TBIP Take

Posted on March 12, 2013 by admin

Queer of My Dreams

Last month, in Bangalore, during the book tour of her first novel, Not Only The Things That Have Happened, author Mridula Koshy said, “I am fed up with writers saying that they want to show human beings are the same everywhere. It seems like a dull ambition.” Directors of queer cinema too often fall into the trap of talking about their work in the same-same or same-but-different or so-different-you-can’t-touch-this-but-I-see-you-baby terms.

Let’s eavesdrop on filmmaker Andrew Haigh feted for his film Weekend, a film about two gay men who fall in love after a casual encounter in a bar. In this piece he says, “You want to be able to describe the gay experience in all its complexity without worrying that your film has to represent a community.” He goes on to say, “But we can move away from the big issues and go a few layers deeper, which makes the films more accessible to a lot of people because they’re about more universal issues. These characters’ struggles aren’t just about being gay.” Here I do not want to dismiss Haigh’s concerns but I just wonder about all the other things he could be saying about his film-making process, if he wasn’t being knotted up by questions of universality. Perhaps it’s just that filmmakers, like dancers, should never talk about their work.

By a series of mysterious incidents, I was one of the four judges at the recently concluded fifth edition of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival. The results are out and you can check them out here. More importantly, you should make serious attempts to seek out some of these films. Even better, make plans to arrive at the next edition and enjoy the warm, relaxed hijinks among which movies and performances are watched at BQFF. We could wave at each other.

BQFF programming leans towards short films and the 26 short films in competition were, for most part, wonderful. Even the tiny, somewhat lazily made Can You See The Real Me? (director: Pankaj Gupta) was a great vehicle for the charisma of the transgender hair stylist Sylvie. The handful of Spanish short films were supremely competent, ranging from the black comedy of the love triangle in Ratas (Jota Linares) to the girlfriend-swapping fun of Vecinas (Eli Navarro). It’s impossible to not enjoy the smirking seriousness with which Love Wars (Vicente Bonet) has been made. Two gay stormtroopers, as identical as two penguins, discuss their relationship and politics while war rages outside the Death Star. It is the most charming Star Wars spoof since Eddie Izzard and more romantic than the ‘official’ sequels in which Hans Solo and Leia have children with Malayali sounding names (Jacen, Jaina and Anakin).

The most romantic of the shorts was the Thai entry, She Is My Best Friend (Jirassaya Wongsutin). One minute, life is about ensuring your best friend doesn’t lose her hair band or cheat too much at badminton and then, nothing looks right anymore. This 13 minute film made me wonder again where Thai and Korean directors find their amazing child actors.

The meme of romance in unlikely places continued into the German Zucht Und Ordnung (Jan Soldat) where two naked elderly men demonstrate their bondage gear, talk about life and send up the shiny youthfulness of gay romcoms.

Annoyingly the same audience that laughed non-stop at the daft, blackmailed and brutalized lesbians in the Hindi short Tamaso Maa Jyotir Gamaya (Arshad Khan) lapped up the much worse pap of Reminiscence of Ether (Veena Kulkarni) in which two similarly daft women meet, fall in love, consider adoption, break up, have angst and stunning lines such as: “You are late.” “Call me fashionably late.” Reminiscence faked sophistication no better than Tamaso Maa… faked the downfall of the wealthy. Unlike Tamaso Maa…, Reminiscence… is Anglophone, and it doesn’t have an Ekta Kapoor aesthetic or villains in a seedy den. This somehow translated to Reminiscence… getting the BQFF 2013 Audience award and various weeping, life-changing moments in the aisles.

This year’s festival programming had a few more features than usual. Many of them were dreary enough for me to wish for a return to a short-film heavy status quo. Nevertheless you should watch a couple of the features if you want a quick jolt out of any vanilla-Hollywood zone you might inadvertently be in.

I first watched Mondomanila: Or How I Fixed My Hair After A Rather Long Journey, last year at an Osian screening in Blue Frog, Delhi. It was mid-morning and outside the world was calm. Inside, there were only three of us in the dark, sitting in alien-designed bar furniture watching Mondomanila, swinging between shock and resentment at being manipulated into shock. Re-watching it last week left me in roughly the same state. From the first time director Khavn De La Cruz’s cast of characters in a Manila slum make their appearance, right up to their parting sing-along, the intention is clear: we want you to be bug-eyed. The rat-eating, the twin lesbian dwarf sex, the murder of an American paedophile all feel like they were made to toy with the sensibilities of First World critics who have called Khavn De La Cruz everything from the Filipino Bunuel to the Filipino Takashi Miike. The carnivalesque air, the jolly bloodshed and what De La Cruz calls “a close-up view of all that gangrene and pus” all skates past you though. An hour later it’s hard to remember any of the “backyard full of lovable fuckers” De La Cruz reportedly wanted to make a film about. Except perhaps a hazy memory of a little guy in a stars-and-stripes top hat.

Don’t try and watch the Pakistani feature Bol, on the same day. You will need all the faculties from a lifetime of melodrama-watching to appreciate its full charms. Notionally it is about Saifi, the intersexed child born in a household of seven sisters and his suffering at the hands of his father and lecherous men. Mostly, the film is about Saifi’s father.

If Bol does seem to suggest that patricide is the way to a fuller, capitalist life don’t let it distract you from the cast of pretty women including Iman Ali from Shoaib Mansoor’s earlier film Khuda Ke Liye, the kind of oppressive father you haven’t seen in years, a kindly languishing mother and the brief appearances of a beedi-smoking dai and a hijra with a can-do attitude.

Perhaps a Thai, Pakistani or Filipino director should have been set to the task of adapting Sarah Water’s The Night Watch. This was the first of Waters’ non-Victorian-lesbian-romps. The bloodless adaptation of the story of three lesbians and a gay man in post WW2 London reminded me of another Eddie Izzard theory where he neatly categorizes much of British cinema as being “a room with a view with a staircase and a pond… Films with very fine acting, but the drama is rather sort of subsued and… subsumed or… a word like that. Sub… something or another. You know, just folded in and everything’s people opening doors.”

For no rational reason, I had most looked forward to the documentaries at BQFF. The first handful made me a little alarmed. Really, if you had to make Beyond The Team (Tim Kulikowski) a film about an all-gay football team would you only shoot them, one after the endless other, talking about how they didn’t fit into (supposedly) straight teams and how they are happy to have found each other. Mama Rainbow (Fan Popo), a Chinese documentary about mothers who had embraced their gay offspring headed in that one-gag direction too. Though I was distracted by the slightly off-the-wall moms, everyone’s clothes and a throwaway, solemn statistic— 50 million gay Chinese people. What a glorious nation to move to.

Soon after, things began to look up. The Oscar-nominated How to Survive a Plague (David France) is chock-full of footage of truly inspiring political action in the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the US, elevating its earnest story-telling— the kind that NGOs call ‘process documentation’.

Next, I saw In-Between Days, Sankhajit Biswas’ wistful film about two transgender Bengali teenagers, Bubai and Chiranjit, who gamely navigate sex-work, friendship, family and a distinct lack of money. The scene in which the filmmaker follows Bubai to school where he’s about to write an exam is particularly striking. Bubai’s classmates’ reactions to his arrival are raucous and varied. They are mean, curious, affectionate, teasing and mean all over again. Slender, pretty Bubai is cautious but not alarmed. Bubai smiles a little, enjoying the drama, but is watchful that things don’t get messy just before the exam. The camera and its role in their reaction are made explicit. Unlike for instance in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s film Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret which has a ‘shocking state of affairs in Pakistan’ style cold open, and then stays cold.

When one of the hijras (or khusras as they are known in Pakistan) is taunted by gaping passersby there is no acknowledgment from the filmmaker that what is being recorded is also a reaction to the camera crew, not just the daily lives of the khusras. There is no acknowledgement that despite the poverty and violence they face, khusras are part of Pakistani society, and are being defamiliarized by the eye of the clumsy filmmaker and the clumsier voice-over. A similar defamiliarizing eye goes into the hamaam and records the heated transactions of a chela being sold to a new guru (with the chela’s intervention, not to say consent) and gives it a tawdriness that no one takes to the boardrooms where footballers are sold for millions.

Luckily, there was Call Me Kuchu, (directed by Malika Zouhall-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright) a film that quietly (and I am not a fan of the quiet documentary maker) follows several seeds of an outburst of homophobia in Uganda— murders, utterly bloodthirsty tabloids that call for homosexuals to be hung, a right-wing bill that calls for capital punishment for gays and lesbians, jail sentence for HIV-testing and punishment for those who don’t out gays to the state within 24 hours. The filmmakers follow around a group of gay men and women who try to make sense of this new, apocalyptic landscape. The steady gaze and excellent soundtrack tell the story of several tragedies without ever attempting emotional blackmail. For days afterward you will remember the protagonist David Kato, his mother, his friend Naomi and a slew of others. And this without resorting to twin lesbian dwarf sex.

The Heart of Censorship

Posted on March 9, 2013 by admin

Lawyer Lawrence Liang draws from key judgments, studies and interviews to argue that the I&B Ministry must re-look at the archaic law and guidelines for film certification through the lens of a ‘post-mediatized’ world.

Straightforward as it may seem the word ‘revisit’ can mean very different things for different people and this is particularly true when a minister says there is a need to revisit a law. In light of the controversy over Vishwaroopam, which saw a tussle between the central government and the Tamil Nadu government over the release of the film, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Manish Tewari suggested that there was a need to revisit the Cinematograph Act. “Time-cinematographic act revisited to ensure implementational integrity (of) certification decisions,” he tweeted, on January 31. “Otherwise each state would be its own censor (board).” Following this, on February 4, a committee has been set up by the I&B Ministry for this very purpose.

This would appear like a very welcome suggestion, particularly for those who have been demanding that we rethink the entire regime of film censorship altogether, except that the minister’s suggestion is qualified by a statement that it is important to revisit the Act to ensure that decisions of the censor board are implemented. All of a sudden the idea of revisiting the Cinematograph Act seems more sanguine than it initially did. It is also telling that the minister refers to the decisions of the censor board because the last time I checked we do not have a censor board in India, we merely have a board of film certification (the Central Board of Film Certification, or CBFC). That they do not merely certify films and do indeed act as censors is perhaps the precise need for revisiting the Cinematograph Act. In an ideal scenario revisiting the Act should mean doing away with film censorship altogether and putting in place a certification process much as in most parts of the world. In the unlikely event of that happening how may we best revisit the Cinematograph Act?

Unlike other forms of expression such as literature, cinema is distinguished by the fact that it remains one of the few instances in which it is not censorship but pre-censorship that is applied. If a book is published there is no need for the author to take anyone’s permission to release the book. This does not preclude the possibility that subsequent action may be taken against the book, but in the case of film even before it is released it has to go through the collective gaze of the CBFC, which determines whether it is fit for viewing by the general public. What justifies this differential treatment of cinema?

In 1965 filmmaker and writer K A Abbas filed a constitutional challenge against the pre-censorship of cinema arguing that this was in violation of freedom of speech and expression. Justice Hidayatullah in the Abbas decision (K A Abbas v. Union of India, 1970), which still holds as the prevailing law on the point, stated:

“It has been almost universally recognized that the treatment of motion pictures must be different from that of other forms of art and expression. This arises from the instant appeal of the motion picture, its versatility, realism (often surrealism), and its coordination of the visual and aural senses. The art of the cameraman, with trick photography, VistaVision and three-dimensional representation thrown in, has made the cinema picture more true to life than even the theatre or indeed any other form of representative art. The motion picture is able to stir up emotions more deeply than any other product of art. Its effect particularly on children and adolescents is very great since their immaturity makes them more willingly suspend their disbelief than mature men and women. They also remember the action in the picture and try to emulate or imitate what they have seen.”

The judgment advances what could be termed as the ‘medium specificity’ argument and this single paragraph has been cited ad nauseam in all subsequent decisions on film censorship. It will be worth our time to look at the various assumptions present in the paragraph a little closely, to see whether they still hold true in the post internet era. The paragraph suggest that the problem of cinema arises not so much from its inability to represent reality, as much as the fact that it is able to do it too effectively and that it has the ability to impact differential classes of people differently, especially children who are prone to believe whatever is happening as a result of their inability to distinguish between the illusion on the screen and reality.

A lot of the cinephobia that informs the law and judicial responses stems from an outdated idea of media impact which assumed that people had to be protected from the influence of media because of their incapacity to distinguish between reality and illusion. In the Indian context this attitude can be traced to a paternal and patronizing attitude of the colonial authorities who believed that native audiences were specially vulnerable to film on account of their relative immaturity and hence there was a need for greater censorship of cinema. The Indian Cinematograph Committee of 1928-29 conducted interviews across the length and breadth of colonial India to confirm their suspicion but were a little surprised by the results they encountered.

I will refer to just one interview with Lala Lajpat Rai— an interview from almost a hundred years ago worth ‘revisiting’ as we think of the Cinematograph Act of the 21st century.

“Q: Do you think that the cinema has any pernicious effects on the youth of our country?

A: No more than it has any effect in other countries. I have never heard of any particular complaint.

Q: One European gentleman who is in charge of the college youths in this province told us that there is a danger of the youths of this country being demoralized in their impressionable age on the undue emphasis that is laid on sexual films?

A: I do not agree with that view at all, and I will give you my reasons too. First of all, the influence of the cinema is no more and no greater than the influence of the novel or the drama. The college youths read a lot of novels, both American and European, and it is from their subjects of these novels, that most films are produced and I have no apprehension that the films are likely to be more harmful than the reading of novels and dramas. The fact is that the western civilization is spreading across the world. It has its good effects and its bad effects, and we cannot have the one without the other. I am sufficiently confident that our people will be able to resist the evil influences of the cinema on account of the general atmosphere of sexual morality that prevails in this country. Of course there will be a few individual people who may go astray here and there, but I don’t want to make that the basis of action.

Q: The point which is emphasized is that in some scenes nudity is prominent, and some of the films contain what they call close up scenes and, as my friend Col. Crawford puts it, cabaret scenes, under-world scenes. I mean that such scenes are made to appear so largely that they have a pernicious influence on our people. It is also said that such scenes tend to lower the esteem of the Western womanhood in the estimation of the people here.

A: I don’t want the youth of this country to be brought up in a nursery. They should know all these things, because they will be better able resist those things when they go out. They should see all those things here and they will be able to understand all the points of modern life.”

Lajpat Rai confidently asserts a vision of the future citizens of this country which does not condemn them into a state of perpetual infancy. He also refuses the theory of the specificity of cinema as an object of censorship and claims that the influence of cinema is no more and no less than that of literature. While the argument of the impact of cinema may even have had some partial truth at its inception, we have now lived with the medium for over a hundred years and we live in what may be termed a ‘post mediatized’ world where our senses are saturated with various forms of media and images from the television to billboards, and the internet and mobile phones.

Similarly the copycat theory that claims children copy every thing that they see in films has also been discredited. Shohini Ghosh, Professor Zakir Hussain Chair, at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, narrates an interesting incident about the Hindi television serial Shaktimaan which had run into controversy since it was claimed that it was motivating children to attempt to fly. Citing a telephonic interview with Mukesh Khanna, the actor who played Shaktimaan, Ghosh describes a particularly insightful moment when one child caller said: “Shaktimaan uncle, I want to be like you when I grow up. I want to be an actor.”

The courts in India, while responding to cases on film censorship, have often found themselves constrained by the archaic law and the vague guidelines that exist for film certification. Despite the limitations the courts have attempted to interpret the Cinematograph Act more liberally, to bring it up to date with social and technological changes, and it may be worthwhile for the government to take heed of some of these interpretations when they revisit the Cinematograph Act.

In the K A Abbas decision itself Justice Hidayatullah stated that the mere existence of themes which were listed as objectionable did not per se make them fall foul of the law and what was important was whether their “artistic merit or their social value overweighed their offending character”. Urging the officers of the Central Board of Film Censors (which was renamed the Central Board of Film Certification in 1983) to exercise caution in undertaking their task he said that: “Our standards must be so framed that we are not reduced to a level where the protection of the least capable and the most depraved amongst us determines what the morally healthy cannot view or read. The standards that we set for our censors must make a substantial allowance in favour of freedom thus leaving a vast area for creative art to interpret life and society with some of its foibles along with what is good”.

Similarly in the Tamas case (Ramesh v. Union of India, 1988) the Supreme Court affirmed Justice Vivian Bose’s observation that “the effect of the words must be judged from the standards of reasonable, strong minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in every hostile point of view” (Bhagwati Charan Shukla v. Provincial Government, 1947). In one of the most important cases on film censorship—the Bandit Queen case (Bobby Art International v. Om Pal Singh Hoon, 1996)—the Supreme Court allowed for frontal nudity on the basis that it was indeed an integral part of the film. They held that as the guidelines for film certification are broad standards and cannot be read as one would read a statute and within the breadth of their parameters, the certification authorities have discretion to ensure that they do not do away with what needs to be seen.

Let’s therefore welcome Manish Tewari’s suggestion to revisit the Cinematograph Act but let us also hope that it is not just an exercise in strengthening the powers of the central government vis-a-vis state governments, but a complete rethinking of the foundational presumptions that inform film censorship and their relevance in the era of the internet.

Contributor Image by Joi Ito (CC-BY-2.0)

Turning Point

Posted on March 5, 2013 by admin

As we lead up to the centenary of Indian Cinema we ask those who’ve journeyed with it to name one significant turning point in its path.

“One turning point in Indian cinema was when Satyajit Ray made his debut in the 1950s. With a few exceptions the only kind of cinema prior to this was one that had adapted its form from the urban theatrical tradition. This clearly did not make use of the full potential of cinema and could not present life in the way that cinema was capable of presenting it. After Bengal, this new form of cinema, which took directly from life, found practitioners in Kerala and later in Karnataka and Orissa.

Finally, at the beginning of the 1970s, this new kind of cinema found favour among young filmmakers in Mumbai who were making films in Hindi. This whole process got considerable encouragement from State created institutions like the Film and Television Institute of India and the Film Finance Corporation. For instance, Uski Roti, made by Mani Kaul, was radically different from any Indian film made before that time. Soon other films followed, like M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa.

Also, in 1971, the number of American films being imported into the country was reduced by the Indira Gandhi led Government, thereby creating space for this kind of cinema in a number of cinema screens in urban metros. This also led to several private producers funding this alternate kind of cinema. Several of my own films in the seventies and eighties were funded by such producers.”

—Shyam Benegal, 78, is one of India’s most acclaimed filmmakers. His early films Ankur, Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika and Mandi, played a key role in the pathbreaking new cinema movement that emerged in the sixties. Later Benegal went on to create classics like Junoon, Kalyug, Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda, Sardari Begum and The Making of the Mahatma. He has also written, directed and produced the 53 episode historical drama Bharat Ek Khoj. His last film was a political satire, released in 2009, called Well Done Abba. He is based out of Mumbai.

S-U-P-E-R-S-T-A-R

Posted on March 2, 2013 by admin

Bus conductor, actor, deity, Rajinikanth has taken the meaning of Indian iconography to new heights. Here are three extracts from Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography that give us a taste of his legend.

The Making of the ‘Superstar’

Bairavi opened on 2 June 1978. The man who orchestrated the film’s marketing campaign came from a tin-manufacturing background. Born and raised in Madras, ‘Kalaipuli’ (Tiger of the Arts) S. Dhanu used to excel in cultural activities like debates, elocution, poetry recitations and acting in his school days and won several intra and inter-school prizes for these. His family business was a cottage industry named Subramaniam Sheet Metal Works that specialized in supplying tin containers to snuff powder manufacturers. Dhanu joined the business right after completing his schooling. Soon, because of what he describes as his ‘thirst for the arts’, he got into the business of re-releasing old films that ran in morning shows. One of the first such was K.S. Gopalakrishnan’s 1962 film Sharada, starring Vijayakumari and S.S. Rajendran. Dhanu printed fresh posters for the film featuring a weeping Vijayakumari touching a pair of slippers; this was clearly aimed at the female audience, and triggered off a marketing campaign that outstripped the film’s original release publicity. The posters also had captions speculating on Vijayakumari’s fate. Dhanu released the film in 1974 at six Madras locations. The campaign paid off and the rerun ran to full houses. Dhanu then re-released film after old film with similar campaigns and they all worked at the box office. The clever part of this was that Dhanu had realized that in an era before home video and multi-channel television (the state-run Doordarshan available in Madras was a single channel with limited hours of broadcasting, begun in 1975), the audience with an appetite for older films had no source of getting them save for reruns. Dhanu even picked up, for a song as it were, films that had flopped on initial release; he would print posters focusing on interesting elements from the plot, and these became hits upon re-release.

Bairavi was the first new film that Dhanu acquired for release. “Our publicity covered the entire city,” says Dhanu. “I put up a 40-foot cutout of Rajinikanth at Plaza theatre. As soon as I set it up, the city corporation officials asked me to take it down.” Unfazed, Dhanu got an influential friend to call up the corporation commissioner and explain that he was a young man trying to grow in the business. The commissioner’s main concern was that the cutout was unstable and might fall on unsuspecting passers-by and traffic. Dhanu agreed to reinforce the cutout and it remained, lording it over one of Madras’s busiest thoroughfares. Apart from this, Dhanu printed posters proclaiming Rajinikanth as “Superstar”. “The publicity caught on like wildfire across Tamil Nadu,” says Dhanu. The posters were larger than the normal six-sheet ones. They featured Rajinikanth engaging with a snake, standing with a whip, carrying a goat on his shoulders and so on. “All of Madras was stunned and the cinemas were bursting with people,” recalls Dhanu. “From the time I saw a still from the film, I realized that it was a Rajini that nobody had seen before. MGR and Sivaji have done many films, but that particular still did justice to Rajini in a way that no picture has ever done for any star since. And that’s why I called him Superstar.”

Rajinikanth, writer and producer Panju Arunachalam and others in their group travelled from cinema to cinema to gauge audience reactions. “That’s when Rajinikanth asked who the distributor was,” says Dhanu. “And that’s when he came and saw me for the very first time, wearing a rose-colour banian and black trousers. ‘Fantastic publicity, beautiful publicity,’ he said. He hugged me tight. The Rajini I saw that day is still the same today.” The next day, however, Rajinikanth sent writer/producer Kalaignanam and director Bhaskar to Dhanu with the message that when huge stars like MGR and Sivaji Ganesan continued to exist, it didn’t feel right to be called Superstar— could the publicity be toned down? Dhanu’s response was to print another set of posters that said “The Greatest Superstar Rajinikanth in Bairavi”. The new posters were sent to Rajinikanth’s hometown Bangalore and the film was a massive hit there too.

Hum, and fitting in with Bollywood

DeepaSahi has vivid memories about the Hum shoot. She came to know about the existence of an actor called Rajinikanth only when she signed Hum. “I didn’t know before about him, because in the ’90s the North and South were very divided,” she says. “So the North Indian people knew very little about South Indian cinema, except for those films like Swayamvaram (Own Choice, 1972) that were brought for festivals. One never knew about the mainstream cinema there.” Sahi was born in Dehradun and studied at the National School of Drama in New Delhi.Even after the shoot began, Sahi wasn’t aware of Rajinikanth’s stature in the south. “I didn’t know for a very long time,” says Sahi. “I had no clue that he was the Superstar and his market price was around (I don’t know exactly) three times what Mr. Bachchan’s market price was. I didn’t know that I was so privileged to be working with the Superstar. And I found him to be a lovely, innocent person.” Sahi’s very first scene for Hum, during the film’s Ooty schedule, was nerve-wracking for her. She had to deliver a one-and-a-half-page-long lecture to veteran actor Kader Khan, who plays a general, with Bachchan, Rajinikanth and Govinda standing behind her. “It was my first commercial venture and I was horrified. I was given the dialogue in the morning. I said, ‘Look at these stars standing behind me!’” The shot was done in one take, however, and Sahi says that all the experienced stars around her were very supportive. “I found Rajinikanth to be a very sweet person who is very modest,” she says. “He would never join us for the revelries after pack-up. After the shoot everybody would freshen up and then gather in Mr. Bachchan’s room. But he would never ever join us. He was very shy and quiet.” Sahi recalls that Rajinikanth would sit alone in his room and open a fresh bottle of Johnnie Walker, one of the most expensive blended Scotch whiskies in the world; he would have a couple of drinks and then give the bottle away to a unit hand, and open a new bottle the next evening. “It was his only gesture that pointed to his wealth—because he is not at all a show-off or an extravagant guy,” says Sahi. “For me what that gesture meant is that it’s like pinching yourself to say— Is all this true?”

Sahi would talk to Rajinikanth a lot without really realizing that he was a superstar in the south. She had seen a couple of his southern films and appreciated his style and noted some gambling scenes he had done. During the film’s Mauritius schedule, Sahi wanted to go gambling with Rajinikanth to see how he gambled in real life. ‘We all went to the casino and he had no idea how to play blackjack or roulette!’ she remembers. “But the fact is he was so lucky that he would always win. He would just place a bet and would win. He was just doing it for the fun of it—and suddenly there was this huge pile of money he had generated. The fighters who were with us in the unit, they were all losing like crazy. They all came and said, ‘Rajini Sir, we have lost.’ And he said, ‘Take take take,’ and gave away all the money to them. They hadn’t even asked him to. In a stroke he gave it all away. And it wasn’t a small amount.” During the shoot, slowly, Sahi drew the reclusive Superstar out and got to know him better. “One day he was telling me, ‘I don’t know if you know that I was a bus conductor before this,’” she recalls. “I said I’d heard. He said, ‘God has been so kind to me and I have so much money. I have a tennis court and I don’t know how to play tennis. I have a swimming pool and I don’t know how to swim.’” There was a scene in Hum where Rajinikanth had to rescue Sahi from drowning, but he didn’t know how to swim. “He was constantly, diligently there though his double was doing the shot,” she says. Rajinikanth eventually talked to Sahi about Latha. Sahi says, “He was very, very proud of this lady he had married. He was very proud that she was educated and spoke very good English.” She says that during the shoot, she didn’t really know the protocol and hence would ask Rajinikanth and Bachchan to give her cues for her scenes with them, even if they were not in the shot. Normally, in the case of senior actors, if they are not in the frame, an assistant director gives the cue to the actor in the frame. Here, actors of the stature of Bachchan and Rajinikanth gave Sahi her cues themselves, a fact that left her impressed. “They would stand behind the camera and give me my cue, like any professional would. Only great people have that kind of modesty,” says Sahi. “Both Mr. Bachchan and Rajinikanth had no pretences of being stars.” Sahi also remembers that Rajinikanth had to go away during the shoot to attend the charitable weddings sponsored by him and held at the Raghavendra Kalyana Mandapam, of several indigent couples. “Rajinikanth is somebody who you never forget,” she says. “I’ve never forgotten my meeting him and working with him, because he was so unique in his reactions. The modesty and the humbleness— it was not a put-on. As an actor you can see it if somebody puts it on. People do these things. But not him. It was completely genuine.”

How Muthu became the “Titanic of the art theatres” in Japan

In 1996, Kandaswamy was in Singapore’s Little India district at the Mohammed Mustafa shopping centre, every Indian tourist’s haven, and was choosing some DVDs when he noticed three Japanese standing next to him and conversing in their language. Kandaswamy didn’t know any Japanese but got curious because every thirty seconds the word “Rajinikanth” came up in their conversation. Interest piqued, Kandaswamy inched closer to the Japanese to find out exactly what they were referring to. Not knowing the language, he couldn’t follow a word. The Japanese now noticed Kandaswamy edging closer and looked at him with suspicion. “After three minutes and ten mentions of Rajinikanth, I couldn’t stand it any longer,” says Kandaswamy. He offered to help if they were looking for something related to the Indian Superstar. Kandaswamy did not introduce himself as a producer. The Japanese took him seriously and told him that they were looking for four films of Rajinikanth’s; among them was Muthu. Then Kandaswamy took them to a nearby restaurant to understand their fascination with Rajinikanth.

“God shows you an opportunity, it’s up to you to grab it,” says Kandaswamy. One of the Japanese that Kandaswamy met on that fateful day in Singapore was Jun Edoki, a film critic. Edoki took the DVD of Muthu back to Tokyo and watched it with his wife. “It was absolutely fascinating— even without subtitles,” remembers Edoki. “We became addicted to the point where we had to see at least part of the film at least once a day.” Edoki became obsessed with the idea of getting Muthu a theatrical release in Japan. He took the film around to distributors until Atsushi Ichikawa consented to release it via his distribution company Xanadeux. But the rights had to be secured first. Xanadeux wanted to secure Muthu’s distribution rights for Japan for five years for a one-off fee without any box office profit percentage, if any, going back to Kavithalayaa. Kandaswamy was in a quandary. He had no idea what to ask for as a fair price as there was no precedent. He didn’t want to discuss the matter within the industry in Chennai (the name of the city had changed from Madras in 1996) for obvious reasons. It was up to him to take the decision. So he called Tokyo and asked them to name a price. They were taken aback as they were used to dealing with Hollywood and its prices and legalese. Kandaswamy was keen to explore this new, unknown and exciting market. Similarly, the Japanese were keen to try out releasing an Indian film in their market. They liked the film and believed it would do well, but the price was something both parties couldn’t arrive at. Kandaswamy made up his mind and took a call. “I said, one dollar. Price, one dollar. Can you believe this?” he says. “They were shocked, they thought I was joking.”

Kandaswamy made them promise that if Muthu did well, they would take all the future Indian films from Kavithalayaa for Japanese distribution. The Japanese agreed and the film was released in Japan in 1998 as Muthu, Odori Maharaja (Muthu, The Dancing Maharaja). Japan was suffering from a crippling recession at the time. Japan’s economy had shrunk 0.7 per cent for the financial year that ended on 31 March 1998, the first time the country had experienced negative growth since 1974. The yen had fallen to an eight-year low against the dollar, and consumers weren’t spending as much as they used to. The cinema is usually a cheap source of entertainment, and Muthu’s air of happiness and full-on entertainment came at exactly the right time for the country. Kandaswamy says that in 1998, movie ticket prices in Japan were amongst the highest in the world at $15, but he was insistent that ticket prices not be reduced just because the film was Indian. Shinya Aoki, editor of a Japanese film journal, says, “Indian films are filled with the classical entertainment that movies used to offer.” Miyuki Shinogi, who was a twenty-year-old college student when Muthu released, agrees. She saw Muthu after reading a rave review. “That was it— I was hooked for life,” says Shinogi. “Muthu had everything a movie fan could ask for, from dancing and singing to love scenes and tears. Most of all, it made me feel good.” The film was a remarkable success with more than a million Japanese queuing up at the turnstiles to watch it. At the Cinema Rise theatre located in Tokyo’s Shibuya locality alone, Muthu played for twenty-three weeks and attracted 127,000 punters, netting $1.7 million, easily the cinema’s biggest hit of the year. “It was the Titanic of the art theatres,” says Ichikawa.

The distributor had employed a shrewd marketing strategy that included distribution of flyers that read: “Forget about the recession. Forget about the millennium. Get rid of your worries. This is the first page of a pleasant dream that will continue for the rest of your life.” Another flyer said: “Starring Superstar Rajinikanth ‘Muthu’, Meena and Elephants!” Upon Kandaswamy’s suggestion, Rajinikanth was billed as the Indian Jackie Chan and was promoted across Japan thus, feeding off the Hong Kong star’s immense popularity in the country. Kandaswamy and Ichikawa also followed the maxim that nothing quite sells like a pretty face and flew the actress Meena over to Japan. She made a surprise appearance on stage immediately after the first show of Muthu in one of the bigger theatres. The actress was armed with three lines in Japanese that she spoke before an appreciative audience: “I love Japan. I love the Japanese people. Just see my film three times.” Kandaswamy says, “And that’s what the Japanese did. They saw the film three times.” According to Kandaswamy, the Japanese people’s dress and food habits changed after Muthu, and some people began wearing salwar kameez and consuming masala dosas. He says that Muthu’s socio-cultural impact on Japan extended to Bollywood dance schools springing up all over the country. The Japanese brewery Godo Shusei also cashed in on the trend, using Indian dancers to replicate a dance from Muthu in a commercial for their alcoholic drink Chu-Hi. Even though the agreed price for the Muthu rights was $1, Ichikawa generously paid Kavithalayaa much more than that, following the success of Muthu at the Japanese box office.

Excerpted from Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography by Naman Ramachandran, published by Penguin Books India, Viking (Penguin India) Rs 699. You can purchase the book here

Cover Image: Rajinikanth in Apoorva Raagangal, © Kalakendra Films

The Big Jinx

Posted on February 26, 2013 by admin

TBIP investigates the process by which India’s Oscar entry is chosen and how that might be impacting our chances at the awards

It is the 24^th of February, 2013. Jessica Chastain opens an envelope, at the Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles, and reads: “And the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film goes to Amour”. An Austrian film by director Michael Haneke. In the 56 times that this award has been contested for, a film from India, the country that reportedly produces more films than any other in the world, has won it— not once. Indian movies have been nominated, in this category, thrice.

Only one movie, from each country, can contest for an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. The selection of this movie, in each country, is overseen by an institution that is authorized to do so by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or the Academy, which conducts the Oscars every year. In India, this institution is the Film Federation of India (FFI), an autonomous trade body.

On September 22, 2012, Barfi! was announced as India’s entry to the Oscars. Allegations of plagiarism, that had arisen when the film was released, were resuscitated online and in the media. The Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film is decided through a three-stage process. There is a shortlist of nine movies, five of which are nominated. One wins. Naturally, Barfi! didn’t even make it to the shortlist.

This is not the first time the FFI has been embroiled in a controversy over the selection of India’s entry to the Oscars. Inexplicable choices before include Henna (1991), Indian (1996) and Jeans (1998). On September 28, 2007, Producer Sheetal Talwar and his wife, Director Bhavna Talwar, filed a writ petition in the Bombay High Court, on the grounds that certain members of the jury who chose Eklavya over their film Dharm, were biased.

We set out to find out what lies at the root of these controversies and, through conversations with key FFI officials and jury members, and an examination of related documents, discovered that the problem is not that rules are flouted in the selection of India’s Oscar entry. Rather, that basic rules that would ensure the fairness and transparency of this process have not been put in place to begin with.

THE WAY WE ARE

The FFI was constituted in 1952. It calls itself the “apex body of the film industry” on its website. The first of many objectives it lists here is to “promote, protect and watch over the interests of the Indian Film Industry and allied industries and trades”. The FFI’s members comprise producers, distributors and exhibitors from all over the country, each belonging to one or more of 43 associations that are affiliated with the FFI today. Each association pays a fee to the FFI on becoming an affiliate, and for every year after. Other objectives of the FFI include popularizing Indian cinema abroad; lobbying for laws, grants and governmental treaties with other countries that will benefit the Indian film industry; providing legal aid to its members and safeguarding their rights; and resolving any disputes that may arise between them.

The Academy authorized the FFI to conduct the selection of India’s entry to the Oscars in 1957. Bijay Khemka, the current President of the FFI, says this is too far back in the past to know how or why. “Academy wanted FFI to do it, FFI wanted to take care of it,” he says. “It’s for many years that it’s been going on, so I’m not able to tell you how it started.”

Here is how the selection for India’s Oscar entry is carried out:

To choose the jury that will select the Oscar entry the FFI first assembles a committee comprising its “(12) office bearers and two to three special invitees”, says Supran Sen, Secretary General of the FFI. These invitees could be “members of another film workers association: the writer’s federation, director’s federation, or any other body— other than the FFI itself.”

Sen says this committee selects a jury of “11 to 17 members”. Khemka says that after this the members of FFI’s Executive Committee (comprising 80 members who represent, among them, the 43 associations affiliated to the FFI) “okays these names”. According to the Academy’s rules the jury should include “artists and/or craftspeople from the field of motion pictures.” Khemka says that for this jury they “take recommendations from all our bodies (the associations affiliated to the FFI) and we also approach (prospective jurors) on the individual merit of people”. Marathi filmmaker Sandeep Sawant, who was a member of the last jury, adds that the jury is meant to be representative of every region of the country: “They are not just from Bombay, (but from) all over India. They represent maximum regions from India—South, Bengal, Punjab, Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi—of course, you can’t have one from every state, but you have people representing various languages and regions.” The Jury elects one of its members as Chairperson as soon as it has been created. The FFI has to send the list of jurors to the Academy two months before the deadline for the Oscar entry.The Academy’s rules with regard to this process can be found here and here.

To call for entries, says Khemka “we (the FFI) issue notices (to various film related bodies), we put it on our website also and we inform all the state bodies to inform their producer members, if anybody wants to apply for Oscar.” The date, place and mode of submission (a form has to be filled with details regarding the film; a print of the film has to be sent in; a service charge has to be paid) is outlined on their website.

Entries may be received by the FFI directly, or received by one of the affiliated bodies and forwarded to the FFI within the due date. The films that fulfill the criteria laid out by the Academy are seen by the jury.

To qualify for the Best Foreign Language Film category, a film has to be of feature length (above 40 minutes); it has to be, predominantly, in a language other than English; it should have been released in the country submitting it during a particular period (for the 2013 Oscars, the film should have been released between October 1, 2011 and September 30, 2012); it should have run for at least seven consecutive days in a commercial movie theatre, for the purpose of earning profit; the film should be submitted in the format specified by the Academy; it should have English subtitles; and the FFI must certify that the creative control of the film lies with India’s own citizens.

The films that have been submitted are watched by the jury together. The jury then decides whether to select one out of all of these films or carry out the selection in two stages. If the jury decides on the latter, then it agrees on a shortlist of films first, and then selects one out of the shortlist. There are discussions on the films before them. India’s Oscar entry is finally selected either by a formal vote, or by a consensus that emerges out of these discussions. So the process of selection varies from jury to jury and is often suggested by the jury chairperson.

But how many films should the jury shortlist, when such is the case, before it selects the final film? Should there be a secret ballot in case of a vote? Are there any guidelines for how the jury should be selected, to ensure that no jury member is biased towards a film that is in the running?

These questions remain unanswered. The first notable public mention of guidelines for the selection of the Oscar entry came up during the Bombay High Court hearings on the writ petition the Talwars had filed. The Court directed that the FFI should prepare draft guidelines for the selection process. On December 18, 2007, the counsel for the FFI submitted before the Court that the FFI “had framed the draft guidelines and regulations” and prayed “for time to place the same on record”.

After the last hearing on July 17, 2008, the Court noted that: “Pursuant to the directions of this court, guidelines for selection of films for the Academy Award have been suggested by the Advocate General, Maharashtra (Ravi Kadam). We hope that the respondent Authority will take (these into) consideration in order to avoid any arbitrariness in the process of decision-making which is just and fair.”

Sen claims these guidelines have been put into place, yet he refuses to let us know what they are. “That’s actually confidential,” he says. “Those are our own guidelines.”

However, he says: “We see that there is no interested party (on the jury). That is a very very important factor. That is why this hullabaloo with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film (Eklavya) occurred.”

The bodies overseeing the selection of the Oscar entries in other countries put out the guidelines that govern this process in the public domain. In Italy press releases are issued for every stage in the process: the call for submissions, the short list of films and the announcement of the winner. The concerned bodies in countries such as France and Germany have detailed guidelines for the selection of their jurors as well as those for the selection of their Oscar entry on their websites.

Selection committees from all of these three countries also release the names of the jurors who select their Oscar entry once the process is completed (here are the jurors for this year’s entries for France, Italy and Germany.

France has been nominated 35 times for the Oscar (more than any other country). It has won 12 times. Germany, since its unification in 1990, has been nominated for the award 9 times and won the Oscar twice (before its unification, West Germany was nominated for the Oscar eight times and won it once, while East Germany was nominated once). And Italy has won 13 Oscars— more than any other country in the world.

When asked, FFI officials Khemka and Sen agree to give us the names of the chairpersons of juries that have selected India’s Oscar entry in the last couple of years. But they refuse to disclose the names of any other jury member.

When questioned about this, Khemka says: “This is a process where the general public don’t come into the picture, because it’s an internal process. Like when the Oscar Award is given and the Oscar selection is made and there are 5000 people to select the Oscar Best Picture and nobody knows who they are.”

But here the jurors comprise only 11 people. When it was pointed out that the names of all the jurors are released in other countries he said: “Nahin (No), even we call the press conference. All the jury members are present there and they announce the best picture (India’s entry). So it is known.”

Yet neither Sen, nor Khemka tell us who the jurors on the last jury, which chose Barfi! as the official Oscar entry five months ago, were. Most media reports have only the name of the jury chairperson Manju Borah. While some news reports have cited the name of another juror, Marathi filmmaker Sandeep Sawant, neither of the FFI officials confirm this— even though Sawant does so himself, when TBIP speaks to him.

Says Sen: “The basic simple reason is— suppose there are say 11 jury (members), then the press start telephoning everybody and then out of their minds they say this happened. That is why the whole problem was there that time. Nobody except the Chairperson (is revealed). Because then everyone approaches each individual jury (member) and says: How did you find…yeh-woh (one movie or the other). Sometimes they force them. So we don’t tell.”

Revealing the names of the jurors, after the selection has been announced, ensures the accountability of the FFI. It allows the public to gauge for themselves the qualifications and standing of those who select India’s entry to the Oscars. It seems impossible that the press can “force” jury members to reveal who they voted for, or even talk to them, against their wishes, but perhaps, if the names are in the public domain, the press can question the jurors about whether the selection was carried out in a fair manner. Also, putting out the names ensures that if any jury member has actually been professionally involved in a film that he has voted on— people will find out.

This was what had happened at “that time”— as Sen puts it. It was five years ago, during the selection of India’s entry for the 2008 Oscars. Here is what appears to have transpired.

ADHARM

In September 14, 2007, before Eklavya had been officially announced as India’s entry to the Oscars, Producer Sheetal Talwar was at the airport. Talwar remembers the date because an India-Pakistan match was on. “I had already gotten a call from Supran Sen saying: ‘Sheetalji, we are going with Eklavya and not with Dharm’.” he says. Then, says Talwar, he got a call from Producer-director Vinod Pande, who was chairperson of the jury that had taken this decision. “Sheetalji, I just wanted to tell you, I was trying to watch the India-Pakistan match, and I can’t, because I think an injustice has been done,” is what Talwar claims Pande said.

Another Jury member, cinematographer Nadeem Khan, called Bhavna Talwar soon after this, to congratulate her on Dharm. “I just want to tell you that I loved your film and if I had my way it would have gone as our entry,” is what Khan says he said to her. The Talwars spoke to the two jury members and found out who else was on the jury.

After the decision was announced officially, on September 25, the Talwars filed a Bombay High Court writ petition, on September 28, praying that the Court should review the jury’s decision to send Eklavya to the Oscars. Respondents in the case were the FFI, Vinod Chopra Films Pvt. Ltd., which had produced Eklavya, as well as the 11 jury members.

Because of this case, the names of all the jurors who chose India’s Oscar entry in 2007 are in the public domain. The 11 jurors were producer-director Vinod Pande, writer and lyricist Jalees Sherwani, cinematographer Nadeem Khan, filmmaker Anil Sharma, producer Bijoy Kalyani, producer Ravi Kottarkara, costume designer Shahid Aamir, film editor Ranjit Bahadur, producer-director Jagdish Sharma, music director Ravi Sharma and filmmaker Sudhir Mishra.

The Talwars alleged in their petition that one of the jury members, Bahadur, was biased towards Eklavya as he was involved in editing a documentary on the making of the film, which was used to promote the movie, and that two other jurors, Mishra and Jagdish Sharma, were biased because they were close to Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the producer and director of Eklavya.

There were six hearings, according to court records, up to July 17, 2008, when the petition was dismissed with a note to the FFI to take the guidelines suggested by the Advocate General into consideration.

The Academy learnt of the case. On October 10, 2007, Bruce Davis, then Executive Director at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wrote a letter to Pande which read: “In fact it turns out that there is a widespread feeling among Indian filmmakers and the public that your committee could have been more sensitive to ethical issues in making its decision—if there were in fact one or more members who should have recused themselves from this year’s voting—then we are confident that your group will establish more readily defensible internal standards for future years.”

Pande and Davis exchanged letters over the next few days, in which Davis offered to allow the jury five days to “either reaffirm its original choice or designate a different Indian entry”. But since the Court had not come to any sort of conclusion by that time, this was not to be. TBIP has procured a copy of these letters from a source who wishes to stay unnamed.

Two of the 11 jurors, Jagdish Sharma and Ravi Sharma, have passed away. TBIP spoke to five of the remaining nine. Here are excerpts from the conversations.

Vinod Pande – Jury Chairperson, 2007

Pande has been on the jury for India’s Oscar entry thrice. Here, he suggests that some jurors who seemed to prefer Dharm voted for Eklavya instead. And that they might have voted for Dharm had he called for a secret ballot instead of an open vote.

TBIP: What happened?

Vinod Pande: Okay it’s history, so perhaps we can speak about it. You see, when the films were seen, the heart, the sentiment of almost all had immediately gone to a film called Dharm. It was a very competent film, a very poetic film. And in our view it represented India precisely. It dealt with those fault lines of India which are affecting us. Normally we have obtained a consensus (the last two times that he was on the jury) by following a tradition ki koi voting nahin honi chahiye (there shouldn’t be any voting). In any such organization, especially in creative exercises, although democratic processes warrant an exercise like voting, you try not to. You want to give the impression that it was unanimous. So we tried to avoid it. So in order to avoid it I have always followed a method that I tell members that, rather than a (quick) general discussion, there will be extensive discussion on all the films we have seen. So that they are then able to precisely zero in…

TBIP: On the merits…

VP: Ki merit kahaan ja rahi hai (where does the merit lie). And we were able to do it. And we were clearly able to see that Dharm was… (our choice) And so there wouldn’t have been any voting and it would have gone. But someone mentioned: “Sir ab voting karenge (now we’ll vote)”. Now if a member insists, then you’re caught. Because you have to put it to a vote. I was very sure (that Dharm would win). Most of the members were praising Dharm. There was a member who said “Sir poetry thi” (It was poetry). Their sentiment was so clear. One of the jurors said: “Sir, can I give 3 names?” (I said) Go ahead. He says, “No. 1 Dharm, No.2 Dharm, No. 3 Dharm.” I mean such was the commitment.

Then I was taken by complete surprise. Some jury members who were praising Dharm voted for Eklavya instead. And while voting, you can have a secret ballot. And the mistake that I ended up making was, that was my mistake because I had never envisaged this, you know. I said: No let’s have an open ballot. Agar main secret ballot karata to shayad yeh film (Dharm) ho jaata (if I had asked for a secret ballot then maybe this film—Dharm—would have been selected).

Nadeem Khan – Juror, 2007

Khan says that one of the jurors, whom he would prefer not to name, was insistent on choosing Eklavya because its producer had the infrastructure and money to lobby for the film in LA. Khan also claims that Vidhu Vinod Chopra called Khan about the film more than once, and that Chopra’s production manager came to meet him with promotional material.

Nadeem Khan: What rankled me was that, from day one, there was this one gentleman, who came in with an attitude ki bhai falaani film jo hai, uska jo producer hai, wahi (that this particular film, its producer— he’s the one), he’s got the infrastructure, he’s got the money to lobby in L.A. The guy under question is my class fellow (Vidhu) Vinod Chopra. The film in question was Eklavya. So I told him: “Let’s all first see the film and then we’ll decide. Why are you blowing a trumpet prematurely?”

This gentlemen who I’m speaking about, during the course of our screenings, made it a point now and then to talk about how Eklavya was the only suitable film as our entry to the Oscars because infrastructure L.A. mein Vinod ka itna accha hai (because Vinod’s infrastructure in LA is so good)… There was a very strong lobbying for Eklavya.

In fact, Vinod (Vidhu Vinod Chopra) had rung me up also before this: “I’m a class fellow yaar. So it goes without saying ki tu toh, yaar, hai mera dost hi na (that, after all you’re my friend right)?” And I said, “Vinod, let me just see the film.” “Of course, yaar.”

Vinod used to ring me up three times a day. In fact, he sent his production manager. I was shooting in Juhu somewhere and he came with a pamphlet. At that point in time, we had not started seeing them (the films). Vinod is my friend. He tells me, “Ay, listen man, my film’s coming in.” I’m being preconditioned right? 50%. So when that guy came in I said: “Isko le ja yaar tu (take this away man). Mere friend ne mujhe phone kiya (my friend has phoned me). End of story.’

TBIP: How did Vidhu Vinod Chopra find out that you were on the jury?

NK: You ask him that. Don’t ask me. He rang me up even before I started this thing (the jury’s process). He said: “Boy, you’re on a jury”. Maybe someone told him. I don’t know. I didn’t tell him.

Jalees Sherwani – Juror, 2007

Sherwani says he received phone calls from a production house, which he doesn’t want to name, saying they wanted to meet him and “give details” and tell him “how much” they had done for a film that was trying to be India’s Oscar entry. The person making the phone call knew he was the jury member the day before he knew this himself.

Jalees Sherwani: I was not liked by everyone who participated because they could not influence me. Many people tried, but I politely refused, said they had a wrong number, or that somebody else has given them wrong information about me.

TBIP: Were you getting phone calls? Before the actual selection process began?

JS: Yes, yes, yes.

TBIP: When we spoke to Mr. Supran Sen. When we asked about this time’s jury members, he said the FFI had decided not to give out their names. So how did someone find out in this case?

JS: Definitely it was leaked. I mean before I knew that I was a jury member I was informed by a production house, saying: “We want to met you and give details and explain how much we have done for this film and what kind of film it is.” I said: “I don’t understand, why are you bothering me?” “No, no sir you are the Jury member.” I said: “Gentlemen, let me know if it is so, because I have no information about it.” And next day I get a phone call from FFI that you are a Jury member and from so and so date we are having these screenings and please join… I mean, you can call it dubious, you can call it a leak, you can call it whatever word you feel that is suitable for this kind of irregularity— which is dishonest.

TBIP: Are you saying sir that the jury could have been biased— because people knew who the jury was?

JS: Possibly the decision was influenced. When they can make the call to me, they can make the call to other jury members as well. I didn’t get influenced, but somebody else could have been influenced by them.

TBIP: Sir do you remember which production house?

JS: No I cannot say that

TBIP: You can’t say that?

JS: No.

Sudhir Mishra – Juror, 2007

Mishra says that “‘bias’ is an ambiguous word” that can’t really be proven in the Indian film industry where so many people have worked together in the past, or are friends. But he warns against a scenario where a juror has been professionally involved in the film he or she is judging. Also, he recommends a secret ballot and a larger jury. He agrees that juror’s names, as well as the selection procedure, should be in the public domain.

TBIP: Bias was alleged against you as well as other jurors in a writ petition filed in the High Court.

Sudhir Mishra: The Sheetal Talwar and…

TBIP: Sheetal and Bhavana Talwar were the ones who filed it. How would you react to that?

SM: The voting should be kept secret. How do they know who I voted for? And then when you say ‘bias’ it’s a very ambiguous word. What does this bias mean? I don’t even know what happened to that case…

TBIP: The Court dismissed the case and asked the FFI to look into it and institute guidelines for the selection procedure.

SM: I think the FFI should get a clear set of guidelines. Guidelines that make the process transparent and fair. And the jury should also be larger. There should be a very strict guideline that no jury member should be involved in a film he is (judging)… but what do you do in the case of a friendship? When a jury member happens to be friends with a filmmaker (whose film he is judging)?

TBIP: Because many jurors could be friends of filmmakers whose films have been submitted, or could have worked in the past with such filmmakers on other films, if not the one they are judging?

SM: That’s right. That is why you should have a larger jury, with top-notch professionals from various branches of films and various regions. And voting should be by secret ballot. But you’ll always have this problem, that so-and-so editor has worked with so-and-so director, three years ago. Unless someone has actually been professionally involved with a specific film, how do you determine bias?

TBIP: Do you think that the names of the jury members should be put out in the public domain…

SM: Definitely. The names of the jury members should be put out in the public domain, after the process is complete. But this is the reason why I will never be part of a jury in India again. Because then I’ll be subject to pressure, and abuses from people. If your friend’s film doesn’t go, you will say Sudhir Mishra was part of the jury and he was biased.

TBIP: But if there’s a secret ballot, and no one even mentions how many votes a film won by, then no one will know who voted for what.

SM: Yes, maybe if an objective agency counts the vote.

TBIP: Like the PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) for the Oscars?

SM: Yes.

Ranjit Bahadur – Juror, 2007

Bahadur says he wasn’t asked whether he had been professionally involved with the films he was judging.

TBIP: Why didn’t you say that you had worked on a promotional documentary on the making of Eklavya?

Ranjit Bahadur: The fact is that I happened to work with the line producer of the Dharm movie too. I worked (with the line producer) before this film. I worked even after the controversy. So I don’t know, it didn’t occur to me. I didn’t provide any false information. They didn’t ask me that: “These are the films that are going to be there.” I thought we would just watch movies and the only time I speak my mind is when I see a film and I thought it was a serious panel discussion and I put forward my views strongly. Beyond that I don’t know anything.

Despite repeated efforts to reach him, Vidhu Vinod Chopra was not available for comment. TBIP contacted the CEO of Vinod Chopra Films Pvt. Ltd., who replied with an email saying: “Vinod is out of the country and not available as of now. I will not be in a position to comment on his behalf or on behalf of VCF.”

(TBIP has some jurors, on record, talking about who voted for which movie. It has decided not to put this information out because the scope of this article is not to try and decide a case dismissed by the High Court. It is entirely futile to try and determine if the jury or Chopra were in the wrong in the absence of clear rules defining right and wrong in this scenario.)

Today, Supran Sen says the FFI “always takes a declaration from each jury member that ‘I’m not at all concerned (connected with a film that is in the running in any way)’. This time (while assembling the jury for the 2013 Oscars) also there was one (interested party)— but it was sorted out.”

But there is no way for us to ascertain this as, other than the jury chairpersons, we don’t know the names of all the jury members on any of the juries that succeeded this one.

Also, a juror may be biased towards a film even if he or she has not been professionally involved with it (for instance, if he or she is a relative or friend of the film’s producer, or director, or crew member, or is working with such a person on another movie). The best way to ensure the objectivity of such jurors would be to put in place a system of secret ballot— so jurors have to fear neither the discomfort of voting against a friend, nor the reprisal of a powerful producer.

As for the phone calls allegedly received by jurors (and, as in the case of Khan, the visitor on his film set), what exactly are the rules laid down when it comes to lobbying for one’s film?

The Academy, when it comes to lobbying for the Oscars, lays down that: “The picture must be advertised and exploited during its eligibility run in a manner considered normal and customary to the industry”. For the award for the Best Foreign Language Film, the Academy’s general committee, which votes on the films, is divided into 3 groups and each group is given a list of films to watch, of which they should have watched 80% to be able to vote in this category. So Academy voters might miss a film unless the producer publicizes it avidly, and holds screenings for it. This, however, is not the case with the FFI, which facilitates and ensures that the jury for India’s Oscar entry sees every film that is submitted.

Here, the FFI should lay down clear rules that say that a producer whose films have been submitted to the jury for India’s Oscar entry should not try to influence a jury member to vote for his or her film. If such an attempt to influence him or her is reported, and can be proved, by the jury member, the film in question should be disqualified.

Also, a producer’s infrastructure, and resources that allow him to lobby successfully in LA, may be relevant when it comes to determining India’s Oscar entry, but considering we’re a country of so many talented filmmakers with meager resources, it falls upon the FFI to institute a fund, with the aid of the government, that allows a producer to lobby abroad to ensure that India’s Oscar entry stands a fair chance at the world’s most prominent film awards.

But the real question here is, if the names of the jurors are part of an “internal process”, as FFI President Bijay Khemka says, how did those making the phone calls alleged above find them out— in one case, before the juror in question knew of his appointment himself?

When TBIP tried to put this question, and these suggestions, to FFI Secretary General Supran Sen, after the interviews with the jurors, he refused to answer any more questions related to the Oscars.

BITTER SWEET

It is 2013. And little seems to have changed since 2007. The jury that selected India’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars this year watched 20 movies at Hyderabad before deciding on Barfi. When asked who the other jurors were Jury Chairperson Manju Borah says: “That committee (the jury) has been dissolved and according to Film Federation (of India) rules, I’m not supposed to talk (about this) now because I was hired for that period of time only.”

Borah does mention, however, that she kept the vote “open”.

Manju Borah: We were, in total, 11 jury members, working in different fields of filmmaking.

TBIP: When you were selecting the films was it a secret ballot or was it just…

Manju Borah: It was open and (the voting was conducted) after a lot of discussion, round after round of discussion.

TBIP: So you just had a show of hands? You just raised your hands?

MB: Yeah, yeah.

Marathi filmmaker Sandeep Sawant was also on the jury that selected Barfi! He points out another discrepancy in what we have learnt so far. While FFI office bearers Khemka and Sen, as well as Borah, have said there were “11 jurors” in this jury, Sawant says there were not 11 but “14 or 15 jury members” present.

Sawant also says—as did Khemka—that the names of the jurors are let out to the press as soon as the film is selected. “When the result is declared, all the Jury members are there and the whole press is there,” he says. “Each member of the Jury is introduced. It’s not like it’s announced secretly.” But again, like Khemka, he refuses to reveal the names of his fellow jury members in 2012.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN

Many countries have changed the way they select their Oscar entry. East and West Germany had to overhaul and merge their selection processes after the unification. In Italy, the Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali (ANICA), a trade association of producers, distributors and film technicians very similar in nature to the FFI, has revised their system of selection twice— when the responsibility for selection was shifted from a 8 to 10 member group, selected by ANICA from among members of the Italian film industry, to the jury of the David di Donatello (Italy’s most prestigious film awards) in 1998; and when this responsibility reverted to a 15 member jury selected by ANICA again, in 2005. The Academy itself, after it faced criticism for not including acclaimed films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Persepolis in the Best Foreign Language Film shortlist in 2008, revised its selection procedure for this category from a two-stage to a three-stage voting process.

We know of these changes because they are in the public domain. Because we have been informed about them. But the FFI is less forthcoming about its plans. “We will revise the process as and when we need to,” says Sen, assertively. “We don’t need to revise it every year. And this is an internal matter. We can’t disclose it to the media.”

On Needlepoint: Christian Louboutin

Posted on February 22, 2013 by admin

On Needlepoint is a series on Fashion and Films, because ever since they were introduced to each other by Glamour, they’ve maintained a deep and exciting friendship, collaborated fruitfully, gotten up to mischief and given us more than a couple of exquisitely dazzling moments in history.

The time you spend with 50 year old Parisian footwear designer Christian Louboutin is filled with envy. This is not because he’s one of the highest ranking designers in the world (he has topped the Luxury Institute’s annual Luxury Brand Status Index, the LBSI, for three years in a row) or because each shoe he makes sells for a fortune. Or because after this evening in Mumbai, he will travel to Nepal… and then to his palace in Syria maybe? His cottage in Portugal? His 14^th century castle in west-central France? Or to his sailboat christened Dahabibi (meaning, ‘my loveboat’) on the Nile?

This time is filled with envy because Louboutin makes all of this cease to matter. Because he discusses cinema with an uncanny passion that you are unable to match, however hard you try. Because it is a passion that marks everything in his life. He searches for the film Aan on your laptop as if it were the urgent need of the moment. Because, for Louboutin, it is. He has to know whether the princess in the movie was played by Nadira, or Meena Kumari.

Because every critical moment in Louboutin’s life has been a pressing need fulfilled. When he left home to room in with a friend at age 12. When he decided to drop out of school. When he came to India, on a whim, at 16, to “visit the studios”. Or when he casually acted in what was to become the cult French film Race D’ep. Clubbing at iconic Paris night club Le Palace, apprenticing at cabaret music hall Folies Bergere, freelancing for Chanel, Maud Frizon, Yves Saint Laurent… he has made every moment count. Louboutin does not let time fly by. He does not rush after it. He seems to collaborate with time. And exquisite things come of such collaborations.

He’s sitting on an armchair now, on a suite on the 23^rd floor of the Taj Land’s End, in Bandra, Mumbai. On his feet are a pair of impressive off-white and gold shoes with his signature red soles. On a coffee table in the adjoining room are a pencil and eraser, that Louboutin sketches his shoes with, and a set of marker pens that he uses to fill in the colours. The red pen has pride of place in the set ever since he used an assistant’s nail polish to paint the sole of a stacked heel with, in 1993, in a flash of inspiration that gave his line a signature which he has been successful in patenting, only partially, last year. (The shoe itself was inspired by Andy Warhol’s Flowers). A copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes lies in his suitcase that is packed and ready to leave with him tomorrow. On his bed is a tiny card, left by the hotel, inscribed with William Shakespeare’s “To sleep, perchance to Dream.” But in this moment the man who makes shoemaking seem like the most enthralling profession in the world is elsewhere; tuned into a different universe than the one suggested by the paraphernalia in the room. He is leaning back, shoes on the table, focussed on only one thing. As it used to be when he watched movies as a dyslexic child. These moments, again, are for cinema only.

When you were about 18, you acted in a French cult classic whose English title is The Homosexual Century.

Ya.

And then again in 1984, you acted in another French movie.

La Nuit porte-jarretelles.

Ya. Whose English title was The Night Wears Suspenders.

Exactly.

And then of course there were two other films where you played yourself. The Homosexual Century (whose French title was Race d’Ep)— was this the first movie you acted in?

No actually, I had acted in a movie when I was 13. It was a movie called The City Of Nine Doors by a director whose name I don’t remember. And then the second one was Race d’Ep by Lionel Soukaz and I was not 18 actually, I was definitely younger. I was 16 I guess.

Ah, because I was going according to the year the film was released in. But then, in those days, films would take longer to make than today. And also I am so so glad. Because I do remember that… at this point I was living at my parents’ house, which I left when I was 12, but I sort of came back now and then, and at age 18 I was not living at all anymore with my parents. But I remember very well, when the movie was out, I was taking a taxi, and the taxi arrived at this roundabout which was the Place de la Bastille in Paris. And at that time there was a big movie theatre called Cinema Bastille and I said to the taxi: “Do you mind to… that poster looks familiar… have a look again to the… could you turn around one more time?” And I turn around, at once, and it was me naked, with a feather. Holding a feather string. Naked, sitting on some… guy. And I thought: “Oh my god, if my parents are seeing that I’ll be killed.” So I remember that I was under-aged basically because otherwise I wouldn’t have cared. So I was 16.

This would have been a controversial film in the times when it was released. What made you decide to act in it?

I knew the director. The director was a friend of a friend. And this was like in the seventies, so basically in the seventies, especially at my age of like… 14, 15, 16… you don’t really think, and there hasn’t really been any type of thought before. He said: “I’m doing a movie, I want you to act in it.” And I said: “What is it about?” thinking I’m the new Cary Grant for sure. But I had no intention of acting in a movie. I never wanted to be an actor, and never will, clearly. So what happened is that I just didn’t think about it, but I had a bunch of friends who were doing the movie so I thought: “Okay, let’s do it.” And he just told me: “Well it’s a story of this photographer, and you’re going to be the leader of the gang of guys he’s meeting.” So the photographer was this famous photographer called Baron (Wilhelm) Von Gloeden, who was this photographer in the 1890s, and who’s been famous for these pictures that he did, of young Sicilian boys treated as sort of classical posters, Roman style, Greek style, with the grape, naked… a bit of leopard (skin)… with a little bit of fur somewhere or just holding a leaf.

And, what basically happened was that after three days I was really fed up. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the country, and I really didn’t like it. I never liked to act. I did, by laziness, when I did it and because I always had a hard time to say no to people. So this was the only reason I did the movie, but after three days I was really fed up. The only thing I remember very well is Rene Scherer (a co-actor) and he was this philosopher, but also he was less famous than his brother, who was (the filmmaker) Eric Rohmer, and while Rene Schererhad the family name Eric Rohmer had changed his name. They had this sort of relationship a little bit like the Klossowski brothers, the two artists (Pierre—also a writer—and Balthus). They didn’t get along.

He claimed he was deaf, but I think he was pretending that he was deaf, because, funny enough, I remember having a very good time with him. And when I was speaking he was always laughing, and he was actually answering me. So I realized that it was a big trick that he was deaf— like he didn’t have to speak to people (if he didn’t want to). So basically there was this gang of young guys in the movie and he was listening to people, but barely speaking to anyone. The only person who happened to speak to him was me. So I was also very proud.

And the other film The Night Wears Suspenders, which released in 1984, did that come about in more or less that same way?

It definitely came about in the same way. I knew Virginie Thévenet as a sort of night club friend. A very, very sweet girl. So it was her first movie, and so in the movie she actually had cast a lot of people, who were not actors at the time. She cast Eva Ionesco, who now has become a director. She just did her first movie My Little Princess. She actually got a prize here, in Mumbai, for that movie. Eva was also my closest friend from school. My sister Farida (Khelfa) was in it. Most of the people in it were the sort of people who were coming out from the clubs from Paris etc. A kind of underground style Paris.

Acting has certain elements of showmanship, of drama; was there anything that you got from those early years that you took forward to your designs? Was acting something that you absolutely left behind, or was it something you learned to adapt?

I’ve been having a weird thing with acting, just the same way I always had a weird thing about being photographed. Often if you are photographed, and mostly if you’re acting, you’re basically not yourself. You’re supposed to be representing someone else, another character etc. So I posed for a lot of photographs with these photographers called Pierre et Gilles (the duo of Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, known for highly stylized photographs)and I never, ever had the patience for it. I also felt sort of awkward to be watched with a lens.Same thing for acting. I really have a hard time to have a lens—some really weird object—sort of staring at me. I always feel really uncomfortable. The weird thing is that I’ve been sort of able to do these little acting moments, that are as me— where I was the person that I am. Then it’s completely different. Even if someone is taking a photograph of me, as me, it sort of breaks that problem that I have, meaning I just couldn’t act as somebody else apart from who I was.

Do you think that’s the difference between an actor and a showman? That a showman, or someone who’s only a performer, can be himself?

Yes. I think there is a big difference between acting and another type of show where you could still be yourself. So it’s really completely different. I have no problem being myself— even staged, even fake. I have no problem being even more stupid than I am, but still myself. But I have a problem playing a dumb person who is not supposedly me, if you see what I mean.

Are there any really dramatic moments from cinema that have inspired your designs in some way or the other?

Yes, a lot, a lot. A lot of design that I’ve been doing have been directly influenced by movies, specific scenes of movies. Or not even specific scenes, but just the ambience of the movie is going to basically remind you of something, and sort of push you to draw according to that.

I’ll give a sort of wide example. Every single movie of David Lynch has been a big influence on my work. But not necessarily by its design— but by its ambience. If I’m thinking Lynch, my work is going to have the palette of colour of Lynch… it is going to be also fabrics, you know? If you think Lynch, you’re not going to think pink, or bright yellow, you know? It’s going to be blue, velvet. I mean I’m not even imagining the Blue Velvet movie, but dark, dark colours, suede and, you know, matte things.

So, a shoe can be just started by an ambience, or a shoe can just start by some music even. So definitely ambience in the cinema, as well as music, has pushed me to do a lot of designs.

But also some scenes, and literal things. Like, I would take (Luis) Bunuel as another example. Bunuel, he’s a great source of inspiration in terms of design. You know, most of his movies— from Le journal d’une femme de chambre to Repulsion. No, Repulsion is actually(Roman) Polanski. I’ve been doing a lot of shoes thinking about Repulsion because of this corridor with the hands coming out of its walls. But, Bunuel definitely. The first movie that he did Un Chien Andalou— that was so surrealist of him. I loved the Mexican part of him, but also the French part of him. Bunuel is probably the only director that I liked while growing up.

I was born in the mid sixties so I started to watch movies in the seventies, mid seventies actually, and I didn’t like any of the directors of my period. Worse— the actors. I’m talking about the French cinema. Now when I look back at the seventies period, I do like a lot of movies. I do like a lot of actors in the movies. But at the time, I don’t know why, it’s very personal with me, I just didn’t like my period. I just didn’t like what was exactly exposed in the seventies. There was this very naturalist type of cinema. So a girl had to look sort of frumpy. It needed to be sort of natural, sort of slightly turned down. I just didn’t like that.Also, French cinema in the seventies was very ‘true values’. It was the end of the sixties, so there was this sort of sexual revolution behind that etc.,and also the idea of freedom, and it was politically driven. It was not the sort of dreamy type of cinema, and I really always loved the most dreamy type of cinema. Now, when I look at those seventies movies, funny enough they look quite surreal because the acting, which seemed normal at the time, now seems to be over-acting. But at that time, at that specific period, it really didn’t look as if they were over-acting, they just acted boring.

Can you cite any designs? Like, for example, when we’re talking about Bunuel, can you cite any specific designs that may have been inspired from a film, or films?

Actually, when I said that I didn’t like any directors, there were two that I liked, of that time. When their movies were coming out, I would see their movies. Otherwise I would see fifties movies, sixties movies, 1920s, thirties, whatever, but never that period. But I’m missing one person, Jacques Doniol (Valcroze). I love Jacques Doniol movies actually. And so, yes, for instance, out of the Bunuel movies with Jeanne Moreau there’s one which is called Diary of a Chambermaid or Le journal dune femme de chambre, there is a really literal scene, where this older man who is a fetishist wants Jeanne Moreau to walk with the boots… and he talks to the boots, and he looks at her. So I actually re-designed these boots (that he wants Moreau to walk with), without actually re-looking at, or referring to the boots in the movie.

Basically I think everyone is influenced by things and it’s a very normal process. But there is a difference between copying and being influenced, even if it seems like the same thing. For me, if I think of something, even something very specific, I don’t look at the document— I won’t look at a picture of the thing. It just goes through the filter of my memory and it comes out the way it comes out. And funny enough, when I did that boot, which is called ‘Fife’, I thought that it would be quite close to the boot that she was wearing. But when I looked at the boot she was wearing, after I had done this, it has nothing in common: nothing, nothing, nothing. Well it’s in leather— that’s about it. But I do like that, I have no problem with that.

I did another shoe, thinking of another movie where actually, again, the main part is played by Moreau. It’s called Mademoiselle, and it’s one of the rare movies of Tony Richardson. So it’s a schoolteacher who comes into the country, and she’s teaching kids in the country in the South of France. What basically happens is that she is a pyromaniac, but nobody knows, and they have a lot of fires in that little village. So all the farms get set on fire. The houses of that village get set on fire. There is this immigration of—this is in the fifties—so there is this immigration of bucheron (woodcutters), cutting wood, Italian people coming to do that job for three months and after that they would move back to Italy. So, one of the two bucheron here is very handsome, and he has affairs with some girls in the village. So basically the men in the village are very jealous of him, and they blame him for setting the fires, when actually he doesn’t set the fires. But he is responsible for having sex with the wives. It was quite a fascinating movie because there’s a transformation of that teacher. She’s a very dry teacher, and very sort of old style, 1950s dry—Mademoiselle, the movie’s called because she is a Miss, an old Miss. She’s like more than 40 and she has never been married. And of course she has a crush on the good-looking bucheron and she sort of looks at him when he’s not looking at her. But there is this transformation of her from this sort of dry teacher when she goes to set this fire. As a ritual, she has a cupboard and she opens the cupboard and she has high heel shoes and she has piles of matches. So she puts make-up on, high heels, and she goes into the forest and she sets fire to the farms. But what I loved about the movie was the transformation which flows from the shoe. Red lipstick, and a pair of black pumps to set the fire.

It is said that your collection ‘Le Showgirls’ is sort of a tribute to the films All That Jazz, A Chorus Line, Showgirls and Moulin Rouge. In what way?

No, there is one part of the collection which is inspired by Showgirls, but that’s one thing that I always… I’ve always loved showgirls. I started designing shoes for showgirls. So it’s been inspired by a lot of movies which have showgirls. But I didn’t like Moulin Rouge.

You didn’t?

No. I didn’t like Moulin Rouge. There are two schools, I realized; a lot of people who liked Chicago didn’t like Moulin Rouge, and a lot of people who liked Moulin Rouge didn’t necessarily like Chicago. I’m on the Chicago side. Why? Because I think that in terms of performance, it’s a much better performance. In terms of style Moulin Rouge is more stylish, but it’s very still, compared to Chicago, where, you know, you have Catherine Zeta-Jones who’s great, and a wonderful dancer in the movie. But you also have RenéeZellweger who is great, but you also have Richard Gere, but you also have Queen Latifah who is a great singer, and a great dancer. So in terms of real performance, I think it’s a great show. It’s much more close to the Bob Fosse type of movie. And Moulin Rouge,which is a stylish movie, is shot a bit more sort of like a fashion-shoot. So I was really not inspired by Moulin Rouge.

I sort of always liked the movies by Busby Berkeley, but also all the Esther Williams movies. The very choreographed 1950s comedy musicals I’ve always loved.

One of the first movies I saw was… I think it’s a Nicholas Ray movie with Cyd Charisse (Party Girl). I remember very well, the poster— just a pair of legs like that, crossing. It’s a very famous movie of him. She’s never been as good as a dancer. I mean she was a great dancer but in a movie she’s never been as good.

And I always liked Singin’ In The Rain, I mean the classical Gene Kelly. They have definitely been very inspiring. In terms of music I’ll always love flamenco. Some movies with flamenco, have been great. There was a great movie with Carmen Amaya who was the great flamenco dancer, which was a very very good one too; I don’t remember the name again.

When you see these films do you think of your days working at the Folies Bergère (an iconic cabaret music hall in Paris, where Louboutin apprenticed)?

When I went to the Folies Bergère for the first time it was very much like The Red Shoes, this movie of Michael Powell (and Emeric Pressburger), which is set in Monaco, 1948, a Technicolor movie. So you see those shoes— the ballerina puts on those shoes and never wants to stop dancing. So it basically only takes her to her death— she jumps to her death with the shoes. It’s a bit of a tale about being unsatisfied in a way, but also ambition. And also, do you die for your work? Do you die for your art? Do you marry your art, giving up your life? Or can you sort of separate a bit of yourself from your art, or is it the only motto that you can live for? It’s a beautiful incredibly well shot movie. I had that feeling when I was at the Folies Bergère, not because of some sort of dramatic side, but because of the girls. One of the girls is of course Russian in the movie, and she’s this sort of diva, you know, a 1950s diva. Just like you have a bit in India still now, and less in Europe. So she’s always late, she’s quite lazy, but she has this fantastic skill as a dancer. So it’s about her. And so there were these type of characters in the seventies in the Folies Bergère.The girls would always arrive late, they were always complaining. They were tricky, you always had fights between the girls etc. But it all looked like a boarding school at the same time. I always had the idea of it being like this sort of big, big boarding school filled with feathers basically.

Can you think of any other films that have influenced you in the way that Diary of a Chambermaid did?

A lot of Lynch movies inspired me to do really very specific shoes. And this is proof—I did shoes that were photographed by David Lynch for this exhibition I did with him. So ‘Fetish’ (the exhibition)was definitely an inspiration starting from David’s work.

But the problem that I have with being very inspired by movies that I love is that when I love some movies, they’re already so perfectly styled that you don’t necessarily want to change anything. I’m thinking West Side Story is a great movie also. It’s very inspirational, but at the end of the day everything is there. If you think Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday— same thing, you know? She is already so perfectly styled that there is just nothing to add. So I would say that some Egyptian movies were very inspiring because, for instance, in the classical type of Egyptian movie, in the 1950s, sixties, you always had a belly dancer. And belly dancers are bare foot, and that’s one thing that I really liked to do— shoes for people who don’t really need the shoes. Really good belly dancers should not be on shoes. So to sort of draw a shoe inspired by a belly dancer is actually a counter-sense in a way because she shouldn’t have them. So the paradox actually leads to interesting shoes. I have been more thinking of people with bare feet, adding shoes to them, for instance, rather than thinking of people who are already properly attired in a way.

You first came to India in 1978, when you were 15 or 16. Why?

When I was 16, I came for the first time to Madras because of some of the earlier movies I saw. I started to go by myself to see movies when I was 12. Once, when I was 13,my sister Elena and I,and one of my friends who was older and loved movies too, spent the whole night out and then we slept over at his house. We woke up and Elena said, “We have to go to the cinematheque.We have to see a movie, you’re going to love it. It’s an Indian movie.” And we were like, “Ugh, what? An Indian movie? What for?” She said, “It’s a beautiful Indian movie and it’s called Devi and it is by this director called Satyajit Ray.”Now, where I was living there were two cinemas— one was called the Louxor and one was called the Delta. The Delta specialized in Indian movies. So I had seen a few movies that I liked because there were a lot of sing-songs. One was Aan, which was one of my favourites. So the first time we went to the Cinematheque with Elena, and she said, “There is this movie called Devi and the director is going to be there. He is called Satyajit Ray.” I thought: Oh God, what a bore. And then, we still went, and we saw a fascinating movie. And at the end, everybody applauded— it’s a beautiful, beautiful black and white, a classic of Satyajit Ray. And he was there. So that was very impressive because first of all he was a very tall and very handsome man. And he was bringing to that room, the perfect idea of Indian elegance. He was extremely elegant, extremely well dressed, extremely polite. He had a beautiful voice, and he had these sort of glasses and he started to explain his movie, and some people were asking him about his story etc. So since that day I started to see Satyajit Ray movies, and some other Indian directors but more of his movies, especially his new movies. So I saw something of the Indian cinema, through Satyajit Ray, and also some of Bollywood cinema, which at the time was made in Madras as well. So, when I turned 15, and I decided to go to India, one of the reasons was that I wanted to visit studios. So I went with a friend of mine, who was older, to Madras. We went first to Bombay, but we didn’t think of going to a studio in Bombay for whatever reason.

Why did you want to visit the studios? For what purpose?

Because when I was watching the Bollywood movies, some of which were made in Madras then—and you knew that a lot of other Indian movies (the Tamil movies) were made in Madras—it looked like a studio. I wanted to see how it was made because those fifties and sixties movies, Indian movies, musicals etc. looked really… there was something that I really loved compared to the American cinema of the same time. The big difference between the same period, of the 1960s colour movie, between Hollywood and Bollywood, was that all the tricks were really, really big in Indian cinema. Also, there was something sort of really not very well made, in a way. When you were shown columns, for instance, they would be shaking at times. You could definitely see that it was made in a studio. That I sort of liked. So I just was sort of quite fascinated to see what the studio actually looked like. And also I guess there was this idea for me of pure exoticism about the Indian cinema, whereas the American cinema was not pure exoticism— it was really pure industry. I could not even imagine knocking on the door and asking to visit a studio in America. I would not even imagine that. While in India I thought it would be possible. So I first came to India— to start visiting India and also to visit the studios in Madras, which I did.

You were here for about a year?

I was there for a bit less than a year.

Which are the Indian films, and filmmakers that you’ve enjoyed the most?

I would say that clearly Satyajit Ray has been my favorite director. And also he has been a very inspiring director even in terms of my work. I would say that not only is he a fantastic director, but also he’s been very inspiring in every single aspect, from his black and white movies, to his colour movies, to the story etc.

But there is also one thing which sort of fascinated me. An idea that came to me because of Satyajit Ray.

Basically, when you go to see movies, there is one thing that is never really surprising: you always seem to know whether this movie is made by a male director or a female director. It’s very rare to imagine this movie is done by a woman and it’s actually done by a man— you’ll never get it wrong. But when you watch Satyajit Ray’s movies, when you watch Charulata or La Maison et Le Monde, The House and the World (Ghare Baire), it’s quite difficult to know if it is made by a male director or a female director. He manages to enter the essence of femininity in a way that you really have a hard time.

This was the subject of a game that I was playing at the time with my friends who didn’t know their movies. I would say, “Is it a male director or a female director?” and people were saying (for films by Ray): “Oh, it’s a woman.” Some would say: “Oh it’s a man.” But you never really knew.It was something he managed to understand as an insider almost—what’s going on in a person, the essence of a lot of situations etc., but also of women, which is one thing I feel very close to because I’ve been brought up by women. So I know how women are perceived by women, but very few men can actually understand women or how they act. A part of the woman’s world is really difficult to go through if you are a man actually, and still Satyajit Ray has this thing— it’s incredible how much subtlety and femininity goes into his movie in a very, very, very impressive way. I would say that among Indian directors I did like, very much, Guru Dutt. But definitely my favourite, by far, would be Ray.

You spoke about him inspiring you in your work as well; how so?

Because I am doing a very feminine work, and in his movies there is something also very, very feminine, and he understands women in a very… But also he has a way to film women, the subtlety of women, the movement, the body language, which is very inspiring in general. And again it’s often women portrayed with no shoes. So it’s not directly translated through the shoes of his characters, I would say,but at the same time everything which is painted of femininity is interesting to me. That (interest) comes from my work, and goes directly to my work.

And, as I said, he is one of the rare directors to have transcended that male-female filmmaker style.

Has any shoe of yours ever been inspired by a character in his movies? Maybe a female character; not by her shoes but by the character itself? Or a scene?

You know what? Yes. Because I did some shoes which were sort of really very, very, very soft sandals, big heels, with a sort of henna design. So there are one or two scenes in Devi for instance… there is a moment where you see that from being still sane, she starts to be quite insane, and completely lost, and she has all this sort of make-up, as a goddess, she has this heavy make-up with all the dots etc. So I did a shoe, actually, very,very, very close to that, taking the drawing of all the dots, and outlining it in the way that she has this very, very heavy kohl underneath the eyes, which starts dripping. So the arch line was very, very dark, black, with a skin colour, with all these sort of white dots out of the face of Devi, and Charulata too. But also a lot of details of ornaments, of the flowers etc. There is also a lot, from Devi, from the dreams of the father, where he’s mixing up Kali and his daughter-in-law, with all these sort of metal pieces, statues,and flowers etc. So I did some shoes out of mixed metals, mixed with really sort of silky flowers— so quite inspired by, actually, the dreams of the father-in-law in Devi.

What did you call these shoes?

There was one that I called ‘Shiva’, there was another one that I called‘Devi’, to be literal. I did one shoe which was a flat shoe and it’s a mix of the border of a sari, and then a part of it is almost like… you have a lot of rings so it’s just like little strings of gold, but it’s also very much like the Cartier rings, and it’s all mixed together. So it’s a lot of bangles you would have on one little foot, attached, and then its borders would sort of cross in the middle, on the arch, the flat huge border side.

And this was called?

I called this shoe ‘Devdas’. It’s not necessary that they have some reference to the movie. I love Devdas though.

The one with Dilip Kumar, or the one with Shahrukh Khan?

No. The one with Shahrukh Khan. I have never seen the one with Dilip Kumar.

And the shoe you’ve made called ‘Bollywoody’, what made you call it that?

Just the colours, I have to say. I’ve been a little lazy with the Bollywood shoe. It was really a reference. It was a shoe that I had but I had it in a very, very sort of classical way with the black pattern etc., when I wanted pretty much the opposite. It’s a very structured pump, so it’s a very Western type of pump; so I just wanted to make it happy in a way with a lot of colours, and really more ornamented. So I did it in blue, turquoise and then also in bright pink, like what you call ‘Indian pink’. And also crystals embroidered all around the shoes. I called it ‘Bollywoody’ because it really has the Bollywood colours. And what I remembered of Bollywood was the Bollywood posters that you had in the late seventies in Madras, which were actually hand painted. But most of them also were with a lot of sequins. So you had these sort of faces etc. but a lot of writing, and a lot of background with fixed sequins, which shimmer in the sun, which I love. So when I do a reference to Bollywood, it also has to do not necessarily with movies, but with the posters and the brightness of the posters from the late seventies.

You have a poster collection…

I have a poster collection.

Of Bollywood posters…

Of Bollywood posters and Indian movies in general.

When did that start? Way back when you had come into India?

The first time I came to India I started to buy posters and then I kept on buying some, but it’s not about the movies in general, though I sort of know a little bit about some movies. For instance, you would have the first print, because it was painted for the first week and then after that per movie you would have different posters. So I sort of always liked the idea because you never had that in France. You never had a movie whose posters were changing, because they were never really hand painted so they wouldn’t change every week. And so that’s one thing that I liked, but I liked it also because a lot of movies then, now a little bit less, were written in the Indian—Hindi or Tamil—script, and not the same writing. So also in terms of graphism, when you come from Europe those letters in themselves are really beautiful. And I like calligraphy, so I like the very calligraphic posters. I can’t read it, so I can see it as a design instead of something that you have to read. It was really sort of a visual in the beginning; it has nothing to do with the knowledge of Bollywood.

Moving on to the way cinema has influenced you personally, there’s a trapeze swing in your studio. How did that come about?

I started trapeze because I saw one movie, which is a Wim Wenders movie with Bruno Ganz, which is called Wings Of Desire. This is a beautiful movie and so when I saw that movie there is this beautiful scene where the angel, (played by) Bruno Ganz, flies and he lands in Berlin. But he is transparent to the world. Nobody sees him; he can see the world, but he just cannot be seen unless he becomes human and loses his status as an angel. And there is this moment when he sees this woman in a trapeze, flying, and that is the moment where he falls in love and he decides to become human and to probably go back to a human state. I just love that scene. I love the movie, but I just love that scene specifically.

So when I left the cinema I said, “Okay I want to do trapeze.” So I started trapeze because of that movie. And funny enough, two years after or three years after I started the trapeze I was in the class in Paris where I was doing that trapeze and who do I see? I arrived a bit late. So the classes had started with a bit of stretching and a bit of yoga etc. before going on the trapeze. And I bumped into Solveig Dommartin who was the actress (that Ganz’s character fell in love with). So it’s ten o’clock in the morning and I’m thinking: This is because of her that I’m here actually! I should tell her. I should definitely tell her.But first of all I was a little bit shy, and then I looked at her and she was in bad leggings. It’s morning, so nobody really cares. She probably didn’t wash her hair and had no make-up on, and I thought: Well, who would be happy to have this talk at ten o’clock in the morning—My God this is because of you etc. If you’re an actress, you don’t necessarily want to have this talk at 10 o’clock when you are in your bad gym clothes, and someone is explaining to you that you are a goddess, and so I thought I shouldn’t tell her anything.

I ended up not talking to her, and when she went on the trapeze I looked at her, of course, and she didn’t have the grace at all. She was actually really bad. And I thought: Well, at the end of the day this is what is magical in the cinema: that vision of this man who was in love with her.Wim Wenders made her fly just like an angel, and she was an angel in the movie; but reality was a different story. She was not so impressive in the trapeze. Too bad, but at the same time it just makes stronger the love that I have for cinema.Because I really understand that what I always love about cinema is that magical part.And I sort of lived the proof of the magical part through this incident.

What’s your most vivid childhood memory of watching a movie with your family?

With my family it was James Bond.

Which one?

I couldn’t say which one, actually, but it was definitely Sean Connery. As a kid I adored Sean Connery and I still think that no one has beat him for James Bond. There is no way one can ever beat him, and I was very disappointed by Roger Moore. When I look back now he’s not a bad James Bond, but to me James Bond was really Sean Connery and he sort of formatted my idea of a superhero.

What was the memory? Was it all your family members? Your father, your mother, your three sisters together?

I didn’t go to the cinema with my parents. I would watch movies on TV with them. Actually, I was dyslexic as a child. So when you’re dyslexic your concentration is slightly different. So in that sense when I was watching a movie I was completely taken by the TV or the screen. So strangely enough, I have no remembrance of people around me. It’s quite rare for me to remember such things, and the few rare moments that I remember will be when someone is looking at her or his watch, getting bored. This really kills me. And I had this happen with one of my best friends and I said, “Listen, I shall never, ever go to the movies with you anymore because you keep on watching your watch and it drives me crazy!” Once you do it twice, I can’t appreciate the movie anymore.I have the feeling that someone is so bored next to me. It really destroys all the pleasure that I have from watching that movie. So basically I always loved to watch movies all by myself. I often went to the cinema by myself. Even today, when I watch a movie, I manage to have all my attention driven to it. What I’m saying is that it shuts off all the other elements around me.

What are, according to you, some of the most sweeping ways in which design and fashion have influenced cinema?

I would think of two completely different things. First of all, if I think for me and my work, my idea has always been divided. If I have to say who are the persons who would represent the perfect shoe in cinema, I would say, from the front: Marlene Dietrich. Why? Because of the way she crosses her legs, the posture, the body language. From the front, the attitude is all elegance. From the back it would be Marilyn (Monroe) because Marilyn is all about the way she walks. If you think of a woman from the front that’s Dietrich. From the back, walking, it’s definitely Marilyn Monroe. So a perfect shoe would have the front designed for Marlene Dietrich, and the back, the heel, designed for Marilyn Monroe because you really want to see her walking and you want to see the shape of her body walking and you have all these famous scenes, like in Some Like It Hot you have two guys undress and dry and then they keep on looking at her ass and the way she’s walking. Another example, of course, is Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It— it’s the same thing.

To go back to your question I would say that, where I think there has been a huge influence from the cinema to… (fashion), it’s not necessarily been by a movie, but it’s by the characters in a movie and it would be (characters played by) Brigitte Bardot, because Brigitte Bardot really represents, completely by herself, that sense of freedom. And that sense of freedom has inspired all the sixties— all the French movement in fashion of a sort of liberated corset (the girdle, which was popular till the fifties, were supplanted by the pantyhose since. In 1970, Bardot was used as a model for Marianne, the national emblem of France, who is a personification of liberty. Busts and statues of Marianne had previously had anonymous features. This was the first time she was modeled on a famous woman). And in the fact that, you know, you have at first Martine Carol. Martine Carol is the huge actress for the youth in the fifties in France. And then Bardot arrives, and Martine Carol becomes completely out of fashion. But not for Bardot’s choice of movies, but because she represents the youth and the freedom and there is no corset. There is no tightness in the body. The body is completely open and completely liberated. So it’s not even shoes actually. She’s always in ballerinas. Bardot really represents someone… not barefoot, sometimes barefoot, but also completely in flat shoes. Flat, flat, low ballerinas. And so, definitely I would say that if someone has influenced ‘maximum fashion’ in a way, ‘long-term fashion’, it really is Brigitte Bardot. But at the same time if you go on to ask me about the sophisticated aspect of fashion, it would be Dietrich.

You collaborated with David Lynch for the exhibition ‘Fetish’, in which you had women who wore shoes that were beautiful, but very painful. Shoes they would not wear in their normal course of life. Why did you decide to do this exhibition with a filmmaker?

Because, first of all, I belong to the fashion industry by accident. The thing that I always wanted to do was to design shoes, but never necessarily for fashion; I really wanted to design shoes for dancers: for showgirls, for performers. But it ended up that when I did the Folies Bergère, I realized that not everywhere was Broadway and also it’s a very expensive thing to do shoes. You don’t just take a machine and sow shoes. It’s not just about taking a cloth and stitching it.

So I ended up starting in the fashion industry but my real passion from the beginning has always been basically plays, movies, performers, concerts. So when I started I thought at one point when I was first selling my shoes and I had so many women saying, “I can’t run in these shoes!” And I thought: Well, why does everybody always want to run?Then I thought: I would love to do shoes, where I would never have to hear, “I can’t run in these shoes.” These shoes are not meant for running. Just like shoes are not made necessarily for walking. Just like a lot of other objects have different meanings.

So I basically thought: Okay,I would like to do a series of shoes which have to be seen with desire. So by extension it became shoes of desire, so it could go on the side of fetishism, and also fetishism is not… you do not have one fetishism. Fetishism is a large word with a lot of meanings. Fetishism is often reduced to bondage;a sadomasochist type of practice. Bondage is a specific type of fetishism, but fetishism is not just bondage. So I thought: Well,I would love to do shoes… really fetishist shoes, and have them photographed by someone. What I thought of in the beginning was that I’m sure that I just don’t want these shoes being photographed by a fashion photographer because it ends up being… the problem with fashion photography is that it’s such a short moment. That anything that gets shot through the lens of fashion gets dated very quickly. In that idea, fetishism, I didn’t want to have it dated by the passing of the instant moment. So I thought it should actually have the sensibility of a director. If you are a movie director you may be influenced by the same things (as a fashion photographer), the same country you’ve been visiting or by the same exhibition… but if you treat the essence in a different way, it stays longer basically. And so I thought: When I think of fetishism, it has to be done by a photographer who can be inspired by fetishism, but also who, in his work, has something very strong around fetishism or who is one of the people whose work I fetishize about.

And I thought that I would love to do those pictures a la Lynch, in the Lynch style. For me, when I was thinking of these shoes, the environment was very much Lynch. And I had known David, though we were not really friends— we had just met. I had worked with him on a different things, though not as a designer. I had photographed… I had written about him… his garden (for French Vogue). We met again a few years after and he was in Paris to start his exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, and we actually became friends at that time. So I thought: Well, I always wanted to do this exhibition in a Lynch way, but back then that would have been a little fancy. Now that I know David well enough to ask him I must. So I asked him because, instead of doing it in the Lynch way, if you can do it with Lynch, it makes much more sense. Because David was my first inspiration when I was thinking of these photographs. I really thought that the closest environment I could talk about, that I could visualize, would be a Lynch film— so it came naturally.

Have you considered taking your collaboration ahead and making a film, like Dali and Bunuel did?

No, because David, at the end of the day, I don’t think he really needs anyone actually to do movies with. So it would be a dream to work with David because he’s such a wonderful character, but also he’s very… he’s like a student. When I asked him about those pictures; before we ended the conversation I said, “I would have loved you to do photographs of shoes really inspired by fetishism in general,” and he said, “Okay, let’s do it.” He just didn’t think twice and he’s got this huge enthusiasm about projects, which I love. It’s a great thing to be so enthusiastic, like that,after so many years of practice. To keep on having, as your core base, this huge enthusiasm. And as long as it’s creative, his mind starts floating. So it’s great, but I really don’t think he needs anyone to do a collaboration with. I mean, if he wanted to collaborate with someone, it would be up to him to actually think of someone…The one person that I love, one of my favorite directors, is also, like David in a way, a big aesthete, I mean by that that you have a lot of great directors, and you can be a great director, but this is not necessarily why you are an aesthete. I sort of come from the world of aestheticism, through my work and everything that I love. I have to say that I love the idea as a person: people who are aesthetes.

So you have another director who I really watch: Wong Kar-Wai. And Wong Kar-Wai is very detail-oriented. And he always has great shots of shoes. But I have to say, me, as a shoe designer, I always notice that the line looks good, but it’s badly made. And actually China is not really good for making shoes, even now. So the styles are beautiful, but they’re badly executed. Like the dress in In the Mood for Love. All the different dresses with the same line are all as beautiful as possible.It goes to the shoe— I understand the line, I understand the silhouette, but the details, they’re bad. I can see that it’s not well made. I may be the only person to see that but I know that as an aesthete it bothers me. Because I think, if you need help, I’m all there for you.

According to you, who is the most striking female character in all the films that you’ve seen, and what sort of shoes would you make for her?

Again it’s very complicated because in films you have completely opposite type of characters, in the sense that some people… I like some actresses for everything they represented around men. Again I’m thinking of Marlene Dietrich. Marlene Dietrich is an example of an incredible character, incredible fabrication, incredible beauty, great actress, funny actress. You see the pleasure that she has playing… there is something about what she is and there is something completely the opposite, completely comic in a way, but with such style, and when I think Dietrich, I also think (Josef Von) Sternberg… And, you know, The Devil is a Woman, The Scarlet Empress, I mean, everything is perfect.

Have you designed any shoes for Marlene?

I designed a lot of shoes thinking of Dietrich, definitely. One I called ‘Maralena’ and ‘Maralena’ is thinking of Dietrich of course, and it’s also about a photograph. I love Dietrich for many reasons. I think she’s a trooper, an amazing character. Her daughter wrote her memories of her mother (Marlene Deitrich by Maria Riva), and they’re the most fascinating memories ever.

So in the career of Dietrich there is one moment, of everything she had a problem with, the one thing that I perfectly relate to. When you have a problem, there is always something good that you can pull out of that. At one point, Dietrich was broke, and nobody wanted her anymore in the sixties. She was completely passed by in a way and she decided to do something which would be considered the end of a career for anyone: going to Las Vegas. Basically she transformed herself into a stage person, as a huge, huge, huge singer actually, because she’s been singing in her movies etc. So she became this big performer, and instead of thinking, you know: Oh my God, this is the end of my career, she re-launched herself in the most brilliant way. And she was wonderful, I saw all her movies, her singing, performing. The one thing which I love is that she had this perfect body and she had these dresses made by Jean Louis which made her look naked, almost,because they were made of translucent, sheer chiffon, with some brooches and diamonds to hold it etc. And she always had a thick diamond necklace around her neck. I realized why— when I saw the dresses that were exhibited in Paris, and also in Berlin.

I realized that she wasn’t entering a dress when she wore these, but a foam bodysuit that the dress was stitched on. She was actually very, very skinny, too skinny, and already quite old, you know… 65, 68, and 70—she was born in 1901, and these performances were in the seventies. So these bodysuits were like a thin armory of nudity that she would enter, with a few diamonds and chiffon spread around. And the thick diamond necklace was to hide the moment where her dress, a turtleneck of foam, came up to her neck. I loved this idea.

So I did this shoe, Maralena, which was inspired by the fake nudity of Dietrich. It has a skin toned tulle, but it basically looks like a transparent shoe, like a mesh where I’ve been adding ‘diamonds’ (crystals). So basically when you have them on, you have almost like a tattoo of stones on your feet. So it’s transparency with stones on it, and it’s definitely straight coming from the Dietrich inspiration.

What are the pros and cons of a designer being patronized by the movies or the movie industries?

None. No bad sides, I can’t complain.

The second Sex and the City movie had your shoes, which was a switch for them, from earlier year references to Manolo Blahnik. What do you think brought this switch about, and what did it mean to you?

First of all I don’t have a TV, so when the press girl who was working with me in New York said, “We have to do shoes for Sex and the City,” and she was very excited, I just had no idea what it was and I was basically not interested. So we lost a lot of episodes because I was basically not keen on doing those special orders, but I had so many people saying, “You have to do some shoes for Sex and the City.” That’s how I ended up doing things for a show I hadn’t really seen much of.

But the reality is that all these shoes were bought in the stores, and so I realized the importance of Sex and the City, because after the shoes were shot and shown, they were suddenly no longer in stock; they were out of stock. So people were coming back and asking for that shoe, for that shoe, for that shoe, and it was always the shoe worn by Carrie Bradshaw— whatever, Sarah Jessica Parker. So I realized the importance of that show to the American culture. I only watched it much after and I did like it actually I have to say. I really did like it.

So I don’t really know what to say. Everything that happens to you, and makes you, in a way, more exposed for your work, is a good thing I guess, but I think that a shoe should really be seen with desire, so I’m really not someone who would like to impose my work on people. I think that it’s quite offensive to be very pushing of the celebrity system, because at the end of the day, however famous you are, whatever famous woman this is, she always has, just like everyone else, desire. So in a way if you offer what you do (give away your products to stars or movies for free, so they may be seen everywhere), it’s just … putting the things, it’s just obliging, and putting the people in a situation where they’re not dreaming about it (my shoes), they’re not raving about it.It becomes a normal thing, just another thing. So it’s like breaking the, not the mystery, but breaking the magic of it.

So just like when you go to see a shrink, you pay, you buy a pair of shoes, you pay. Period. And I really think it’s important because it keeps the value of my work, but also it gives values to the desires which is inside the person who is actually getting the shoe. So the whole celebrity system of the shoes, the different items etc. is… I understand the value of it, but I don’t feel the need to put my shoes at the feet of… (a celebrity). I’m just really happy when they are on the feet of people, because I know that they love them. It’s not me who’s imposing them on anyone.

Is there a downside people who would push it in that manner? For a designer who pushes his or her wares out there using the celebrity system?

I think that everybody’s different. I think that when you’re working in the fashion industry, the starting point is different for everyone. If you build a brand because you want to be successful or you want to make money out of the brand, out of the system, you end up having to think about it in terms of what you call ‘marketing’. What is marketing? It’s basically building… Trying to build an identity, trying to infuse some DNA in a product which has no DNA. And for that, I have no problem, because I have never been obliged to think about marketing. I mean, I have some people coming to me and saying, “We would like to work in this marketing department.” And I say, “There is no marketing department!” And when people are asking me why, then this is the answer: You need a marketing department when you have no identity. I never wanted to build a brand. I basically wanted to do pretty shoes to go on girls, so I never had to question myself about, ‘what should I do?’ I just like what I do, and it just happened that a lot of people like what I do too which makes me very happy.

There’s a story about you where a police inspector calls you up and says he’s found your visiting card in the bag of woman who has just stabbed a man, and this leads to you designing a shoe. How did all of this happen?

What happened was that one day I arrived at my office in Paris and I had those machines, you know, the answering recorder. So I hear a sort of heavy accent from the South of France. So it’s like some policeman saying, “This is a message for Mr. Louboutin. Can he call back to this number? You ask for the post 127, or you can ask anyone to the post 127 please etc.” So I sort of called back and said, “Hi, my name is Christian Louboutin.” “Ah yes sir, yes sir, this is for the case … Well we want to ask you a few questions about a woman.” So I said, “Yeah, tell me.” So he said, “Well there’s been a woman and we need to actually know more about her, because there is an involvement in a case, so we need to know more about the woman.” So I said, “Well what do you want to know?” “Well about her identity… you probably know that woman.” So they start to describe the woman and I said, “Listen, I know a lot of women who have blonde hair, I know a lot of women who are brunettes so it’s not really… ” “Well, but she had your number. So you must know her because she had your number in her bag.” So I said, “What number? Was it the number that you called me by?” He said yes, so I said, “Well, this is not my number, this is the number of the shop, and the office had the same number.” This was in the earlier period so I said, “Well, you have to understand that this is a general number out of a shop.” But he keeps on it. He says, “Well, you have to understand that you probably know her maybe in another way.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, you know, maybe you could know her, as, you know, some girl that you don’t really know, but you just know them.” She basically was a prostitute, so I said, “Well, I don’t do that. You know what? On that, I can assure you that I wouldn’t know the girl.” So he said, “But there is still this number.” I said, “This number is a number of a shop. But anyway, why do you need to know her identity? You must know her identity.” So they said, “Well, she probably had different identities if you see what I mean.” I said, “I really don’t know what you mean!”

But, anyway, the whole conversation was very surreal, but it ended up that I thought that the woman was dead, but in fact she had actually killed a man. And when the man died, it was near Versailles, he held on to her purse, and she left the bag. This is why they knew that the woman had killed him. She left very, very quickly. So the man held on to her bag and he died with her bag in his hands. So I hang up and I say, “I’m really sorry but… definitely if I can help then I will call you back,” and of course I never call them back. But I thought, Well, what type of shoe… would a woman who is clearly a client of mine, because she had the card of the shop… What type of shoe would she have? So I started to design a shoe, which would be like a perfect shoe for a woman who had to kill someone probably. So she had to sort of look good, if she was like a sort of escort type of girl, so it would be a delicate shoe, it had to be slightly sexy; high heeled to bring out the maximum in her ass. At the same time she had to obviously be able to run away wearing it. So I made a slide-on, and behind the slide there was a sort of swing-back detachable so it was a different shoe according to different situations. So when she is flirting, she detaches the thing, and when she’s not flirting, she can just put it back on. She can change… it’s a woman who is changing identities. The shoe had to have some sort of transformation in order to change your own identity; basically to hide. This is why I called the shoe ‘Murderess’.

You have this French saying that you’re quoted on when someone talks about the logic, the thought, behind your design: “the little thing that fucks everything up.” Could you explain that?

Well I think that I’ve never understood the idea of perfection. I think that perfection to me sort of leads you to death. If you’re trying to be perfect, what’s left after? If you’ve decided that this is it, then what’s left after? Anything what has to be seen with the idea of perfection is that it just doesn’t make it, it just doesn’t work for me. It’s almost a sort of sad concept. It’s almost, to me, also a fascist concept if you think about it in a way that perfection, you know: Third Reich— perfect race, it goes straight to kill other people. A lot of ideas leading to perfection are actually eliminating all the rest and I just think that it makes no sense. So versus the idea of perfection, I’ve always liked the idea of trying to go in the direction of beauty, of creativity, but with something that fucks up, which is not like, which is sort of… You enter a perfect idea in anything, even in beauty and aestheticism, and then you need to surprise in a way. And the way to surprise, there should always be something that makes it fuck it up. It’s like the accent to the thing.

The Pakistani Prism

Posted on February 16, 2013 by admin

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, 34, is a documentary filmmaker who was born and raised in Karachi and now lives between Canada and Pakistan. She has been in the news for having won the Oscar for her film Saving Face— a documentary on women who have been victims of acid attacks in Pakistan. She is also the recipient of a number of other highly coveted awards, including the Emmy (for Pakistan’s Taliban Generation in 2010) and was included in the Time Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world last year. But Sharmeen’s body of work transcends the glory of recognition. She has made over a dozen films in 10 countries focussed on human rights and women’s issues— consistently trying to give voice to marginalized people. After Saving Face she has gone on to make a film on Transgenders in Pakistan and a television series, Ho Yaqeen, that features ordinary citizens who fight for justice and change in her country. She is currently working on a film called Sounds Of Sachal, on an orchestra from Lahore that is reviving and reinventing traditional Pakistani music.

What attracted you to journalism in the beginning?

I always knew I would work in the field of journalism. While I did not have an inclination towards film back then, I have been writing for various news sources since I was fourteen.

Did you study film-making? Where and what?

I have never studied film-making.

The Academy Award might be the biggest milestone in your career so far, but personally what do you consider your biggest achievement?

When I look at my daughter, Amelia, I feel that she is my biggest achievement. Despite all the fulfillment that my work brings me, nothing can rival the joy spending time with my husband and daughter brings me.

Your efforts to showcase what is wrong with your society are foremost a voice against cynicism— the ‘what will change’ question. While complete change might take very long to come, what are some of the smaller consequences you wish would come of your cinema? What might be some of the (however small) changes that your films have managed to bring about anywhere?

Through film my aim is to raise awareness about hidden issues, and to provoke people into questioning their preconceived notions and rethink the way they see a community or phenomenon. For example my film, Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret, sheds light onto the customs and traditions of the transgender community in Pakistan from a humanist perspective. I hope that it will force Pakistanis to reconsider their current disposition towards them.

Saving Face has already stimulated worldwide attention on the topic of acid violence. Attacks are now being reported at a higher rate in Pakistan, and a lot of financial support has been directed towards the rehabilitation of survivors.

What are the kinds of films that have inspired you? What might be some of the films you treat as text-books for visual storytelling?

Iraq in Fragments and The War Tapes are very powerful documentaries in the way that they highlight human suffering. Buena Vista Social Club, on the other hand, captivates the audience through the immense beauty that it captures.

A lot of people say your films have made them cry. What are some of the films that always make you cry?

Classics like Gone with the Wind tend to get me going.

What advantages does the visual medium have for a journalist over the written medium? What, on the flipside, are some of the constraints of film?

Film transcends all other mediums by portraying the subject in its most natural setting. It breaks all barriers between the subject and its audience and diminishes the possibility of embellishment. However, capturing all the different constituents of a phenomenon on camera is very challenging. It requires you to always be in the right place at the right time.

Do you see your role more as a journalist— an objective chronicler of reality, or as an activist— someone who uses the medium of films to inspire and orchestrate change?

I see myself as a careful mix of both. While as a journalist I must be cautious to report on issues without my own opinion seeping through, my intention is that of an activist. I document phenomena that needs to be brought to the world’s attention so as to stimulate critical discourse and facilitate change.

Tell us about some of the technical/ logistical roadblocks you have had to overcome while filming.

While working in conflict zones there have been times that my crew and I have had to abandon scheduled interviews and shoots at the last moment, due to fear of being kidnapped. While shooting in places such as Saudi Arabia I have encountered officials who see a woman with a camera as blasphemous and have had to convince them to allow me to proceed with my work. Other than that I have been very lucky and have also developed an intuition over the years that warns me against particularly risky situations.

Tell us about some of the moral dilemmas that you’ve dealt with while filming documentaries.

While the aim of my documentaries is to facilitate change in the lives of those who are in the same circumstances as my subject, I often question whether the film will positively affect the life of my subject specifically. Another constant challenge is ensuring that I am a passive observer in the life of my subjects, and that I do not influence their decisions in any way.

And yet, it cannot be easy to not get involved with your subjects given the amount of time and empathy you invest in their lives. How did this dilemma of involvement play out vis-à-vis your film on Transgenders?

As a documentary filmmaker, I have been trained in maintaining an objective approach when interacting with the subjects in my film. However, this is much easier said than done, especially when working with vulnerable communities. I try and channel my empathy towards making sure that subjects are represented accurately in the film, and that they are given the opportunity to tell their own story.

You make your films for a global audience. Have you ever had to explain a cultural context to accommodate them? Is that a constraint?

Using film as a medium I am able to capture my subject in their natural surroundings and this usually accounts for context. I always try to capture adequate background information about my subjects as well as their environment so as to provide an accurate and all-encompassing picture. I have always worked this way and so I do not see it as a constraint.

Have you considered fiction features? Can they be as effective as documentaries for telling untold stories and creating awareness that might lead to change?

Producing fiction films allows for more flexibility in portraying a story and can deeply impact the audience. I would love to make fiction features and feel that they too can effectively raise awareness about uncovered issues. Till now I have continued to engage in documentaries for the reason that it allows me to provide silenced communities with a voice that brings their personal stories to a global platform.

What according to you are some of the qualities that a good documentary filmmaker/journalist should possess?

Good filmmakers/ journalists must have the ability to make their subjects feel comfortable around them. They must also be able to see beauty where no one else can, and make that beauty come alive on screen.

Is gathering finances for a documentary always an uphill task? Has it become any easier with all the changes that have taken place in the digital and electronic media?

Gathering funds for production has definitely become easier as appreciation for the documentary form is on the rise. It is also easier, now more than ever, to access financiers from all around the world. Advances in electronic media allow for people with common interests to reach out to one another and engage in projects.

Name one (or a couple of) reason(s) why this is a good time to be a woman filmmaker in Pakistan.

Women of profession in Pakistan have always been respected, and there is no ceiling for them in the workplace. It is also a good time to be a filmmaker in Pakistan as our media has more freedom now than ever before. The number of private television channels has grown exponentially, and cinema houses that show more than just mainstream films are sprouting up in urban areas.

Securing funds locally for independent filmmaking is still a challenge, but this is an issue for filmmakers in Pakistan in general.

What does the term ‘woman filmmaker’ mean to you. In your own assessment, what has being a woman brought to your cinema/storytelling?

Being a woman filmmaker I have access to twice the subject matter that a man would have access to. Women let me into their homes and personal lives and really allow me to survey their existence, which is essential before filming a subject. When speaking about sensitive matters it is also sometimes easier for subjects to trust a woman. On the other hand, being a woman has also been advantageous when working in territories that women do not usually frequent, such as the Taliban areas. A woman being an anomaly in such an environment, the men resort to treating me like a man. Hence, the term ‘woman filmmaker’ means higher access to me.

While there has been a lot of buzz about Pakistani literature (particularly in English) over the last decade, Saving Face was one of the few instances that put Pakistani cinema on the international map. Can you think of a couple of films/ filmmakers you would like to recommend from your country?

Mehreen Jabbar is a notable veteran of the Pakistani film industry, but in recent years more independent filmmakers are emerging in Pakistan. Shoaib Mansoor has recently made two fiction films that focus on social issues in Pakistan, and Ali Kapadia is another up and coming filmmaker.

Why has filmmaking in Pakistan not caught on as one might have expected it to?

Filmmaking has caught on in some ways, you will find many up and coming filmmakers who are experimenting with new styles and are producing exceptional independent projects. There is a distinct rift however, between our commercial films and the growing indie film industry; our talent is most evidently seen through our television programs, or on the internet, not on the big screen. We need more avenues for promising filmmakers to find funding and access the resources to pull off international quality cinema; we have the skill, we just need the means to see our projects through to completion.

Post the Oscars one of the things you were looking forward to was using Saving Face as an educational tool in Pakistan. But despite your Oscar win, you’ve faced opposition against releasing the film in Pakistan, and not released it despite having a legal right to. How do you balance interests when making a decision regarding something like this? How do you deal with it on a personal level?

Daniel Junge, the co-director of Saving Face, and I both agree that the safety of the women in the film is paramount. Even though we have chosen not to show the film in Pakistan, we will go ahead with the educational outreach component. We have designed public service messages that will be broadcasted on television and radio channels in the Saraiki belt of Punjab, where the acid attacks in Pakistan are concentrated. We will also be disseminating educational materials in this region. Although these materials are not linked to Saving Face, they announce the penalty against acid crime and provide information about support for survivors.

You’ve directed a TV series called Ho Yaqeen about ordinary citizens from Pakistan fighting for justice and change. What was your primary motivation here? Also, were you at any point wary that your subjects, mostly women, might face the sort of repercussions that threatened your subjects from Saving Face? How did it all turn out?

A common complaint in Pakistan is about a lack of role models and mentors who can inspire our youth and give them a figure to aspire towards and emulate. We remain unaware of all the extraordinary individuals who dedicate their lives to bettering Pakistan regardless of the obstacles placed before them. My aim behind Ho Yaqeen was to choose the stories of six individuals who embody the core values of a progressive Pakistan; these people are brave, determined, ambitious, and refuse to take no for an answer. I wanted their stories to be documented so that their voices are heard and their struggles are celebrated. I hope that their narratives inspire others to take similar actions within their own communities.

Safety is always given top priority when making documentary films, and Ho Yaqeen was no different. We had to be extra cautious as many of the characters featured in Ho Yaqeen are involved in civil rights battles, and often face stern opposition when fighting for equality and justice. Our subjects were asked to only share the parts of their lives that they were comfortable with, and we maintained anonymity of certain participants when it was deemed necessary to their security.

If you could recommend any one documentary—from anywhere, any era, that you feel everyone must watch—which one would you recommend and why?

My film, Iraq: The Lost Generation, looks into a society engulfed in war. From all the films that I have made this one was the most emotionally challenging due to the subject matter. I think it is important for everyone to realize the devastation that comes out of war and so I would recommend this film.

Iraq – The lost generation, Trailer

Promo for Transgenders

Trailer, Saving Face

Ho Yaqeen – Episode 1 (Sabina Khatri) PART 1

Ho Yaqeen – Episode 1 (Sabina Khatri) PART 2

For Real

Posted on February 12, 2013 by admin

TBIP’s documentary film recommendation

Bom or One Day Ahead of Democracy by Amlan Datta is a very curious study of the lives of the people of Malana, an isolated village in the Himalayas, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. These people, known for making the best Hashish in the world, also sustain what is said to be one of the world’s oldest democracies. They believe Malana is a republic in its own right, to be governed by a locally elected council which bears no allegiance to the hegemonic Panchayati Raj structure that the panchayats of other villages in Himachal Pradesh subscribe to. They worship their own deity, make their own laws and their politics is independent of the Indian state. I call this a ‘curious’ study, because, unlike other documentaries on the village like Malana: Globalization Of A Himalayan Village or Malana, A Lost Identity, One Day Ahead Of Democracy is not an objective anthropological account, even if for Amlan it began that way. What began with a smoker’s interest in where this amazing hash comes from, and a visit to the village with Election Commission officials, went on to become a personal journey. He stayed back in the village even after the officials left. He befriended the head of the village council, was adopted into one of the families there and ended up adopting two children from Malana. As a result Amlan’s documentation of the villagers’ way of life becomes an argument for it. His account of Malana’s reluctance to be a part of the Indian electoral system, its suspicion of a power plant that has sprung up nearby and its abhorrence of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials who continue to raid it – progresses from the outside-in to the inside-out. So the film also becomes a study of the filmmaker himself who, over the course of filming, becomes an integral part of his subject. This extreme subjectivity of the filmmaker fascinates me.

TBIP Take

Posted on February 8, 2013 by admin

Closing The Universe

On the 6^th of May, 1954, a young doctor took a train from London to Oxford and ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. He had trained for 8 years and given the Olympics a shot before he became the first man in recorded history to run a mile in less than four minutes. The record he made that day has had a strange history. Roger Bannister didn’t run much after that and spent his life as a self-effacing, highly successful neurologist. 46 days after he first did it, his arch rival John Landy ran the mile in 3 minutes 58 seconds. Sport records have an odd way of making commonplace the superhuman. Since Bannister over 1100 male runners have run the sub-four minute mile. His best has been lowered by 16 seconds. Schoolboys have done it and so have forty-year-olds. While no woman has yet broken four minutes for the mile, the current record stands at 4:12.56 by Svetlana Masterkova in 1996. Like in the Cole Porter song, birds, bees and educated fleas all have an eye on that mile.

Do those in the arts have similar burdens and compulsions of constant variation on elegant themes? Certainly there seems to be truth, universally acknowledged, in that Shakespeare can only be staged with radical political intervention and, preferably, in Croatian blank verse. On the other hand, no one seems to mind Austenian heroines come as they are, as they please. Filming Pride and Prejudice is treated like sponge cake— a classic challenge for the expert. The arts have a way of allowing the artist to amble along at the ten-minute mile if s/he has a respectful expression.

One might argue that the record-breaking athlete is powered by something more internal, not the gaze of the spectator. Even if this is taken as wholly true, the spectator of sports is powered by a desire for excellence, by that Daft Punk refrain for more. The spectator of the arts though is a tolerant creature, easily charmed and sometimes actively hostile to surprises. What would we do if Subodh Gupta stopped tossing stainless steel bartans in the air?

In 1981 a young Salman Rushdie gave the world a book of great beauty, of imaginative pleasures, a compulsive story. 1981 was the year of Chariots of Fire, the film that told the true story of two runners in the 1924 Olympics—Eric Lidell and Harold Abrahams, who incidentally was Bannister’s timekeeper when he ran the mile—but don’t be distracted. In the years since Midnight’s Children these are some of the things that have happened to the cinema and television viewer: Indiana Jones, E.T., The X Files, the Star Wars trilogy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, the gargantuan Harry Potter empire, a whole lot of Almodovar, Terminator 2, Avatar, Rajinikanth, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Inception, Life of Pi and the internet. It is not clear that Deepa Mehta and Rushdie, as screenplay writer in the making of Midnight’s Children, have taken cognizance of the images already burnt into our brains.

Let’s not compare the beauty and strangeness of the five hundred-odd children who assemble in Saleem’s head from his tenth birthday, over 500 pages, with the poor sods who are extras in Midnight’s Children. By the time they started appearing (aside: what was that Bharatanatyam costume?) I had the uneasy feeling I was watching one of the trashier episodes of Heroes. Any minute Hayden Panettiere was going to turn up in Saleem’s room with her cheerleader costumer and a snotty (sorry, Saleem) attitude. When Satya Bhabha’s Saleem listed the ‘werewolf from Nilgiris’ people in the audience sniggered, so unthinkingly close (and yet so far) was it to the ‘assembling the A-team’ sequence of every caper movie. The pity of it was that, by staying in Saleem’s room, the movie didn’t give us the cheap thrills of showing us the gifts of the children either, in a way that this silly Hyundai ad does.

Midnight’s Children—the movie—ignores cinema audiences ready and ripe for the blurring of truth and magic. It’s an odd object, this movie— stiffly pedantic where the novel was fluidly cinematic. It ignores all the wild possibilities of flitting around the country (which the novel does bindaas from sentence to sentence) and when it does it is to show the tired old footage of Nehru making a tryst with destiny. Or to do embarrassingly saturated colour in a ‘Delhi slum’. Here I go, comparing it to the novel again. Ignore that. Let’s stay in cinema.

In 2009 a young woman called Lucy Alibar co-wrote the screenplay Beasts of the Southern Wild, an adaptation of her one-act play. In 2012 the movie has won everything in sight and been nominated for everything else. Its lead Quvenzhané Wallis is nine and the youngest actress to ever receive an Oscar nomination. Wallis plays Hushpuppy, a girl who lives in ‘Bathtub’, a southern Louisiana bayou community which is hit by a storm. Hushpuppy’s exteriors and interiors are full of the startling. She hangs with pigs and chihuahuas, lives in a shack of her own, a bell-ringing distance away from her father, and eats roast chickens whole. We hear the echoing heart beats of animals as she hears them. When we hear the noise of the approaching storm we could choose to think of this film as a response to Hurricane Katrina or just believe what Hushpuppy sees: the breaking of the polar icecaps and arrival of the aurochs. It’s a film that blooms magic realism at high speed like flowers in time-lapse photography. It allows, like Marquez’s Macondo, the space for both the ascension of Remedios the Beauty and the fear that the train is a frightful “kitchen dragging a village behind it”.

Rushdie once quoted an image of a dog barking in Saul Bellow’s The Dean’s December. “The central character, the Dean, Corde, hears a dog barking wildly somewhere. He imagines that the barking is the dog’s protest against the limit of dog experience. ‘For God’s sake,’ the dog is saying, ‘open the universe a little more!’ And because Bellow is, of course, not really talking about dogs, or not only about dogs, I have the feeling that the dog’s rage, and its desire is also mine, ours, everyone’s. ‘For God’s sake, open the universe a little more.’”

Midnight’s Children was Rushdie’s way of opening the universe. And like Bannister’s mile it lay open and luminous. This movie on the other hand has not even attempted to crack a window.

Gaza and the Greatest Love Story Ever Known

Posted on February 6, 2013 by admin

Civil Rights Attorney Radhika Sainath wrote this piece in Gaza, on November 9, 2011. Not much has changed since then. In November, 2012, a ceasefire was declared between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza. Last month, according to a report, Israeli soldiers fatally shot four Palestinians in the West Bank and at least one in the Gaza Strip. The report identifies the deceased as Anwar al-Mamluk, 20, Udai Darwish, 21, Samir Awad, 17, Saleh al-Amarin, 15, and Lubna al-Hanash, 21.

Palestinians in Gaza love Indians. They love Indian dancing, they love Indian music, they love Indian clothes. Whenever I walk out of the house, someone inevitably asks “hiyya hindeyee?” Is she Indian? ”I knew it!” they say when the response is in the affirmative. “Bheb al Hind,” I love India.

Regular people here in Gaza know a lot about India—far more than the average American or European–which is really surprising given Israel’s closure of Gaza and its isolation from the world. So why this love for India?

Is it because, nearly a decade before India’s independence from Britain, Mahatma Gandhi rejected the Zionist colonial endeavor in Palestine, writing on November 11, 1938:

What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

Or is it the fact that India opposed the partition of British Mandate Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, was the first non-Arab country to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974, and did not extend full diplomatic relations to Israel until 1992? Could it be that Yasser Arafat, whose visage can be seen on many a Gazan wall, billboard or door was warmly welcomed in India?

No, no, no and no.

But I had a sneaking suspicion I knew the answer after I recently showed a photo of my Indian-Canadian husband to a family I was visiting in a village in the southeastern part of the Strip a couple of weeks ago.

“Oh, handsome,” said 43-year-old Layla, gazing at the photo I had taken of Suresh on the subway. Layla’s orange, lemon and olive trees had been bulldozed by the Israeli army about ten years ago when Israel created a “buffer zone” within the Strip. Her family had to vacate their farm home because the kids were terrified by the nightly Israeli army gunfire. “I’ve seen him on the television.”

The kids came around and looked at the photo, “He was on the television, he was on the television,” declared 12-year-old Samaher, pointing at the small T.V. “Raj Kapoor,” she added, naming the famous Bollywood actor from the 1950s and ‘60s.

“Tell him he’s invited to Gaza,” added Layla.

I was pretty sure that my husband had not been featured on Palestinian television in the month I had been away. The mystery continued.

Then on Monday, I visited a Sammouni family for the Eid holiday in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza. I had last visited that neighborhood in February 2009, in the aftermath of ‘Operation Cast Lead’ when Israel had killed 48 members of a single extended family and turned the entire neighborhood into rubble.

I brought a big plate of sugary sweets and my wedding pictures. The women went nuts. “It’s just like in the Indian films,” they cooed, “Amitabh Bachchan. Kareena Kapoor,” they added.

It all seemed to be coming together. Amitabh Bachchan was largely responsible for my popularity, along with Kareena, Aishwarya, Hrithik Roshan and the whole gang.

Then yesterday, a woman I had met at a memorial event marking the five-year anniversary of Israel’s shelling of a row of houses in Beit Hanoun, in the north of Gaza, invited me to a pre-wedding henna party. We laid a wreath on the graves for the 19 killed—which included 14 from the same family—and then delivered Eid sweets to Bedouin families living near the buffer zone. Afterwards, we headed to a modest home to see the bride.

I told the women at the party I had just gotten married five months ago. A grandmother who appeared to be in her early seventies gave a short speech in Arabic which I interpreted as “Do you and your husband love each other a lot?”

“Of course,” I declared, thinking she must have found it odd that I came to Gaza so soon after getting married.

“What she means,” another woman translated, “is that Indian people, they have great love stories, she has seen it in the films, and she says that you and your husband, must have had a great love story too.”

Everyone leaned in, arms held out so as not to smudge the intricate lines of green henna drying on their hands. I reflected on our time together… was it an action romance adventure with moustached villains and elaborate choreographed dance scenes?

“Um, yes,” I said, wondering if they wanted more details. They turned to more important questions.

“Do you know Kareena Kapoor?” one woman asked in Arabic.

“We love Indian films,” declared another.

“Dhoom 2 is my favorite,” added one recent college graduate. “But I also love Jodhaa Akbar.”

So Amitabh, Abhishek, Aishwarya, Aamir, Hrithik, Kareena, Salman, Shahrukh, if you’re reading this, how about a shout out to 1.7 million of your biggest fans in the Gaza Strip? Israel has forbidden pasta, tea, cement and freedom flotillas from entering Gaza, but it hasn’t stopped Bollywood. We watch you under the Israeli drones and the F-16s, after being shot at by the Israeli navy and army while fishing, picking olives or going to school. You bring a sliver of joy to people living under the world’s longest occupation in the world’s largest prison, and for that we thank you.

In the gallery: Glimpses of life in Gaza, by Ruqaya Izzidien. Izzidien is a British-Iraqi journalist and photographer.