Bollywood

telling Hugo Weaving, my friend and co-jury member here at Sydney, that if we have the luxury and the leisure to dream and imagine and invent, we also have a responsibility to do something interesting and thoughtful. If I have privileges, I must put them to good use”.

Hopefully the Saas-Bahu audience will think the exact same thought, and move up a notch along with him!

Guns ‘n’ rain

Amit Kumar’s first feature, Monsoon Shootout also featured at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, and was included in the competition category. The film is about the dynamics of split second decisions that could change your life forever. To shoot or not to shoot, that is the question faced by a rookie cop in this action-packed police thriller set in monsoonal Mumbai. Three different scenarios play out, based on the decisions that could compromise his morals.

Kumar claims he has always been intrigued by the decisionmaking process, like how much of the other person’s perspective do you take into consideration while making a decision that will affect them?

“The idea has been sitting in my mind for ten years now,”

Kumar told Indian Link. “The UK Film Council that was supposed to fund it closed down, and when I found an Indian producer they wanted a well-known star in the film, so it stalled again. Finally Anurag Kashyap helped out”.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui gives a stunning performance as the baddie at the other end of policeman Vijay Verma’s gun.

Nawazuddin (the new Naseeruddin?) also appeared in Kumar’s first offering, a short film called The Bypass (2003). Kumar must surely be thrilled with the way Nawaz’s career has taken off in the last ten years.

“Having Nawaz on board makes it all very powerful,” he admitted. “You have him, you’ll have the producers.”

Dabba dreams

Written and directed by the talented Ritesh Batra, Dabba (The Lunchbox) is set in Mumbai and revolves around a mistaken delivery in the dabbawala (lunchbox service) popular in Mumbai. This leads to a relationship between Saajan, a lonely widower who is about to retire, and Ila, an unhappy housewife. They start exchanging notes through the daily lunchbox that inspire them to create a fantasy world together. The film was screened on May 19 as a part of the International Critics’ Week at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation of over 15 minutes and very positive reviews. Dabba also won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award, also known as Grand Rail d’Or.

Batra is a graduate from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts film programme, and his talent has been lauded at Sundance, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) and by French-German TV channel ARTE. The Dabba screenplay has also been applauded and awarded an honourable Jury Mention at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and was promoted at the Goa NFDC Film Bazaar, the Berlinale Talent Project Market and at the Torino festival screenwriter’s lab.

International recognition

So, what were Gandhi and Kumar expecting from Sydney?

“I got exactly what I was expecting,” Anand Gandhi confided. “A warm welcome. A full house. A curious and interested audience, who treated me to wonderful Q&A sessions, which often spilled out of the theatre!” (He forgot to add, modestly, a standing ovation).

Amit Kumar was more romantic in his reply saying, “I came expecting simply that the Sydney audience will love my film, and come to India to see the monsoon… but maybe not a shootout!”

Kumar added however, that he hoped to see his film challenge the existing notions of Indian cinema.

“My film was in competition, so viewers were primed to see something different, but yes, I’m hoping to change perceptions about the kind of films we make in India”.

We can safely conclude that these filmmakers did exactly that, given the more-than-warm response. The other Indian links at the festival, namely Algorithms by Geetha J and Ian MacDonald (a documentary on blind chess players); Char: The No-man’s Land (a documentary on the social effects of the environmental problems with the Ganges); and Midnight’s Children, no doubt added to the growing realisation that Indian cinema goes well and truly beyond Bollywood.

Home truths

While Bollywood has been whinging for years about the lack of international recognition, it is a fact that the Indie industry seems to have gone and won it through sheer talent. Ritesh Batra, Anand Gandhi and Amit

Kumar were all at Cannes this year where India, celebrating its 100th year in cinema, was the special guest country. While Cannes did its bit to honour the Indian industry, did the Indian industry live up to its part of the bargain and showcase its strengths fully?

Amit Kumar seemed to think not.

“It could have been a bit more balanced,” he claimed. “Hindi cinema is not representative of Indian cinema. But then, it is more visual and widely known. Still, the new breed of film-makers did manage to impress. Lunchbox did very well. My own film was well-received, but it is a genre film and will travel well. Anurag Kashyap’s Ugly was interesting, you can always expect something different from him. And Bombay Talkies was good too, in sending the new message out”

Anand Gandhi’s response was dismissive. “Hundred years on, the issue that engages me the most is, where do we stand today. Right now, my peers are making really exciting cinema - cinema that will change the game,” he said.

The interesting fact about both filmmakers is that though their stories are largely set in contemporary Mumbai, they are suitably global enough in theme to reach out to a wider audience. They are also based on real-time situations and episodes offering a slice of actual life in India, something that resonates more with an international audience than the song and dance fare that seems to characterise Bollywood. Perhaps this is where the new breed of filmmakers is different from those in Bollywood. Another challenge that radical Indian filmmakers face is in finding funding for their movies. Producers within the domestic film industry are simply not interested if the film is not commercially viable. Anurag Kashyap and Guneet Monga came on board to produce Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout, and actor Sohum Shah stepped in as producer of Ship of Theseus, “to safeguard the artistic integrity of the project”. With Dabba, the film was jointly produced by Indian, British, German, French and American film bodies. And while these awardwinning films have been shot around themes mostly in Mumbai, funding for these has been, either partially or wholly, through international producers. Perhaps it’s time Bollywood looked beyond its boundaries towards supporting new talent that brings recognition to the Indian film industry as a whole. And what better time to promote this than in 2013, as India celebrates 100 years of cinema.

The Indian response

It’s early days yet for Ship of Theseus in India, but Gandhi is confident that his film will do well.

“I am greatly surprised at the response already,” he said. “It is unprecedented, I should say, to hear people talk about a film that is arthouse yet entertaining”

The Twitterverse is replete with eager viewers who have liked the trailer.

The film was released in five centres only - Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. But the online push has been so strong that Kiran Rao has just announced an online voting system for other cities. The film will be screened in the city that gets the maximum votes.

“With our online campaign, our effort is to gauge the interest of that audience, and hopefully, based on that, to take the film to them,” Rao said recently. He added, “It’s an exciting new way to reach out to viewers, a democratisation of cinema, where audiences decide what they want to see”.

For Amit Kumar, the expected Indian response to his film Monsoon Shootout is also clear. “It will probably be similar to Gangs of Wasseypur Although Monsoon Shootout is slightly different in tone, I think it would be safe to say, those who enjoyed Gangs will enjoy my film too,” he claimed.

And perhaps the audiences are ready for it in their own way, given that some recent commercial releases that blur the line between mainstream and art-house have been well-received, like Chak De India, Rocket Singh, Kahani, Vicky Donor, OMG and Ankur Arora Murder Case.

Anand Gandhi tellingly observed, “I think it is quite an arrogant response when Indians (outside of India) come up to me and say, ‘I love your film, but I don’t think the Indian audience will get it’. Everyone wants to think! We just have to give them more food for thought!”

Hope they dish it out by the platefuls. With details Sheryl Dixit and online sources