Film Impressions

INTERVIEW: Bejoy Nambiar

MAN OF THE MOMENT

You liken Bejoy Nambiar’s debut film Shaitan to Amores Perros in terms of its existential sweep and he smiles self-consciously, “I’m humbled by the comparison.” It’s not the first time Bejoy has found himself in august company. As an absolute novice, he convinced Mohanlal to come to Mumbai to act in his first short film Reflections (2005). Just eight minutes long, it’s a compelling narrative with enough drama and visual finesses to have persuaded Mani Ratnam to hire him as an assistant on Guru and later get him to line produce his flawed epic, Raavan. Clichéd as it sounds Bejoy describes his stint with Ratnam as “being at university. The sheer scale and intricacies of his vision are astounding.” From there to getting Anurag Kashyap to produce Shaitan, was an arduous, but rewarding journey. The debutant fondly recalls all the heartache and meticulous planning that went into Shaitan, arguably 2011’s best film so far.

Nambiar: This year's breakout director

CONVERSATION: The Actors of AMEN

KARAN MEHRA IN CONVERSATION WITH JITIN GULATI

Amen, by Judhajit Bagchi and Ranadeep Bhattacharyya, is a short film that has grown to become a festival favorite in the few months since its release. The two leading men of the film have a fun conversation with each other about how they approached playing gay in the film.

(Jitin Gulati in italics)

KARAN MEHRA: What I know about Jitin was that he worked in banking, but he left his job to come to Bombay and pursue acting. He's been doing a lot of ads, he has a good physique, but now he has a broken leg..

JITIN GULATI: (Smiles) Don't give too much information...

Well, you can pay me back. Then he did a short film called Atonement. He does it the Al Pacino way, role mein poora ghus ke... very very strict in terms of lines, the mood, the feel of the whole page. He'd done a lot of homework for Amen from what I remember and he had met the writer and cinematographer  much before I came in, but sorry to say, he did a f*ck-all job! (Laughs)

PROFILE: Cinematographer Manoj Lobo

REAL CAN BE BEAUTIFUL

One of the hallmarks of Abbas Tyrewala’s directorial debut Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na was the believability of its characters and situations. The Arabian Sea shot across from the Bandra reclamation was just like it is in real life, a dark moody colour. The skies weren’t a saturated blue. Poetry was made out of cement mixers (which were likened to snoring ogres). There WAS a pretty cast, but not a designer one, like in recent films like Aisha. “Of course, at the beginning some of the actors did have a problem with them not looking glamorous because they want that,” says Manoj Lobo, director of photography of the film, and of Mr Tyrewala’s next, Jhootha Hi Sahi, currently in theatres. The brief he had received from his director was to keep things real. This sat pretty with his own sensibilities, “The only thing I told Abbas at that time was that real could be beautiful without being cosmetic.”

INTERVIEW: Cinematographer Himman Dhamija (Part 2)

(CONTD FROM PART 1)

Let’s look at Raavan… it’s always talked about in terms of its beautiful cinematography, although the film was slammed.

The problem is people don’t know, or aren’t confident about judging. In fact, Raavan is a typical case, because you’ve got Santosh Sivan doing it, so it’s already branded. We’re a very brand conscious society.

So really we’ve have to look at a film as a whole product… rather than single out Sivan’s work.

Definitely. If you wear an Adidas sneaker, just because of an Adidas logo there, you may make some people feel that it’s really good. So before buying it, you wouldn’t take a good hard look at it. So in a film like Raavan, it figures that good cinema is not about looking beautiful and stunning, it’s more about emotively where it is going. At the end of the day, if a film is not working emotively for whatever reason, there’s something that the DP  is not doing right. He’s also a part of it. Which is what I was talking about, the expectation of you in this country is to provide good-looking images, and not meaningful images.

INTERVIEW: Cinematographer Himman Dhamija (Part 1)

THE INFUSION OF SUBTEXT

For almost a decade, HIMMAN DHAMIJA has been adding to his repertoire as a cinematographer by consistently working on cinema that cuts across a wide canvas in terms on genre or sensibility, in films as varied as his debut feature Boom, last year’s Chandni Chowk to China, and the understated Little Zizou; as well as well-received documentaries like last year's The Boot Cake and A Good Man, both Australian productions. Here, in two parts, he speaks to Vikram Phukan about his work and philosophy.

How different is working in India as opposed to your experience in Australia, where you recently produced your wife's documentary A Good Man?

I think it’s very different. You’re looking at two completely different film-making cultures. Just to begin with, the grammar of film that is used or the genre of film that we work upon is very different. The equipment may be the same all over the world…

…but the culture here is much more frenetic.

Yes. There is a intensity to work there too, it’s just that there are less people doing it and there is less work as well. Here there is a huge volume of work…

INTERVIEW: Director Milind Ukey

PAATHSHAALA: NO LONGER CHILD'S PLAY

At a time when the news media are flooded with stories about academic pressure on students comes a film that tries to focus on this issue and ring a note of caution. Milind Ukey's Paathshaala grew out of choreographer Ahmed Khan's own experiences as a parent and is based on a script he has written. "Today academics has taken a backseat and the purpose of education seems to be defeated because of the commercialisation of schools. There's pressure on parents and on students. Our film takes a stand on this Issue highlighting all the problems children today face and that society needs to take note of," says director Milind Ukey, a former assistant of Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

PROFILE: Cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis

IN SEARCH OF NEW IMAGES

Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex aur Dhokha a.k.a. LSD is India’s first major digital film. Much of the credit for its authentically tacky look goes to young Greek cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis, whose brief was to make amateurish and shaky footage look aesthetic. “When I first met Dibakar, he showed me some low-grain porn videos from YouTube. And that was all the reference material we had,” Nikos laughs. From there to designing a distinctive look for each of the three stories of LSD was an exciting journey. “The first story is the video diary of an amateur filmmaker. So we used shots from his film, which is why the footage is unframed and quite gritty. The second is a story in a supermarket seen through the store’s CCTV cameras, so we have wide, high-angle zshots. The third story has a hidden camera in someone’s vest or bag because it’s a sting journalist’s story.”