Category: Features

What’s common between Parinda and Ardh Satya? Or Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Hyderabad Blues, Pardes and 1942: A Love Story? Her name was Renu Saluja. Renu was the creative force behind at least a quarter of all “parallel” movies made in the 80s and 90s. As a point of fact, her roster as a film editor is more illustrious than many filmmakers. Like Naseeruddin Shah said at the launch of the aptly-named book on her called Invisible: The Art of Renu Saluja, “She was much more than an editor. She was a filmmaker.”

Renu Saluja is like a mythical figure who features prominently in any discussion around serious cinema in the 80s. She features in every book, every interview, every scrap of text ever written about those films and their makers. But she was on the sidelines of most of those stories. Everyone mentioned her, every anecdote featured her, but she never became as well-known as many of her collaborators. Film editing has never been a well-regarded craft in this country.

An editor is someone who translates the director’s vision to the screen, in effect almost “making” a film all over again. Satyajit Ray had once said, “Editing is the stage where a film really begins to come to life.” And yet, in the rich century-old history of cinema in this country, editors never became stars the way directors, music directors, lyricists, even some cinematographers did. For the most part, they remained obscure. Precious few would know or even care that Sholay was edited by M. S. Shinde, Mother India by Shamsudin Qadri, and Mughal-E-Azam by this gentleman named Dharamvir. Probably the only star editor the industry has seen was Hrishikesh Mukherjee, but that was more because of his successful shift to directing. Again, a lesser-known fact: the last film Hrishikesh Mukherjee edited was Manmohan Desai’s Coolie.

In this eclectic mix is thrown Renu Saluja. Unlike most of her male counterparts – she was likely India’s first female film editor – her work has been spoken and written about extensively. And yet, she remains a familiar name outside the fraternity only amongst film buffs. Renu has not only edited the likes of Albert Pinto ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Ardh Satya, Parinda, she has also been instrumental in the making of many of these indie classics. One of the most pertinent examples is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Renu had been involved since the time the film was a germ in Kundan Shah’s beautiful brain. Kundan was assisting Saeed Mirza on Albert Pinto and Renu was editing. This is when Kundan, Sudhir Mishra, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and his wife Renu Saluja started hanging out. At the pre-natal stage, it was Renu along with her husband who kept encouraging Kundan, listened to early narrations, gave constant feedback and brought co-writer Ranjit Kapoor on board.

Renu was present on the sets every single day, ensuring she never becomes a hindrance and helping out wherever she could. She even played a cameo as one of the burqa-clad women whose veil Pankaj Kapur lifts if she were the dead Demello and gets a resounding slap in return. When there were doubts over Pankaj’s suitability of playing a man older than he was, it was Renu who went out looking for glasses for him. But on top of all that, she came in with a certain amount of smarts as an editor, which helped the film immensely. As Naseer liked to say, the amount of footage that was discarded would have made a whole other film! Renu was also credited as assistant director on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. She continued the practice of going to sets every day for most of the projects. Saeed Mirza used to shoot at places like Dongri, Kamathipura and Nagpada where they were constantly surrounded by tough men and often anti-social elements. But Renu didn’t once flinch. She wasn’t scared or intimidated by anyone, nor did she look down upon any of them.

A film’s raw footage can often appear messy and disjointed. The editor’s impact on this kind of material is quite magical. She can transform it into a timeless classic. Vidhu Vinod Chopra said during an interview: “Some films I saw before they were cut and after they were cut. A film like Bandit Queen, I saw the five-hour thing and I thought it was okay. It made no impression on me. Ardh Satya made no impression on me, when it was at that stage. Her contribution was absolutely immense. I think she put those films where they deserved to be. She was very good at what she was doing, because that’s what she was living for.”

While reminiscing about her in Invisible: The Art of Renu Saluja, Om Puri wrote, “She once complained that we actors had no sense of continuity and that she had a tough time whilst editing Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. I murmured sheepishly that we were new then.” Renu Saluja had received the National Film Award for editing not once or twice, but four times:  for Parinda, Dharavi, Sardar and Godmother. Interestingly, when it all started, Renu was a staunch mainstream film fan, listening to Hindi songs constantly and playing Antakshari all the time. She followed her sister to FTII. He sister Radha Saluja was an actress, having worked in films like Haar Jeet (1972), Ek mutthi Aasmaan (1973), and Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar (1973). Contrary to popular perception, Renu’s first credit in Hindi films was as an assistant director on Aaj ki Taaza Khabar, much before she went to FTII. It was her intention at this point to learn film direction. But she couldn’t be accommodated in the direction course and ended up enrolling for the editing course. By the time she graduated, the scenario in Hindi cinema was in for major overhaul. While the old guard still remained, a whole new generation came into the movies hoping to change it for the better.

Renu Saluja was at the heart of these changes, and she was working with most of this new gang of directors: Sudhir Mishra (Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin, Main Zinda Hoon, Dharavi), Vidhu Vinod Chopra (Murder at Monkey Hill, Sazaye Maut, Khamosh, Parinda, Kareeb, 1942: A Love Story), Saeed Mirza (Albert Pinto ko Guzza Kyon Aata Hai, Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho), Mahesh Bhatt (Janam), and subsequently Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen), Dev Benegal (Split Wide Open) and Nagesh Kukunoor (Hyderabad Blues, Rockford, Bollywood Calling). It is safe to say that all of these films were significantly impacted by Saluja’s skill as a talented editor.

Another great legacy of Renu Saluja lies in the stardom of Shah Rukh Khan. When Shah Rukh was at the very beginning of his career and scouting for work, it was Renu who spotted the talent in this boy on seeing his TV serial Fauji and kept recommending him to everyone she knew. Everyone including Ketan Mehta, Kundan Shah and Aziz Mirza had considered Shah Rukh for their films because, among other things, it was the great Renu Saluja who was recommending. Shah Rukh was flabbergasted with this name he kept hearing. Who was Renu? He didn’t know her. Many years later they might have encountered each other on the sets of Pardes. But Shah Rukh regretted not taking out the time to spend more time with her, get to know this incredible woman who kept asking everyone around them to bet on a newcomer who she didn’t even know personally.

When she passed away due to cancer at just 48, Renu Saluja left broken hearts and classic films in her wake. It’s been 22 years since her demise, and it’s high time she is recognized for the legend that she truly was.

 

Renu Saluja (Jul 5, 1952 – Aug 16, 2000)

Shyam Benegal: the Affable Auteur

“Weave a circle around him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’

 

The most endearing aspect of Shyam Benegal as an individual and a director is his unassuming demeanour. He is an ‘author’ without being authoritarian. His seemingly ordinary way of bearing himself simply belies his strength to give sustenance to the universe of stories that he carries within him. This facet of Benegal starkly contradicts the commonly perceived image of directors; that they are inseparable from their inherent authorship even while they are not all the time conscious of it.

What makes Shyam Benegal stand out is his turning away from the author’s persona as described by Roland Barthes; an “author” who is keener on ‘seeing’ things as they happen than on ‘showing’ them from the central perspective of a manipulating agent. This ‘author’ contradicts the auteur who emerged in the 1950s new wave cinema as the sole controlling figure. To be more precise, Benegal prefers to be among the anonymous audience rather than donning the role of a puppeteer who holds the strings and fastens the story to his fingers. For Benegal, the self-effacing author, the story unfolds itself, and speaks for itself.

In the conventional notion, an artist /author is synonymous with a creator, an inspired being—one who drinks the milk of Paradise, is guided by the “Heav’nly muse” (John Milton, Paradise Lost), sees things that others fail to, and is capable of creating life with masterstrokes. However, in the 1960s, this notion was radically replaced with the notion that the author is only a ‘translator’ and not a creator. This new incarnation or role of the “author” was ushered into the arena of critical theory by Roland Barthes in his path breaking essay ‘The Death of the Author’, in which he says that the author is merely the facilitator, the mediator or simply the ‘space’ where currents and cross currents of socio-cultural happenings cross their paths.

No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality, but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins. The sense of this phenomenon, however, has varied; in ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or a relator whose ‘performance’—the mastery of the narrative code—may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’. (Roland Barthes)¹

In a similar manner, John Barth takes a survey of art forms and genres such as music, painting, pop art, intermedia art, and literature, and proposes that all art is repetitive by nature and that the ‘authors’, instead of creating, merely synthesize what went past and what they see around them in the present. Benegal, in spite of possessing a widely acclaimed oeuvre, appears not to believe in this proposed ‘myth’ of originality, in which the Aristotelian conscious agent is an “aristocratic notion” of which “the democratic West seems eager to have done with, not only the “omniscient” author of older fiction, but the very idea of the controlling artist has been condemned as politically reactionary, authoritarian, even fascist.”²

Benegal is said to have set out under the influence of Satyajit Ray, but his films are a class apart from Ray’s, for, unlike Ray, Benegal in his depiction of social realism prefers to be less suggestive and more straightforward, less dreamy and more harsh, raw and lifelike. Whether in his early films such as Ankur, Manthan, Bhumika, Mandi, and Junoon, or in his later films such as Mammo and Zubeidaa, he captures the political undercurrent that flows through all social relationships. Survival and self-fulfillment of individuals caught between the expectations of the society and their own, are the core issues that Benegal addresses in his movies that move in the domains of class/caste struggle, gender politics, psychic obsession, history and cultural anthropology.

In real life too, as in his films, there is no attempt to mystify or romanticize reality. While reflecting on his own works, Shyam Benegal assumes the ‘role’ of anything but the director that radiates a towering, all eclipsing and an all-knowing halo. He is careful not to let the author’s self take over his common man’s way of sitting relaxedly while talking. Even while giving background details of threshold moments, Benegal appears like one recounting the most mundane, ordinary happenings in the chain of everyday incidents of which we barely take any notice. In his description there is neither any trace of anxiety of searching nor the thrill of finding. Shyam Benegal is placidity personified.

 

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References

1. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodernism: A Reader”, by Sean Burke, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1995, pp. 125-130. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxctrs61.21
2. Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction. London. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1984

 

Girish Kasaravallii
I am not making a “perfect” film, I am making an “imperfect” film.
To me, cinema is a powerful tool for challenging existing notions.
-Girish Kasaravalli

 

True to his stated philosophy and approach to cinema, noted Padmashri Awardee Kannada Cinema auteur Girish Kasaravalli has been chiseling his cinema spotlighting on prevalent socio-political concerns, while crafting his own idioms and aesthetics.

Girish Kasaravalli’s approach though is not dogmatic or didactic. Neither is it viciously violent or a virulent answer to the ills of a hidebound society that fails to see reason in its failings and the repercussions of its draconian practices on the various diaspora that people it.

The cinema of Girish Kasaravalli holds up a reflective mirror to that which afflicts the people due to traditional dogmas. Benign, humanistic, subtle and provocatively persuasive, Girish Kasaravalli’s films engage his audiences in a dialectical dialogue, cajoling them to see reason, and to reform for the greater good of themselves as individuals as well as for society at large.

Treading a lonely furrow, the flag bearing Kannada art cinema right from 1977 with his eponymous celluloid treatise Ghatashraddha, Girish Kasaravalli has never veered off his creative aesthetics or cinematic vision, but instead steadfastly adheres to his idea of cinema.

Girish Kasaravalli’s celluloid canvas captures the quintessential moral, ethical, cultural and political dilemmas we live in, providing a metaphorical context to them; acts as a possible change agent, though not necessarily; and creates an inner churning and introspective reflection among the viewers of his films.

Kannada litterateur UR Ananthamurthy once said, “Girish Kasaravalli is an imaginative film maker. He provides a metaphorical depth to his vivid narratives. We are made to meditate on them.”

Never one to consciously and creatively push his cinematic envelope to aesthetic levels lest they become inaccessible to lay, discerning audiences, Girish believes in forgoing the esoteric for a simpler and easier to grasp form of cinema, one that is at a much mundane narrative level.

Consequently, while Girish Kasaravalli’s films triumph as soulful, sensitive sagas of human foibles and their aftermath on the subjects concerned, they fall short of much more aesthetic appreciation of cinema in its pure art form, as the auteur seeks to consciously and deliberately eschew these elements for the greater purpose of reaching his intended audiences, the masses.

Girish Kasaravalli has never resorted to loud and preachy statements in his films. Instead, he subtly, sensitively, and profoundly conveys the homily of the film while ensuring that the underlying undercurrent in his thematic treatise drives home the point as unobtrusively as possible. Each of his films pulsate, resonate and abound in a multitude of meanings and with multifarious strands of metaphors that bespeak of our lives.

A cursory walk through all his works since those halcyon FTII and much feted debutant Ghatashraddha days to his latest foray with Illiralare Allige Hogalare (Can’t Stay Here, Can’t Go There) offers one a glimpse of the inner workings of Girish Kasaravalli’s cinema of serious engagement as well as of where he has drawn the Lakshman Rekha, the line that he never crosses lest it dilutes the larger purpose of his cinematic discourses. The only time he did so with Kanasemba Kudureyaneri one felt it did not bear the necessary fruition he had sought in his experimentation of the much-coveted film form.

As a critical insider, Girish Kasaravalli, in a filming career spanning over half a century,  has been holding a searing mirror to the harsh socio-cultural realities of our society, and has ensured that the cinema of Kannada Cinema is talked about, and looked upon, as among the best in the global cinema amphitheatre.

Right from his debut short film as a student at FTII, Avasesha, which fetched him a Gold medal, Girish Kasaravalli has shown where his creative cinema disposition lay, and despite the onerous struggle that his films go through to find an audience, he has struck to the principled path he has traversed all along.

The reasons for this are not far to see. A pharma graduate, he found his true calling in cinema thanks to the rich cultural moorings at his homestead in maternal uncle Magsaysay Award winner KV Subbanna, the founder of Neenasam, in Heggodu, and a Yakshagana patron in father Ganesh Rao, who also ensured his son gorged on the best of Kannada literature at that early impressionable age.

The touring talkies of the times that pitched tent in his village every once a while when he was a child, and the film magazines and books that he had access to, sowed the seeds of celluloid dreams in the young Girish Kasaravalli. This was indeed fortuitous for Indian Cinema and in particular Kannada cinema in that it ensured the regional language cinema would always be in the forefront of any discussion on cinema both within India and abroad.

Girish Kasaravalli’s early love for literature and cinema, and his intimate relationship with all art forms, can be witnessed in the individualistic, intuitive and insightful ways in which he adapted novels and short stories for the silver screen.

Girish Kasaravalli was intuitively drawn to the neo-realistic school of cinema whose avowed practitioners were Kurosawa, Ozu, Fellini and Antonioni, besides India’s very own Satyajit Ray; all of whom greatly influenced him. Girish Kasaravalli himself has confessed to his unabashed influence and appreciation of Ozu and Ray’s kind of films on his very own cinematic schooling and approach to film making.

The cinema of Kannada has a wide spectrum. While at one end, Dr Rajkumar, thespian and flagbearer of all things Kannada and its regional and linguistic identity, ensured that there was a modicum of meaningfulness in mainstream films and family audiences visited the theatres without being squeamish about what lay in store, at the other end, realistically portrayed issues that were tearing society apart, Girish Kasaravalli emerged as the lone beacon holder for the other kind of cinema, where aesthetics, idioms and craft of cinema dominated the narrative structure.

Though the nouvelle vogue off beat cinema movement had begun much before Girish Kasaravalli’s own sojourn into that less trodden path, in 1970, with the likes of peers such as Pattabhirama Reddy, Girish Karnad, BV Karanath (with whom Girish Kasaravalli was an understudy), P Lankesh, and TS, it was Girish Kasaravalli who continued to pursue it diligently.

Tirelessly and singularly Girish Kasaravalli has been singularly capturing the cataclysmic changes around us through his captivating cinema, reminding us each and every time where we are and where we are headed as a society and as a nation.

 

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Cover photograph courtesy: Bijaya Jena

 

Out of the twelve films Richard Attenborough directed in his lifetime, seven were biographical pictures, a genre that has come to be labeled as the ‘biopic’. In a marathon interview given to John Gallagher in the year 1992, Attenborough explains his fixation with the genre: “I’m fascinated by the people who have changed our attitude towards accepted authority, accepted criteria in relation to the manner in which we conduct our lives and our supposed civilised society. I’m fascinated by those who’ve revealed things to us in terms of human relationship in the way we view each other’s problems and so on…”

Attenborough had debuted as an actor at the age of 18 in the British propaganda war film In Which We Serve (1942). Actor, composer and playwright Noel Coward was hell-bent on directing the film. Since he didn’t have any experience in directing, it was suggested that he hire a remarkable editor. The best editor in all of England at the time was a young man named David Lean. Eventually Noel was bowled over by David’s talent, enough to co-direct the film with him. And that’s how David Lean and Richard Attenborough debuted with the same film. Both prolific directors, both known for their obsession with the Orient. But they never worked together again.

Richard Attenborough’s life and work was a series of serendipities that fuelled his energies and his talent. His depiction of the sinister conman Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock (1948), a film noir, made him a star overnight. The next two decades were filled with one classic role after another – I’m All Right Jack (1959), The Great Escape (1963), Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), and Guns at Batasi (1964). He set up a film production company with his friend and fellow actor Bryan Forbes under which they made films that allowed Attenborough to attempt new kind of roles, like in The League of Gentlemen (1959) and The Angry Silence (1961). He happened upon a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer. He was deeply affected by Gandhi’s life and work. He was reminded of his father, who also was an admirer of Gandhi and who, many years previously, had taken little Richard to watch a newsreel of Gandhi’s visit to India. This was when he started obsessing over making a film about Gandhi. Motilal Kothari, an Indian civil servant who worked with the Indian High Commission at London, got in touch with Attenborough to discuss a project on Gandhi. Attenborough, who was already primed for it, jumped at the idea. He was 39 and a successful producer but hadn’t started directing yet. He began developing the script. He was so consumed by the idea that he told everyone including his co-stars. Shirley Maclaine, his colleague from The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968), said in an interview that Attenborough kept discussing Gandhi throughout the time they spent off screen. In fact he was spending so much money on developing the project that he said he could “barely pay the gas bill”.

Attenborough also met the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, with the script on which he was working. Nehru encouraged him, but with a word of caution. He said, “Make a film… don’t deify him. That’s all we do in India. He’s too great a man to be deified… but make a film about him. He was a man, not a god or a saint!” On a side note, Nehru said this in the early 60s. But even today, more than 50 years later, most Indian biopics are just that —deified eulogies.

It was around this time that he got a call from actor John Mills about directing a film called Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). Attenborough loved the script but he was curious: why him? John said, “We either ought to have a director who knew everything, or one who knew absolutely nothing!”

In the meanwhile, Nehru, who Attenborough was counting on to help with the film on Gandhi, passed away in 1964. Within a span of just 6 years, Motilal Kothari also breathed his last. Under the circumstances, it might have been prudent to give up on the biopic altogether. But Richard Attenborough kept at it, and was more determined than ever to realise his dream project.

But it was Attenborough’s second directorial feature that would become his first attempt at a biopic. Young Winston (1972) followed the exploits of a young Winston Churchill, based in part on his own book My Early Life. For the titlular role, he chose a relatively unknown stage actor named Simon Ward. The film starts with him in India, in the middle of the Sikhs and the British fighting Pashtuns in the Northwest Frontier Province in 1897. There is a flashback to his childhood years, followed by scenes of Churchill in battles in Sudan and later in South Africa. The film was a great success, and the leading man Simon Ward became a star. Simon went on to appear in a number of roles in the next 46 years, the most recent one being as Bishop Stephen Gardiner in the historical television drama The Tudors.

As he completed two more films, A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Magic (1978), Attenborough renewed his attempt at making Gandhi. The script was almost ready, but financing the film proved to be a bottleneck. Warner Brothers and MGM Studios had agreed to back the project, but eventually backed out. The newly-formed National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) stepped up and with the backing of D.V.S. Raju, the chairman of NFDC, the film eventually secured financing. By the time Attenborough was ready to roll cameras, it was November 1980.

The fact that Richard Attenborough, a major Hollywood star (While his directorial work was reasonably well-received, at this point Attenborough was more of an A-list Hollywood actor rather than a star director. This was soon going to change.) was making a film on Mahatma Gandhi had spread through the by-lanes of Indian filmdom. When he was casting for the film, a young Naseeruddin Shah was considered for the role of Gandhi. He was given a ticket to London, where the audition was supposed to happen. Shah said in an interview that he was confident that he would bag the role. Where else will they get a better actor who suits the part? In fact, the Indian media flashed it on the headlines that Naseer had actually got the role. This further reinforced Naseer’s confidence. This was the first time he had been to London, and he had a blast. He was made to stay in a hotel in Oxford street and travel in a Rolls Royce, and was given some money to spend. When Naseer was taken to Shepperton Studios for the test, he met Ben Kingsley for the first time. As soon as he set his eyes on Ben, Naseer knew he was the right man for the part. A test was conducted, but by this time Naseer was convinced that Ben looked more like Gandhi than himself, and he was indeed more suited to portray the role. He also watched Ben’s audition, which further confirmed his thoughts. Naseer admitted later that he didn’t think he could do a better job than Ben Kingsley at that time.

Ben Kingsley’s (born Krishna Bhanji) paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was from. Ben Kingsley prepared for his role by studying newsreel footage of Gandhi, reading books on and by the man, dieting, losing weight, practicing Yoga and learning to spin thread just as Gandhi did. It was Michael Attenborough, Richard Attenborough’s son, who recommended Ben Kingsley to his father. Some other casting choices were interesting.

Daniel Day Lewis played a street-smart ruffian named Colin who bullies Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi when he was in South Africa. It was Lewis’ second film. Exactly 30 years later, he played another giant of world politics, Abraham Lincoln, in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012).

Martin Sheen, the star of major Hollywood films like Apocalypse Now, The Departed, Spider Man and Catch Me If You Can, played the role of American reporter Vince Walker. The character was fictional, and was partly based on real life journalist and war correspondent Webb Miller.

Attenborough’s doggedness which kept him attached to the project regardless of the setbacks, also reflected in his storytelling and approach to directing. There were some light moments as well. Quite literally. There was much concern expressed about how such a revered figure as Gandhi, a virtual deity to many Indians, would or should be portrayed on screen. Someone, in all seriousness, suggested that Gandhi should only be shown as a brilliant white light moving across the screen(!) An exasperated Attenborough snapped back: “I am not making a film about bloody Tinkerbell!”

The shoot was so detailed and so elaborate that every actor, including the extras, was checked for whether they were wearing any modern garments or footwear, and everyone was given 1930s style haircuts. The hairdressers were mostly women, and many of the men (who were villagers) objected to this as they were not used to strange women touching them. Amongst all the hoopla and idiosyncrasies, the film was eventually made and released in December 1982. It became an instant sensation. It became one of the highest grossing foreign films of all time in India. Critics gave sparkling reviews, and it swept the Oscars the next year, winning as many as 8 awards in various categories. When Richard Attenborough left England to make Gandhi, he was a great star who happened to be a good director. By the time he went back, he was an internationally acclaimed filmmaker.

Attenborough made five more films on historical characters, three of which could be said to conform with the form and feel of a biopic: Shadowlands, Grey Owl and Chaplin. Shadowlands (1993) is about C.S. Lewis, the writer of the fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia, and his relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American Poet. Grey Owl (1999) talks about a British man who becomes a Native American trapper, played by an early Pierce Brosnan. But after Gandhi if there’s one biopic that matched it brilliance and earned Attenborough great fanfare and admiration, it was Chaplin (1992). Robert Downey Jr. is primarily known today for playing a certain ‘genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist’, but the film that turned the tide of RDJ’s career was Chaplin. After hitting the marquee as a teen actor with films like Weird Science (1985), RDJ became the darling of primetime television when he played the romantic interest of the lead character in Ally McBeal. But even before that, Attenborough surprised everyone by casting the 27 year-old Downey Jr. as Chaplin. The studio wanted better bets like Robin Williams or Billy Crystal. Even the virtually unknown stand-up comedian-turned-actor Jim Carrey was also considered for the role. But it was Attenborough’s doggedness at play again. He stuck to his guns, and Robert Downey Jr. became a brilliant Chaplin. He infused the character with verve, charm and flamboyance to such an extent that even today, post-Iron Man, it is inconceivable of any other actor playing Charlie Chaplin on-screen. Other than Chaplin himself.

 

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Photo credits
Richard Attenborough at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival

 

Film festivalas — a platform for gender parity
Discriminated, underrepresented, misrepresented with that proverbial male gaze syndrome on screen, and subjugated and suppressed to the point of stoic silence off screen, women in the film industry have had to face a Sisyphean struggle to come into their own and wrest their due from an otherwise male dominated /men driven entertainment industry.

The high profile #MeToo and Time’s Up movements of recent years sharply shifted the focus upon sexual assault victims, especially women, and created widespread awareness. However, very little appears to have changed—the entertainment industry has not really moved forward from the “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”[1] syndrome. The decisive change in the West has come from elsewhere. Film festivals there have become a great equaliser. A platform for gender parity.

The world’s top-tier film festivals congratulated themselves last year when, one by one, they signed a pledge on gender parity drawn up by the French women’s organization 5050X2020. The protocol commits the fests to greater transparency about the number of films submitted and the makeup of their selection and programming committees, and calls for an even gender split in senior management ranks.

Since Cannes became the first to sign in May 2018, both Toronto and Berlin have named women as festival co-directors for the first time in their history: Joana Vicente and Mariette Rissenbeek, respectively. (Henry Chu)[2]

That finally, now, there is a conscious attempt in the West to give women their due is a welcome augury. This is a definitive development. And [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]it is hoped that as women representation gains in strength and their voices are heard, seen, appreciated and accoladed, it would ensure that women filmmakers would eventually turn into a great force to be reckoned with.[/highlight]

In India, though, none of the festivals have taken such a public pledge, and perhaps it isn’t at all necessary.

Tanu Rai is the Deputy Director of Programming of the Directorate of Film Festivals, which conducts the International Film Festival of India (IFFI). Anupama Chopra and Monita Borgohain are the Festival Directors of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MAMI) and the Guwahati International Film Festival, respectively. Bina Paul, Smriti Kiran, and Shalini Shah are the Artistic Directors of the International Film Festival of Kerala, MAMI, and the Kautik International Film Festival, respectively. Sabina Sanghvi is the Vice Chairperson, and Aditi Akkalkotkar the Deputy Director of Communication & Coordination, of the Pune International Film Festival. And Ratnottama Sengupta is on the Selection Committee of the Kolkata International Film Festival.

Women in India are well represented in film festival juries too. Last year’s edition of the Chalachitram National Film Festival featured an all-women jury, nine in all, spread across three categories. Additionally, the two most noted international film festival curators from India chance to be women—Uma da Cunha and Meenakshi Shedde.

At the 50th edition of IFFI, homage was paid to 50 women directors, a first of its kind that demonstrated the importance of providing women the platform they duly deserve while raising the bar on gender parity. At the recently-conducted 51st edition too, women were well represented—there were 24 films by women directors. Furthermore, many of the major festivals in India have a special award for a film by a woman director.

As divergent as the multifarious cultures and geographies that woman directors represent, their films too, with a melange of themes and social concerns, are as disparate, and offer insights into their minds and methods. That in many of these films the protagonists too are young women navigating the challenges of life and the situations they find themselves in speak of the core thematic concerns of the women directors and the feminine perspective that they bring into their visual narratives.

For aspiring directors in the highly competitive entertainment industry, the top film festivals, which offers one the opportunity to showcase one’s films to the who’s who of the industry in addition to getting written about in the newspapers, is that first, and highly crucial, career-making step. Each of these women directors of today are thus true ambassadors of their gender. Additionally, they are opening windows of opportunity for the future generation of women filmmakers.

 

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Bibliography

[1] Berger, John. (1972). Chapter 3. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Modern Classics.

[2] Chu, Henry; Chu, Henry (2019-08-01). “How the Major Film Festivals Are Faring on Gender Parity.” Variety.

 

See also

https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/women-in-cinema-in-age-of-digital/

 

Ever since the Venice International Film Festival, the oldest in the world, blew the bugle in late 2020, announcing with much bravado that it would be held on time, cineastes all over the world have breathed a ray of hope. Roberto Cicutto, President of La Biennale di Venezia, said on the eve of the festival, “the show must go on and the world must go on, to watch and to discuss movies together, to live this art the way we used to live it.”^[1]

Following the initial onslaught of the present pandemic and the shutting down of Europe, Cannes first indefinitely postponed and then cancelled their 2020 edition. Many others soon followed suit. However, something radically different came out of this. The major international film festivals, including the top 3, Berlin, Venice, and Cannes, put together a combined act in late May/early June—the ‘We Are One: A Global Film Festival’—a totally virtual one.

In India, the film festival season traditionally begins sometime in late October, led by the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), and is immediately followed by the other biggies, the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF), the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), and the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK); in that order. In 2020, rather than cancelling their act altogether, the top 4 chose to postpone their respective events to 2021.

Hybrid film festivals came into fashion out of necessity. Thanks to the internet, one now has the choice of attending film festivals either by being physically present or by not venturing into a cinema hall. Film festivals, through the virtual route, have literally entered our very living rooms. But then, cinema being a collective experience with the ambience of a darkened theatre providing its own individual aesthetics and atmosphere, watching films and participating on online and webinar sessions was not as wholesome or participative as a real-life community participation would have been.

At the 51^st edition of IFFI and the 26^th edition of KIFF, both of which went hybrid this time around, half capacity auditoriums, social distancing, masking, sanitisation, and temperature checks became the new normal. The 25^th edition of IFFK takes things one step further—it would be held in 4 different cities in Kerala. We need to toast the resilience of all those working behind the scenes, braving the odds to covet cineastes’ hearts and offer us the very best they can in this present situation.

As one daintily steps into 2021 harbouring much hopes that the year will bring in its wake a resurrection and revival of sorts, the core concept of a film festival, celebrated and savoured since nearly seven decades, has taken a virtual 360-degree turn. While the virtual world makes for a temporary solution, hopefully it would never replace the real-life happenings. For, as actor Keanu Reeves says, “the whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity.”^[2] Viva la cinema.

https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/the-1st-international-film-festival-of-india-1952/

https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/on-the-history-and-importance-of-film-festivals/

https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/iffi-at-50-a-reality-check/

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Header photograph
Zeenat Aman on the dais at the closing ceremony of the 51st edition of IFFI.

References

1. Stanford, Eleanor (2020-07-28). “Venice Film Festival to Return With Masks and Without Blockbusters”. The New York Times.
2.  Blueskye, Brian. (2020-01-02) “The best way to experience Palm Springs film festival? With an open mind”. The Desert Sun.

 

Entertainment industry eyes a Phoenix post pandemic
The global entertainment juggernaut that was having a great gambol run was arrested in its stupendous stride with the Ides of March bringing in its wake the world’s deadliest virus, quickly christened Covid-19. As ‘Social Distancing’ became the new lingua franca, the entertainment industry, which had witnessed robust business and was in celebration mode to usher in 2020 in grandeur fashion, with big ticket movies set to populate the screens across the globe, saw its aspirations cruelly crushed. Thereby, virtually pushing the otherwise robust and resilient industry and its various constituents and stakeholders into dark times of uncertainty and a state of stasis. It seemed as if Dooms Day had arrived.

With government after government announcing lockdowns curtailing the free movement of their diaspora, cinema as a collective experience was stifled and strangulated, and cinema loving people were compelled to relinquish their regular romance with the multifarious and multitudinous creative works that had always held them in thrall.

Needless to say, with huge sums of monies having poured into big ticket movies, the entertainment industry was left starring at humungous losses with virtually no window of hope in the near future to recoup the investments made in anticipation of a huge windfall at the box office. The cascading effect was such that it left the entire value chain of the entertainment industry lurching in a limbo adrift like a rudderless boat wondering will there be a better morrow turning 2020 in to one of annus horribilis never ever envisioned by the dream merchants.

But then, like a sliver of hope, you had the streaming platforms providing the much-wanted avenue to an industry that had been pummelled into a vortex of darkness and left floundering for a ray of sunlight to survive and revive itself.

True to the survival instinct of India’s big ticket entertainment industry—Bollywood—you had the stakeholders taking to the streaming platforms like a horse to the water, releasing films like Gulabo Sitabo, Choked, Dil Bechara, Shakuntala Devi, Miss India, Ludo, Ponmagal Vandhal, Soorari Pottru, Penguin, V, Ka Pe Ranasingham, Miss India, French Biryani,Law, C U Soon, Sufiyum Sujatavum, Ayyappanum Koshiyum, Kappela and a host of others in multiple Indian languages.

Initially, filmmakers boarded the OTT bandwagon quite reluctantly. As one after the other jumped into the bathwater to test the waters of uncertainty, the traditional theatre owners and exhibitors were roiled and much chagrined at their counterparts’ hurry to wrest back their investments. Cannibalisation soon becoming the new survival order in this dog-eat-dog world where huge sums of money had been invested and quickie returns envisaged that there was no other remaining option. ‘Being served rightly and on time’ became the new pecking order as OTT platforms courted and coveted those in dire straits, lobbing the carrot of ‘recover and survive today if you want to make a kill tomorrow’.

As a result, the streaming industry saw a sudden resurgence and an hitherto unexpected fillip to register a 55-60 percent year-on-year growth in the pandemic hit fiscal, according to the Boston Consulting Group and Confederation of Indian Industry report. Meanwhile, the theatrical exhibition business plummeted, suffering over Rs 3,000 crore plus between March and September.

Theatres in India were finally permitted to open in October, but only to half their occupancies. The Hollywood film Tenet and a host of Indian films with star attraction attempted to woo back audiences grown up on a theatrical, collective experience of big screen outings and draw them out of their cloistered and boxed-in living room entertainment.

The traditional exhibitionists of the entertainment industry were now faced with a new question: besides true value for money, how best to cater to the insatiable appetite of the movie public for paisa vasool entertainment following democratisation of screens across the spectrum making it a win-win situation for all the stakeholders in the survival game?

With the inimitable charm of theatres, a sense of commune in collective, community viewing experience of films, the entertainment industry is perhaps in for a churning and long overhaul where content will dictate who will collect the sweepstakes and who will fall by the wayside.

While industry watchers believe that there is bound to be a quantitative rise in the content, however, in the new tall order, much emphasis would be on the quality of content and how that content would be stitched and suited to the needs and demands of the streaming platforms and theatrical circuits who will be looking to it. Gone will be the days when one size will fit all and cinemas that will be rich in content, as diverse and disruptive in its execution and engagement in a dystopian world that the entertainment business has been driven into will be the order of the day.

Sure enough, as industry watchers posit, segmentation and segregation of content would be the new transaction of trade in the times to come, with platforms catering to the niche palates of audiences from the discerning and aesthete to the pure play commercial entertainment seekers.

One can hazard and envisage to posit that a quiet cinematic revolution is in the offing as a sense of sanguinity sets in to the various stakeholders of the entertainment empire as they seek to put their business back on the rails. Indeed, one can say that a Phoenix act could be witnessed as the pashas of entertaining and engaging cinemas play the roulette of survival to create an annus mirabilis.