Tag: Vishwaroopam

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Cinema@100

‘Bollywood filmmakers have budgets, not sensibility’

Actor Farooque Sheikh speaks on the malaise of money dictating quality in our cinema, when dedication and passion actually should.
by Humra Quraishi

farooq sheikhFarooque Sheikh was the eternal reel sweetheart, the man with more than good looks and a formidable acting talent. He did few films, but made an impact with each one, before moving on to do theatre and television and making a mark there as well.

For somebody who seems to be so soft-spoken on screen, Farooque Sheikh in the flesh comes as a bit of a surprise. He minces no words, spares nobody in his criticism. Recently, he took up the cudgels against the Tamil Nadu Government in favour of Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam, which the Government banned from release despite certification from the Censor Board. “Of what use is the Censor Board if the Government is going to Talibanise films and filmmakers in this fashion?” Sheikh had famously thundered on TV.

I met and interviewed the actor twice, once in the 1990s and then in 2005 when he was speaking at a seminar here in New Delhi. He’d been his usual outspoken self and did not hedge around questions. It is refreshing to find film personalities like him who are not much bothered about political correctness.

Sheikh had a lot to say about the Hindi film industry, and how hypocritical and money-crazy the current generation of filmmakers are.

“Successful filmmakers in Bollywood today have big budgets, but no sensibility or sensitivity. Cinema has become totally commercial, a Farooq Sheikhcommodity to be sold,” he said. “There are no film producers today like K Asif and Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy, or even Mehboob sahib. Mehboob sahib had no money, yet his passion drove him to make films. Bimal Roy lived in a rented accomodation all his life. It took MS Sathyu a full 20 years to repay the loan he took to make Garam Hawa. That level of commitment is missing in today’s film producers. Today, film producers simply go by whether the film will be a box office hit. Maybe because there are too many business interests involved.”

We soon began chatting about stereotyping of communities in Indian cinema. He became quite animated on this subject. “Community perceptions in our films have always been about stereotypes. The Christian girl is a girl dancing or wearing short skirts with signs that she is a ‘fast’ girl. The Parsi is always shown as blundering. The Sikh is either a soldier or a man constantly eating parathas; nobody on screen shows him like Manmohan Singh.

“In the case of Muslims, the characters are hardly believable. Why do they portray the Muslim man always in a lungi and a vest? Or he is a gaddaar. As a token, one of them will be very patriotic so that the entire community is not misunderstood. The other stereotypes, with 300 aadabs in one film and women wearing ghararas or cooking kormas, are also absent in real life Muslim households.”

farooque shaikhHe added that since cinema was popularly perceived to be an entertainment medium, so whatever was shown on the big screen was automatically assumed to be something that need not be taken seriously. “So nobody complains about these stereotypes.” He was also quick to point out that television does have a bigger impact on people’s lives than cinema, and that things shown on TV have sometimes been life-changing in villages.

Who, in his opinion, held out some hope as a filmmaker? “Anand Patwardhan,” he replied. “He has fought the system. And fighting the system is not an easy task.”

Watch a trailer of the charming Chashme Buddoor starring Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval:

 

(Pictures courtesy movies.ndtv.com, www.indianetzone.com, www.santabanta.com, www.thehindu.com)

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Film

‘People can protest, but State cannot pander to them’

This, and other illuminating thoughts from film personalities, at a talk on 100 years of Indian cinema at St Xavier’s.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Cinema, especially Indian cinema, is increasingly being derided for being the opium of the masses – something which it is praised for, in equal measure, but in the light of negative portrayals of women in films and the recent Delhi gangrape and murder, what we are choosing to watch is as important as what filmmakers are choosing to show us.

“It’s been only a little more than a century that we have understood our own evolution,” said independent filmmaker Anand Gandhi. “And it’s been just two or three decades that we’ve realised that culture mimics life. So when we talk of a century of Indian cinema, we have to understand that we have had very less time to really understand the question: does cinema imitate life?”

Anand was speaking at ‘Century of Cinema – the challenges in the next 25 years’, a talk held at St Xavier’s Multimedia Centre, recently. Joining him on the panel were film scriptwriter, filmmaker and member of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), Anjum Rajabali, and current Managing Director of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), Nina Gupta. Film theorist and researcher Narendra Panjwani chaired the panel.

Anjum replied to a question on why non-masala films were not marketed enough in India, or why they faced a distribution problem, by saying, “If a product has to connect, it does. Look at a film like Ardh Satya (starring Om Puri). It was a disturbing film that ended on a note of despair. It barely had conventional, masala elements in it. And yet it ran for 20 weeks at Novelty Cinema in 1983 – in those days, if a film ran at Novelty and Chandan (considered the massiest cinema halls of Mumbai) for a long while, it was considered a sure hit. Despite the likes of Salim-Javed and Manmohan Desai being immensely popular at the time, writer Vijay Tendulkar had still penned a script that connected.”

 

He also responded to a question on the portrayal of women in cinema. “Yes, the portrayal of women is a concern. We have to examine how popular culture portrays them, and does it have an effect on social psyche? There are no easy answers, but a collective interface is needed and we need to be conscious of why certain characters are shown a certain way. Filmmakers must be careful, because the audience may see things shown in films as endorsements of behaviour.

For instance, the portrayal of Sonakshi Sinha in Dabangg. Is her character’s portrayal a recommendation of that film for how women should behave? If not, why has she been portrayed that way? These are questions that filmmakers need to ask themselves,” he said.

To a question on whether good Indian cinema could possibly become mass, even as films like Rowdy Rathore and Dabangg ran to packed houses across the country, Nina (in pic on right) said, “Films combine an element of art and an element of commerce. The reason films are so expensive to make, is because a film requires a huge collaborative effort from several different people who must all be on the same page. With such a big canvas, the element of risk is greater. If a certain kind of cinema, parallel cinema for example, does not have an audience, it is not going to be made.”

 

Anand (in pic on left) interjected when an audience member said that mass entertainers only dwelled on escapism, “Cinema serves extremely complex functions. Films do mirror who we are, our relationships, the times we live in, but they also mirror our aspirations, dreams and memories. A film is an anthology of our responses. Films that mean something to me have reflected the environment I have been in, and my introspection. So I don’t think that idealism and realism can be mutually exclusive of each other in cinema.”

An audience member asked Anjum if he felt that cultural and political interference in films could be a factor to consider for the Censor Board in the coming years. He replied, “Look, certain statutory guidelines are very strongly put down while passing a film. The Constitution does guarantee freedom of expression, but with the rider that we should be sensitive to others.

Coming to the point of bans and protests, let me give you the example of the film Aarakshan (directed by Prakash Jha, and which Anjum wrote). Even before the film’s showing, a preemptive ban was imposed in three States, which the Supreme Court struck down. The film ran in theatres and there were no protests after release. But in the case of Vishwaroopam, a ban was imposed because the State chose to pander to protests. In my opinion, we should give groups the right to protest, but the State has no business pandering to these groups’ emotions, which are not in the guidelines of the law. If you play to the gallery, there will be several threats to the identity of artists.”

Categories
Film

Banning films is our new pastime

If we’re banning films anyway, can the State ban films that hurt our intelligence, several of which release this year?
by M@themetrognome.in

This has been some week for the film fraternity. SRK’s ‘victimised’ (or not) statement created quite a stir and a ban on Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam proved how flat the fraternity falls in a face-off with the State. But Vishwaroopam is not the first film to go perilously close to getting the axe. Many films in the past have been ‘modified’ to suit the sensibilities of a few people who find some material in it ‘objectionable’. Some films like Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch are still in the cans due to this.

Even Hollywood is not spared. Remember how David Fincher gave the Indian Censor Board the finger when he was asked to remove three scenes from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that were apparently gore and sexual in nature? People who managed to get a bootlegged copy of the film and have seen it, will tell you how important the ‘unsuitable’ scenes are to the plot of the film. Similarly, The Da Vinci Code was banned in States like Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Nagaland because of its controversial plot revolving around the manifestos for Christianity.

In Malaysia, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was banned only for Muslims, while the film was deemed suitable for Christian and Buddhist audiences. The film had the potential to create unrest amongst Muslims, thus the unusual ban. In retrospect, it seemed like a wise decision – it makes sense to not watch it if you don’t like it. But now, the Malaysian Government has failed to do the same for Vishwaroopam; the film was removed from theatres just a day after its release.

If banning films in the name of religion irks you, then this would definitely make you furious. In 1917, Birth Control, a film on family planning was banned in the United States of America in the interest of ‘morality, decency, public safety and welfare.’ The only reason one can let this pass is the year of the ban, when a not-so-modern America upheld a stereotypical image of the real woman and her moral values. Maybe a hundred years from now, even we will stop banning films for unjustifiable reasons.

But, can a ban really make the filmmaker bankrupt? The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Hollywood film that don’t get a release in a few foreign countries are seldom affected. They recover their costs on the home turf. But Indian movies banned in Indian states take a severe hit at the box office. Indian films are specifically made keeping the Indian (sometimes regional) audiences in mind. While some movies do extremely well with the Indian diaspora overseas, most of the moolah is generated at home. The ban on Vishwaroopam can cost Mr Haasan a whopping Rs 95 crore, by trade estimates.

Instead, there should be a ban on Non-Entertaining Films. These are movies that serve no purpose whatsoever, and require the viewer to keep his brains in the freezer before watching them. Like the No.1 series of Govinda – Aunty No.1, Anari No.1, Beti No.1 etc. These movies impair one’s judgement to the extent that one spends his hard-earned money to watch a grown-up man behave like a monkey. Maybe in the future, the Censor Board or the State can do the people a huge service by banning films that should have never be released.

Just to make the task easy for the Censor Board, here are a few upcoming films in 2013 that are very suitable for imposing a ban on:

Rangrezz. It stars Jackky Bhagnani. Censor Board, there’s your reason.

Zanjeer remake – The Classics should be sacrosanct and not allowed to be re-made, especially if Apoorva Lakhia is directing them.

Mere Dad Ki Maruti – Really? There is a big brand in the title. YRF has already recovered its production costs, so this one doesn’t need any box office collections.

Raanjhnaa – Sonam Kapoor cannot act. Period. Remember Mausam, with its riots, wars and 9/11? Sonam was worse than all these disasters combined.

These films (and more are coming up this year) are a bigger threat to the nation and hurt sentiments across religion. They should be banned purely on the grounds of offending the religion of Sanity. If the Censor Board fails to be the do-gooder, then maybe it’s time we take the matter in our own hands. Let’s impose our own ban on crappy films, by not watching them on the big screen and forcing distributors to take them down. It’s a thought fit for a utopian world, but hopefully we’ll get there soon.

M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Picture courtesy ndtv.com)

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