

 

A decade later, when Mehta read about Azmi’s murder, his only contact with the lawyer had been a phone call, where Mehta had asked him about an inmate who had been imprisoned at Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail at the same time as Azmi. “He said he didn’t have time then, and to call him later,” Mehta remembers. “Perhaps he didn’t want to revisit those days.”

 

But Mehta has tried hard to revisit those days—that bridge the gap between two points in the life of a man that are on either side of the law, the gap in between witness and martyr—in the two and a half years after he read that report. In these years, claims Mehta, “I have lived with Shahid”.

 

***

 

In the beginning, for a few months, he read everything he could find on Azmi. “I wanted to stay with the idea. Nurture it to see if and how it could be a film.”

 

Sameer Gautam Singh, an aspiring screenwriter from Delhi, had asked Mehta to take a look at a script he had written during this time. “It was a twisted love story. I didn’t quite know how to respond to it.” When he didn’t, Singh sent Mehta a “strongly worded” email with lines like “‘you might not have time for me today, but one day you’ll have a lot of time for me’… or something like that,” Mehta recalls, laughing. When Singh visited Mehta’s office the next day and asked for his script back, Mehta met him and said he didn’t really identify with the script he had written, but asked him whether he would like to work on another idea.

 

Singh and Mehta’s son Jai did most of the initial legwork (“I felt that, in the beginning, if I  went, the family would see me as a person with vested interest— especially since my last movie didn’t lend itself to this kind of film.”). They interviewed Azmi’s family (his mother Rehana and brothers Tarique, Rashid, Arif and Khalid) and colleagues and spent time in the milieu Azmi had lived and worked in. Then Mehta met the family himself. Conversations with each family member opened up a new window: “Each of them had a distinct personal relationship with him.” Khalid, a lawyer himself, provided them with legal papers and pleas his brother had prepared for key cases. “They were almost entirely devoid of any legalese,” says Mehta, whose first film, …Jayate, is based on lawyers as well. “They were written in simple English.”

 

Key cases such as those of accused arrested under POTA (the Prevention of Terrorism Act) or MCOCA (the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act) which were legislations that allowed for confessions extracted from the accused in police custody—often through torture, deceit or other questionable means—to be admissible in a court of law. Such confessions, even today, result in the imprisonment of the accused in terrorism cases, for long periods, without bail. Accused like Arif Paanwala (2002 Ghatkopar Bus Bombing), later acquitted, or those accused in the 7/11 Mumbai local train blasts, the 2006 Aurangabad Arms Haul, the 2006 Malegaon Blasts. Azmi secured 17 acquittals in a short-lived legal career of only seven years. Acquittals of men who had emerged out of crazed media furors and shoddy investigation work by enforcement authorities under pressure to deliver, who would dish out mug-shots that would be plastered on TV and in print, to create our poster boys of hatred, to be hated, a few for every season of terror strikes. In defending these poster boys,Azmi became something of a poster boy himself. Standing steadfast as witness to their cries in the wild, he became their martyr. His last well-known and well-hated client was Faheem Ansari, accused of conspiracy in the 26/11 attacks. He was acquitted on 3 May, 2010. But his name was finally cleared of any complicity in the attacks by the Supreme Court on August 29, 2012, two years, six months and 18 days after Azmi’s death, and 11 days before Mehta’s Shahid premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

 

Raj Kumar Yadav plays Azmi, an actor, not a star, even though not casting a star meant that Mehta had to compromise significantly on the budget of the film. Yadav was made a part of the research. He accompanied the team to lower courts, where they sat in on sessions and often surreptitiously clicked reference photographs from their phones to aid the authenticity of what they would create.

 

Mehta remembers that, while researching …Jayate, it had occurred to him that courtrooms were almost exactly “like fish markets”. But in the film itself he had shown the proceedings as sanitized and respectful, as they are in Bollywood, or even Hollywood, legal dramas. In Shahid, Mehta has tried to undo this. Lower court arguments, even those involving terrorism cases, often culminate in spats between advocates, on the court floor, that you cannot help but laugh out loud at. The fact that this laughter distracts you momentarily from the fact that a human life hangs in balance, makes the trial all the more horrific when you return your attention.

 

Khalid also provided the team with material that his brother and he had studied from for their LLB exams. Not thick law books, but printed and stapled ‘notes’, that sell faster than AIRs (All India Reporters that record the judgments for each and every case) at legal book stores. These notes concise each subject into 50 odd pages. Most students around India are familiar with them, many swear by them. Mehta filmed Yadav reading these notes diligently, when he wanted to show Azmi preparing for his law exams. He filmed Yadav in the same room that Azmi had once studied in, and he filmed him in other real locations, like the Dongri office of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, an NGO providing legal aid to poor accused in terrorism cases, that Azmi fought many of his cases in consultation with.

 

***

 

The other side was trickier. Azmi is said to have joined a training camp in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir after the 1992 riots. “I had seen policemen killing people from my community. I have witnessed cold-blooded murders. This enraged me and I joined the resistance,” a 2004 report inThe Times Of India quotes him as saying. He was arrested by the Govandi Police on charges of communal violence, under TADA or the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (which was finally repealed in 1995) when he was 16 (this was despite the fact that he was a minor). Additional charges framed against him, after he was arrested, were that he was conspiring to assassinate Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray and J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. He was in jail for over five years, till 2001, when the Supreme Court acquitted him. It was in prison that he completed his graduation, as well as a post-graduate degree in Creative Writing. It was after Azmi was released that he studied law.

 

“The details about his time in Kashmir are very sketchy,” says Mehta. “No one (among his family and colleagues) talks about it.” Still, Mehta found one person, whose name he does not wish to disclose, who spoke about this time. “Especially about him missing his home, and his disillusionment with the movement,” Mehta says. Similarly, there were not many people who could recount the details of Azmi’s time in jail, though Mehta says he knows from what he has gleaned that it “transformed him”. Mehta says: “A lot of the film is based on what I imagined his journey to be.”

 

There is a scene in the film where Azmi has his face blackened by right wing goons. There is no account of this ever actually happening, though he did receive endless death threats for the cases he took up. But as Azmi saw himself in so many young men he was trying to save from unwarranted torture and imprisonment, so did Mehta see himself in Azmi. “That incident, in the film, was fiction. It was my connection with Shahid, who was persecuted in different ways,” Mehta says. “The truth of the matter is that that incident, what happened with me in 2000, has never left me. And that the violation of our basic right to expression has become even more deep-rooted today. When I see someone being violated, I go back to that incident.”

 

Mehta is happy with the fact that Khalid said, after watching the movie, that it was “95% accurate”. “When you see Raj Kumar, you do not remember him, you remember the character,” says Mehta about why he thinks Yadav has been an excellent choice for Azmi.

 

But there might be another reason. “As I listened to his words, I couldn’t help but fear for his future,” Letta Tayler, a researcher in the Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism program at the Human Rights Watch (HRW), had said about how she felt when she met Azmi in 2009. “The light he radiated seemed impossibly bright.” Perhaps the truth of the matter is that no actor, nor star, could have played Azmi. Even the best method actor would be at a loss as to how to recreate an aura that emerges out of a lifetime of pain, grit and inconceivable optimism (Azmi was not, as many self anointed saviours try to be, the light at the end of the tunnel. He was the light in it). Yadav, in his studied portrayal, has done the next best thing— paid a simple, wholehearted tribute to the man who is no more.

 

In a similar vein, Mehta’s script, which was initially non-linear and complicated (“When I showed people a linear script they felt it would be too long and boring”), was returned at the editing table to an unbroken storyline by his editor Apurva Asrani (who also has writing credits on the film). “He started a non-linear cut, then stopped, because he felt it wasn’t working,” says Mehta. “So, like with a documentary, we built the narrative on the table.”

 

Shahid‘s producer, Sunil Bohra, came to the shoot one day and asked Mehta: “What kind of director are you? There are no top-angle shots, no dolly, no rig. I’m telling you— you can take these things.” Mehta didn’t need to. “When he (Bohra) saw the film, he got it,” he says. To have stylized Shahid, this rare narrative of our times—not Gandhi, not Jodhaa Akbar, but a narrative that has been woven by us, that we continue to endure—would have been inappropriate. Mehta has played it straight. “I did not want to show off,” he says. “I did not want to manipulate the audience.” Thankfully. How much of life do we see through top-shots anyway?

 

Also thankfully, Mehta claims he hasn’t had to make any cuts to the film to have it passed by the Central Board of Film Certification (though a crew member reveals that the refusal to remove a scene that shows Azmi being tortured on arrest may have gained him an A certificate). Of course the moral police may come knocking on his door again, but “this time,” says Mehta: “I am not afraid. I will not take it lying down.”

 

So, unlike in so many other cases, once Shahid releases we may just see the same film that was lauded at so many festivals. Festivals where, in front of cinema theatres full of people, Azmi has been shot, right at the beginning of each showing. The film goes on for a gripping two hours, at the end of which the scene plays out again leaving, each time, a wall ridden with holes.

 

Who were the men who shot Shahid Azmi? Who sent them? These are the first questions Mehta has been asked by audiences at each festival. “The sad part of our investigation processes is that you never know what really happened,” he says. “There is only speculation. And there are vested interests (that misdirect the investigation).” He also says: “For me, who killed him is irrelevant. It angers me enough that someone walked into his office and killed him.” He adds: “There are mainstream films, like Kurbaan, that provide you with both the problem and the solution— often a half-baked solution. What do you take back from the theatre? Nothing!”

 

***

 

Perhaps it is just as well that Mehta didn’t delve into who killed Azmi. Doing so could have been read as a filmmaker commenting on a subject that was sub judice by the Court and, like Black Friday (directed by Anurag Kashyap, one of this film’s co-producers), Shahid’s release might have been delayed endlessly. Mehta, however denies that this was a consideration. He claims his decision was purely creative. And it pays off well. The identity of his killers, like the proverbial elephant in the room, begins to bother the viewer. The blood stained wall looms large and follows you out of the theatre. Perhaps this is Shahid‘s greatest strength. By not telling you, it makes you want to know.

 

In February, 2010, the month in which Azmi was murdered, four accused were arrested under MCOCA in connection with the case. They were Devendra Jagtap, Pintu Dagale, Hasmukh Solanki and Vinod Vichare. The police claim the accused were members of a gang run by Bharat Nepali. Four months later, in June, Azmi’s peon Inder Singh, the only key witness in the case who was present at the office, received a threat call that was traced to Gujarat. In November, the same year, a gangster was gunned down by suspected Chhota Rajan henchmen in Bangkok. The police have now confirmed this was Nepali.

 

On January 20, 2011, a MCOCA Court dropped its special charges against the accused because it found no evidence of the fact that “pecuniary gains were made in the crime, a mandatory aspect for MCOCA charges.” Then, on April 8, 2011, Crime Branch officials apprehended a man, named by the press only as ‘Munna’, with a gun and a few live cartridges at the Kala Ghoda Court. Munna had allegedly arrived there, with an accomplice, to free the four accused who were in a hearing at the Court then.

 

On July 23, 2012, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Vichare, against a personal bond of Rs 50,000, because he was not “shown to be present” during the assassination.

 

***

 

“Do you think Mohamed Atta is a big terrorist? The guy who flew the plane into the World Trade Centre?” asks Mehta, when speaking of who could have killed Azmi. “Or Kasab? The real perpetrators, who gave the orders, are sitting pretty.”

 

Azmi’s death has been clouded by its share of conspiracy theories. There is a theory that he had received phone calls from underworld dons who were Muslim, congratulating him on his work, and that this angered Hindu gangsters such as Bharat Nepali, or Chhota Rajan, who got him killed. Another rumour is that intelligence agencies weren’t happy with the way he was blowing holes into the State’s cases, and making the enforcement look bad. And that he was aware of some greater conspiracy underfoot, that they wanted to hide. And so they wanted him out of the way.

 

Unlike Oliver Stone’s JFK, Mehta’s Shahid isn’t an investigation into any of these theories. Perhaps because, unlike JFK, which was released 28 years after the president’s assassination, it has only been three years since Azmi passed away, and there is no District Attorney called Jim Garrison asking the tough questions.

 

Or maybe there’s the irony. That Azmi was our Garrison, our witness, now martyred. “Human rights are violated by the most powerful,” says Mehta. “And the people who fight it have no protection.” Shahid is not a whodunit, but about a larger picture, he says. “If you ask me,” he says. “I think we killed Shahid.”