Aparna Sen on her friend Rituparno Ghosh’s quest, journey and cinema

I first met him in the late 1980s when he was 20 something and a copywriter at Ram Ray’s advertising agency Response. Ram, an old friend, called me up one day. “I’m sending a young chap across. Writes rather well. Can you find some time to listen to a film script he’s written?”

So that was how Rituparno Ghosh came over to our Alipur apartment one morning in 1986, a slightly plump, curly haired young man in jeans and T-shirt, with huge glasses on, bright eyes shining behind thick lenses, a far cry from the style icon that he had developed into later.

Ritu ended up becoming not only a close friend, but also someone akin to a brother.

The script he read out was about Radha and Krishna. A bit over-lyricized I felt, but extremely detailed and very well written. I knew straightaway that the young person sitting across the room from me was a major talent, knew without a doubt that he would go far. What I did not know was that he was already a star of sorts in Ram Ray’s copywriting team, and had created lines like “Boroline Chirodin” for Boroline and “Tawker Aapon Jon” for Margo soap. I asked him if he would like to collaborate with me on my scripts and he agreed readily.

We never did collaborate after all. Every time he came, we would end up chatting. For hours on end. About everything under the sun. Films, poetry, Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Bergman, Kurosawa, the Tollygunge film industry, Uttam Kumar, Soumitra Chatterjee, my experiences as an actress… We enjoyed these sessions hugely! So much so, that soon he began to accompany me to shoots, to poetry recitals where I sometimes performed, to rehearsals of stage plays that I was then acting in, and even when I went shopping. Or we’d simply hang out at home, swapping story ideas for future films. Sometimes he would help Konkona, then a little girl, with her Bengali grammar or he’d sit with me through a script narration. Afterwards, we’d discuss the merits and demerits of the script we’d just heard. He always had something very insightful to say, and I benefited greatly from his sharp intelligence, often turning down or accepting a film offer on the strength of his comments. And, of course, we read our own scripts out to each other, although he was far more prolific than I was. I had heard many of his scripts long before they were made into films— Hirer Angti, Unishey April, Dahan, Ashukh, Khela (then titled Nalok), Titli, Chokher Bali…

Ritu had said to me once that if he had a piece of blank paper in front of him, he felt an insatiable urge to fill it up with words. In later years, he had once gone to a film festival where the hospitality was terrible. He found himself in a hotel room without food and with no money to buy a meal. There were packets of coffee, however, and an electric kettle. He made himself endless cups of coffee and, in order to distract himself from thoughts of food, drew out the notepaper supplied in the room and started writing. That was how the script of Ashukh got written. I felt that his facility with words was both a blessing and a curse, and told him as much. Interesting and well-written dialogue came so easily to him that he tended to make his films verbose unless checked. He would often fall in love with the dialogue he had written and continue a conversation between two people endlessly and effortlessly. I often played the role of conscience with him and he insisted that I do. This was one of Ritu’s qualities that I never tired of admiring. He could take criticism with an open mind and never held a grudge. If he didn’t agree with you, he would tell you so to your face. I believe this happens only with people who are perfectionists and who have a strong self-image. It is only when artists are unsure of their ability that they become defensive and vulnerable to criticism. In any case, our friendship was too important to both of us to risk jeopardizing with intellectual dishonesty. If I lied to him to spare his feelings, he would know instantly, just as I would with him. This was part of our comfort zone with each other. We knew that we could always be sure of brutal frankness. I think our respect for each other would have been diminished had it been otherwise. So I told him about something Satyajit Ray would do as an intellectual exercise— use dialogue in a scene only if it were impossible to communicate an idea through visual means. After that, both Ritu and I would keep trying to do this in our own scripts, even though we didn’t always succeed.

Ritu also had an insatiable curiosity about everything. In my case, he was curious about the saris I wore, my hairstyles, my make-up, my interior decoration, my relationship with my daughters, everything. I realize now that he was then a director in the making, soaking up every experience around him like a sponge. I happened to tell him about my guilt because I couldn’t give my daughters enough time, and that my elder daughter had once said, “I kept waiting for you to find time, till one day I discovered that I had grown up!” I realized how intently Ritu had been listening to all my confidences the day I first heard the script of Unishey April. He had put those exact words in Debashree’s mouth: “Tomar jonye wait korte korte I grew up Ma.” People go to film school to learn film direction. I don’t think film direction can be taught. You can learn about framing, lenses, lighting, photography, editing, and so on— but in order to be a director, you have to take your lessons from life itself. Ritu was doing just that.

Hirer Angti, Ritu’s first film, was produced by the Children’s Film Society. Shabana Azmi was then heading it, so Ritu asked me to write a letter of introduction for him to Shabana. He came back to Kolkata not only with the contract for the film tucked firmly under his belt, but he had also laid the groundwork for a lifelong friendship with the Bachchan family during his trip to Mumbai. That was another one of his many wonderful qualities— his personal charm. He could bond effortlessly with almost anyone and this stood him in very good stead in his career as a filmmaker. His relationships with people may not always have been entirely free of trouble, but his charm was not facile; Ritu was genuinely interested in people—how they lived, how their minds worked—and his sensitivity, combined with his considerable intelligence, allowed him to get to the core of almost anything, be it a human being or an idea.

In later years he had earned the reputation of directing his actors minutely, sometimes even asking some of them to imitate him. But I never saw that side of him. Although he was a very good actor himself, in Unishey April he left me largely to my own devices. Of course, I knew the screenplay inside out. In many senses it had become mine as much as his after our endless, detailed discussions about it. Interestingly, Ritu asked me to decorate Sarojini’s (my character in the film) bedroom set. I now realize that it was a director’s device to get his actor to identify with the character— an acting workshop of sorts. Unishey April forged a strong bond between Ritu and me. We took the script to one producer after another, with me promising to act free of cost if only they would fund the project. It never ceases to amaze me that all of them, without exception, turned us down. How did they not realize its worth, being in the film business? At that time a friend called Renu Roy had suddenly got hold of some money. She suggested that she and I form a film production company and that I make its first film. But by then, I was determined to get Ritu’s film off the ground, come what may. Finally Renu, Ritu and I jointly formed Spandan Films and used the money to produce Unishey April. Most of the actors acted free of charge and everyone helped, as they often will in the case of a first film. The film won the Golden Lotus at the National Awards, and the rest is history.

I saw Ritu through many stages of his, sadly, short life. He was initially a slightly effeminate boy, but no more than that, at least not on the face of it. He still hid the fact that he was gay, although it obviously pained him to hide it from those he loved. I remember badgering him to get married and even threatened to look for a suitable girl if he couldn’t manage to find one himself. He brushed my suggestions aside lightly enough, but I was puzzled at the sadness on his face. A few days later he gave me a book of poetry to read, gifted to him by a male friend. “You do poetry recitals,” he said, “ …you might find something interesting here.” After he had left, I started turning the pages. On the flyleaf were inscribed the words “to you, from me”. Understanding dawned. I never badgered him again. But that incident broke whatever barriers of inhibition had existed between us. I became his confidante, and he mine. He began to tell me about his relationships, about the pain of the sexually marginalized, about his loneliness, about his desire to be accepted for who he was.

Gradually, as he became more and more successful as a filmmaker, he started becoming increasingly open about his sexuality. He discarded his jeans and t-shirt in favour of long flowing kurtas and handpicked scarves. He lost weight and shaved his head, looking beautifully and elegantly ascetic— a Buddhist monk in designer clothes. But he was shaping his mind too, not just his exterior. He had always been an avid reader and an early riser. Now he disciplined himself into spending those early morning hours reading and writing. He delved deep into Rabindranath Tagore who had always been an inspiration for him, developing a greater understanding of the androgynous quality of Tagore’s writing. He also loved the Mahabharata from which he had chosen his name—Rituparno—rejecting the name Shouroneel that his parents had originally given him. The androgynous characteristics of Shikhandi, Brihannala and, to some extent, Chitrangada in the Mahabharata fascinated him. His last fiction film Chitrangada was inspired both by Tagore’s play of the same name, and by the episode of Arjun and Manipur’s warrior princess Chitrangada in the epic he so loved. In a masterstroke, he envisioned Kamdeva, or Madan, of Tagore’s play as a plastic surgeon who transforms a male Chitrangada into a feminine and desirable woman, and then he went on to use that section of the play as a metaphor for a transsexual choreographer’s desire to become a woman through a sex re-assignment surgery. He also started acting in these roles himself, thus effectively blurring the line between fiction and real life. Without sending out a message, within quotes, as a lesser filmmaker might have done, Ritu managed to bring the hitherto marginalized into the domain of the mainstream, to an extent.

Ritu cannot be seen simply as a filmmaker. Indeed, I am not a hardcore fan of all his films, some of which I find more decorative than deep. He must be seen in totality— as a conglomerate of his films, his writing, his considerable scholarship, his eccentric lifestyle and his sexuality. It is as if he were creating himself from scratch in his own laboratory— right from the point of choosing his name to becoming a formidable filmmaker who flaunted his trans-sexuality with fearless aplomb.

Ritu’s presence was magnetic. His absence is no less powerful. It will take a long time to get used to it.

Turkish basilicas, English estates, Russian republics, the Al-Qaeda and the Buckingham Palace. Chako tells you how Bollywood usurped everything.

Early 2000, Bollywood was on the cusp of a revolution. Not so much in terms of storytelling, but in terms of location. It all started when Shah Rukh Khan landed in a helicopter at the gorgeous Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire in what is now a Karan Johar classic. As a sensible member of the audience giving in to the usual suspension of disbelief (more than usual— this is Bollywood), we thought: ‘Okay. He’s getting off a helicopter and visiting an English castle. This looks lovely, nicer than anything used before in our movies. ‘

Till he said, “This is my childhood home.” That’s when some of us went, “Huh?” Anyone who said, “Okay, that makes sense,” we stopped talking to. Waddesdon Manor, once home to the Rothchilds, became a dividing line for our cinema.

Rudimentary research tells us that: “Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. The house was built in the neo-renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898).  The Baron wanted a house in the style of the great renaissance châteaux of the Loire Valley. Once his château was complete, Baron Ferdinand installed his extensive collections of French 18th-century tapestries, boiseries, furniture and ceramics, English and Dutch paintings and Renaissance works of art.”

But not in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, the mega Bollywood epic where it served as Amitabh Bachchan’s character’s home, referred to as the family home, which his son, played by Shah Rukh Khan, walked out of in a huff to establish estrangement and subsequently reconciliation (apologies to the four people who haven’t seen it). As for the few students of English stately history who are also Karan Johar fans (a niche demographic), they might have been thrown by the fact that Amitabh Bachchan makes a reference to having bought it after being successful in business (clearly so successful that they gave him an Austrian Barony and an English estate), not to mention the family dining room he enveloped in late renaissance art (maybe this Indian family, instead of putting the usual deceased dadas and nanis on the wall, were fans of Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, French pastries, Jacques-Louis David— that ilk).

It didn’t end there. Blenheim Palace, a 15th century castle of the Duke of Malborough and, subsequently, the Churchill family estate for 300 years, served as the site where Kareena Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan went to college. A college where one could drive in, in red Ferraris, and do choreographed dances with semi-dressed Uzbek women. Naturally, the existence of real colleges in that country (um, Oxford? Cambridge perhaps?) did not get in the way of this fictitious one, which looked like a far more fun place to study (and dance). In fact, if this college from Mr. Johar’s imagination had existed, perhaps the Churchill family would have ditched their Oxford ambitions and converted their family home into this place.

Another “Huh?” from Indian audiences would have made sense, except what was happening was impossible to undo.

The revolution had begun. Through the nineties, Bollywood had slowly begun abandoning gritty Bombay slum locales for Switzerland. Lamhe-esque love stories popped up across rolling Swiss hills. The gritty Bombay slum would make a comeback, thanks to art house auteurs (Anurag Kashyap, Danny Boyle) showing our movies to the world, but that would be years later. For Bollywood, pretty women bouncing around the Alps in nightclub attire projecting sexy, while freezing and begging for the director to say cut, was the decade. Then the early 21st century began. Karan Johar appeared as a behemoth force. He began by making his characters live in this massive castle, and the game changed. Suddenly, as the decade went on, the Swiss became passé. Our songs were shot everywhere. New York, London and Sydney became the backyards of every romantic comedy. Most Bollywood heroes and heroines had cool professions in these cities— fashion magazine editor in New York (Preity Zinta in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna), chef in Sydney (Saif Ali Khan in Salaam Namaste), rich daddy’s boy in London (every other film).

The locations expanded— Istanbul (Mallika Sherawat dancing in Guru, shaming the Ottomans with her moves), Machu Picchu (the one and only Rajinikanth dancing on it in Endhiran or Robot, shaming the Incans with his moves), Ipanema Beach in Rio (Dhoom 2, Bipasha Basu shaming Brazil’s transsexuals with hers, no easy feat), the bars, and women, of the new Russian republics (nearly every movie has them as assorted extras, dancers, hookers, bartenders— also, Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, is a favourite), the streets of Bangkok (Sanjay Dutt has played a Thai policeman, which says less about him and more about the Thai police recruiting process).

Bollywood went to the world with such aggression that it felt like, at some point, the world would run out of locations to offer.

Lord Macaulay had once said, while making a point about why British India would wipe out Indian culture, that history was whatever was written by the victors. The way history seemed to be turning out, the victors had reversed— the Bollywood producer paying to rent Blenheim Palace by the day seemed to be re-writing history. The fictional use of a piece of British history would end up being watched by way more people than visitors to the actual Blenheim palace. In due time, with enough rentals, and audiences, the fact that the Duke Of Marlborough had anything to do with it will perhaps be forgotten for a universal assumption that Kareena Kapoor went to college there. It could perhaps someday be the site for a Karan Johar museum— may the Churchills rest in peace.

Naturally, with locations around the world comes a certain license to adapt it to your fiction. Hollywood does it all the time. Tom Cruise speaks an Arabic he’s invented as Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible 3). In the Bourne franchise, Matt Damon can get across Europe as a fugitive simply with a Volkswagen mini and good looks (which, in Matt Damon’s case, is perhaps possible). In Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, when the planet is getting snowed over and they’re showing different world cities deluged, there’s New York, London, and a place called ‘New Delhi Bombay’. In Independence Day, the Will Smith mega-hit, aliens seem to be able to fly from New York to Washington in about three seconds (airlines should learn something from this).

So far, nothing wrong you think. Creative license and geography go hand in hand. However, once Bollywood started taking over the world, we took it one step beyond Hollywood. We started making it our world, on our own terms. We were the new Macaulays. History will remember whatever geography we created.

Take this for example. Race 2 showed Istanbul (as usual). The villain’s character (played by John Abraham) lives in the Hagia Sophia (a basilica, practically a part of the Great Palace of Constantinople) and parks his Lamborghini outside it. It’s like the equivalent of a Bond villain living in Rashtrapati Bhavan and saying, “Yeh mera ghar hain”. As an aside, the plot involves stealing the Shroud of Turin, (yes Jesus Christ’s shroud) to sell “in the black market”. To figure this plot out, without the help of any drugs, is not recommended, so I’ll stop here, except to say that I’d love to see the black market for holy Christian relics. Who buys and sells? Priests? Nuns? Bandra people? Mel Gibson? Maybe that’s why the Pope resigned. He saw Race 2.

Moving on, the Buckingham Palace and Wembley Stadium are now used in films way more than any Indian stadium. In Housefull (spelt thus), a central, final, climax involves putting laughing gas in the air-conditioning vents at Buckingham palace so the royalty run around laughing/going crazy. The Queen is giggling. Long Live the Queen.

In a lovely situation of the story made to fit the environment, if a CIA agent is needed, they’re conveniently Indian and Hindi speaking. Same for a Pope, a Brazilian police inspector, a Spanish diving instructor, a New Jersey school teacher, pretty much any professional who shows up in any part of the world in any new-age Bollywood film. There’s usually an element of surprise registered by the lead actor (“Aap Indian hain?”) before casual acceptance. Genius.

In a John Abraham movie I saw, he was on a boat in Lake Geneva, clearly landlocked because you can see the other side, but that doesn’t bother him because he delivers this line of dialogue: “I am coming to India by sea. Be ready.”  Another intelligent use of the world was when the filmmakers Abbas Mastan bought the rights to the robbery film The Italian Job, whose story—as you may have guessed even if you know nothing about anything—climaxes, in, um, Italy. The brothers said, “We’ve bought the rights to (The) Italian Job. We are calling it Players. It is set in Russia.” So, without Italy, what story had they bought? Just ‘the job’? The Hollywood studio that got that cheque must have had a good laugh.

The greatest work of geopolitical appropriation so far, however, has been Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam (and I don’t mean the media furore). Kamal Haasan transforms from an effete New Jersey dance instructor to a macho RAW Agent (great cover) and is invited by dint of his knowledge and strength to work alongside the FBI, to stop a New York nuclear attack. Because one can just be invited like that, as if it’s a 13 year old’s dance party. The nuclear attack is stopped by placing a microwave on top of a nuclear bomb (I hope Einstein and Samsung are listening). Osama Bin Laden’s cave has a rather welcoming open-entrance which the Americans can see from their helicopters (take that Zero Dark Bigelow). In a brilliant move—that makes complete sense only if you live in a mental asylum—to create a decoy from the real terrorist attack (yes, the microwave), the bad guys unleash radioactive pigeons over New York City that have uranium droppings, so that the entire Manhattan security apparatus goes nuts chasing these pigeons. You would have better luck building your own iPhone with straw and sheet metal than you would figuring out the logic behind all of this.

However on top of this mélange of global brilliance, sits the character played by Rahul Bose, Omar, an Osama henchman blinded in one eye by counter-terror attacks which also left him with a crooked face that Omar portrays in a way that would be scary only on Monsters, Inc. Omar is able to fly in and out of the US in a private plane while getting a bird’s eye view of the micro-nuclear-wave (my term) attack he’s about to unleash. Clearly, his private plane is not running into the same immigration officers Shah Rukh Khan’s plane is.

Earlier, when asked by a French aid worker in Afghanistan whether he speaks English Omar responds with, “Yes I can, woman!” giving off the air of an Arab patriarch from a Tintin comic. Also, in a brilliant piece of advice, he tells another Al-Qaeda character, “How about some attacks on London and New York?” to which the response is: “Good idea.” For an organization whose entire reason for existence is attacking the centers of the western world, you would think they would have thought of this earlier. Or perhaps daily? No wonder they’re losing the War on Terror to the CIA.

When the nuclear New York attack fails to detonate from his cell phone (these damn microwaves!), Omar shows his phone to his assistant, complaining about signal. If you thought you had signal problems, clearly the Al-Qaeda are no better. And theirs is probably pre-paid.

I really wish the world was what Bollywood creates and not the way it is.

I read somewhere that space travel is being contemplated and Richard Branson might open up aircrafts to the public, to travel there. Now that Bollywood has had its fill of this planet, perhaps space is the next frontier. I cannot wait for the film where Amitabh Bachchan casually points at Uranus and says, “Yeh mera ghar hain,” or Kamal Haasan shows up on Saturn, runs into an alien, and asks: “Aap Indian hain?” To which the answer, naturally, is “Haan”.

Cover image courtesy NASA

Uday Bhatia traces the life and times of Neecha Nagar, the only Indian film to have won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Chetan Anand, the filmmaker behind this forgotten masterpiece

It’s easier to make a case for Chetan Anand as the Indian Orson Welles than it is for Neecha Nagar as our Citizen Kane. Like Welles, Anand came into filmmaking cold, but took to it like a natural. Both directors shared a predilection for darkly beautiful images, and an unwillingness to compromise, that earned them that lethal label— ‘difficult’. Yet, Welles’ debut is today considered one of the greatest movies ever made. Neecha Nagar (Lowly City), in spite of having been the only Indian film to have won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival—the Grand Prix in 1946—remains little more than a trivia question in the land of its origin. Outside of academic circles, it is rarely discussed. Few have seen it, or know that it’s available on DVD. I found no mention of it during the recent festival organized in Delhi by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema.

Which begs the question: If this film is a cinematic treasure, as everyone from Satyajit Ray to Shekhar Kapur has attested, why has it been allowed to hide in plain sight?

A “little toy” called cinema

According to Ketan Anand, Chetan’s son, it was Hyatullah Ansari, founder of the Urdu daily Qaumi Awaz, who first thought of adapting Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths. This turn of the century play looked probingly at a bunch of characters in a decrepit lodging house, and derived much of its claustrophobic power by never moving the action outside of it. Neecha Nagar deviates from the original in this respect; its action alternating between Ooncha Nagar and the impoverished village it looks down upon (‘neecha’, or lowly, in every possible sense). Whether Anand, a fan of European and Russian cinema, ever saw Jean Renoir’s 1936 adaptation—which also flits between high and low society—is a matter of speculation.

In his autobiography, Balraj Sahni recalls the first time Anand mentioned his plans to direct a film. “You know, I am not at all keen on acting,” Anand told him. “What I want to do is to make a realistic and purposeful film. I have decided to call it Neecha Nagar. I shall show in it the economic struggle waged by the different classes of our society and I am not going to make any compromise with the box-office. In fact, right now, I am working on its scenario.”

This was Bombay, 1943. Both Sahni and Anand were members of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), then at the zenith of its influence. Early Indian cinema owes this leftist cultural organization an incalculable amount; poet and lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, actor Prithviraj Kapoor, filmmaker Bimal Roy and film music composer Salil Chowdhury were all IPTA alumni. So was Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Neecha Nagar’s co-writer along with Ansari, a man with definite ideas about the revolutionary potential of cinema (in a letter to Mahatma Gandhi in 1939, he begged him to “give this little toy of ours, the cinema, which is not so useless as it looks, a little of your attention”). IPTA produced Neecha Nagar, as it did Abbas’ directorial debut Dharti Ke Lal.

Also, Anand wasn’t the only one debuting with Neecha Nagar. Kamini Kaushal, who plays the hero’s sister Rupa, had never appeared on screen before. Neither had Zohra Segal (seen here in a bit part) or the blandly handsome Rafiq Anwar, who plays Balraj, the college-educated leader of the villagers. Sitarist Ravi Shankar, who had recently joined IPTA, was drafted in by Anand even though he had never composed for a film before. And this would be the only film that Rafi Peer (superb as the villainous Sarkar) acted in, in Bombay; after Partition, he returned to Lahore and founded the prestigious Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop.

Inquilab Zindabad

In a fascinating interview given to the Centre of South Asian Studies in 1970, Abbas indicates a stream of insurrectionary moments in pre-1947 Indian cinema. He starts with Raja Harishchandra, the country’s first ever feature film, and proceeds to list a dozen odd titles which few today would have heard of, let alone seen; films like 1930’s Swaraj Toran (censored and released as Udaykal), 1931’s Bombs (released as Wrath) and 1936’s Jai Bharat. Neecha Nagar—which, oddly, Abbas fails to mention—falls squarely in this tradition.

Shooting for the film began in 1945, a year of great turmoil and nationalist fervour. Its plot is a simple enough allegory for British oppression (though it could apply equally well today as an illustration of official neglect). Sarkar, a smooth-talking industrialist, wants to construct a housing project on low-lying swampland. He conspires to drain the swamp and divert its waters, via an existing drain, to Neecha Nagar village. The villagers rise up against Sarkar, refusing his help even when disease and drought start taking their toll.

Seen today, the film is as blatant a jab at the British as was possible without it getting banned by the censors. It’s actually quite surprising that the makers got away with what they did: a brown sahib villain with a name like Sarkar; a hero who wears a Gandhi topi and advocates non-violent resistance; the boycott of Westernized goods (in this case a hospital) by the oppressed; and a goose bump inducing moment when dozens of torch-carrying protestors are shown to form a rough map of India. The British are never mentioned, but that’s hardly necessary.

Germano-Russian Extraction

Considering the number of cinematic traditions it draws on, Neecha Nagar would be ideal teaching material for a film class. First off, there’s the influence of German expressionist cinema. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Early Indian cinema had very strong links with Germany. Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani trained at the German studio UFA. Franz Osten, who made his first film in Germany in 1911, was responsible for some of the best Indian silents, including Light of Asia (1925) and A Throw of Dice (1929). And what would Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal (1949) have been without Josef Wirsching’s fever dream photography?

While no German seems to have been directly associated with Neecha Nagar, cinematographer Bidyapati Ghosh was trained in Germany. His work in the film shows the clear influence of expressionism, a cinematic style pioneered by German directors like Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. Expressionist films had odd, angular sets, bold angles and dramatic lighting— all of which are in evidence in Neecha Nagar. In addition, the idea of a half-crazed industrialist holding a disgruntled subterranean mob to ransom was at the heart of Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis, as was the trope of the industrialist’s child falling in love with someone from the lower depths. Another nod to German cinema is the ever-present painting in Sarkar’s haveli, which shows a vampire-like individual standing in front of a bizarrely twisted landscape. It looks uncannily like an artist’s impression of Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – a 1920 film credited with kicking off the expressionist movement.

For all its Germanic touches, one cannot ignore the influence of Soviet cinema on Neecha Nagar either.Take the example of the famous montage sequence that underlines the arrival of the drain water in the village. As Ravi Shankar’s sitar plucks out foreboding notes, the viewer is bombarded with a series of quick-fire images— emaciated cattle, sludge flowing downhill, dead birds, villagers trudging through the muck. One particularly memorable juxtaposition sees the head of a vulture replaced by that of Sarkar. As a stand-alone sequence, it’s as blatantly stirring as anything in Sergei Eisenstein’s films.

The Soviet influence on IPTA had always been strong. Krishan Chander, who co-wrote Abbas’ Dharti Ke Lal (1946), was a Russophile. Abbas himself co-directed the first Indo-Russian film production, Pardesi (1957). Balraj Sahni had fallen under the spell of Russian filmmakers like Vsevolod Pudovkin and Eisenstein during his time in London in the early 1940s. Anand too was a fan— after adapting Gorky in Neecha Nagar, he reworked Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General for his next film, Afsar (1950). He was also an admirer of Pudovkin, and is said to have invited him to stay at his Juhu home during the 1952 International Film Festival of India, in Bombay.

Besides the German and Russian cinematic traditions—which coalesce in spectacular fashion towards the end of the movie when vampiric static shots of Sarkar are intercut with images of a menacing gargoyle and the aforementioned painting—Neecha Nagar also makes use of homegrown devices, such as musical storytelling. The film has two dances, choreographed by Zohra Segal (and tacked on, post-Cannes, for the India release), and six songs. Not one of them, though, is a love song, romance being a possible casualty of Anand’s refusal to compromise with the box office.

Realism and Reality

It is tempting to try and detect the influence of Italian neorealist cinema on certain passages in Anand’s film. Yet, it’s unlikely that Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945)—the first widely known example of neorealism—reached India in time to be an influence. What can be stated with more surety is that Anand’s pioneering use of location shooting and frequently stark imagery make Neecha Nagar a landmark in Indo-realism (if such a genre exists), paving the way for Do Bigha Zamin (1953) and Pather Panchali (1955).

But if you’re the kind that believes reality trumps realism, that art imitates life, watch carefully around one hour and 12 minutes into the film. As the villagers stand beside a funeral pyre, a dog runs across the length of the screen. It’s seen in long shot, and barely for a second. Perhaps it was a detail added to increase authenticity; more likely, it was a mistake that survived the final edit because it was too difficult to cut out. Manny Farber once wrote about a scene from Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep: “One of the fine moments in 1940’s film is no longer than a blink: (Humphrey) Bogart, as he crosses the street from one bookstore to another, looks up at a sign.” What impressed Farber was the way Bogie’s action allowed the viewer to believe, for one small moment, that the set and every fake prop in it was the real world. I feel the same way about this one-second canine cameo. I’d take it over all the montages in Russia.

A first at Cannes

The first annual international film festival to come into being was Venice in 1932. By 1938, many felt the ruling Fascist party in Italy was exerting undue influence on the selection process. When Renoir’s The Grand Illusion was denied the top prize (then called the Mussolini Cup) in 1937, it riled up the French; when Leni Riefenstahl’s pro-Nazi documentary Olympia won the same award a year later, they shrugged and said “Je vous l’avais bien dit (I told you so).” On the train back from Venice, French government official Philippe Erlanger and film critic Rene Jeanne started hatching plans for a rival festival. Sunny Cannes, in France, was chosen as the venue, and an opening date of September 20, 1939 was set. But when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, and kicked off World War II, the festival was shelved. It wasn’t until 1946, a year after the war had ended, that Cannes could finally open its doors to world cinema.

Does this story have anything to do with Neecha Nagar, beyond the fact that it won the top prize at Cannes that first year? It may. Eleven films were awarded the Grand Prix in 1946. Among these were The Lost Weekend, made by Billy Wilder, a Jew who’d fled Germany in 1934 and who worked briefly in Paris before starting on a remarkable Hollywood career; as well as Leopold Lindtberg’s The Last Chance, about an American and a Brit who escape Nazi prison. Yet another winner was Rome, Open City, Rossellini’s powerful anti-Fascist masterpiece. All this is to say that being seen as the anti-Venice was high on Cannes’ list of priorities in its inaugural year. Although its targets were imperialism and capitalism rather than fascism, Neecha Nagar may well have been advantaged by the pro-humanity, anti-oppression bent of the 1946 festival. Also, the idea of people revolting against their masters is always likely to find favour with the French.

“The tone is gloomy… ”

After Cannes, Anand may have been forgiven for feeling optimistic about his film’s chances at the box office back home. He should have, however, heeded Anton Chekhov’s warning about The Lower Depths. In a letter to Gorky dated July 29, 1902, Chekhov wrote: “The tone is gloomy, oppressive; the audience, unaccustomed to such subjects, will walk out of the theatre, and you may well say goodbye to your reputation as an optimist… ”

Neecha Nagar isn’t half as depressing as it would have been had it followed Gorky’s play faithfully (to see how that might have looked, watch Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 version with Toshiro Mifune). Yet, its commercial fortunes were blighted from the start. According to critic Jai Prakash Chouksey, it was only on Pandit Nehru’s insistence that the distributors released the film at all. But audiences didn’t care. Maybe they were put off by rumours that this was an ‘art film’. Perhaps they just didn’t feel like spending an edifying but miserable hour-and-forty-minutes watching this when they could be nodding along to K.L. Saigal. The easier-to-digest Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani was all the nationalism they could stomach that year. Neecha Nagar was a crashing failure.

There was more bad luck ahead for Anand. After Neecha Nagar failed at the box office, his directorial career stalled. It was only when younger brother Dev Anand found work as an actor that the brothers were able to launch Navketan Films. Even then, their first film together, Afsar, flopped. Aandhiyan followed in 1952— another disappointment. Finally, in 1954, Chetan managed a hit with the noirish Taxi Driver. Meanwhile, the negative of Neecha Nagar was lost in a fire, and the reel went missing. The latter was discovered years later in a Calcutta junk shop by Satyajit Ray’s cameraman Subrata Mitra, who bought it off the shopkeeper for Rs 100 and deposited it at the National Film Archives of India.

In the years that followed, Anand forged a fascinating, uneven and underappreciated career (there’s that Orson Welles connection again). His Haqeeqat (1964) was the granddaddy of Indian war movies— as well as a thank you to Nehru for his early support. Aakhri Khat (1966) saw him turn a 15-month-old toddler loose on the streets of Bombay and follow him with a handheld camera. Heer Raanjha was a 1970 film entirely in verse. But unlike his other sibling, director Vijay Anand, Chetan was never seen as a safe bet at the box office. In a 1960 letter published in Seminar, he complained to a friend about the many obstacles preventing him from making his film Anjali. One by one he ticks them off: financiers, distributors, government officials, even the audience. He ends on a poignant note, wondering aloud if he’s abetting his own downfall by naming his enemies in a letter. “I am often my own obstacle,” he concludes.

They say that everyone loves a hard luck story. By that yardstick, at least, both Chetan Anand and Neecha Nagar are unqualified successes.

Chetan Anand in his younger days (Courtesy S.M.M. Ausaja)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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