For Real

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

TBIP’s documentary film recommendation

Most films about folk traditions carry a handloomy sense of worthiness, the smell of middle class stodginess desperately trying to gain some cool by association, some elite status by the recognition of artistic traditions which are both austere and lush in their commitment. While the folk traditions themselves could set our souls free, the same cannot usually be said of the solemn films made about these traditions.

If you hate that kind of film then you need to have your faith reaffirmed by watching Ruchir Joshi’s 1992 documentary 11 Miles: A Diary of Journeys. This film about the Bauls is made with great artistic exuberance, a visual sureness, an energetic beauty and a questing heart. A fabulous opening sequence sets the tone of the film— a minstrel sings through the Calcutta streets, before walls plastered with film posters, over pylons and half built flyovers, his song coming in and out of the traffic, the night a geometric pattern of dark and sulphur yellow lights, flagging off a journey of stories, songs and conversations with Bauls. The first person voice-over meditates on their ideas of samadhi and desire, walls and lines, freedom, art, life and the need to disturb those who are too much at ease with their own ideas, free associating with thoughts about Ghatak, Dylan, Machado and observations about shots the filmmaker ‘sees’ . Perhaps the most marvelous thing about this film is the way its form makes the tradition present, films it with a personal eye, not a formulaic one so that the baul who blow dries his hair lives in the same film as the baul in the manicoloured robes with the pahuncha hua demeanour and one landscape holds deep blue ponds and zigzags on asphalt, arid expanses and TV towers.

11 Miles… is a mast, must-see documentary, whose essay style, unburdened by pedantic definitions of high and low art, popular and folk, anthropological and experimental, expresses itself with an intellectual independence and clarity that the documentary form at its best is capable of. At two and a half hours some may consider it a bit self-indulgent, but I’ll take that over self-aggrandizing any day.

Short, selected clips from the documentary are available to view online on the website of The Travelling Archive project http://thetravellingarchive.org/related_research_ruchir.php

The Mirror Has Two Faces

Posted on October 25, 2012 by admin

Mira Hashmi on Pakistan’s paradoxical and puzzling relationship with Hindi cinema

Her name was Sardar Bibi on her identity card but, in the great Punjabi tradition of conjugating proper nouns, everyone called her Sardaran. She was a widow in her sixties and her daughter Meena was my nanny. Sardaran did odd-jobs around the house, cooked the chapatis, and at night taught me old Punjabi folk songs and narrated fables about wayward monkeys and ticks that exploded in rivers of blood after having a tad too much to drink. This was the early 1980s and the VCR had only just entered our collective consciousness, and with Indian films banned from Pakistani cinemas since 1965, pirated videos of Bollywood fare, though not available in great abundance, were the newest guilty pleasure, one more in a long line of declared cultural taboos in the wake of General Zia’s bid for ‘Islamization’. (This split between official line and ground reality often gave rise to absurdities of farcical proportions, such as the state television channel being instructed to never mention India by name, resulting in Dilip Kumar’s return to Mumbai after a trip to Lahore, in 1988, being covered in news bulletins with the sentence ‘Humsaya mulk ke adaakar, jo humsaya mulk se chand roz ke dauray par aaye the, aaj shaam waapis humsaya mulk ke liye ravaana ho gaye.’ And I shall also never forget the night I heard the moulvi at our neighbourhood mosque reciting a naat—devotional verses—set to the tune of Roop suhana lagta hai, chaand purana lagta hai.)

When word got around that the Hashmi household had acquired a National VCR (but nothing to watch on it), a kind family friend lent us two films from his Dubai shopping: Naseeb and Suhaag – both Amitabh Bachchan starrers. For about a month, all the kids plus the household help would sit huddled together in front of the TV after lunch and religiously watch either of the two films every single day. It was sometime during this ongoing exercise that Sardaran declared that Bachchan was her long-lost son. Our kitchen, which was her domain, became a shrine to the star, with posters and pictures adorning all the cupboards. Over the next few years, she only managed to see one or two more of The Angry Young Man’s films, but her mantra remained unchanged, unshakeable: Bachchan was her son. She managed to convince the local electrician of the veracity of her claim but the rest of us would only giggle and smirk in response and treat it as the joke that we felt it was. It was only many years later, after she had passed away, that we learned from her family that as a young woman during the upheaval of Partition, Sardaran had been separated from her infant son, whom she never saw again. She prayed that the lost child had been found by a good family who raised him as their own and, somewhere in her heart, she hoped that he had grown up to be a handsome, successful, famous and adored man— someone exactly like Mr. Bachchan.

On a warm, humid Lahore evening, three days after Rajesh Khanna’s death on July 18, a group of friends and I sat together in his memory, singing Bheegi bheegi raaton mein and watching him woo Zeenat Aman on the projector in my cozy living room. We were plunged into darkness every now and then with the constant power ‘load-shedding’ that has been a staple of our daily lives for the past five years, but our spirits were not to be dampened. With strings of motia wrapped around our wrists, we munched on pita bread and hummus and sang and reminisced about our movie memories of Kakaji, and amidst this I was suddenly reminded of Sardaran, and the deep, almost inexplicable connection that innumerable Pakistanis have with Hindi cinema. After all, politically, we have always been ‘enemy countries’, having fought three official wars and countless unofficial ones, and with much suspicion of the other to be had on either side of the divide. There is intelligence surveillance, political one-upmanship, media tu-tu-main-main, police-reporting visas, and visa application processes that’ll make you wish you’d never been born— and yet, there is also a strange kind of affinity, an underlying, seductive fascination that at once repels and attracts us to the Other— sort of like the Hollywood films in the 80s where both the villain and the love interest would be those darned Russkies. In official forums, there is resistance and denial (even as Hindi films were allowed back onto Pakistani screens some five years ago), but on the ground, the unembellished reality is that today Bollywood informs our cultural landscape more than our own local cinema. Lollywood, as our film industry, based primarily in Lahore, is referred to, was supposed to benefit from the ban on Hindi films because it would, in theory at least, allow home-grown cinema to flourish unhindered by rival product. That theory was, of course, inherently flawed and in the face of zero competition, not to mention Zia’s destructive cultural policies, Lollywood eventually (and inevitably) floundered. Today, there is reverence and nostalgia for our legends, like Madam Noorjehan, Santosh Kumar, and Waheed Murad, but Lollywood, for all effects and purposes, and due to our own acute myopia, has become irrelevant to the larger picture. Our radio stations now play Indian filmi sangeet, our up-market movie houses show The Dirty Picture and Ra.One, our weddings see the young ‘uns performing choreographed dances to Oo la la and Chammak challo, we cry with Aamir Khan during every episode of Satyamev Jayate, we know the inner and outer worlds of Shahrukh Khan inside and out, Katrina Kaif and Shilpa Shetty smile benignly at us from billboards, and we hang on to every bit of Bollywood gossip about Saifeena that floods the internet. (We also laugh ourselves silly when Hindi TV channels spell it ‘Abhi na jao chod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahi’, but I’ll save that for another day).

The internet has obviously made it that much easier to have the world, including that of Hindi ‘fillums’, at our fingertips, but even in the years way back when Gates and Jobs were just pimply-faced geeks getting copies of Asimov kicked in their faces at the beach, Hindi cinema managed to very much be a part of our lives in an oddly organic fashion. Apart from the trickle-turned-surge of Hindi movies on VHS that led to a mushrooming of video rental outfits all over the country, local book stores started stocking smuggled issues of Filmfare, Stardust and (now long defunct) Star & Style. Only a few precious (and terribly expensive) copies of each would make it across and then would be passed from fan to rabid fan, dog-eared and creased, each article and interview and photograph pored over and dissected and discussed incessantly. It was through this network that we came to keep ourselves updated with Amitabh Bachchan’s recovery after his infamous accident on the set of Coolie. (My cousins had made a pact that they would watch the new VHS of Laawaris only if/when the star succumbed to his injury; I arrived home from school one day to, horror of horrors, see them viewing the film. “Is he…?” I asked in a trembling voice. “Nah, we just got tired of waiting and thought, what the hell?”). This was also how it got around like wildfire among Pakistan’s female population that the frizzy-haired girl in red in the song Papa kehte hain from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was hero Aamir Khan’s wife, thereby shattering a million teenage dreams, in unison with those in India I imagine.

And then there was, of course, Chitrahaar! It is nigh impossible to explain to the YouTube generation just what an esteemed place this film song show held in our hearts. Twice a week, we would await it eagerly, singing along to the ads for Nirma Washing Powder and Vicco Turmeric Ayuvedic Cream that signaled the imminent arrival of Chitrahaar, our beloved window into Bollywood’s past, present and future. Perhaps it’s nostalgia speaking, but the instant gratification that the 24-hour Bollywood content TV channels offer today, simply doesn’t compare to the sense of heightened anticipation that Doordarshan used to elicit back in the day with their banner programme.

There are hazy memories of a screening of the 1967 Meena Kumari starrer Noor Jehan, which, for reasons now consigned to the planes of bureaucratic amnesia, was allowed to have a limited release in Pakistan sometime in the late seventies, but I remember very clearly the thrill of watching a Hindi film in the cinema for what I consider the first ‘real’ time, when I visited Delhi and was whisked off to see Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, in 1984. Many years after that, I was in Mumbai making a documentary on Madam Noorjehan and got to meet my cinematic idols, Gulzar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand among them, and though I tried to appear unfazed, the truth is that I could barely contain myself. The monumental sense of awe I had felt in the presence of the subject of the film I was working on, was duplicated during interviews with Lata Mangeshkar and Naushad, and I was acutely aware of my ridiculously good fortune. Perhaps dearest to my heart was the meeting with the late Manorama, who spoke with great fondness of her old friend ‘Noori’, whom she hadn’t met since the latter left Mumbai after Partition. At the end of our chat, she couldn’t hold back the tears and neither could I. It was my first conscious and overwhelming realization of the one peoples we once were, and also of what a strong emotional presence Indian cinema had had in my life, as well as in those of many other Pakistanis.

The question though, that I certainly had never really asked myself, or anyone else for that matter, was why. Why do we have this deep and abiding love for Hindi cinema? “’Why ever not?’ is my answer,” says Faiza Sultan Khan, editor of The Life’s Too Short Literary Review and fellow Bollywood enthusiast. “When I was living in England no one asked, why do you watch American films? It was just the dominant cultural presence, as Hindi cinema is in the sub-continent.” So, because, like Everest, it is there?

“Well yes, but it’s also about the music,” posits Ali Dayan Hasan, human rights activist and HRW’s (Human Rights Watch) envoy to Pakistan. “We were hearing this music in our homes from the day we were born really. It was only natural that the connection extended to the films themselves as we grew older. I saw Roti, Kapada Aur Makaan when I was about five, which really my parents ought not to have let me see at that age! But I remember hearing the songs and thinking, hang on, I know this music. So yes, the music aspect is a very strong one, it’s in our genes, practically!”

The three of us, along with Samar Ata-Ullah—television producer—and Yasser Hashmi—psychology professor—are, as it happens, listening to some filmi music yet again a few days after our Rajesh Khanna memorial evening, and trying, for a lark, to place our collective fandom in some sort of context. Among the first things we figure is that from the vast history of Hindi film music, it is the music of R. D. Burman that, like I’m certain is the case across the border, elicits the strongest devotion.

“My parents were not actually into film music at all,” Faiza clarifies. “Their tastes were the kind of high-brow that, let’s be honest, aren’t that appealing to a six year-old— qawwali and non-vocal classical. So when one heard Mera naam hai Shabnam (from Kati Patang) for the first time, well, let’s say life picked up considerably!” Indeed, the Pancham appreciation society in Pakistan is as vibrant and maniacal as anywhere else and it recruits younger and younger people everyday. Among them is Ali Aftab Saeed, a twenty something musician who gained notoriety as well as tremendous following and critical acclaim last year when he and his band, Beygairat Brigade, released the politically charged song Aaloo Anday. Saeed is a die-hard Burman fanatic and I asked him recently what the legendary composer’s work means to him. “Speaking for myself, I simply cannot think beyond R.D.,” he gushes unabashedly. “What’s interesting though is that an overwhelming majority of Pakistani musicians today are exhibiting the R.D. influence on their music; and the virus, so to speak, is spreading wider yet. This is true regardless of the inclination of the musician, be it eastern or western. Even those who officially despise Indian music and claim they have absolutely nothing to do with it, have in their commercially successful work the sensibility of music that R.D. introduced. It could be unconscious in some cases but it is unmistakable all the same. Just as the west is considered to have set the standard of cinematic aesthetics and consequently filmmakers all over the world are following more or less the same principles; it seems that Pancham has done the same to music of the subcontinent. It would be interesting to study R.D.’s influence on Pakistani musicians, and if I can get some funding, I would love to make a documentary on the subject.”

Apart from the music, Ali has another theory on Pakistan’s love affair with Bollywood: “The Hindi film is actually in our language, the language of the Pakistanis; the language of Bollywood for the longest time was just Urdu. More importantly, the sensibility has been an Urdu-speaking, North Indian, Hindustani Muslim sensibility. Therefore, in reality, these films are for us, they are ‘ours’. They made them for us!” Amidst our giggles and smirks, Faiza concurs. “The dialogue and more to the point, the poetry, the lyrics were pre-dominantly in Urdu, the language of poetry and symbol of sophistication, prestige, romance. I mean I think back to the picturization of Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye, when Anand (Rajesh Khanna) looks down at the book in his hand which has a rose pressed in it, and it’s a book of Urdu poetry. It’s a lovely moment, and also poignant because that flower pressed in it has a million other meanings to it now.” Yasser adds another angle to this admittedly under-considered aspect: “Interestingly enough, that’s the point on which the Punjabi film industry in Lahore was opposed to the local Urdu films; they said, ‘we are making ‘Pakistani films, this Urdu cinema is actually Indian’.” He also points out that preceding generations of Pakistanis, like many of their Indian counterparts, had a melancholic, romantic longing to revisit the shared past of the two countries, “like the scores of people who still come and go across to seek out ancestral homes. I remember from my childhood that the shopkeeper in the market near our house always used to have Gurdaspur Radio playing, because that’s where he and his family had migrated from, and you’d often hear him declare, ‘Gurdaspur zindabad!’”

Perhaps fittingly then, the new Indian cinema that has started to evolve in the last decade or so doesn’t appear to hold the same kind of appeal that old Bollywood does. Says Faiza, “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be watching Hindi films because now the new ones are very much the Indian urban experience, and they’re now very specific to the location where they’re set or made. The older films always worked with a particular set of symbols and you as a viewer knew what you were negotiating. Now it’s become very insular and self-indulgent; it has ceased to be a universal experience, and truthfully it doesn’t resonate with me like it used to.”

“It’s become like one big in-joke,” agrees Samar. “For example, even in something like Delhi Belly, there were all these references which probably only Delhi walas would really get. I have cousins who live in Delhi, so for instance they told me about the ‘Nakad waale disco, udhaar waale khisko’ reference, which is apparently written at every paan shop. We can of course still enjoy the film on a very basic level, if it’s a well-made film, but that richness, that density of subtext gets lost in translation, which was not the case before.”

It would be convenient to pretend here that there are no anti-Bollywood segments in Pakistani society but that would not be true— of course there are, and they are roughly of two kinds: those who are indifferent towards cinema in general and/or snobbish about indigenous cinema in particular, and there are those who are generally anti-everything Indian, well and truly indoctrinated in the ‘nationalistic’ belief system espoused on official levels through school textbooks and other propagandist avenues, and handed down from one generation to the next (sound familiar?). As a teacher of Film Studies, I do a lecture on song picturization in Hindi cinema and I remember this one time when after the class was over, a student came to me and apologized. When I asked him what he was apologizing for, he said that he had kept his eyes averted from the screen throughout the class because in his household, India, in all and any of its manifestations, is the enemy, and that notion extends to the country’s movies. We proceeded to have an intriguing discussion on the matter with me giving him the usual spiel about art being beyond boundaries etc., and which concluded with him ceding that he’d “think about it”. But the kind of reasoning I was employing to try to give him another perspective on the issue becomes harder to propound when Bollywood sometimes seems to lose the plot and produces neighbour-bashing fare like Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, or does it?”

I put the question before my gathering: do ‘anti-Pakistan’ films like Gadar etc. have any complex implications for us as ‘patriotic’ Pakistanis? “No, don’t be absurd!” Ali guffaws. “It’s just a movie, made expressly to make a quick buck by exploiting niche jingoistic sentiments, and I think most people are smart enough to know the difference, to know that art is above this kind of nationalist baiting, that it’s separate from traditional modes of animosity, and so no, we don’t really care. We choose not to watch it, or even if we do, we kind of just make fun of the whole exercise. All national cinemas resort to this sort of nonsense at one time or another.”

“My reaction is one of amusement, largely,” adds Faiza. “Which is what it ought to be in the face of simple-minded propaganda.” Samar brings up a related point which I too had written about earlier on my blog. “What I find far more annoying are the Indo-Pak love fests like Veer-Zara,” she says. “Which actually are only interested in reinforcing the stereotypes that most Indians who have no exposure to Pakistan tend to believe about us, the same ones that were employed by the ‘Muslim Social’ genre earlier. In that film, which did really well in India but was pretty much laughed at here, they wanted it to be about the Other, so it could not look the same, it could not look ‘Indian’. So they resorted to clichés about the Other, which from the Indian perspective is chiefly that these people are ‘Musalman’ with a capital ‘M’, which actually doesn’t say anything about how an upper-middle-class girl in Lahore lives. They did a lot of research but in the end they couldn’t resist the clichés when it came to characterization, ergo the ridiculous sight of everyone wearing achkans and doing aadab; they had to be conspicuously different from the Indians. But I guess the kind of film it was and the audience that it was aimed at, the makers of Veer-Zara decided that they didn’t require any kind of nuance or sophistication. Without that pronounced Otherness, it would’ve been just a girl and a boy who are pretty much the same and just happen to belong to two different but basically very similar countries. That is, of course, ironically enough, the mundane reality.”

That gap of Otherness may finally start to narrow with Pakistani artists like Ali Zafar making inroads into Mumbai. Unlike some other false starts like that of Meera, Zafar seems set (and determined) for a pretty steady career over yonder, and there is an unspoken sense of hope that his brand of cool, urban ‘modernity’ will help to lift the veil off of the decidedly outdated notions of ‘Pakistaniyat’ that a lot of Indians still believe in despite increased people-to-people contact through social media.

As a parting shot, Faiza has a great suggestion for how Bollywood can reciprocate our continued loyalty and affection: “Bollywood’s biggest treasure to date have been the great Peshawaris, the Kapoors, and for Pakistani women of all ages, whether yesterday or today, Rishi Kapoor has been the Kapoor of our dreams and fantasies. So I believe the way to halt all extremism in Pakistan is for him to be sent over by Bollywood, to come back and sing Parda nasheen ko be-parda na kar doon, because I think that would do it, and all of Peshawar would resonate with the sound of burqas ripping spontaneously!”

Indeed. And as Rafi saaheb once sang:

Jaan pehchaan ho

Jeena aasan ho!

History Does Not Repeat Itself

Posted on October 21, 2012 by admin

Chittagong etches the divide between how we see our politics and how we see our history

Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong feels uncannily like a Gangs Of Wasseypur reunion. What with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpai and Jaideep Ahlawat back in the trenches for another period film. There is, however, one crucial difference. Chittagong, unlike GOW, is not about these stupendous actors. Nor is it about cinematic craft. Pain’s film is as honest as any film can be to its story— it is well and truly only about Surjo Sen, a schoolmaster and revolutionary and his unlikely army of young men who fought the British with nothing but gumption in what turned out to be a giant leap towards India’s eventual tryst with destiny.

The film is told from the point of view of Subodh Roy (aka Jhunku), a 13 year old boy who joined the struggle against the occupying British establishment led by District Magistrate H. R. Wilkinson— portrayed in the film as a cruel administrator who disregards his wife’s opinions and his own conscience in order to further his career. Pain and his team interviewed Jhunku before he died in Kolkata, weaving personal and political history seamlessly in the script.

Chittagong is quiet even if, like many period films, mildly theatrical in its stylization. But the background score ensures that its heart is firmly on its sleeves. You can either give in to the overwhelming emotion of patriotism, idealism, sacrifice, faith and team spirit (controlled catharsis has much going for it) or filter the inherent sentimentality of the film through a skeptic’s glasses; make mental notes of when the narrative drags, where the production design is not up to the mark etc. How you choose to view the film will not, however, change your perspective on the story you are being told. Because the story you are being told does not allow for another perspective. It has no shades of grey. Surjo Sen was an upright, righteous, self-sacrificing leader who taught his young students self-belief and moral courage, led them to fight the good war against the unmitigated evil of the British and their empire. They gave up their future, their lives, their families, for the greater good of all Indians. The British call them terrorists but they are wrong. No room for argument there. Before he is led to the gallows, Surjo Sen wonders aloud if the future generations will judge him for thrusting young children into a losing battle. But the film is certainly not judging him. If anything that moment only further glorifies the hero for his introspection and humility. And perhaps rightly so, for history has never called Sen to trial.

One might grumble that the Chittagong Uprising, which began on April 18, 1930, has not been given its rightful due by history as it is taught in India. It is not as widely known as say the 1857 Mutiny or the Quit India movement. But there is an upside to that too. Surjo Sen has been spared the kind of scrutiny that Gandhi could not escape. Even though he is ‘father of the nation’. Because he is ‘father of the nation’. I say upside because I have nothing against the past being viewed as a simple place with a simple story. But I do have a few questions. Would Surjo Sen have exonerated the future generations like they have him? More importantly would he have exonerated himself? If he could see into the future, would he have wondered whether the freedom they were fighting for was worth their lives after all?

It is hard to say. We are in no position to look at ourselves as simplistically as we look at our collective past. The children who were pelting stones in Kashmir in 2010 also claimed to be defying death to fight the oppression of an occupying state. But even the most liberal of us are not likely to buy that narrative without raising a few critical questions. The Maoists of India’s Red Corridor also claim to be part of a movement that is out to fight the imperialistic attitude of the Indian state against poor tribals and farmers. We are not buying that narrative without raucous debate either. Nor are we exonerating Ganapathi, the Supreme Commander of CPI (Maoist), as we did Surjo Sen. Even though he is an ideologue who used to be a teacher.

The Maoist movement has its roots in the Naxalite Movement of 1967, which in turn drew inspiration from the Tebhaga Uprising of 1946, which in many ways followed from the Chittagong Uprising. What changed along the way for Revolution? Why is the Maoist struggle not as simple a story as the Chittagong Uprising? Because no one is capable of fighting a good war anymore? Was there ever such a thing as a good war? Or are there only good intentions? How do we know intentions? Or must we balance our cynicism for our present with our romanticization of our past? Or is it simply a question of favouring your own side? Back then we were all Jhunku. Today most of us are Wilkinsons. Or, at best, his dissenting, powerless wife.

One of Surjo’s key aides was a man named Ananta Singh, who was jailed at Kala Pani (the dreaded Cellular Jail at Port Blair) for his role in the Chittagong Uprising. Post independence, those who died with Surjo were declared martyrs. Some of those who survived became a part of the government of free India. Ananta Singh went on to form a radical communist organization—the Revolutionary Communist Council of India—to fight against the injustice of the Indian government. He was jailed again, in the late 1960s, for about eight years. This time by his own people’s government. Good for history that Surjo is its hero then. Ananta would have been a lot harder to fit into a box.

Indie Show Down

Posted on October 17, 2012 by admin

In continuing with its efforts to bring forth the concerns of independent cinema, TBIP takes a petition started by a group of filmmakers to the I&B Ministry

The Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma has expressed doubts to TBIP about whether the I&B Ministry will agree to the demands of 30 filmmakers who have asked it to fund the construction of new theatres to exhibit independent cinema. The filmmakers put out a petition on the website change.org on October 2 which asks, among other things, that Rs 200 crore of the Rs 600 crore which the I&B Ministry has put aside for film restoration be used to fund such theatres instead.

“Constructing theatres is not what the I&B ministry should be doing,” says Varma, who claims he hasn’t seen the petition, when he is informed about this demand by TBIP. “It should be involved in the conservation and preservation of the audio video culture and heritage of our country. But I can comment (on the petition) only when I see it.”

This is the mindset the filmmakers are trying to fight against. “It’s very nice to restore what’s there but you can’t have a glorified past and a dead present,” National Award winning filmmaker Onir Dhar, who drafted the petition, says. “We’d rather have a living vibrant film culture. We have to create an ambience or space where these kind of films can be seen and spoken about. Besides exhibiting them, what’s also important is people discussing these films. To this end, these theatres could function like film clubs.”

Varma also believes this demand could be construed as a “commercial proposition”, as opposed to one in public interest. “Once someone takes a commercial decision to make a film it will become extremely difficult for the Ministry to say: ‘we must reserve a screen for you’,” he said. “That becomes difficult because people have to see it, right? It’s not the government that will see it.”

In addition, Varma questions the long term feasibility of such a project. “It (such a theatre) has to be sustainable,” he said. “Somebody has to maintain that (the theatre). And that will depend on how people will want to see such films or not see them.” In other words, he warns that these theatres could become a drain on the exchequer.

The names of petitioners range from acclaimed directors of offbeat films, like Shyam Benegal, Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Sooni Taraporevala, Ashvin Kumar and Buddhadev Dasgupta, as well as more mainstream filmmakers such as Vishal Bhardwaj, Ashutosh Gowariker and Homi Adajania. Academy Award winning Sound Engineer Resul Pookutty is also a petitioner. Besides exhibition spaces for independent cinema, they have asked for a re-examination of state run channel Doordarshan’s programming choices (they want national award winning films to be given prime-time slots). Also, they’ve asked for a re-look at the procedure by which films have to be separately certified before being broadcast on TV channels. According to the website the petition has over 6,423 signatories. It requires 10,000 in all before it can be presented to the I&B Ministry.

“These theatres will be dependent on government funding for about a year,” says Onir, on the question of sustainability. “Then they will become self sustaining bodies and pay for their own maintenance.” The filmmakers want 400 theatres to be constructed around the country, under the aegis of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) or another autonomous body set up for the purpose. Going by the Rs 200 crore demanded for this purpose, the average cost of building each such theatre will amount to Rs 50 lakh. “These could be low-cost, single screen theaters, each having a capacity for a hundred people,” Onir says. “The tickets could priced at between Rs 25 to Rs 50. Besides exhibiting films, they could fulfill the role of a film club like Nandan—a state sponsored cinema complex in Kolkata— but on a much smaller scale.” Onir explains that each theatre could also host discussions on cinema and have small libraries or book shops which will aid in them eventually evolving into cultural centres. He suggests that the running and maintenance of the theatres could be assigned either to the five local offices of the NFDC (in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Thiruvanthapuram) or branches of the new body appointed to oversee their construction.

“The key is decentralization,” says Onir. “So that the power doesn’t lie with one unit. Four to eight such centres, throughout the country, could identify good films from the regions they are in charge of and show them.” Then, he says, each centre could “recommend films from their region for the other centres to show in other regions as well”. Onir bemoans the fact that some Indian states such as Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Manipur have only a few theatres.

“Small films can’t compete with a big budget film, so what we’re looking for is an alternate space, and government patronage for independent films,” says Aamir Bashir, director of Harud, who has also signed the petition. Bashir believes this will grant independent cinema more visibility. “If it wasn’t for PVR Director’s Rare (an initiative by theatre chain PVR to promote independent cinema), I don’t think my films would be distributed,” he says. Even this release, he claims, was “more of a limited release—for one week, one show per day.” Says Bashir: “It’s not just difficult to release a film like mine (Harud), it’s almost impossible.”

A highly placed official within the I&B Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, made us aware of a fact which could give the debate a whole new dimension. “While initially it was projected to be Rs 600 crore for restoration, the I&B Ministry has gotten only Rs 400 crore from the Planning Commission,” says the source. “It has been scaled down to that level.” The official adds that “allocating such funds is also a problem, because of the current slowdown.” This would mean that the budget for Rs 600 crore has been scaled down by the precise amount the filmmakers have demanded in their petition. The date for this cut in the restoration budget is not known. The filmmakers who put out the petition are obviously not aware of this.

Moreover, this official points out that the government is “currently only implementing schemes approved by the Planning Commission in its 12th five year plan, which was put in place only recently, in the financial year 2011-12”. This being the case, “the funding for these theatres can only be approved in a review that will take place in the third year of the plan (2014-15)”.

The official foresees another policy pothole. Constitutionally, all regulations related to the exhibition of films, other than those pertaining to censorship, are determined by the state governments. Also, the construction or redevelopment of cinemas requires the acquisition of land which will also involve cooperation from the state governments. “We can’t interfere with the states,” this official says. “Unless we have a joint scheme, where we provide funds and the state government does the job. There may be political problems as the state governments would want to have their own share in this. And because of the media hype in something like this, regional political parties would want to get involved.”

“There is also the question of who selects the films to be shown in these theatres, and on what basis,” says this official. “Who is to qualify a particular film as an independent film?” The official says that even if the NFDC or an autonomous government body is placed in charge of this, the allocation of a theatre to one film over another might invite controversy, if clear guidelines are not agreed upon.

“They might like to see that the government promotes (their films),” says Varma, the I&B Secretary. “And there are many ways in which this can take place— not necessarily through constructing theatres.” Both he and the other official have indicated, as an alternative, several international agreements the government has signed recently to foster the co-production of independent films with countries like the UK, Brazil and Spain. They seem to be suggesting that these co-productions will help Indian independent films find a distribution outlet in these countries. Not at home though.

If you want to read or sign the petition you can do so here

Cover Image – The state sponsored Nandan cinema complex – © Biswarup Ganguly, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license

A Moment In The Conscience Of Man

Posted on October 16, 2012 by admin

Every once in a while we like to flip a few pages and go back to a place in history which gives us a unique vantage point to reevaluate our shared perspective of us and our movies. Here is one such page from modern history.

Utpal Dutt, actor-director-playwright, was as committed to fusing his art with his politics as he was to his enviable zest for life. This is the text of a fiery address he delivered in a seminar on Satyajit Ray organised by Sahitya Akademi, Sangeet Natak Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi on May 15, 1992, three weeks after Ray passed away at the age of 70. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement to build a temple to Lord Rama in Ayodhya, to which he refers in the first paragraph, culminated seven months later, on the 6th of December 1992, with the destruction of the medieval Babri mosque by mobs backed by right-wing political parties. On August 19, 1993, Utpal Dutt passed away, aged 64.

RAY, RENAISSANCE MAN?

The latest labels they have found for Satyajit Ray are the Bharat Ratna and Renaissance Man. The paper distributed for this seminar also describes Ray as a product of the Indian Renaissance. While his body was lying in state in Calcutta, the Doordarshan commentator repeatedly spoke about Ray being a representative of the Indian Renaissance. What, pray, is the Indian Renaissance? History is quite silent about it. We once heard historians talk of the Bengal Renaissance, but an Indian Renaissance is a recent invention of the government in New Delhi. When did this mythical Indian Renaissance begin? And when did it end? Or perhaps it is continuing at this moment, secretly, within the movement for smashing the Babri Masjid and building a Ram temple in its place? Perhaps the Indian Renaissance is to be discovered in the recent widow-burning in Rajasthan or in the great Indian sport of burning brides for dowry? Or perhaps the mass poverty and illiteracy of India are the hallmarks of the great Indian Renaissance? Claiming Ray’s genius for something that is essentially Indian is a shameless bluff, and merely reminds one of how every Greek city claimed Homer after his death. The Government of India, as usual, woke up later, after a night of revelry, discovered a genius in Calcutta and hastened to confer something called the Bharat Ratna upon him– only because the Americans gave him the Oscar. Of course, Ray had previously won every prize the film world has to offer—at Cannes, at Venice, at Berlin—but they are merely European prizes and don’t count! Oxford University conferred a doctorate on him, but, of course, you have to be somewhat learned to realize its importance. The President of the Republic of France flew to Calcutta to pin the Legion of Honour on Ray’s jacket, but then France has no Seventh Fleet to prowl the Indian Ocean and we are not holding a joint naval exercise with her. But an American award is a different thing altogether. So the game of sharing in Ray’s glory began in great haste in New Delhi, and, since the man was already in a coma, it was safe to heap the Bharat Ratna on him. Men in coma cannot refuse awards.

The invention of this myth of the Indian Renaissance and making Ray its representative is similar to this late attempt to claim a share in all the honours the world has showered on him for so long. It is ironical that USA is the only country that has not yet shown any of Ray’s important films commercially. In fact, the American people remain ignorant of what his films mean. The Oscar comes from a small group of film specialists. The game is clear: we honour you, we worship you, but your creations are not wanted here. Our audiences will be fed on American trash, and trash only; we do not want a trade-rival in this country.

The Indian government’s hypocrisy is equally brazen. It is shameful that, while conferring its highest award on Ray, it has kept Ray’s film on Sikkim under a ban. We know only too well the antics of the corrupt coterie that controls Indian TV; they have suddenly woken up to their bosses’ belated appreciation of the ‘last representative of the Indian Renaissance’, and showed some of his films after his death— but after making arbitrary cuts and censoring bits of dialogue. Their miraculous intervention changed Ray’s Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961) into Two Daughters, one story having been totally left out. They cut line after line of dialogue in Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), and wanted to stop Sadgati (The Deliverance, 1981) because the word chamar had been used repeatedly in the film. Please note: Sadgati is a film made specifically for the TV, and challenging its dialogue constitutes an attack jointly on Ray and Munshi Premchand, the writer– pretty bold of TV, one would think. No respect for persons.

Thus the Government of India has substantially the same attitude to cinema as the US Academy: personal adulation for the filmmaker but neglect for, even opposition to, his films. Ray’s films—as well as films by various young experimenters in the medium—need protection from the film-mafia of big tycoons who control distribution, production and every other aspect of filmmaking. The Government of India considers the film industry only a source of endless taxation, and believes a golden handshake with the dying Ray will exonerate it of all its sins. The Government of India appears to be a local branch of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) as far as India’s cultural world is concerned. It is at this moment inspired by ideas of a market economy, of free capitalist growth— in other words, surrendering the young filmmaker to the mercy of the big capitalists of cinema. It approves heartily when the young filmmakers are denied channels of release and driven away from the field. Free competition is the watchword, competition between millionaires and paupers. And if the paupers cannot survive— why, they can go and look for jobs elsewhere. This is the substance of an exit policy enforced on the cultural world, the forced exit of every serious filmmaker, thus leaving the field clear for an unending supply of trash. In the arts, trash always sells better than classics; penny dreadfuls always knock Tolstoy out. Herein is the role of the government— if it is interested in educating its people. There can be no free market in the arts. Just as the government cannot resign its responsibility to check and restrict the sale of heroin, similarly it cannot sit back and say: Ray must freely compete with Bombay. If the Government of India were not composed of a bunch of Shylocks, it would have realized that, given the opportunity to watch serious films for some time, people would reject the gruesome, mindless violence of the commercial cinema and demand more and more socially conscious films. It is a fact that Ray’s films were not originally patronized in Calcutta to the extent that could be considered socially significant. But as he began to pour out more and more films, Ray addicts grew fantastically in number, until the release of a new Ray film became a danger signal to commercial cinema in West Bengal. This is a lesson that the Government of India should have learnt: that classics have to have channels of release to the people; it is only then that they become irresistible. Of course, a government which consists of hirelings of money-bags cannot interfere with their free market and set up the new cinema as a rival to rubbish. Rubbish has therefore been ennobled by a new name— ‘mainstream cinema’, thus declaring to the world that the mainstream of Indian art flows in channels of imbecility.

All this began with Pather Panchali, which the highest executive of the Government of India saw in Calcutta and went red in the face. Fuming, he asked Mr Ray whether showing such poverty on celluloid would not bring India to disrepute in the eyes of the world. A typically Indian question: appearance is all the Indian rulers believe in. Mr Ray’s answer put the executive down immediately: if it is not disreputable for you to tolerate such poverty, why should it be disreputable of me to show it? This cry has been repeated again and again: that films should not present the stark reality of Indian life but must whitewash it, pretend—as in the mainstream cinema—that every Indian drives a Mercedes, that a taxi-driver goes home and routinely turns on the air-conditioner before going to bed and that every Indian girl sports an exotic hairdo. Thus alone can Indian honour abroad be enhanced. The cry has been heard from big capitalists as well as from disgruntled, frustrated actresses of Bombay. A prominent Calcutta newspaper while defending City of Joy—an American film being shot in Calcutta—wrote: ‘If Mr Ray can show the abject poverty of Calcutta, why should this foreign director be denied the right?’ It is like saying: why should Bombay films be denied the right to show violence and rape, since Shakespeare shows them freely? All these organs of big capital were spreading a scare about Ray and the new Indian cinema: that these films do not entertain but make you worry about problems— so avoid them at all cost. Go where the beautiful girl gets soaking wet in the rain while she sings a rollicking number and the macho boy singlehandedly knocks 10 toughs out. That is the real India, where there is no inflation, no unemployment, no suffering.

Ray has shown Indian artistes their responsibility to society: that they must be truthful, that it is not only their right but their duty to probe poverty and expose it, lay it bare for all to see and ponder over the inhumanity of it all. To mix Ray up with the maker of City of Joy is a low-down trick. The people’s objection to City of Joy was not because it showed the poverty of Calcutta, but that it was lying. Dominique Lapierre wanted to probe Calcutta’s underworld, without knowing a word of Bengali or Hindi; in the process, he discovered a tiger from the Sunderbans straying into Calcutta, spoke of Calcutta’s overcrowding being caused by refugees from the Himalayas who had fled the Chinese invasion of India in 1962, recorded a flood in Calcutta where all the ground-floors of all the houses—literally, all the houses—had been inundated and corpses floating so thick in places that you could not see the water. The people objected to the portraiture of a so-called mafia in Calcutta borrowed from the exploits of Amjad Khan and Amrish Puri in Hindi films, without any verisimilitude to Indian reality. City of Joy was crass imperialist propaganda calculated to malign India, and hence the peaceful movement in Calcutta against it.

Let us therefore drop the word ‘Indian’ before Renaissance when assessing Ray’s work. There has been no such thing in history. Historians for a time spoke of a Bengal Renaissance beginning with the rise of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, the teacher, in the 1820s through the work of Rammohun Roy, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutt right up to Rabindranath Tagore. But historians have now withdrawn the word Renaissance from this upsurge of progressive ideas and call it simply the Bengal Reform Movement. They now argue, and rightly so, that a Renaissance ‘presupposes the existence of a revolutionary bourgeois class who through the upsurge of Renaissance ideas advance to capture of power and a democratic revolution’. The British imperialists prevented the rise of the Indian bourgeoisie and therefore ‘Renaissance’ is idle talk in India. But perhaps they have reached a governmental decision to use the word ‘Renaissance’ loosely, to describe certain qualities of Ray’s art, irrespective of historical context. History has never been a strong point of the bureaucrats in New Delhi. One remembers with horror the various histories of the Indian freedom movement compiled by them, where India appears to have won freedom because she dutifully wove khadi and drank goat’s milk, where the Naval Mutiny of Bombay does not appear to have happened, where Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army are given five lines of dubious prose, where Bhagat Singh is actually criticized for being a terrorist.

If the word Renaissance has been loosely attached to Ray, one expects an analysis of his works to trace Renaissance thought in them, what these ideas are and how they have appeared in his films. But alas, for that one requires not only a knowledge of film art but also extensive reading in Renaissance literature, neither of which, one is sorry to note, is available to the numerous secretaries who run the actual work of governing. When Mr Ray was dying, they were busy discovering the identity of the gentleman who used Mr Solanki as a courier to Mr Felber, and even more busy trying to conceal it. Renaissance literature does not fit into this routine. The only explanation of the expression we have heard over the TV is Mr Ray’s amazing versatility. That a man can be a filmmaker, designer, painter, writer of note, music composer, songwriter, book-illustrator and an acknowledged authority on the art and history of printing is inexplicable to them, and therefore they seek to explain it all by a convenient label—as if versatility is the principal characteristic of Renaissance men. But Leonardo da Vinci is not a universal model of Renaissance genius; he was an exception in his time. The other great exponents of Renaissance ideology were men who specialized in just one field, and yet moulded the thoughts of their age. One has never heard of Michelangelo doing anything but paint and sculpt, or Shakespeare doing anything but write plays, or Machiavelli taking time off from political pamphlets to sit down at the harp and compose a sonata. Single-minded devotion to a single art does not negate their claim to being Renaissance men.

The Renaissance released a deluge in Europe which changed social relations, struck a blow at the dictatorship of the Church over man, released the creative energies of men, drove the aristocrats and feudals from positions of social dominance, and generally laid the foundation of a revolution. The ideas that rose from this storm will have to be painstakingly traced and related to their relevance in Ray’s films before such labels can be stuck to him. Time does not permit us to do it on the spot. All we can do is identify certain general trends in Ray’s films and see if they conform to the ideas of the European Renaissance— not Indian, of course, because no such thing exists.

The Renaissance brought man to the centre of attention. Before the Renaissance, man was merely a Christian— oppressed by the Original Sin and a toy in the hands of God. The Renaissance freed man from this intellectual slavery and portrayed him as one who shapes his own destiny by his own will and passion. If there had been anything called an Indian Renaissance, Indians would have been freed by now of belief in kismet, in the pantheon of gods directing man’s destiny and in the burden of a past birth and sins committed therein.

Already in Pather Panchali, Ray’s protagonists suffer not because gods have willed it so but because of poverty created by men. They are evicted from their home by a power that is stronger than gods— a social system that condones exploitation. And this revolt against a concept of gods who crush human beings reaches fruition in Devi, where a girl, a common housewife, is declared a goddess incarnate and is expected to heal and cure every sick villager, until the boy she loves more than her life is dying and is placed before her so that she can touch and heal him. She dare not play with this boy’s life and tries to flee, her sari torn and her mascara running all over her face. One has merely to compare this film with dozens churned out from the cinema-machine of this country, where a dying child, given up for dead by medical science, is placed before the image of a goddess—and, of course, there is a lengthy song glorifying the goddess—be it Santoshi Ma or some such forgotten local deity. Then the stone image is seen to smile, or to drop a flower on the boy’s corpse, and lo and behold, what the best doctors could not do, the piece of stone achieves in a second! The corpse opens its eyes, even sits up. This is followed either by another unending song of thanksgiving, or the boy’s parents weeping and rolling on the ground to show their gratitude. This kind of brazen, shameless superstition is peddled by film after film in this country every year. Are they any less dangerous than drugs? If drugs destroy the bodies of our young men, these films destroy their minds. A proper tribute to Ray would have been to make it impossible to make such filth and, instead, to make arrangements for Devi to be shown all over the country at cheaper rates. Devi is a revolutionary film in the Indian context. It challenges religion as it has been understood in the depths of the Indian countryside for hundreds of years. It is a direct attack on the black magic that is passed off as divinity in this country. Instead of the vulgarized Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Indian TV could have telecast Devi again and again; then perhaps today we would not have to discuss the outrages of the monkey brigade in Ayodhya.

Renaissance ideology was mainly a bourgeois-democratic ideology and therefore had to herald the death of feudalism and the suicidal excesses of the aristocracy. Ray’s Jalsaghar (Music Room, 1958) is a masterpiece in this sense— the lonely, drunken aristocrat, living alone in a massive palace, alienated from life and his fellow men. Doom appears to be written across the tortured face of the landlord, whose pride equals his financial bankruptcy. The history of overturning social relations has been captured in this film with the same unmistakable certitude as in the chronicle plays of Shakespeare. And the social question is emphasized when the little bourgeois visits the lord, a philistine towards art and beauty, but rich and arrogant. He even tries to toss money to the lord’s dancing girl and is prevented by the lord’s stick touching his arm. One can only compare this to the usual portrayal of landlords in Indian commercial films, which not only consistently glorify the lord’s kindness and charity but even where the young hero is shown as a poor boy from the village, you can bet it will be proved at the end that he is actually the lord’s long-lost son. His pedigree has to be established, damn it; a peasant’s son fighting for justice cannot remain a peasant’s son at the end. That would be propaganda for the Mandal Commission.

Shatranj ke Khilari (Chess Players, 1977) does the same thing with Mughal feudals who are so devoid of love of country that they play chess while English imperialists imprison and drag away their master, and their country is enslaved. They could not care less. Where Ray goes way beyond Renaissance ideology is when he chooses to chronicle his own time, such as in Sadgati. We see the heavily lined face of the Indian working man perhaps for the first time in Indian cinema. We have been given glimpses of the Indian proletariat, usually as a slogan-shouting union man in the background, waiting for an Amitabh Bachchan to use his fists to knock the exploiters out. Mainstream films have consistently portrayed the workers as tame middle-class types who wait for a messiah to come and liberate them. Sadgati is the first Indian film to capture the real Indian worker who is doubly exploited: exploited as a worker and exploited as a lower caste. In fact, Sadgati is the prehistory of the present Indian proletarian movement which began in an atmosphere of brahmanical scorn and contumely. The Ray of Sadgati is certainly not a Renaissance thinker but a poet of the contemporary world, confronting the elements of class struggle.

We can extend our study to his last films and see the same political process working in his active, superbly contemporary mind. Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People, 1989), based on Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, does not end as Ibsen ended his play, with Dr Stockmann standing alone against the world and declaring that the individual is always right and the majority always wrong. Ray knows this is no longer true in today’s world where the masses have advanced to a political role in society. Ganashatru ends with a procession of working men who have arrived to help Stockmann (Dr Ashok Gupta, played by Soumitra Chatterjee in the film) fight his battle. Or take Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree, 1990), where Ray flays the immorality of a middle class that is wedded to the capitalist ideal of making money. Or Agantuk, where Ray indicts so-called civilization which can wipe out a city by pressing a button and at the same time showers contempt and hatred on the tribals of the world who have not learnt the art of murder.

One has a sneaking suspicion that all this talk of Renaissance ideas may well be a ruse to remove from sight the living contemporaneity of Ray’s ideas and relegate him to a museum of ancient statuary which has ceased to bother us now. This suspicion is strengthened when we consider a film like Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980) which was his response to Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency decree. This film in the guise of a fairytale is a blast against all forms of dictatorship which believes in thought-control, prison for the workers, arrests and deportations but which all the while is preparing its own ultimate destruction.

Renaissance is an inadequate term for Ray. He was a moment in the conscience of man.

ON JANA ARANYA – A LETTER TO RAY FROM DUTT

Translated from the original Bengali by Samik Bandyopadhyay.

Excerpted from On Cinema by Utpal Dutt, courtesy of Seagull Books. You can purchase the book here

The Moveable Feast – Directors

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

A moveable feast is many things. A religious holiday whose dates keep changing, a party and most famously, Hemingway’s immortal moniker for Paris. We are adapting the phrase yet again; adopting it to introduce a series of conversations on cinema between those who are instrumental in shaping it. The idea is to have an honest, informal chat on how we watch cinema and how we make it; to determine our co-ordinates on the map of the journey of Indian cinema; to have a laugh at ourselves; to share what we know, and identify what we don’t. Most of all to raise a toast to cinema. For cinema alone is the most exquisite moveable feast.

For our first Moveable Feast five Hindi film directors come together to talk about the trials, tricks, and sheer thrill of film direction. All five have vastly different personalities and processes and have made very different films. Yet they are united by two crucial factors. Each of their last films was remarkably significant and all of them have braved the peculiar challenges of making films in India.

Meet (clockwise)- Anubhav Sinha (dir: Ra.One), Bejoy Nambiar (dir: Shaitan), Imtiaz Ali (dir: Rockstar), Raj Kumar Gupta (dir: No One Killed Jessica) and Raj Nidimoru (co-director: Shor In The City). – Pragya Tiwari.

Watch:

The full video .

Is there such a thing as too much publicity?

Has any of you not had a run in with the censors?.

Is there any award that you aspire for? .

How difficult is it to raise money for your film? .

What qualities have helped you as a director and what qualities could stand in your way

How much and what should and can the director control? .

What role does the ‘director’s instinct’ play in your work? .

(Location Courtesy – Opa, Juhu)

Or read an edited transcript:

Pragya Tiwari: What is the most challenging thing about being a director?

Imtiaz Ali: Giving interviews

Pragya: Yeah?

Imtiaz: Yeah

Pragya: Before the film is released or after?

Imtiaz: Anytime… anytime

Pragya: Why is it a challenge?

Imtiaz: Because often times when you are talking about your film you are so obsessed with it that you want to really get into the depth of it and talk and it becomes very exhausting. And it is sometimes confusing for the guy who is interviewing you, who wants a quote or something. So, you know, you get involved but you feel cheated when the guy is not listening but reading his next question and you think: ‘Why the fuck? Why the hell are you doing it anyway?’ Because it’s important. It becomes a complicated and an exhausting thing and… remaining not very meaningful either.

Bejoy Nambiar: For me starting the film is like the most challenging thing about being a director. We were just discussing that even before we started here.

Pragya: Getting it on the floor or… ?

Bejoy: Not just that but getting it all together. I think a film starts on an idea, you know, from the idea. Then there are a lot of other processes that happen, before we actually get it on the floor. I’m talking about that. Funding becomes one big issue and that’s one big part that you have to cross over. I’m just one film old. So, right now, as a director, I think that’s the most challenging thing for me, to actually get it going, to get it started.

Anubhav Sinha: Actually most of it is very challenging. Har kaam… Jaise Imtiaz ne bola usmein doosra challenging part yeh hota hai ki aap jab interviews karte hain toh din mein agar sattaais interviews karte hai toh, same panch sawaalon ko sattais sattais baar answer karte hai. Ki film ka ek incident bataaiye. Toh kya baatyein? Matlab, we’re not stand up comedians ke hum aap ko ek interesting joke sunayein jisko sunke aapko hansi aayein. Arre humne dedh saal invest kiya hai, khoon lagaaya, paseena lagaaye. Film banaayi hai. Pyaar karte hai film se. Ab usme kahaan se anecdotes dhoondenge, yeh toh sabse irritating sawaal hota hai duniya ka. (Everything is challenging. Like Imtiaz said the other challenging part is that when you give interviews, and if you do 27 interviews in a day, you have to answer the same five questions 27 times. Questions like: ‘Narrate an incident from the film.’ So what do I narrate? I mean, we’re not stand up comedians that we’ll tell you a joke that’ll make you laugh. We’ve invested one and a half years, our blood and sweat. We’ve love the film we’ve made. Now where do we look for anecdotes in that film? This has to be one of the world’s most irritating questions). And I also agree with Bejoy. See most filmmakers are always… they find stories in everything. That’s why they are filmmakers. That’s why they are storytellers. And then to figure out which one… I’m going through that phase right now, so I relate to what he (Bejoy) said more. Figuring out which one story I want to convert into a film, which one I want to invest in. And you invest a part of your life. And then, the next process— of finding who you want in your film. Not just the actor, but who should produce it, who should release it, where do I want it released— the whole lot. I think after that it is pretty routine stuff. Filming it. Post producing it. Releasing it. There’s a certain mechanics you follow. But the part before that is emotionally and logistically the most challenging.

Raj Kumar Gupta: From the two films that I have done, I’ve realized that the easiest bit of being a director is directing, you know, because that you only do when you’re on set. Try the road to trying to figure out what to make and getting a producer to make your film, and getting that… bringing him on the same page about how you are looking at the film. Getting a cast together, and that whole road to reaching to your set, is the biggest battle I’ve faced.

Anubhav: Also a lot of, you know, compromises that you need to make. They may not be very blatant compromises, but the moment logistics come into play, slowly, some minor decisions keep trying to change your film. And you don’t want your film changed. So that battle is very tough. And the bigger your film is, the demands are higher, because the investments are higher. The smaller your film is, the demands are still higher because it is not saleable. So I think we, within us, have to probably overcome this. I have been interacting with a lot of international producers. The mechanics that works there, which we do not see in our business much, is that the producer finds a director with a story that the producer believes in as much as the director does, and the producer believes in the director and then it is all about helping him make that film. Here the producer and the director are continuously accommodating each other. The producer’s also trying to accommodate you. He doesn’t necessarily believe in your vision. And then what happens is that when the producer finds a good project— it’s a good commercial proposition. Now he wants it, because it’ll make money for him, but he doesn’t believe in it. So producers will have to learn to let go of such things.

Raj Nidimoru: For me it’s more about, I think—I was thinking as you guys were talking— about getting other people to see the film that you see. That’s my biggest challenge every time I make a film. Starting from the producer, to the actor, to the D.O.P. (Director of Photography), to anybody around you. To say: “Look, this is the same but not the same; this is not how I want to shoot it, but this is how.” So you almost want to pick up the camera, act yourself, everything, put it together, and say: “This is what I want to make.”

Imtiaz: Ya but that’s also the job I think Raj…

Raj: Correct.

Imtiaz: That is the only job where you have to…

Raj: That is the biggest job too.

Imtiaz: You have to break it down to small things.

Anubhav: Dispersement of the vision.

Raj: It’s just that everybody comes with such blocks or baggage that… Yeah, it’s like you (Anubhav) were saying. Compromises, in terms of you only come with a certain set of ideas, that come to clash with what others have in mind. It’s more than just ‘let’s get together to make one’.

Pragya: Have anyone of you had formal training at a film school?

Imtiaz: Not me.

Bejoy: Nor me.

Pragya: Do you wish that you had formal training?

Imtiaz: Really?

Raj: No. Not really.

Anubhav: We were too talented to go to a film school.

Raj: I’m surprised none of us went.

Bejoy: I know, I’m surprised. I thought someone was going to say yes.

Anubhav: The only reason why I regret I didn’t go there is because it’ll take me a lifetime to catch up on those films that I could not watch.

Pragya: So you’ve all learnt on the job, so to say?

Bejoy: Yup.

Anubhav: Have we learnt? (to Imtiaz) Have you? I haven’t.

Imtiaz: I have not. No, no.

Pragya: We’ll keep that for when the cameras are off.

Raj: We (he and his co-director Krishna D.K.) made a bunch of shorts. Didn’t want to experiment directly on an audience. So we thought it’s not fair to make a feature film and learn on the job. So we thought let us make a short every month or whenever we get time. So we were making shorts for a while for almost one or two years. Just by ourselves.

Bejoy: That’s what I did it too. I also started with shorts.

Raj: Nothing formal, just take a camera…

Anubhav: I hadn’t heard of shorts when I made my first film, I just made my first film.

RKG: But I have worked under Anurag (Kashyap), so I’ve worked… I have learnt on the job.

Anubhav: I have been an assistant myself.

RKG: As an assistant I, you know, have picked up a lot of things. I never believed in… still I don’t believe in the ‘going to school’ thing. There are a lot of practicalities that you have to deal with when you are making films. There are so many things that you have to handle on the job. And those things are so unbelievable that you don’t…

Anubhav: …those cannot be taught

RKG: …nobody can teach you. So you can only see and learn from filmmakers; or while you are on the job, looking at the director work, and understand what kind of situation he is going through, and people in and around him. At least that’s I learnt how to handle a film. I learnt to preempt that if one has to handle a certain situation, I can do it this way or at least I can try doing that.

Pragya: I’m sure that there have been plenty, but can you guys recall some turning points in your learning curve? Like some lessons that you remember, that you learnt on the job?

RKG: For me everything was quite an eye opening experience. When you see them, see directors handling actors… We are just assistants, you know. When you come, and when you join, you are just assistants. You see a director handling an actor, you see a director trying to navigate through different people or different situations to make the film that he wants to make. So you learn. And also I learnt not what kind of films to make, but the spirit of filmmaking. You know that’s what you learn while you are doing… while you are working under somebody.

Bejoy: I was pitching for Shaitaan. To Mr. Mithun Chakraborty. I went to meet him. And I was pitching for this one role to him and, in ten minutes, I just explained the idea to him. He understood the film immediately. And he was quiet for sometime and then looked at me and said “Kursee se awaaz nahin aani chahiye (There shouldn’t be even a squeak heard from the chair).” So me and my writer just looked at each other and we looked back at him and he repeated the same thing again. He said: “Kursee se awaaz nahin aani chahiye.” So we both shifted in our chair as if something was wrong. He said: “No, the kind of film you are making, if the audience shifts in their chair, then this film will not work. You need to make a film which is really fast.” That was like: Whoa! Where did that come from? But he understood the spirit of the film; he got that that’s what the film should be like.

Imtiaz: I think in my case I only started to learn about direction, if at all, after I started directing, and not before. I have not assisted anyone or gone to film school. Then it’s that I’ve made four movies but I don’t think that I know anything more than I did when I started out. And it used to make me very insecure to feel like this, initially. The thought that I should know more, I should feel more confident on the set. Why am I feeling less confident than I felt when I directed television? Why am I feeling less confident and less at ease now in my fourth film than I used to feel during the Socha Na Tha (his first film) times? But I have learnt to accept that. My feeling is not that I have learnt. In fact, in this last film I felt that ‘Oh, so this is the direction to take to start learning.’ It’s really like that for me.

Raj: I didn’t go to film school, I didn’t assist anybody, and sadly I wasn’t attached to anything that is film. As in, I had not even any remote uncles or aunties in the business.

Imtiaz: Yeah, same here.

Bejoy: Same here.

Raj: We were from an engineering background. When I say we, (Krishna) D.K. and I, we make films together. So all we knew was the fact that we were analytical enough to see if we can breakdown what we see. So we were just sitting during weekends and looking at films and thinking ‘Why can’t I do the same thing?’ We had no clue how to write or direct, or where to put the camera, so it was more about… for us, it was a very self taught breaking-down process, an analytical process. You know, let’s sit and see what we can do. I have a camcorder, so now what do I do? How do I stitch a scene together? So that was it. So you’re reading a little book—those days there were not so many books either—just read a little bit and then you go, ‘Okay, let’s do this.’ I used to get amateur actors to act. So you are handling just enthusiasts— that’s it. So how do you make it look good with an amateur actor? So I thought that was our quality. Because I wasn’t a born story teller, nor was I… nor did I have it in my genes. So it’s more about, we thought, ‘Let us break it down.’

Pragya: And is that still an essential component of your filmmaking?

Raj: Yeah because every time we attempt a new genre or a new technique or something of that sort which you haven’t done… Like, let’s say, we do an action film tomorrow. Green Screen, CG (Computer Graphics) and stuff like that. I haven’t been on a single director’s set. So I don’t know how directors handle it.

Anubhav: One is logistical learning. That is the simplest job of it and, like Raj said, that once you have to shoot a film on green screen— you are surrounded by specialists. They teach you, you learn. If you are a smart man, if you’re willing to learn, you’ll learn. The more difficult thing is the creative learning and that’s something which does not come from…

Imtiaz: Teaching.

Anubhav: Teaching. It comes from watching. It comes from doing. Like a very simple example of Rockstar. It’s a story about a man who loves a woman, doesn’t get her, loses her and then goes back to get her, can’t get her, whatever. That’s the story. Now how do you tell that story? He could have started the story anywhere in the timeline. He chose to start it from some place. Now that is creative learning.

Pragya: I was also talking about the qualities, that you feel that you have, that have helped you. And what is the job requirement of a director. And something that you think might stand in your way. I mean it could be something small like…

Bejoy: Hustling?

Pragya: …not wanting, not being comfortable with…

Bejoy: All directors are hustlers, we all are hustlers.

Pragya: It could be being someone who doesn’t like confrontations.

Bejoy : We are constantly hustling all the time.

Anubhav: But honestly, though he may be saying this in a light vein, but all directors essentially are fantastic manipulators, we are manipulating all the time and for good reasons.

Pragya: Sure.

Anubhav: Also sometimes for bad reasons, for wrong reasons, wrong for you good for me; but you are manipulating, you are… Today, you want this actress who you think is not a great actress. She is doing an intense scene today. So first thing in the morning, when you see her, you try to transport her into an intense day. But there are actors who are laughing. I worked with Kareena, she’s SMSing all the time. She’s on Blackberry all the time, and she’ll listen to you… but then she transforms. There are manipulations we do with our DOPs, with everybody. You have thought of editing a scene in a particular manner and your editor wants it in a particular manner. He shows it to you. You hate it. You don’t say you hate it. You say: “Fantastic man, what if we start with the close up? Let’s try this and… ”

Imtiaz: The whole scene changes.

Anubhav: You slowly manipulate him into doing it the way you want to do it. After all it’s your film. And there is nothing wrong with that. So we are all fantastic manipulators.

Pragya: And managers?

Anubhav: Managers, yes. Creativity comes last.

Pragya: How important is control?

Imtiaz: Control, I think, is a very dangerous commodity. I think the attempt to control is a kind of shortcoming that directors have and the less you can control, the less you can come in the way of the movie getting made on its own, the better it is. You need a huge kaleja (liver) for that, I think. Because in my case, starting out, I was very clear about what I wanted. That this guy has to sit down and say this line and get up and da da da, whatever, because my breakdown was based on that, and it was on paper. It was in my mind and nothing could change that. So if the actor came up with a thing like: ‘You know what, I feel like saying this line standing, you know, how will it be?’ Then you’ve got to make him sit down because you don’t know any better, and what if then the close-up will come like that. Then how is the continuity going to work? Blah blah blah… everything will get fucked up. So he better bloody sit down and I better find a way of making him sit down without appearing to rebuke him.

Anubhav: You have to intellectualize it.

Imtiaz: Then you’ve got to intellectualize it. You’ve got to say, “Sir woh kahaani mein na woh sunlight-wunlight (Sir, the thing is the story requires sunlight to fall on you in a specific way)… .” Tell him what he doesn’t understand and make him do it. But then, if you know in your heart that the moment was true for him to stand and deliver, then gradually I think you let that go and say okay what’ll happen yaar? If he stands and says this I can’t take that shot, and the edit will not turn like that, so then what’ll happen? Is there a way out of that? Can we take the breakdown in another way? Then you start losing that control. I feel that the good, I mean, the few good things that I might have seen in my movies are coming from there, from not from imposing a control but actually giving it up.

Pragya: Has the struggle for you stopped— in negotiating the balance between control and letting go?

Imtiaz: Never.

Anubhav: Never.

Imtiaz: It never stops.

Bejoy: I think it’s a constant struggle.

Imtiaz: It’s constant.

Pragya: But you become more comfortable with it?

Imtiaz: Not really. You never become comfortable with it.

RKG: You know, it is about being a director or playing a director. It becomes such that once you direct an actor—also we work with actors who have their own mind, I mean very sound minds—what happens a lot of times is… it happens that they might come up with something, where they might, say… You might have constructed a scene in a particular way, then they come in, they read the scene, and it might turn out very differently. So either we (the directors) can say, “No I want it this way.” And then they (the actors) become very defensive and the environment becomes very tense. Or you can just work around things, and you can see how that can work for you.

Imtiaz: It’s like… if you love something, set it free.

Anubhav: I also kind of disagree with Imtiaz on this. There’s a logistical control that I agree you should let go of. But there’s a film that you thought of when you started making that film. And slowly, by losing this control, you may end up making a film that you had not set out to make. I’ll give you an example of a great filmmaker. Stanley Kubrick. Eyes Wide Shut, he disowns that film. He said, “I got so enamored, overwrought, by my stars that I did not make the film I wanted to make.” And this is Stanley Kubrick. You have to keep a watch and still, when you’re doing a film like Ra.One, what Imtiaz says will have to be done. There were scenes that had to be shot in a particular way, because these shots were prepped like it, rigged like— ‘Don’t move!’ And then there were scenes when I would shoot knowing those were performance scenes, when it didn’t really matter how you shoot them. When Amitabh Bachchan tells Jaya Bhaduri (in Silsila), “I’m in love with Rekha,” it’s a single shot scene. When Dilip Kumar tells Amitabh Bachchan (in Shakti) ke “Tumhari maa beemaar hai, ho sake toh dekh aana (Your mother is ill, see if you can go meet her),” single shot scene hai. So some scenes are like that.

Pragya: Related to creative control is the area of a director’s instincts, right? Is that something that you go back to, I mean is that something you fall back on while directing? As an instinct, do you think filmmaking is getting better for you?

Imtiaz: I think instinct is very real and often times the only thing that you’re going by. You decide to do something in a certain way, okay. And you’re talking constantly to a lot of people. And this brings me to the point of manipulation as well. Then you will find the logic to give, to say, you know— “The glass should be here. You know why? Because the light, because the XYZ… ” and you will find intelligent things to say to justify the glass being here. If you ask yourself honestly— ‘Why do I want the glass here?’ I don’t know. I just want it here.

Pragya: But that’s pretty much how we manipulate ourselves as well.

Imtiaz: Exactly. And then sometimes you try to find logic for your own head, to reassure yourself that you’re not just, you know, on a completely illogical plane?

Anubhav: Playing the director or being the director…

Imtiaz and Pragya: Yeah.

Anubhav: Actually what is dangerous is the imitation of instinct.

Bejoy and Imtiaz: Yeah.

Anubhav: Once your instinct works and then you try to imitate that instinct chances are it’ll be wrong.

Pragya: All of you have a writing credit on at least the last few films that you’ve done. Most of you write your films, or at least partly write your films. How is working on material that has been written for you to direct different from being part of, a very active part of, the writing process?

Imtiaz: I can’t answer that because I’ve only directed what I’ve written.

Bejoy: Same.

Pragya: Have all of you always had a writing…

Anubhav: No I have. See the truth is that I don’t know of many directors… I was talking to a fellow director the other day, about the fact that I am waiting for a writer to come to me, say Ashutosh Gowarikar, and give me a script. And I say, “Wow! Let’s start breaking down. Let’s start shooting.” It cannot be so.

Imtiaz: Yeah it can’t.

Anubhav: Because a story and the way you want to tell it—and there’s so many elements in the story the way you would see it—is your job profile. It’s what you do, the way you want to tell the story. Nobody can be a duplicate of that, so the truth is that all scripts are eventually supervised, at least supervised by the director. Sometimes you take the credit, if you feel you’ve done enough. Sometimes you don’t.

Imtiaz: In a few words, just to substantiate what he’s saying, just as a director directs actors, he also directs everyone else— all the various departments.

RKG: For me, you know, I don’t know whether I have written all my films. But when I look at somebody else’s material, for me, I don’t see it. It’s a very strange thing but when I read something written by somebody else I don’t see the film. But while I’m writing it, while I’m doing it myself, because we describe our situations there— at least I do that—I see the film. Something will be here. He’ll walk in here. This. That. So I see the film in my head. So I find it very difficult to direct what someone else has written. But I also want to do that, you know. I also want to take somebody else’s script and see whether I am able to do justice to that script or not.

Pragya: You know, one of the defining features, at least in the new Hindi filmmaking, has been the introduction of the bound script— that now everyone has a bound script. What is your position on improvisation? How important is improvisation once you have the bound script?

Anubhav: I mean that always takes place.

Pragya: How open are you to improvisation?

Anubhav: Always very open. There are certain situations where logistically you cannot afford to improvise. There you have to be stubborn. But otherwise, if it is to improve the film, the scene, the character, the moment, it should be done.

Bejoy: For me, improvisation is like a part and parcel of the film. It has to be there. In fact, when I work with any technician, any actor, I lay it on the table that I expect them to come in and tell me, or come in and pitch in what they think would be right for the film. At the same time, at the end of the day it is a mutual thing, at the end of the day it’s a call… Like he (Anubhav) was saying earlier, you are letting them do what they want to do, but at the same time you are making sure that they’re doing, finally, something closest to what you really want.

Pragya: But there are lines. I’m sure that there are things you wouldn’t… I mean when I say bound script, there are things that you would want to keep sacrosanct and say: “Well, this is the realm of improvisation and this is what, you know, we stay within.”

Anubhav: See, on set, it’s not the first time that you are meeting the team. You’ve been through it. So even the team knows the realm of improvisation. So it’s not something that they will do absolutely out of the box. Sometimes that happens too, but…

Imtiaz: It’s not a random process, the improvisation.

Anubhav: Yeah. It’s gone through a process.

Imtiaz: And guess who improvises the most— away from the script? It is usually the director who has written the script. So… you do that, other people do that. You are actually trying to reach the script, the real script. Which is not worded, or not in the bound format, or laminated, or whatever.

Pragya: I’m going to go back to something that you were saying earlier, about picking the story you want to tell. I mean you’re constantly fascinated by stories and then the process of narrowing in on that one story. That this is the story I want to tell for my next film. I’m sure it’s different in small ways for all of you guys but can you talk a little bit about that?

Anubhav: We are all kind of vagabonds, intellectually. Sometimes something fascinates you so much that all night you are so excited. You want to shoot the next morning. And yet, after a shower, you say, “Yaar it’s an okay idea.” And you move on. It keeps happening to us all the time. So, speaking for myself, I don’t even know why I pick what I pick.

Imtiaz: For me it’s instinctive as well. You don’t know why you do it. But, as he was saying, I think the story that you want to tell is organic to you and it’s who you are at that point, and what is the voice at that point of time. What you are really. It’s not… when I say: “What is it that you want to say?” it’s not a definite sentence that you have to say, but something that you want to express.

RKG: The thing is that at any given point we have five to six to seven stories which, at least in my case, appeals to me. The only factor that rules, which decides things, is— which one am I able to write and bring to that screenplay format where I say: “Okay. This is the screenplay and I want to make the screenplay and I want to make this film now.” Because at that point I am as excited as I was when I first thought of the idea. So I guess that the whole struggle of writing that… whatever you think… I mean firstly we look at people to write it. The easiest thing that you do is, you look at people— “Arre, tu likh de yaar, tu likh de yaar (Hey, why don’t you write it, or you write it).” You know… you do that. But ultimately you realize nowadays writers are very smart. They don’t write. They’ll say, “Where’s the cheque book?” and it’s fair enough.

Imtiaz: Yeah. That’s what’s so unfortunate about them. No no… in the way that they are the last guys to get paid and after that their work is done.

Bejoy: Writers are very under-rated, they’re not paid well.

RKG: And so this reaction is fair for them. So you realize that, if you have to become a director, especially a first-time director, you have to write your own film.

Bejoy: I remember when I went to pitch this narration to a director (who might have produced the film)… a full detailed narration I gave. After two hours I’m like waiting for his reaction, and he is like “Acha aap ke paas aur kya hai (okay, what else do you have)?” I was like “Aur kya hai (What else do I have)?!” He is expecting me to going in with a bouquet of ideas like: “Yeh bhi hai, ye bhi hai, ye bhi hai… ab aap bolo (There’s this, and there’s this, and there’s this… now you tell me).”

Anubhav: That brings me to one shiqaayat (complaint) that I have with the business. Why do I narrate it to you? Read it! Nobody reads.

RKG: I think now people have started reading. But they will ensure that they hear a nice script.

Bejoy: They still hear it out. Yeah.

Raj: They will still want to hear you out.

Imtiaz: Because that’s what— they check you out.

RKG: Yeah they check you, it’s basically to gauge…

Imtiaz: Yeah, how good, how ‘in it’, how passionate you are. He’ll say, “Hum log toh aap director ke passion pe picture banaate hai. Aapke conviction pe (We make films based on the passion and conviction of you directors).” So you bloody look convinced and passionate all the time. That’s what they look for…

Anubhav: Maybe some great directors and writers are not great narrators so what do you do?

Raj: Initially my apprehension was that whenever I hear a narration, I think it is so manipulated that I can see through it. When somebody’s narrating I’m thinking: That’s just a very clichéd situation I have heard ten times before. You’re just being a funny guy. You are very funny. You’re a really good narrator. I’m thinking: This is not how it’s going to translate on screen. The audience is too smart. They’ll see. They’ll select the next scene.

Imtiaz: But it depends on how smart that person is, who’s hearing it…

Anubhav: To see through it.

Raj: Yeah, I can see that half the scripts are being sold to actors or producers just on the power of convincing the guy.

Anubhav: “Sold!”

Pragya: Okay, how involved do you guys get in your marketing?

Imtiaz: I get very involved.

Anubhav: So do I.

Bejoy: Same here. As much as they allow me. I’ll just get more and more into it.

Raj: Yeah. I get to cut my own trailers, is what I do, because this is what I want the trailer to be so I sit and cut my trailers and design my posters and give it to them. But then it’s really the producer’s call.

Anubhav: No it’s not.

Raj: I mean, you can fight it…

Anubhav: You cannot put out a trailer that I don’t approve of.

Imtiaz: Yeah, sure.

Pragya: No but beyond the trailer as well. There are so many aspects of marketing

Anubhav: Everything. Poster design. There are merchandizing tie-ups and brand tie-ups, like Rayban… That being the case, I am not a part of it. But presenting the film, I have to be a part of it.

Pragya: Does it concern you how the film is being projected or is all publicity good publicity?

Bejoy: No no, for sure. I think the correct pitch of your film, the correct communication, has to go out to the audience. Especially—I can only speak for myself—when you’re not doing a mainstream kind of film and you’re trying to do something different, which doesn’t conform as such, the correct communication has to go out to the audience, because the audience coming in, paying that money, should not feel cheated. My film, for example. Shaitaan. On satellite it was projected as a horror film. They cut a trailer, they cut a promo, to make it look like a horror film. They took some weird shots, put some weird music on it and that was the communication that was put out on TV, because they thought that that’ll get more eyeballs for it. I feel that’s a wrong approach, you can never compromise on your content that way, because then you are cheating your audience.

Anubhav: People go with a certain mindset to watch a film. So you have to create the right mindset with which they should settle into their seats to watch the film. They should not be expecting a cheesecake and get a mousse.

RKG: For me it’s very interesting in the sense that… I mean, obviously, I have to look at the poster, I have to look at the promo to see if I have a doubt, or if I feel that I have certain reservations. But otherwise I think for me, personally, I don’t get involved too much in marketing because I feel the producers don’t tell me how to make my film— so I don’t tell them how to market their film.

Imtiaz: It’s also subject to who you are working with, who your producer is. It’s usually a sharing of strengths and if you feel like you can contribute then you should, as a director. And I don’t think there is anything that should be kept away from the director’s reach, per se, because he obviously doesn’t want to harm the film and he knows the film best and is expected to have the kind of objectivity that will enable the film to reach out.

Pragya: Is there such a thing as too much publicity?

Imtiaz: Too much publicity might be wrong communication.

Pragya: But you don’t think that they are two separate things? One thing could be wrong communication and one thing could also be publicity overdrive.

Anubhav: I would want to hear, actually, their views on this. Because this was labeled against my film— Ra.One

Pragya: I was actually going to bring it up.

Anubhav: That one day, Riteish Deshmukh came to the shoot. He was shooting somewhere close by. He came to Shah Rukh’s (Shah Rukh Khan) van and he cracked a very interesting joke. He said “Ab toh sab log isliye picture dekhne aayenge kay, agar nahin gaye, toh Shah Rukh ghar aa jayega.” (“Now everyone will come to see the movie because they’ll feel that if they don’t then Shah Rukh will come to their house.”) I am very intrigued to know from you guys, did that happen to my film?

Raj: I feel that…

Anubhav: I don’t think there was any wrong communication.

Raj: No. Wrong communication wasn’t there. It was the most publicized film, of course, in the recent times.

Bejoy: You couldn’t avoid it.

Raj: You could not not see it, which I thought was a double edged sword. I was thinking, discussing, about it. Thinking that this will make the haters and lovers both go on the first day, but because they’ve been fed so much (publicity)… Let’s say you don’t like the film. Then in one day or two days, whenever, first show or second show, whatever, they’d come back and say: “Why did they feed us so much?” The antagonism just grows up so much. Everything is so instant these days that I feel that… I thought maybe it would have been safer to do publicity in smaller chunks. Like if you see Hollywood films, in a lot of films you’ll see a trailer coming one and half years early. You’ll see a Batman trailer that’s coming next Christmas. Everyone’s like – ‘Oh my god, one and half years I’ve got to wait for this,’ which seems to be working there. But here I don’t know if anybody is putting so much thought and analysis and marketing brain behind it. It’s one person’s idea and that person’s saying like: “You know what— fuck it; let me just do the film for six months.”

Anubhav: There was actually a thought process. While we released the first poster in January, the 2^nd of January, and the film came out on the 26^th of October. So pretty much 10 months. The thought was: Shahrukh Khan, lover-boy, not many action films, superhero costume. Will they accept it? Will they like this costume? No? Yes?

Raj: To test it?

Anubhav: No.

Imtiaz: Let them get used to it…

Anubhav: Let’s put it out. Let them live with it. And they will eventually accept it. That’s what happened. But I guess what has been alleged, if I may call it over-publicity, in case of Ra.One, probably happened in the last 8 weeks or 6 weeks. And I wonder if that affected the business adversely. I think…

Raj: See, it might have affected the audience, a part of audience, thinking that ‘Why are they doing this to me so much?’ But business wise, you can say, that if it worked in the first few days, then it worked.

Bejoy: It worked right? The whole idea worked.

Pragya: I think with Ra.One, it was about, like he said, in the last couple of weeks, the intensity was literally everywhere.

Imtiaz: Yeah so but it was there Anubhav. These jokes are also coming out of there, I guess. And it’s interesting actually to find out from you whether it worked or it didn’t work— what you think about it. Because the nation was going “Yaar yeh bahut kar rahe hain (These guys are doing too much).”

Anubhav: See I met two kinds of people. Literally, two kinds of people, two kinds of responses to my film: “I loved it.” “I hated it.”

Imtiaz: The publicity or the film?

Anubhav: The film.

Imtiaz: Oh okay.

Anubhav: That’s where I’m trying to combine the two, probably. That it was very early… during the making, during the promotion, I told Shah Rukh that this time you’re doing so much that they are going to expect Shah Rukh Khan to actually come out of the screen, in every theatre, and this can become a letdown. That “Shah Rukh toh aaya hi nahin yaar, screen ke bahar nahin aaya woh (Shah Rukh didn’t come out dude, he didn’t come out of the screen)”. The film did like 240 whatever crores. Great numbers. Top 3, top 4, top 5. Could it have been 400? And did it not become 400 because we over publicized? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Maybe some people in the business say that it could have done 300 or 400.

Bejoy: Because of lesser publicity?

Anubhav: Because it was over publicized, ke Shah Rukh, toh bahar nahin aaya, screen ke bahar nahin aaya.

Imtiaz: Acha expectation. Like that?

Anubhav: Humne yeh promise kiya tha ke Shah Rukh bahar aayega (we had promised that Shah Rukh would come out of the screen), metaphorically speaking.

Raj: I’ve heard this. And I’ve had a producer say this to me…

Anubhav: What?

Raj: The other option. Maybe next film, whatever they were doing it’s a big enough film and they were saying that we’re going to do it only for a month— the whole thing, from the teaser to the release. And it’s a big film and I’m thinking, “Haan.” Because I think it was one person’s opinion, to think that overexposure might let people down. But in a bigger film I feel there’s no letting people down because your business is done in two days. Because the way I’m seeing it is— in the first weekend it’s done. I mean it’s the big ones, especially, taking all the screens. It’s over (after the first week). And at the end of it, even if it just drove the people to see it to figure out how to do their Facebook jokes, you do it. What do you care? It’s become like that.

Imtiaz: I think every movie has a personality. And some movies are shy and some movies are extroverted— and that’s how they need to be projected. So you can’t have a single defined way of publicizing any film.

Raj: And in the case of Ra.One, I don’t think there would have been another way to do it. I mean you have to compare it to other films that are doing publicity and think: I made the biggest film that’s coming.

Pragya: You know this leads to another question, which is budget, given that an amount of budget has now been put into marketing. I’m going to start with Bejoy. You’ve had a tough time raising money for your film. You want to talk a little bit about that? I mean how difficult is it in real terms, to raise money for the film that you want to make and make it exactly the way you want to make it? I’m sure the answers will be different, because it’ll be experiential as well.

Bejoy: It’s extremely difficult, and that’s all I can say. And rightly so. I mean I’m not trying to say…

Pragya: Why do you say rightly so?

Bejoy: I’ll tell you. Because anyone putting their money in, putting their faith into you, they’ve seen your work okay? As a first time filmmaker, it’s a different ball game altogether. If they don’t know about your work and you’re trying to do something different, you don’t have a star, then obviously it comes with all that baggage of: Why should I put my money into someone or some film which I don’t know anything about? I know the story is good, it’s nice. You don’t have a star. You have not made a film before this. So all that works against you. So that’s what worked against me in my first film. But having said that, even for my second, I’m struggling right now to raise that money so I think I’ll be the most bitter one here because I’m literally fighting to get that money. The economics have to make sense.

Imtiaz: There’s also a danger of films doing well, which is when people stop looking at the merit of what you’re trying to make next. Because, like I was telling Raju (Raj Kumar) Hirani once, that: “You are totally screwed because no matter what fucking story you write, and who you take it to, they are going to listen to the story and say, ‘Raju, kamaal kar diya tune, tu is baar chappar phaad dega (Raju, this is wonderful, this time you’ll hit the jackpot).’” Because they will be convinced that he has written a great story because look at his record— who’s going to object to that? So he’s screwed, he has no objectivity that he can get from it. He’s writing in a room and he’s hoping that he’s writing well, and it’s going to work out well, but when he goes out to anyone they’re saying: “Raju?!” Woh toh sunne se pehle hi haan bol dega (They’ll say yes without even hearing him out). So any safety net or any collaboration that he could have got, it’s very unlikely for him. So then he got very insecure, of course, and he said, “Main tereko hi sunaaunga, tu sach bol diyo (I’ll read it out to you, you tell me the truth).”

Bejoy: Most people who are the producers, the corporates and all that, their first question, more than the script, there is no… yeah, of course, they’ll listen to the script, they’ll give importance to the script, but the only question they’re still driven by is the star system.

Imtiaz: Especially the studios.

Bejoy: They only ask who is in your film.

Imtiaz: Exactly.

Bejoy: I am an example. People are not even… they don’t even want to listen to your script if you have a star. They say, “Okay, we are done, what’s the number? This is the star? Okay we are on.” They didn’t even want to know what I’m making, if I had that star on board.

RKG: And that’s the dangerous part.

Bejoy: And that’s sad, that’s sad. Then you are not giving any importance to the content, which is scary.

Anubhav: That brings me to this thing that I was saying about a producer believing in the director and his film. And we must… in India we must start understanding the difference between a studio and a producer. Worldwide, a studio buys into a film that the producer has set up. The producer has invested in the development. He has put the film together. He believes in the director. He believes in the story and he wants to make that film. The studio believes in the producer and says, “This man has never lost money, I want to invest in him.” And they get together. Everybody has a role and function. The director’s job is to… he should be the most protected animal in the jungle, and yet here he is the most exposed animal. He is answerable to his stars. He is answerable to his producer. He is answerable to his distributor. He is answerable to the censor board. We tell the director, “I want a U/A film.” Fuck off! He is making a film, let him make a film. So producing is a job, is a very specialized job. We don’t have producers.

Pragya: Is that why a lot of stars and directors are taking to producing themselves? And is it a good idea?

Raj: (laughing) I don’t think so.

Anubhav: No, no it is more about control.

Pragya: It is about control.

Anubhav: Yeah.

Raj: It is about money.

Anubhav: Directors are doing it out of frustration, because they want to control their film. And stars are doing because it makes good business sense, because they are charging 50% of the production cost anyways.

Pragya: But that can also be dangerous. I mean, if it is such a specialized job…

Anubhav: It is so dangerous, can’t you see? Your films are not recognized outside of this country. You’re still seen as Rajasthan ka Jaipur in the world film market. Have any one of your films done 20 million dollars outside of India? No. Why? Thai films, Vietnamese films, Taiwanese films, Korean films, Iranian films are doing 20 to 30 million every other day. The reason why you’re not doing it is because you don’t understand films. You understand projects.

Pragya: This brings me to the question of audiences, I mean this clichéd separation of multiplex audience and mass audience, and, you know, class audience. Firstly that’s very typical to India because we have such a discrepancy, in our social scenario. I mean massive discrepancies.

Anubhav: Yeah we have two Indias, at least.

Pragya: We have at least two Indias. How does that translate into, in real terms, into the stories? Are you writing for the India you inhabit or are you also sometimes feeling the pressure of writing for an India that exists in some exhibitor’s, or distributor’s or producer’s mind that you don’t know…

Raj: We used to make films that everybody should be satisfied with, the whole of India; anybody who watches your film. Everybody wanted to make a 3 Idiots; like 3 Idiots is accepted all over India, pan India. Right? Doesn’t matter who it is. But I feel, lately that, you know, with the audiences, with the multiplexes, with whatever business models, depending on your budget you make your film. You make the film that you like to make, that is entertaining, that gets your money back. That I think is fairly important— that you have to make your money back. Hence you kind of set your budget, you know, low, big, medium, whatever. Like we have A, AA, B, B1, B2 on all these centers, I feel, even in the non-western countries, there are markets, there are kids films, there are horse films, there are dog films, there are animation films and there is sci-fi. And then there is gore, ultra gore. We have lots of these genres and everybody makes films in their genres. In a similar way I feel that we have… we are developing into that, where we have audiences for different genres, different kinds of films, slowly. So you don’t have to worry about making a 3 Idiots every time.

Anubhav: One new director comes, makes a film called Shaitaan, which is not a commercial title. You can’t sell it otherwise. It becomes reasonably successful. They want him to make 3 Idiots, now his next Shaitaan has to be 3 Idiots. “Ke thoda comedy daalo na sir? Arre nahi? Ismein nahi ho sakta ek item song? (Why don’t you put in some comedy sir? Oh no? Can’t we have at least one item song in it?)” The economics becomes so compelling. And, like I said, you are the most exposed, and weakest— the most vulnerable animal. 35 people who are much more powerful just got off Range Rovers or a set of (BMW) 7 Series; and you were intimidated anyways, so you say, ”One song doesn’t hurt a film yaar, let’s do it.”

RKG: As filmmakers, at least I’m talking about myself, both the films that I did, I wasn’t the first one to say that I’ve made a multiplex film. Suddenly people come up to you—big producers or exhibitors—and they tell you that it’s a multiplex film and you just say, as a filmmaker, “I just wrote a film.” I didn’t know what the market is. All of us want our films to be seen everywhere. You know, so somewhere down the line, I thought that I never categorized my film, never thought it was a multiplex film.

Anubhav: It’s not even your job, that’s what I’m saying.

RKG: That’s not my job but suddenly people in and around made me feel that it was a multiplex film. And somewhere down the line, even not believing that it’s a multiplex film, I mean, I gave in. My mind also got conditioned to: ‘Okay, so it’s a multiplex film.’

Pragya: But if you control the budget somewhere like Raj was saying, why just multiplex and the classes? Within the multiplex, there could be different genres. There could be different people who go for a different reason for films. I mean there could be slasher comedies…

Bejoy: Our audiences have not started doing that. They have not started cultivating a habit of going for a certain kind of film. I don’t think. If that was the case then we would have seen more and more films working like that. Small films of different genres working like that. Like for example, I think there’s a whole zombie film culture, which is very popular abroad. But it’s not started here yet. Once it comes here, once people go for it, once the film becomes a hit, then yeah. Then we’ll have more categories. Right now we have like: horror, comedy, multiplex…

Pragya: I’m going to talk about actors, stars or not. It’s such a crucial part of being a director, you know, communicating with your actor. Have you guys learnt some tricks along the way or do you have start afresh every time with every actor?

Imtiaz: Start afresh every time with every actor.

Pragya: Yeah?

Anubhav: I have a different philosophy that I treat them with. I grade them in three categories. There are actors, there are stars, and there are celebrities. There’s a difference between stars and celebrities. A celebrity is a person who would be mobbed, but that mob will not go to the theatre. He’s just a celebrity. So Anna Hazare is a celebrity. You can make a film with Anna Hazare and you can make a film with a cricketer. That’s your choice. Now you have to figure out who’s a real star. A star is a person who’s not dependent on how the film is looking and still gives you X amount, every star can have a different X, X amount on the box office on the weekend. That’s a star. The rest are celebrities. And then there is Naseer bhai (Naseeruddin Shah), Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur… Gods.

Pragya: Or the new actors. You (to Raj) had some really good onscreen actors.

Raj: Yeah, it’s always a great high when you find somebody and sometimes you don’t even know that they’re going to work out. And when you start your movie, when you start working on it, you realize that there is so much potential that you can pull out of them. And for me it’s been like that in my films. Every time I find one or two guys who are like… Wow! You know? I didn’t even think. Sometimes I don’t even realize until people start saying that. You’re just working with actors. He is fitting my character very well. I’m just making sure he stays within the character— not his own personality, or whatever he wants to do. And later you realize that everybody’s going, “Oh my god, look at this guy, where did he come from? Look at this actor.” And you’re like: He’s done a good job there.

Pragya: Is it also a good high, I mean, that you get a star to act in a way that…

Raj: It is, right? When I saw Chak De! (India), and I realized that—and what’s his other film? Swades—you suddenly don’t see Shah Rukh any more. At least in parts of it, or a length of it. He’s not the guy I’ve been seeing in other films. You’ll think: ‘Wow, that’s a good job!’ That’s like… because, you’d love to see Shah Rukh tilt, but at the same time you’d also want to see another face of him. Because that’s what stars have, they transform every time.

Imtiaz: Yeah. But so the point really is that a star and an actor are not mutually exclusive.

Pragya: No, sure enough.

Raj: Yes, a star is primarily an actor at the end of it. The day of the movie he realizes, or after seeing a particular scene he realizes, that he did a great scene.

Pragya: I’m going to talk a little bit about… has anyone of you not had a run in, small or big, with the censors, anyone who’s not had any trouble?

Raj: All of us have. We always make movies that have troubles with the censors. Problem with censors, you say? Yeah I’ve had it.

Anubhav: That is another strange… I think we can smoke now, on screen, right?

Imtiaz: Can we? I don’t know.

Raj: No, now again you can with a big disclaimer. So I’m thinking—in my film, 80% of the time they are smoking, so I’m thinking—what do I do? Cause you have to have a two-minute disclaimer, I think. In the film somewhere, somebody, has to say, the character has to say… I read a whole article on that…

Imtiaz: Oh okay so you’ve got to build that into the script…

Raj: They say that somewhere. ‘This is bad man, fucks you up’, or whatever, ‘Don’t do this smoke shit’, and then smoke it. I don’t know… I don’t know how to do it.

Anubhav: And if you kiss you get an A certificate or what?

Raj: No. I learnt that A, U/A…

Imtiaz: No, you don’t. No I realized that in Jab We Met, there was a full-out kiss; in fact in Love Aaj Kal as well, and in this one (Rockstar). So no A certificates for me. But you can’t say ‘sex’.

Anubhav: You can’t say ‘sex’?

Raj: You cant?

Imtiaz: You can’t say ‘sex’ even for an adult rated film.

Raj: But what about Love Sex Aur Dhoka? The title has it in it.

Pragya: Even for an adult rated film?

Imtiaz: I don’t know what the fuck man? Yeah. Maybe the rules were different at that time. Because I was told…

Anubhav: I don’t believe this.

Imtiaz: Yeah! I was told this by the censor chief, now, I mean… during Rockstar.

Raj: Wow!

Anubhav: We must have a meeting with Pankaja (Thakur) ji also.

Pragya: What about ‘fuck’? Do you say ‘fuck’?

Anubhav: Of course. You can say bhosadi ke… (literally ‘of a vagina’, in Hindi slang)

Pragya: Yeah that you can… Thank you.

Raj: No, I’ll tell you. I went through the exact thing in Shor (in the City). Shor got a U/A which is weird. There’s a lot of kissing and there’s also a lot of blunt kissing, not sensual kissing. But everything works in the story. I don’t think, I don’t believe it was gratuitous anywhere, the words or whatever. This guy’s putting a gun and saying “You fucking dogs, I want to kill you right now!” So it kind of went in. So that lady who was watching, I don’t know her name, she said, “I liked the film a lot. I don’t want to mute that ‘fuck’ because he is saying it in such anger, that it makes sense. But I cannot do this right now. If you are using an F word, you have to… I have to give an A certificate. But your film is so close to U/A, can you do something ‘aesthetically’ good to it?” So then we figured out. I gave her a solution. Can I do ‘f-u-h’, mute it and ‘i-n-g’? So you kind of feel it? So we actually worked for over two hours on that word, where it was like: “Fuh–ing dogs!” People all thought, “Arre they got away with that whole ‘fucking’ word.” Except what we did was we worked on it, tweaked it. Tweaked it to: “You fuh-ing dogs!” So it’s almost like he is swallowing it. And then it works like that. She came and said in a very sweet way, very well clad in a sari, like a cotton sari…

Imtiaz: Hot nahin bol sakte (You can’t say ‘hot’).

Raj: “See Raj, we cannot do… we have to take out the three ‘fucks’ in the film, you can keep your ‘chutiya’ (‘fucker’, in Hindi slang), you can keep all that.” I was like: What!? It was hilarious. I couldn’t even laugh.

Imtiaz: That’s a great scene yaar.

Pragya: (to Imtiaz) You had a very strange thing, with Rockstar, with the Tibet thing. I’ve read several accounts. So first tell me, tell us, what it was actually.

Imtiaz: There was this slogan, this banner that people were holding. We shot at Dharamsala and Norbulingka and it was part of the brief of the song (Sadda Haq) that it catches roots and people start associating their own angst or troubles with this slogan of ‘Sadda Haq (Our Right)’ and so there was this banner saying ‘Free Tibet’ and there was the flag flying, the Tibetan flag. Now, Tibet, of course, technically, is not a country anymore. Ultimately what happened is that, they said, “Free Tibet is not India’s position on Tibet, in our diplomatic situation. So you can’t say ‘Free Tibet’ but ‘We support the autonomy of Tibet’.” But I said, “That won’t be a good banner.”

Raj (laughs): …make it ‘autonomous’.

Imtiaz: Yeah, so they said: “We can’t let you use ‘Free Tibet’, but what you can do is, you can do just a little bit of a smudge and we’ll pass it.” Now I spoke to them for a while, but honestly also let me tell you, that I thought that— I’m a filmmaker. I can’t also kid myself and say that India’s position on Tibet should be so and so. And unfortunately the guys who you are talking to have a rule book as well. They say, ”Sir, aise humein… I have to go by this,” and I, not very grudgingly either, said, “Okay fine, as long as the point communicates.” Just like, you know, ‘fuh-ing’. As long as we all know that it’s ‘Free Tibet’, then it’s fine.

Pragya: Does anyone feel that we don’t need a censor. I mean in this age, with internet, that we don’t need censorship anymore, or there could be another way, like self regulation?

Imtiaz: There could be another way. There could surely be another way. I don’t have a clear position, unfortunately, about it. I don’t know whether there should be no censorship. But sometimes I think there should just not be any censorship because people can choose for themselves what they want to watch, what they want their children to watch, etc. etc. I don’t even know whether people…

Anubhav: You could well have, a section, a certificate, that says ‘Uncensored’. Enter at your own risk. Like, I’ll give an example. I was walking into the preview of Rockstar and I had my 10 year old kid with me. I don’t know why—Imtiaz doesn’t make films like those—I don’t know why, I asked him, “Imtiaz, bache ko le aarahan hoon (I’m getting my kid). Okay na?” So he said, “Haan, perfect, perfect.” It was just a passing conversation. But as a father, I was concerned. I was watching a Norwegian film, a very simple film— two brothers’ story. Suddenly one brother walks in, the other brother is called in, and my son strolled along, he was just sitting, he was not interested in the film but he started watching it. And one brother said, “Why did you call me?” And the other says, “No I wanted you to be present,” and he takes out a knife and slits his throat. And blood all over. And by then it was over. I just covered his eyes, but it was over. So as an audience I want to have the right to know what I am getting into. As a father, as a parent, I want to have the right. As long as you tell me this could be dangerous. Like what they write? Use ‘viewer discretion’ kind of a thing. I think there should be a certificate like that. Trust me, they’ll be blockbusters.

Pragya: But I think the danger of not having a centralized body could also be that there could be arbit forces censoring things.

Anubhav: But what is the sanctity of the centralized body? A central body that Imtiaz goes and struggles with ke “Dekho bhai (look brother), I’m not for freeing Tibet, it’s just a placard in the existing India.” So he does his entire fight and suddenly Mayawati stands up and says, “You can’t show this film in my state.” Who are you? Or who are they? Tell me. The central government must take a stand. Prakash Jha could not release his film even after censorship. Then what is that censor board doing there?

Pragya: Or the things that happened with Gujarat. Because Aamir (Khan) spoke against a dam. Then they wouldn’t allow a film to release there.

Anubhav: This is so ridiculous,

Imtiaz: Religious bodies… I had some trouble with Love Aaj Kal. Some religious body stood up to say, after censorship, that you can’t show it and then this Censor Board was pressurized and then lot of shit happened.

RKG: There are two kinds of censorship that we face. One, the censorship we go to. The other one, which comes to us.

Pragya: Also inculcated self censorship, given that there are so many censors… (to Anubhav) Did you ever… Your film had a lot of risqué comedy. Did you ever anticipate that? Is that something you start thinking about? Or is it something you just…

Anubhav: It is. It is something worth thinking about. This is a very sensitive area, I don’t know if I should bring this up on record, but the least that I can say is that it also depends on who you are. So, honestly, I don’t think many other producers would have gotten away with ‘bhosadi ke’. So I’m sure, going by the same logic, I got away with some.

Raj: Yeah that’s true, the amount of… Delhi Belly. I love the film. It’s great fun and everything, and it’s funny and all that stuff, but the amount of profanity in the film… Aamir must have just gone in and said, “I think it’s alright,” and they’d just pass it. So it’d be nice to have a producer like that when you want to make a film the way you want to do it.

Anubhav: So it also depends also on who you are. I mean Bandit Queen went on with the censor board for so many years before it made the world go gaga over it. I saw Bandit Queen on a pirated DVD much before it was released, because it took forever to release.

Pragya: As with Anurag’s (Anurag Kashyap’s) Paanch.

Anubhav and Raj: Yeah.

Raj: One angle for censorship is that I was just thinking, as a filmmaker, you don’t want censorship. You want to do what you want, that’s it. But the reason for censorship in a country like ours is that, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. I don’t know if all the filmmakers, this includes directors, producers, distributors—whoever is making a film—are always thinking, right? Pretty much what you’re saying is: this is a country that doesn’t have a system in place, that doesn’t always have a good father, say, who closes his son’s eyes. It’s just, people are just growing up, ad hoc-ly, seeing ad hoc stuff and then minds are shaped like that. So my aunt said like, “I saw this film.” And of course she was also referring to my film. “Joh bhi inko pata nahi hai, they learn from your film (Whatever swear words my children don’t know, they learn from your film).” So I’m like— I see that, I feel for it. My answer would be don’t show it. Be a parent. Be a good parent. Don’t show it to them. What’s the first thing that a guy who is not attached to the film industry says to you when he knows you’re a filmmaker? “Arre mujhe bhi ek role dena (Hey, give me a role too), I want to be the villain.” Nobody says, usually, and I’ve heard this a lot, “I want to be… (the hero).” Instead it’s the original, whole, B movie villain, raping the maid, that you see in the eighties films. They say: ‘‘I want to be a villain. I know I’ll be good in this scene, rape, and all that stuff.” So we’ve been cultured like that. The fact is that for us nudity and sex, comes from that little bit of a villain raping the maid, poor thing, while she’s mopping the house. This is what it is. And I realized that: Oh my god. All my friends are saying, “I want to be a villain.” Nobody’s saying: “I want to be a hero.” Instead it’s: “I want to be that guy who smokes and kills, you know? Stabs and picks out the chain.”

Imtiaz: Smoking has got nothing to do with killing, okay?

Raj: No no I’m just saying, you know it’s all cool, na? You get to smoke, you get to wear sunglasses, you’ve got babes around you…

Pragya: You know talking about institutions. We don’t have an Oscars, we don’t have the equivalent of an Oscar or Golden Globe.

Anubhav: We have Filmfare, we have Screen Awards…

Pragya: Yes Anubhav, we do. But is there any award that any one of you aspires for in India? I really do want a serious answer.

Imtiaz: No.

Bejoy: When we started off, long time ago, we used to look forward to all these awards. All. National, Filmfare, Screen… but over the years the kind of films that have got the recognition, they’ve really lost a lot of credibility I feel. And now, being part of the industry, you get to hear so many things. You see, you start to question…

Pragya: And the cynicism is so much that I don’t even know if anyone even debates this. At least, post Oscars, there’s a debate about the politics of the committee or whatever. But here, I don’t even know if it’s… I mean I think everyone just assumes that it’s really random.

Anubhav: How unfair, and how blatant? You can say that of the five nominated films in the Oscars, this one deserved a little more. But all five were great films. There’s no debate about that. So that gives it more credibility. So what Bejoy has said is probably the most important thing which is: How credible do you think those awards are?

Raj: I mean, even in the Oscars, it’s the best way, I feel, the best way of voting, where you get every director to vote, every writer. Every Oscar nominated guy gets to vote. So it becomes, over the years, a pretty credible body that can vote for it. Who is voting for you, who is choosing you as the award winner— is the most important thing. That’s what it boils down to. But even in the Oscars, the five films that make it from the 300 films that are shortlisted…

Anubhav: …there’s a lot of politics that goes on.

Raj: Lot of lobbying.

Imtiaz: Yeah, a lot of lobbying.

Raj: It’s just money now, how much can you spend to make them see a film? There’ll be great films out there but…

Anubhav: There was a time when Harvey Weinstein could practically get a film nominated himself.

RKG: He used to fight. He used to thrash people. He used to punch…

Anubhav: He would fly people down to the Bahamas and Hawaii and whole lot of such things went on. But still, look at the history. You’ll find out that all those films deserved it.

Pragya: Yeah I mean he wouldn’t dare to go with something that was below a certain standard. I mean it’s not like he would take any damn thing, just because he was Harvey.

Imtiaz: No but that is not a valid point of view. I feel then it’s subject to somebody who is powerful and his intellectual or moral standards. That’s not a fair judgment on anything. No one should have the power to do that, ideally.

Raj: I think a lot of awards have been invented over the years. There must be like 15 to 20 awards.

Imtiaz: There are so many awards man.

Raj: I’m sure half of them were idealistic, thinking that ‘I’m going to be the Oscars of India, I’m going to set a standard.’

Pragya: Really? You think?

Raj: I think at least half of them. Otherwise why are they doing it? I’m hoping. I’m hoping…

Pragya: Because it’s marketing.

Anubhav: I disagree. Let’s understand what an award function is. What is an award function? Tell me, why do you want it? Tell me. You give me the answer.

RKG: A television event.

Anubhav: It is a television event where the stars will come and dance and some movie clips will be shown. Some old retiring actor will be given an award, you will see him after 15 years. And things like those. And it’ll create great TRPs .

Pragya: And there’ll be branding.

Anubhav: And there’ll be branding. So at the heart of it all, it’s a commercial activity. It’s not a desire to recognize excellence.

Pragya: But you know, the National Awards were. But they have been mired in controversy so much. Do they still mean anything?

Raj: When I saw the list of people who vote… Sometimes somebody puts it up on Facebook right? Now Facebook is the news channel. And you get the list of people who were voting. And you don’t know 80% of them or you don’t know who they are or how they are connected to films. And you realize: Oh my God!

RKG: Also the category itself doesn’t inspire confidence; I mean a film can be best film. It can’t be best popular film, best romantic film. I mean you just give something a best film?

Bejoy: Best actor in a society awareness role.

Pragya: Really?

RKG: I mean what are these categories?

Bejoy: Yeah. I saw one recently…

Anubhav: And best actor in a seriously useless role. So there’s all this… All this, so that a lot of people will come. All this, so people will come and it’ll be a star studded event. I was on a jury once and I decided I’ll never be on a jury again. Say you are a bad actress. And suppose I said to Imtiaz that we have to give you an award. We are all intelligent, credible people; history behind us. So we can’t say, “Now give an award to her.” Because I’d look like a fool. Yet all of us know that the award should be given to her so, like we intellectualized the ‘glass yahan kyun hona chahiye’ (‘why should the glass be placed here’), we say: “This time, she did something, I feel her eyes were very honest, I could see through her eyes.” Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows this is what it is, but everyone has to give a dignified reason. I was on one such jury once.

RKG: But I was also on a jury, at least a critics jury. I found it very fair.

Imtiaz: Yeah my experience has not been bad either. One jury. But on the critics jury, not on the popular one.

Anubhav: No wonder. You were on the critics jury. But our awards are the only awards in the world that end with the best actor award, not with the best film award.

Pragya: Two more questions.

Bejoy: Two more?

Pragya: One is about technology. Is it necessary?

Anubhav: I have nothing to do with it.

Pragya: You know that you have to talk the most here, right? Is it necessarily making the films easier and better?

Anubhav: Not necessarily. It’s about the kind of film. Technology can’t help No One Killed Jessica.

Pragya: It’s a part of every film.

Raj: For me it is. For me it has helped tremendously, I think. Just the logistics of the whole thing.

Anubhav: It helps you…

Imtiaz: Yeah maybe logistics, but not the whole process of it. I mean it doesn’t make the film better.

Raj: Yeah, not the film itself. It’s just the process of it. I can take it to my room and open a laptop and start working.

Anubhav: Oh that way. Of course.

Imtiaz: That way— yeah.

Raj: Yeah, that’s it.

RKG: At one point there was this guy who walked up to me. He didn’t have a script, he didn’t have anything. He said, “Sir, I want to make a film on 5D.”

Anubhav: On?

RKG: On 5D. “But where’s the script?” (is what RKG said to him, and he said:) “Woh ho jayegi, kar lenge (That will happen, we’ll do it).” So I don’t know how to take it.

Raj: It’s been advantageous for me for sure. That’s why I’m pro-technology. I’m always loving this new stuff coming up. Shor was really shot on the streets, in the middle of real people, where I couldn’t control the crowd. I couldn’t get enough security, or money, to recreate a scene like Slumdog (Millionaire) would. You are just shooting it there. So I’m glad I can take two cameras and just keep shooting there for an hour, get a 5 second clip out of it. Stuff like that is what helps in technology, tremendously.

Pragya: But what can be tricky?

Imtiaz: What can be tricky is, if you stop thinking. For instance, if he has the ability, or we have the ability, to shoot for endless hours, and if he says, “Let’s roll the camera, something interesting is going to happen.” That’s when it becomes a problem.

Raj: Use discipline is what you’re saying.

RKG: I think technology can only help you make a film. It can’t give you a story.

Imtiaz: It can’t give you a story. It can enhance. It can take you there. It can make it cheaper for you.

Anubhav: It can even help you think larger.

Imtiaz and RKG: Yeah.

Anubhav: Yeah. Like if you wanted to… there was a time when… how would you make Jurassic Park?

RKG: Yeah it can open up the possibilities of what you can think of.

Anubhav: How much you can think and how much ever you can do.

Pragya: When talking about the tricky part, I don’t know how but I’ve heard this story…

Anubhav: How do you bring VT down (Mumbai’s VT or Victoria Terminus Station, now renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, was shown to be brought down in Ra.One).

Pragya: Yes, how do you bring VT down. No, but I have heard this story, I don’t know how much of it is true. But when Jaws was being made, you know, Jaws was not working apparently. And he (Steven Spielberg) was showing it around. And he created the whole fish, he actually created this shark and everything with whatever rudimentary special effects were available at that point. And I think he showed it to (George) Lucas. I’m not sure of the story.

Anubhav: So far it’s right…

Pragya: Yeah and he (Spielberg) said, “Okay tell me what’s not working.” And he (Lucas) said, “Take the fish out.”

Anubhav: No it was not him. I think it was his wife (Marcia Lucas), who was an editor, or the editor (Verna Fields) of Jaws. She said, “Not seeing the shark—it is looking fuck all anyways—not seeing it is more fear.”

RKG: The inspiration also came from Spielberg’s first film Duel. Where you don’t see that guy. You know, you just see this protagonist, you don’t see the antagonist. So it became one of the reference points.

Pragya: Yeah, but you were dealing with so many technicalities when you were making Ra.One. Was it challenging to keep your eye on the human core of the story?

Anubhav: Sometimes it is so intricately technological that it’s… You’re talking 45 degree angles from here, and then six feet… no it has to be eight feet. You suddenly lose the actor because both are as important to the shot. Because if this shot doesn’t work technologically, then it’ll look fake. And no matter how well the actor performs, the shot will not work and, as a director, at that point, you are answerable to the visual effects supervisor, the DP, the actor, the make-up, the special effects— a whole lot of shit.

Pragya: They’re both as important. In all the superhero movies. It’s the emotion that… I mean when Spiderman’s uncle’s dying or… it’s always that. And actually there’s so much technology that’s invisible that in a sense there are so many wires that you just don’t see, and you actually just, you think it’s all really happening, while, at the same time, it’s just the emotion that you’re really connecting to.

Anubhav: No, I disagree with you.

Pragya: Yeah?

Anubhav: I think if all those things were not working, you will not get to that emotion.

Imtiaz: That’s what she’s saying.

Pragya: That’s what I’m saying

Anubhav: That’s what you were saying? I’m sorry.

Pragya: No I’m just saying that a lot of times there’s also… when we talk of genre film viewing a lot of people tend to believe, even in the US, you are going to see great special effects. I’m not sure that that’s not a myth. I’m not sure that it’s not the simple story of Spiderman that’s always moving you. That’s what I’m saying.

Anubhav: Correct.

Raj: Nahin (No). It drives people to go to the theatre wanting to see the stunning visual, what makes the film run, and become a good film, is the core of the film. So it’s both.

Pragya: Okay, absolutely final question. What is the experience of putting your movie out? I’m pretty sure you’ve been asked this question before, but if you can describe it for me… What is the experience of releasing a film and having it out there for everyone, critics, audience, everyone, to see and react to? I know that there are so many pre-screenings that there’s a sort of buffer period.

Anubhav: My experience at pre-screenings is that they are the wrongest reactions you get. Do you think so?

Imtiaz: Yeah. Can be. I mean potentially yeah. I’ve not done…

Pragya: It’s like the exit polls, they’re always wrong to me.

Imtiaz: They are exit polls. There are friends I guess. There are other industry people…

Anubhav: Some of them are there to love your film and some of them are there to hate your film.

Imtiaz: Yeah usually you would know who’s going to say what.

Anubhav: Yeah.

Pragya: One change, personal or professional, that your last film has brought about in your life?

Raj: Made in my life?

Imtiaz: How has the film changed you?

Pragya: Personally or professionally…

Raj: I mean you learn every time what not to do, what to do— I could do this better, how I would have shot it better. I’m never satisfied with the film because given that the person is saying: “Oh it’s a great film, man,” I know I can just see all the flaws in it. So I realized that. I say, “Yeah, thank you.”

Anubhav: You only see flaws. Yeah, you only see flaws in the film.

Raj: Correct. I’m always seeing it, and saying: “Oh my God!”

Imtiaz: You never enjoy your films like other people can.

Raj: And somebody says: “This is a scene to remember.” Writes about the scene. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh fuck— I mean, I patched that up. This is bad.’ That way you’ll learn at a basic level. Shor, because of the reception it got and the fact that people got it, it kind of gave me the confidence of tackling something ‘off’. Because I always felt that Shor was an entertainer. No matter what, it’s a fun film. Anybody who watches it, even though it’s a topical film, you can still have fun. I don’t care about the depths you go to or not— the script or whatever… you have fun. I didn’t think everybody is going to care for it. So when they did care for it, I realized that… hmm. I’m more confident that next time I’ll put a little nuance in the film, or a subtlety, or a little… a subtext or a subplot. I’ll be very confident with what I’ll take on. I can do a superstar film and still have my nuances in it with great confidence because if this can relate to people, that’ll relate better.

Pragya: Do you feel more a part of this industry, after Shor?

Raj: I’m always on the peripheries of the industry. Only now I have met four directors. But I really don’t know anybody.

RKG: As he said, you learn a lot. I believe with every film you live a life, you know, when you’re making a film, from the time of its inception to the time of release, and the reception, I personally feel, I have lived a life with my film and you have your lessons from there. You get to know another’s point of view. Some things might be as you thought; some might not be as you thought. And those are the things that make you think; and then when you go back to look at it, maybe certain points of view you agree with, certain points of view you don’t agree with. But it makes you think; and because you handle so many people, be it actors, different kinds of actors… you deal with different kinds of people so you also learn lessons in life. How to, you know, deal with things and go ahead.

Imtiaz: All of the above. Additionally, I think, for Rockstar, it was more internal learning as such. For one thing I felt how much each person, like a technician or an actor… how much that matters for a movie. That I understood in this film. Also somehow I’m a little less ashamed of mental instabilities or typicalities, after this film.

Pragya: Eccentricities…

Imtiaz: Eccentricities… just… typicalities is more like it.

Pragya: Was it in anyway cathartic to make that film?

Imtiaz: I think it was.

Pragya: More than the others in some ways?

Imtiaz: Surely. For sure.

Bejoy: I think… my conviction in what I was doing. Like he (Raj) said, if the film had not found a connect with people, then I wouldn’t have been as convinced about what I’d wanted to say. So the conviction became much more stronger, in the ideas that I wanted to put forth, going ahead. And if the film had not been received as well, of course, there would have been a lot more introspection on what I want to say in the future.

Anubhav: Nothing left, besides one achievement, that does not come from every film, which is a big plus and a big minus as well. The size of the film, the kind of film. Not only the budget. The kind and the size; so that gives me the confidence of being able to handle any kind of film. But at the same time I realized while they were talking that I am having difficulty choosing my next. Ke, yeh bahut choti toh nahi hai (That, isn’t this too small)? It’s a bad consideration but you are used to it. Like I said in an interview, which is true, that on one day, I asked my production manager “How much are we spending today?” And he said, “How precisely do you want to know?” I said, “Quite precisely.” he came back and told me the number, which was the budget of my first film. And I did that at least four times in my film.

Imtiaz: And all four times it was?

Anubhav: Haan matlab teen-teen crore rupyon ka din tha. Aap kahen… ki aisa ek choti si kahaani soch rakhi hai, mujhe badi achchi lag rahi hai, getting very drawn— love story. Bahut samay se, love story hai, toh agar banaau? Choti hai yaar. Toh mai jhagda karta hoon apne aap se. Ke choti hai toh kya hua? Kahaani hai. Picture hai. Tujhe achchi lagti hai. Yeh bol na. So that is the negative. The positive is ke theek hai, le aao, paanch sau aadmi le aao, koi tension nahin. Le aao paanch sau. Hazaar hai? Le aao. Hazaar bhi they ek din set pe. Hazaar aadmi in a set man. Aur ek-do hazaar ke barabar Shah Rukh.

(Yes I mean it was about rupees three crores in a day. You tell me… Now I’ve thought of a small intimate story. I really like it and am getting very drawn. It’s a love story. It’s been in my mind for a while now, this love story. So what if I make it? It seems too small. So I keep fighting with myself. Keep telling myself: So what if it’s small? There’s a story. There’s the possibility of a movie. You like it. So tell the story. So that’s the negative side of things. The positive side is that: Bring it on. Bring on 500 people to the set. I’ll handle it. A thousand? Sure, bring it on. There were actually a thousand people on my set one day. A thousand people in a set man! And Shah Rukh, who’s the equivalent of a thousand to two thousand people himself.)

RKG: I’d like to ask Imtiaz a question. I mean, when you read reviews, when people react to things like, you know, in reference to Rockstar, people react saying that you know, Imtiaz, “Yaar achchi hai, lekin, you know, Jab We Met jaisi nahin hai, Love Aaj Kal jaisi nahin hai (Man, it’s nice but it isn’t like Jab We Met or like Love Aaj Kal— Imtiaz’s previous films),” the one thing that comes to my mind is—you know it happened with No One Killed Jessica also, that’s why I’m asking you this question—how do you react to that? Because as a filmmaker you’re never going to… you never went and thought that I’m going to make a film like Jab We Met. You were making a Rockstar.

Imtiaz: See I feel that… I tend not to be very harsh to people who say that. I feel they will obviously say that yaar. Now every movie that I make, or anyone of us makes, will be compared with every other movie. People might expect that. No One Killed Jessica and your next etc. etc… that that’s for them to figure out. And I’m sure that they’re going to say after every movie of mine that this is not like that. But I’m okay with it, with people criticizing in that way, that their expectations weren’t met. As long as I’m sure that I’m not falling, I’m not becoming a victim of that. I’m not getting into that trap— that after making Jab We Met I should have made Jab We Met again, and Jab We Met again, which would limit my career and really make it…

Anubhav: I don’t think you’ll be able to make Jab We Met again.

Imtiaz: Not at all. Or any other film yaar.

Pragya: I think it links up to how you take feedback and where you draw the lines of accepting feedback. See that I’m pretty sure that that might be the dominant voice. But I can say, just as a random example, that I would say that Jab We Met was not Rockstar.

Imtiaz: When Love Aaj Kal was released, a lot of people gave it like three and half stars or four stars etc. and many of them wrote that it’s nice but it is still not Jab We Met. Those same critics, because I’m the director of both movies (so I know), had given two and half stars or two stars to Jab We Met when it had released. The same critics.

Anubhav: Yeah he’s right. I have had the same experience.

Imtiaz: So you don’t take it very seriously, do you? As a result of which I don’t really read reviews any more. Honestly I have not really read reviews of Rockstar either. Not because I hate them and I think whatever shit, but because it’s irrelevant to me. The same blacker (person selling film tickets illegally, in black) standing outside Chandan Cinema has told me when Love Aaj Kal was showing, that yeh kya kiya second half mein? Jab We Met ka toh itna achcha tha (What have you done in the second half? Jab We Met’s second half was so good). Achcha Jab We Met ne paani maanga tha single screen mein (Jab We Met hadn’t really worked in single screen theatres, one of which was Chandan Cinema). And today after the release of Rockstar, when I went there, the same group of guys (blackers)— “Imtiaz bhai, kya kar diya aapne second half mein, Sadda Haq ke baad toh picture so gayi hai. Love Aaj Kal mein kitna acha kiya tha. Aapko waise karna tha.” So yeh sab chalta rehta tha. (“Imtiaz, brother, what have you done in the second half? After Sadda Haq—one of the film’s songs—the movie’s gone to sleep. You’d made the second half of Love Aaj Kal so well. You should have made it like that.” So all of this keeps going on.)

Pragya: Would you guys ever want to have a conversation like this with critics and genuinely ask them and what they think and how…

Anubhav: You know what? I’d just add one line to this. I think Raj Kumar, this is a good sign, when they say this film is not as good as your previous films. They were expecting more from you. So it’s respect. It is respectable.

Pragya: That was a random question. But would you ever want to have a conversation like this with critics?

RKG: No. I think everybody has their opinion on films and that should be respected.

Anubhav: There’s a very interesting saying: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.” Some are published, some are not. Maybe there will be some opinions which will be much worse than the reviews, unfortunately they are not written…

Pragya: It’s not about good or bad, but it’s about understanding a thought process about how… Like you said, do you ever get curious about what they think? I mean what are they thinking, how do they think?

RKG: There’s a love hate relationship… (between filmmakers and critics)

Bejoy: Same thing like you were saying about credibility. You are used to reading reviews of certain critics, you see what kind of films, how their ratings have been in the past. When they’re rating your film, you kind of judge them based on what they have been doing.

Raj and Bejoy: So you have your benchmarks.

Anubhav: I read one of the reviews of Ra.One that said, “The most expensive mid-life crisis ever.” Are you reviewing a film?

Pragya: Or are you taking personal potshots…

Bejoy: It’s like a personal thing.

Anubhav: So when you… then it’s about what Bejoy has said— it’s about credibility. That ‘this’ is a respectable review. There are some reviews that I think are very accurate about how the film will do at the box office. You may or may not…

Pragya: Which is not a review, which is…

Raj: A prediction.

Pragya: Yeah which is a prediction. That’s what it’s called.

Anubhav: We are still a developing industry, so let people have the time to learn the art of really ‘seeing’. And then there are reviewers that directors, filmmakers ask, “Kaisi lagi? Kya gadbad hai. Achcha, haan yaar, sahi keh raha hai (How did you like it? What’s wrong? Oh, right. He’s right).” Woh aane mein time lagega. Yeh filmmakers ko bhi yeh seekhne ko time laga, waise sab ko time lagega. (That will be a while coming. Just as filmmakers will take time to learn, so will every one).

Imtiaz: The one thing that I’d like to say about critics is the fact that… They’re entitled to their opinion. Nobody is debating that. You hated my film, loved my film, liked his film better than mine… all that is fine. But sometimes you can see an agenda. Sometimes you see that it’s all about: I’m trying to become an opinion leader, by criticizing and having a voice which needs to be quieten-ed… so then I can have you on my show etc. etc. That’s the beginning of what seems to me a big kind of agenda. That is not on, no? That’s not on.

Pragya: Provocation?

Anubhav: The reviews are a very creative… it should be a very creative…

RKG: Reviewing a filmmaker rather than a film, reviewing a filmmaker, getting personal…

Pragya: I don’t know, I think it’s a…

Imtiaz: Reviews just tell you a story…

Pragya: Yeah.

Anubhav: And now toh reviews are more about ROI. ‘Return On Investment’, this new…

Imtiaz: Everybody is a trade guru, rather than a film critic.

Anubhav: The ROI, the ROI of this film is not good. Return on investment.

Bejoy: There’s this one reviewer I know, in the first three paragraphs, he gives the entire story out. Everything is given out.

Imtiaz: That’s exactly what they do. Most people do that, no?

Bejoy: And that’s… you should never… you can’t do that to a film. Then what are you leaving your viewer with? What? You say: “Okay this is what the film is about.” That’s okay. Here he is giving the details of every scene, the plot… everything is being given out. Now who would want to watch the film?

Anubhav: And it comes out on Thursday.

Bejoy: Thank god you stopped writing!

Raj: I’m just glad people don’t read reviews much, they just see the stars. I’m telling you, nobody’s reading it.

Bejoy: Haan they say na. “Aapke films ko chaar star milein hai, teen star milein (Your film’s gotten four stars, gotten three stars).”

Raj: A lot of times it doesn’t even match.

Anubhav: I don’t think many international reviews give stars.

Imtiaz: Exactly. You know why? Because in many magazines the stars are not up to the reviewer, it’s a very big financial decision for the company.

Raj: Yeah, no, I agree. The headline and the stars, I think.

Imtiaz: A lot of reviewers have told me that I loved your film but… whatever. Stars do hi hai but andar bahut achcha likha hai (there are just two stars but inside I’ve written very well of the film). Yeah, or the reverse.

RKG: Also, are the critics morally supposed to say that: don’t go and watch this film?

Imtiaz: No, no. Never.

RKG: That it is a waste of money? I think only in India, I’ve seen something like this happening… so offensive to any film, to any filmmaker, I mean whether he’s making a B, C grade film…

Raj: Yeah it’s very personal, that’s the problem…

Pragya: Yeah that’s what he said. Also that they’re trying to create a brand, using, feeding off against films…

Anubhav: Yeah. There’s a whole race to say: ‘See, I said this.’ Abhi toh picture release toh chod do, reviews chod do, release ke pehle, shaayad bees din pehle, trailers pe woh shuru ho jaata hai; Ke yeh itne ka opening weekend legi. (Nowadays… the movie’s release and reviews aside, it all begins before the release of the film, at times 20 days before the release, the speculation over how much it’ll earn in the opening weekend.) It’s so disturbing, and people should respect the process of making films. Sometimes a director can end up making a bad film but the fact remains that a team passionately works towards something for a long time, that whole sanctity and respect is somewhere…

Pragya: And social networking has made that much worse, because Twitter and Facebook now have these…

Imtiaz: I don’t know about that. I don’t know…

Pragya: Are you on Twitter?

Imtiaz: I’m not on Twitter, I’m not active on Facebook much. But I feel that instead of one person accumulating all the power of opinion, leading it, there are many people now. So if you can write a review, I can write a review as well. It’s like… if there are more opinions then at least there is some sort of division of scale, and that there are so many opinions that you have also seen the other point of view etc.

Pragya: That is an ideal situation Imtiaz, but the way it’s actually playing out on Twitter is that there seems to be a competition on who can get nastier. And that is how you attract followers and build a brand.

Imtiaz: That’s true. But that’s exactly what critics do anyways. Before the advent of Twitter, that was going on anyways, or it can potentially go on…

Anubhav: No Imtiaz is right. It’s just that number has increased on different platforms, but the act is the same…

Raj: Unfortunately the Twitter guys, all the anonymous blogs and everything, have such a small voice compared to the main critics. One, two days ago, four days ago, you get your three stars, four stars, you are just overpowering everybody with that. So the critics, no matter what, who is saying what on Twitter, it’s just a few critics that have the power to really start off the buzz, no matter what. So yes, it becomes extremely shitty.

Anubhav: I think only in Bombay, Raj. I’ve done this research.

Raj: No, I agree

Anubhav: Bodyguard had such terrible reviews across the platforms (and it was a huge hit).

Raj: Some stars are beyond critics. Some movies are beyond critics.

Anubhav: The mid-sized films suffer the most.

Raj: Some are just… it doesn’t matter. That’s why… I saw a poster of Ready, a re-done poster of Ready, somebody put up these posters saying how the movie should be. So they changed the posters. It’s Ready and Salman (Khan) showing a middle finger to critics.

Pragya: I don’t know if that is valid. At the end of the day criticism is not supposed to reflect box office numbers. I think it’s about, it’s ideally supposed to be about, the art of filmmaking. It’s ideally supposed to represent a niche art point of view.

Anubhav: When did we reach Europe? We were in Juhu.

Raj: I know. It’s beyond control. I think it’s too idealistic…

Anubhav: I had come to Juhu (where everyone is)… now we’re discussing Europe…

RKG: That’s also a point of view. They can say Dabanng is a tribute to a seventies film. And another film set in the seventies can be called a rehash of a seventies film. So you have completely different points of views just because of some factor…

Pragya: Yeah, which is true. Somebody said that about (The) Dirty Picture. That it’s not an ode to any eighties film, it is an eighties film.

Raj: I think the solution is that more voices…

Imtiaz: More voices is not a bad idea…

Raj: Or something that just summarizes all the opinions, at the end of it. You get an idea. Rotten Tomatoes— that’s why I love it because at the end of it you’ve got 150 to 200 reviewers reviewing everything, and you get an idea.

Anubhav: We are still playing at Shivaji Park, so these things matter. The day you start playing at Perth or Lords you won’t hear these voices. They won’t matter.

Imtiaz: That’s true.

Anubhav: So the bigger responsibility on people like these is to create films… what is the 3 Idiots number? 40 million dollars, right? What is 40 million dollars? Peanuts. So, some day, one Indian film which holds steam, that’s what it tries to do. They (the audiences, especially the international audiences) are looking at us. They want to see our films, and you start… Then that one day, you will be on the world platform and then nothing of this will matter. Then you will have to follow the existing (global) culture, which is quite dignified.

Pragya: So the evolution of our cinema will also lead to the evolution of the dependent industries, which includes critics.

Anubhav: These guys, the directors, the directors have to win the fight. And then this will happen.

Pragya: I’m pretty certain that that’s the best way we could end this— directors have to win the fight.

On Needlepoint: Diane von Furstenberg

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

Introducing On Needlepoint– 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.

When 65 year old Diane von Furstenberg kicks back on a bed and asks: “So what is it you want me to do?”– you fumble.

The iconic fashion designer has aged gracefully through her many lives. At 25 Von Furstenberg, a Belgian by birth, launched her signature line from New York by modelling for it in a cotton jersey shirt dress. The tagline read: “Feel like a woman, wear a dress!” Almost four decades later, she wears the lines on her face with the same élan. “I love my wrinkles,” she had said in an interview last year. “I have always wanted them.”

In Mumbai for a luxury conference, DVF has met us on the 22nd floor of Bandra’s Taj Land’s End. We tell her we are a new magazine, only beginning to gather content. She glances cursorily at a view of the sea, then raises two enquiring eyebrows and smiles: “I’m the first person you’re doing this kind of an interview with? Then it will be a success.” She nods. “Every venture that has begun with me has gone on to be a success.”

Her life has been nothing if not cinematic. She entered fashion’s hall of fame in 1974, when she introduced the wrap dress that became a symbol of women’s liberation and was worn by millions. In a decade her very profitable business went bust. In 1997 she made a comeback by reintroducing the wrap to an entirely different generation of women, again to resounding success. In between the years and the wrinkles lie intimate details that would leave even a very imaginative screenplay writer gasping for breath: a marriage and lengthy divorce with Prince Egon of Furstenberg (a former principality, now in Germany); the decision to retain his family name that had become her brand; 29 diamonds, on her 29th birthday, gifted in a band-aid box by media mogul Barry Diller whom she is now married to; countless crazy nights at New York’s Studio 54; displacing American President Henry Ford on the cover of Newsweek which called her “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel”; a scorching affair in Bali with a Brazilian the press knew only by his first name: Paulo; life as a Paris intellectual with Italian Novelist Alan Elkann; a stint as publisher because she felt she was a “frustrated writer”, and as contributing editor for Vanity Fair…

“I’m glad I didn’t talk about myself,” said DVF at the end of this interview. Perhaps it’s just as well. The only thing that can do justice to the life of this woman who said at forty, “It’s time to become a myth”, is a biopic. While we wait for that, here is a Q and A about her brush with the movies.

Which movies have influenced you the most and why?

Oh, which movie influenced me the most, okay, All About Eve…and… (A) Clockwork Orange. There are so many movies, Stromboli, for example, all of (Roberto) Rossellini’s movies in fact. But those two are special.

What is it about All About Eve and A Clockwork Orange?

Okay, All About Eve is because everybody has had that situation of somebody wanting to be you. I also love it for Bette Davis. I can see it over and over and over again. And (A) Clockwork Orange because I think it was the first movie with this modern situation. It is really unusual. It’s violent, but then he (the protagonist) likes Beethoven…

Right, the contrast.

The contrast. I love that.

At a lunch that you threw for The Artist this January, you said Harvey Weinstein only asks you for help with holocaust movies or French movies. What did you mean by that?

Well, because I am French, I mean I am Belgian but I am a French-speaking person in New York and because my mother is a holocaust survivor. So whenever he makes a movie on the holocaust or in French, he calls me. Both the movies he called me for—(A) Beautiful Life and The Artist—won Oscars though.

In what way did you help him?

Nothing much, I just invite people and host a screening. Help him a little bit.

What are the most sweeping ways in which you feel design has influenced cinema?

Well I think that if we start from the beginning, the really big cinema came after the war when all these emigrants from Germany and from Europe came to Hollywood, and brought in incredible talent as screenwriters, directors, costume designers, technicians. I mean there were all these real intellectuals and some very talented people who created an enormous bang– made a big impact on the movies. There’s nothing more dramatic and more extraordinary than those movies at the time. If you think about design in the movies, in costume especially, you think about (Luchino) Visconti and Death In Venice or Barry Lyndon. Those movies are so incredible visually, and their influence remains very important.

And what are the most sweeping ways in which you feel cinema has influenced design and fashion?

When you work on a collection, very very often you will go back to a movie for a reference. But it is a two-way process. I mean, I can be inspired by an (Pedro) Almodovar movie, and then Almodovar for his last movie – The Skin I Live In, for the scene in which one of the central characters who becomes a woman from a man, Almodovar went looking for a DVF dress because for him that is the symbol for becoming a woman.

When was the first time you saw a dress of yours in the movies?

The first time I saw the wrap dress I think in the movies, was in Taxi Driver. Cybill Shepherd was wearing it.

Who are the costume designers whose work you really admire?

Oh, I know I’m going to be bad with names, but the movies of the (19)30s…Marlene Dietrich, the Visconti movies, the Piero Tosi movies…

Of late has there been any work in costume design that you found really exciting?

I think Bollywood movies are very inspiring, we don’t get to see them much because we have nowhere to see them, but whenever you see little snatches of them they seem so inspiring because they’re full of joie de vivre and colours and they’re fun.

Is there any Indian film maker whose work you’ve liked?

Well, of course everybody loves Satyajit Ray and Pather Panchali. But overall, Indians love stories and they know how to tell stories. India is about contrasts and about everything coming together. That comes through in the movies and that is what I love.

What are the pros and cons of a designer being worn on the red carpet?

Red carpet is so annoying, people make such a big thing about it but it is nothing in life. I know it is a thing to get your clothes on the red carpet, but for me it’s much more important to have actors and women of all types wear my clothes for life. People who choose them because they simply like them and because they bring them good luck too. They wear them when they meet the man of their life or when they go for their job interview. When they have memories linked with them.

Who are the actresses from now and the yesteryears who you would really like to dress up?

I think I’ve dressed just about everybody. I mean, I think everybody at some point has worn my clothes but again what I find interesting is when they wear them in the course of daily life. I thank someone like Madonna who is known to dress up in costumes when she is performing, but when she wants to be just herself, go for a book event or meet a head of state, she wears a DVF. Or Ingrid Betancourt, who was in the jungle for seven years and the first dress she bought when she was back was a DVF. Or Mrs. (Michelle) Obama, for her first Christmas card. That means something to me.

Your daughter, Tatiana, is a filmmaker. Your husband Barry, he headed Paramount studios, and then Fox and Universal. Have they influenced the way you see cinema in any way?

No. I love movies because I love a good story. I love the visuals of cinema. The only thing that has influenced me are the movies I see.

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

I think the first movie I ever saw was Ivanhoe and then another movie I remember was Around The World In 80 Days. This was in Belgium when I was a little girl.

Eye of the Beholder: Teju Cole

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

As part of this series we bring to you conversations on cinema with artists, photographers, writers, performers and journalists. The movies that have made an impact on their lives and their work. We trace the life of a movie outside of itself– on a canvas, in a novel or a sculpture. We look at a familiar film through unfamiliar eyes; eyes that reinterpret the images on the screen and give them a new form. We go into places where the lines between mediums dissolve. Where inspiration is not distinguishable from creation. Where movies are not distinct from memories.

Teju Cole, 37, is a writer, art historian, street photographer and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He is the author of a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently at work on a book-length non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and on a Twitter project called Small Fates. In this interview, at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2012, he talks about the influence of cinema on his writing, his characters and his own life.

Outtakes

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

“If there is one thing that the Indian film industry will never be able to match it is the energy of Dev Anand. When I reached the sets at Gateway of India it was 11 am. Dev sahab was already on the sets and in the midst of a shot. He was directing and acting in Mr. Prime Minister. Till 7 pm he continued working tirelessly amidst crowds of uncontrollable onlookers. It also happened to be his 81st birthday and his friends had thrown a party for him after the shoot. By 11:20 pm I was exhausted and decided to call it a day. As I was leaving the party Dev sahab was still exuberant even at that hour. He was living up every moment of his birthday. It was hard for me to believe he was almost twice my age.”

– Fawzan Husain

The TBIP Take

Posted on October 8, 2012 by admin

The Cheek of Sridevi, and Bringing Up Other Bodies

What happened to Manju of Chaalbaaz after the credits rolled and she married the stubbly suitable boy Suraj, aka Sunny Deol? Sure he loved her, certainly he was happy he married her rather than the terrified little Anju. But in a decade after they had two children did he regret not marrying someone who lubricated his social life a little more, someone whose best friend had not been a drunken taxi driver called Jaggu? What would have happened if Suraj had married the stuttering Anju, a woman replete with housewifely graces? Would he try to look away if she broke into her occasional tandav? Would it embarrass her children? Worse, would Anju suddenly claim she can’t dance at all, that she doesn’t do that sort of thing? In some ways Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish is the dystopic sequel about the distorted afterlives of Anju, Manju and all the other girls we so admired in school.

What happens if you still one of the most expressive faces of Hindi cinema into gentility, school it into quietness, oh-let’s-just-say-it, kill it with plastic surgery? If you hadn’t already seen Sridevi this year in a terrifyingly blank-faced guest appearance in one of the early episodes of Satyamev Jayate, chances are that the first few minutes of English Vinglish would have startled you. Where in this Pune household is she hiding the feathered headgear, the chamki, the Chaplin hats, the wet blue sari, the transparent umbrella, the fake moustache, the hawa-hawai? Who foisted her with these silly children? And in an Oedipal moment, you want to slay Adil Hussain, or just chop his hand off when he reaches towards her so familiarly, so presumingly, in the conjugal bed (followed by the somewhat reassuringly retro fadeout).

It gets worse before it gets better. Because you catch her eyes. The eyes you loved, they still telegraph ‘Sridevi, Sridevi, Sridevi’ from behind the stiff kabuki mask. You don’t know these still cheeks. You don’t know this nose. Frankly, you don’t know this Scarlett O’Hara waist in the Sabyasachi saris. But there are her eyes morse-coding whole novels, like the left eye of Jean Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

***

The bodies of our favourite stars are as familiar to us as our lovers. We react as we do to the changes in their bodies with confusion, with proprietariness, with resistance. We exclaim, we coo, we complain. How could he? How could she? When did this… ? Why on earth that?

Contemplate the new pillowiness of Priyanka Chopra’s lips in Barfi as they unfurled, a simple red banner of cinematic autism. What will we do with these lips, you and I and Priyanka Chopra in the years ahead? Will they be a prop we wished she would be rid of? Or will we, like Henry Higgins, grow accustomed to her face. Will we miss those lips if they go?

More worryingly, what will happen as Indian moviegoers grow accustomed to being accustomed? Will we demand more crossly and anxiously that our heroes and heroines seal themselves in amber? Already we play the party game of ‘he had work done/she had work done’ as if it were an application to the Delhi Development Authority to build another room on our roof. Our party game is why Sridevi’s cheeks won’t move. And in another decade, the violence of our nostalgia, our fondness for taxidermy could well freeze the current melting-wax-malleability of Ranbir Kapoor’s face.

There were three other women with me in the lift of the South Delhi multiplex as we all sped to the Saturday 10 am show of English Vinglish – they were earnestly trading notes on the lies they had told their households to get away. The same night, when the bandh lifted in Bangalore and the single-screen theatre Rex had its first show of the day, English Vinglish went house-full. From balcony to Gandhi-class, every seat was taken, every row full of women and men having visceral reactions to the immersion experience of Sridevi. And sometimes, very rarely, our heroes insist on surprising us: despite our craven cowardice, despite themselves.

Like a feathered hat, like a sequined headdress, Sridevi was making her stillness work to tell us that we have no idea what’s happening behind the blank faces of the sweet, trembling-voiced Shashis we think we know. Kisi ke haath na aayegi ye ladki.

***

Later, I had more tempered reactions to Rani Mukherji in the Aiyyaa trailer saying, “Mujhe gore log nahi kaale log pasand hain.” But I must admit my first instinct was: vomit.

It’s one thing for SRK to ‘Enna Rascala’ or eat noodles with curd. What of my father goes? It’s quite another thing for the same idiocy to be inflicted upon Prithviraj Sukumaran, flower of Malayali youth, oiled, pecced and buffed like Razia Sultana’s Abyssinian slave (by which we mean Dharmendra, of course). The fetishising of the skin colour of Prithviraj is an easy subject of a rant (more on that later). At this point, though, the greater source of annoyance is Bollywood’s boring borrowing, the rusty razor blade of its cultural referencing. Kitschy cuteness won’t quite cut it. Not when YouTube now offers such backlists of self-confidence, ranging from the horse-riding Psy’s Gangnam Style to the golf-playing Rajnikanth and Satyaraj in Ennama Kannu from the 1986 Tamil hit Mr. Bharat.

Yes, the plunder of vintage south Indian songs was inevitable after Bollywood made its recent ghastly foray in The Dirty Picture and Om Shanti Om. Let’s not even go there. But those lyrics from Aiyyaa? ‘Dreamum wake upum critical conditionum‘? This two months after we had the sensational melange of O Womaniya (Bhojpuri-English), a full eight months after the masterful Pyarge Aagbittaite (Kannada-Urdu), or even, say, five years after the thrilling first phrase of Saroja Samaan Nikalo (Tamil-Hindi)? Vandi nirthango, Rani! To return to the dusk of Prithviraj, the pecs of Prithviraj. On the slim chance that some day Bollywood will no longer think a Shaitan is a south Bombay kid buying cough syrup and running over people with his car, it might want to turn its hungry attentions away from Prithviraj’s skin to Fahad Fazil’s penis. Or the lack thereof.

Young Malayali director Aashiq Abu’s bizarre 22 Female Kottayam was released in April, but the debates about its denouement are still alive and furious online. Here is a movie almost entirely about bodies, almost entirely about refusing to let you get accustomed (spoilers ahead). Its heroine Tessa (Rima Kallingal) is a nurse, virtuous and sweet. Most virtuous when she tells her new lover Cyril (Fahad Fazil) that she is not a virgin, and that in high school she had an affair with a married man. Tessa is raped twice by Cyril’s boss. These rapes are not fleeting plot devices. Each time she is left with bruises, fractures, needing medical attention.

Twice-raped and even more gruesomely betrayed, Tessa hatches a plan for revenge. Meanwhile, there are other bodies. The swollen pregnancy of the murderer she befriends in jail. Her roommate’s lover’s once-distasteful middle-aged body who she now sleeps with affectionately. There is even a brief tribute to cinema-makeovers when Tessa pretends to herself that a change of hairstyle will disguise her from Cyril.

The strangeness of the movie blooms into full-throttle-crazy in its last quarter. Cyril wakes up in his own bed, tied and hooked up to various tubes and catheters. Tessa has drugged and castrated him. When his rage subsides, he sardonically tells Tessa that she’ll find out eventually that a man is not just his penis– that he is still a man. Tessa replies that she’s catching a flight to Canada and is only waiting for him to heal.

And then we come to the final exchange that is still driving amateur and professional moviegoers crazy, that has already generated half a dozen academic papers.

Tessa tells Cyril that he can follow her to Canada if he wants to. As she picks up her bags and leaves, looking glamorous and oh-so-competent, Cyril says to her “You are a real woman.” Then he continues smilingly, “I will come to see you when I can. To meet you. If I miss you.” Tessa grins and leaves. Is this a return to tenderness? Is it an acknowledgement of a game well-played? Is it just the signal of a sequel? Arguing about what the hell really happened in 22FK is still entertaining viewers months later.

22FK is often tacky, sometimes embarrassingly. But its downs seem like ups when the alternative is participating in Bollywood’s waking dreamum of world conquest. This film with its mainstream stars watched by the general moviegoer presents the body as part of its plot, not as an accessory. A pretty girl and a hunky guy, a raw rape, unattractive people having sex. If the bodies were airbrushed 22FK wouldn’t be so unsettling. It would just be another Botox Bhari Maang.