The flux that Indian cinema has been going through is no longer a new story. Much
ink, including in this magazine, has flowed in chronicling these exciting changes.
Mainstream Bollywood, with its traditional and formulaic approach to films, no
longer hogs the industry. The range of subjects and issues is expanding; meaningful
cinema is gaining while mindless entertainment is ebbing. Here are the latest trends:
Indian cinema, in some cases, is going international, going the way of short films,
and going digital—skipping brick-and-mortar theaters altogether.
The struggles faced by Udta Punjab and its theme and content
exemplify the tectonic changes that Indian cinema is going through.
Something has been
happening in Indian cinema
recently. You know
it, you can feel it, you can
see it everywhere, and
yet there is no term to describe
it. The new movies
aren’t quite mainstream
as they have been, but
neither are they exactly
arthouse cinema. They
aren’t quite “commercial”
and they aren’t
quite “parallel.” A recent, excellent example
is Udta Punjab. Starring big Bollywood
stars like Alia Bhatt, Shahid Kapoor, and
Kareena Kapoor, Udta Punjab revolves
around the real life drug tragedy devastating
the state of Punjab. Unlike your
typical Bollywood film, though, this one
was drowned in controversy much like
typical art films, including endless troubles
with India’s infamous Central Board
of Film Certification (CBFC), leakage of
a pirated version online before release,
and so on. Yet, it has managed to collect
over Rs. 59 crores, as big mainstream
Bollywood formula films do.
(Right) Shot in only 20 days with a modest
budget of Rs. 3 crore (less than
half-a-million dollars), Raman
Raghav 2.0 earned back more
than double its costs by making
Rs. 6.7 crore in Indian theaters in
just 10 days.
Production houses like Phantom
Films—one of the two behind Udta Punjab—have been at the helm of blurring
the line between arthouse and commercial
cinema. Phantom’s home
in Oshiwara is airy and spacious—resembling a Delhi college
campus more than the film production
houses in the crowded,
air-starved suburb of Andheri, the
hub of the Hindi movie business.
A yellow airplane is parked on the
grass downstairs while four official
Phantom dogs, including one
called Dhishoom, laze around its
open kitchen. Upstairs, posters of
films like Gangs of Wasseypur and
Ugly hang proudly on the walls
of co-founder and veteran filmmaker
Anurag Kashyap’s office.
Several posters are in French because
they were screened at the
prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
Kashyap’s latest, Raman Raghav
2.0, also screened at Cannes, is a
psychological thriller based on
a notorious, real-life serial killer,
played by acclaimed actor Nawazuddin
Siddiqui, which forces viewers to reflect
on the darkness within themselves. Shot
in only 20 days, this small budget film—made for approximately Rs. 3 crore—earned back more than double its costs
by making Rs. 6.7 crore in Indian theaters
in 10 days.
(Left) Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak:
Even something in a niche, such
as this children’s film, has turned
out to be a hit.
Even a small film, and that, too,
something as niche as a children’s film
with an apparently limited audience, like
Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak is doing well.
While we don’t know the exact figures,
one would assume the costs to be even
less than Raman Raghav 2.0, since there
are no big actor names associated with
it. Dhanak collected Rs. 2.31 crores in five
days at the box office.
(Left) Brahman Naman:
An Indian avatar of
American Pie? Is this
the beginning of the
teen sex comedy genre
in India?
But it’s not the numbers alone that
point to the changing face of Indian
cinema. Look at the stories being told.
Brahman Naman—a sex comedy directed
by controversial filmmaker Qaushiq
Mukherjee was shown at the Sundance
Film Festival, one of the most high profile
film festivals in the world. The film
is about a bunch of nerds who form a
champion college quiz team. Their goals?
To win the all-India finals and lose their
virginity! Margarita with a Straw probes
the tale of a disabled person’s sexuality,
while Aligarh is a biopic about a professor
at Aligarh University who is suspended
from his job and his life made hell, only
because of his sexual orientation. Short
films are a trend in themselves, and
here too, we come across themes that
dive deep into social issues. Shamas
Nawab Siddiqui’s award-winning and
critically acclaimed social drama Miyan
Kal Aana screened at Cannes last year
and is merely 17 minutes long. Loosely
translating as “Mister Come Tomorrow,”
the film revolves around the little-understood
and controversial Nikah Halala
law of Islam. Judging by the incredible
diversity of these examples, it’s clear
that the storytelling traditions of Indian
cinema are undergoing tectonic shifts.
(Left) Parched traces the painful
struggles of four Indian women,
and their talk about men, sex,
and their lives in the parched
rural areas of Gujarat.
Cinema in India also has strange issues
of offense and censorship to battle.
He may not be a Khan, but the CBFC
(Central Board of Film Certification) head
Pahlaj Nihalani hogs headlines very often
for the seemingly endless instances
of censorship imposed not just on films
but also on their trailers—so much so,
that the Mumbai High Court asked him
to stop acting like a “grandmother” with
respect to a case against Udta Punjab. In
such an environment, the fact that a film
like Brahman Naman is a Netflix exclusive
releasing in July might seem like a miracle.
Film festivals are the other outlets.
Parched—which traces the painful struggles
of four Indian women, and their
talk about men, sex, and their lives in
the parched rural areas of Gujarat—premiered
at the well-reputed Toronto International
Film Festival (TIFF) last year
where it received a standing ovation.
Ever since, it has been traveling to every
major film festival across the world, as
well as playing in theaters in Europe.
(Left) Talvar is based on the infamous
Aarushi Talwar murder case
that shocked the nation in 2008.
Are these changes a mirror to real
life? Critically acclaimed actor Neeraj
Kabi would believe so. “There is a shift
in Indian society. It is very hard to put
Indian society into one place, but what
is happening at a very conscious [level]
is the appreciation of audiences for cinema
that isn’t just mindless entertainment.
Also, the lack of sensibilities in
societies at large, both European and
American, seems to have brought down
human empathy. Perhaps it’s capitalism,
perhaps terrorism, perhaps consumerism.
So viewers are looking at something
to make them reflect on who they are,
and many films are doing that for them,
like Talvar,” he says, referring to the film
based on the infamous Aarushi Talwar
murder case that shocked the nation
in 2008. There are other factors, opines
Kabi, for the sea change in film audiences’
tastes. “Thanks to foreign trips, going
abroad in throngs for higher education,
globalization, and arguably, most important
of all, the Internet—watching shows
like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones—Indian sensibilities of both filmmakers
and viewers are being exposed to the
kinds of cinema
that didn’t
happen before.
Both viewers
and filmmakers
want
greater freedom,
beyond
the bounds
of traditional
Bollywood fare, even though these are
smaller films.”
(Left) India’s official entry to the
Oscars this year, Court, was a
small budget film, apparently
made purely for the love of cinema,
by first-time director Chaitanya
Tamhane in a mixture of
languages including Marathi,
Hindi, Gujarati, and English.
Relative to previous big-budget entries
like Lagaan, India’s official entry to
the Oscars this year, Court, was therefore
almost absurd. It was a small budget
film, apparently made purely for
the love of cinema, by first-time director
Chaitanya Tamhane, in a mixture of
languages including Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati,
and English. The producer, Vivek
Gomber, is an actor who simply wanted
to be more in control of content, had a
good rapport with Tamhane, and so put
his entire life’s savings into producing
this film.
An absurdist portrayal of harrowing
injustice in Indian society, Court revolves
around the story of an elderly Dalit folk
singer who is arrested for the apparent
“suicide” of a sewage cleaner. As the
court case drags on—as court cases in
India do—filled with ridiculous excuses
and delays, the film delves into the lives
of the lawyers and the judge as well.
While nobody is sharing any numbers,
production houses from mainstream
cinema have also begun to sit
up and take notice of these trends. Even
as the star system and its mega-budget
films dominate Bollywood, with the
glossy song and dance numbers that big
production houses used to churn out in
the 90s, there’s now space for commercial
films that are far different: Badlapur,
NH 10, and Talvar, for example. Today, a
mainstream production house like Eros
finances a film like Aligarh, and the big
daddy of production houses, Yashraj
Films—famous for its glitzy, stereotypical
family dramas—greenlights a film
like Titli, which essentially deals with the
darker side of family relationships.
After making mainstream big budget
Bollywood films like Teen Patti and
Shabd—starring the likes of Amitabh
Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
respectively—Leena Yadav made
Parched. “After these films, I wanted
to make a film with no boundaries.
We made Parched with great difficulty.
It came out [because] I was dying to
tell the story,” says Yadav.
Going International
“In American indie cinema, there
are many films being made, but not
all are being released. We [in Indian
cinema] are in the same space,” says
London-based filmmaker Anu Menon.
“There’s the so-called big bad commercial
cinema, and there are these new
voices fighting to be heard. Earlier one
would say, ‘I make ‘Bollywood.’’ Now you
just say, ‘I am a filmmaker.’ Now, it’s
just cinema. It no longer matters where
it comes from. It is international cinema
that can just travel across like, say,
Lunchbox. Moreover, earlier watching a
Bollywood film was like an occasion,
like an experience, like we’re going out
to eat Indian food for dinner. Now, it’s
all about content, just like watching
a French film,” he says. His film Waiting
stars Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki
Koechlin in lead roles. Waiting showcases
a special relationship shared between
two people who befriend each other in
a hospital waiting room while nursing
their respective comatose spouses, and
who learn together to cope with grief
while simultaneously discovering hope.
Lunchbox, India’s entry to the Oscars
a few years ago, is a great example of
another trend—international collaborations.
The film, starring internationally
acclaimed actors Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin
Siddiqui, was jointly produced
by various studios in India as well as
the United States, Germany, and France.
Similarly, Parched is Yadav’s first international
feature film with Hollywood veterans.
Russell Carpenter, known for his
collaborations with James Cameron, shot
the film, and Oscar nominee Kevin Tent
edited it. Today, the film has a 91% rating
on Rotten Tomatoes. Masaan is among
the most well-known films of this breed:
an Indo-French
co-production, it
wowed Cannes last
year, won multiple
awards, and arguably
became the
poster child of independent
Indian cinema.
More will be
coming, as Manish
Mundra’s Drishyam
Films, the go-to production
house for
small-budget indie
cinema, has collaborated
with the renowned
Sundance
Institute to establish
the Drishyam Sundance Screenwriters
Lab to help writers develop their
work under international mentors.
(Right) Ahalya—the spooky short film
that went viral. “Short films are
a great trend. You get more freedom
to explore,” says filmmaker
Sudhir Mishra.
Going Short
Another trend has been that of
short films. Even established filmmakers
like Sujoy Ghosh (who delivered the
blockbuster called Kahaani) and Sudhir
Mishra are making short films like the
14-minute Ahalya and the 16-minute
Kirchiyaan, respectively. One big reason
is that these are low budget, take little
time to shoot, and find willing financial
backing from big brands like Royal Stag.
Finding financing for a film is still tough,
so the short film makes the filmmaker’s
life a little easier. “Short films are a great
trend. You get more freedom to explore.
You go back to that sense of freedom
that came with a small unit, like with
your first film. You are back in touch with
that initial impulse of why you wanted
to be a filmmaker,” says Sudhir Mishra.
Like Jack’s beanstalk in the fairytale,
the number of film festivals is growing
endlessly. Many of these especially
help short films, which, due to their
low production costs, enable aspiring
filmmakers to fulfill their dreams. Siddiqui’s
award-winning Miyan Kal Aana
for instance, has more than recovered its
costs while touring film festivals across
the world. Court, too, more than recovered
the money invested in making the
film through awards won at festivals
across the world.
“Festivals are amazing: you get critical
acclaim as well as commercial wins,
provided you make a truthful film,” says
Siddiqui. “Even a figment of imagination
should be presented with so much truth
that the audience should feel completely
with the character…we cannot smell
cinema but it should be so real that the
audience must be able to smell it. If the
film is about Bombay, viewers should
be able to smell Bombay. Award money
really goes a long way to reclaim your
costs. My suggestion to beginners would
be to first make short films and also target
festivals that pay, so you can aim to
recover your costs,” he says.
Going Digital
All kinds of revenue models have
crept up. Sandeep Mohan (who, ironically,
has assisted Sanjay Leela Bhansali,
famed for his mega budget Bollywood
films) now makes films for as little as Rs.
10 lakh. Instead of theaters, he takes his
films to his viewers, screening in living
rooms, offices, actually wherever anybody
is happy to offer a screening, all
over the world. He then asks the audience
to pay whatever they like, only if
they enjoyed the film.
Sure, theaters remain the “Holy
Grail” in India. But, according to Reuters
(quoting digital film distribution
network UFO Moviez),
India has about 10,000
cinema screens across a
country of 1.3 billion. This
means that for every million
people, there are less
than eight screens, compared
with 30 in China and
120 in the United States!
So even if India is the biggest movie
churner in the world, there are just not
enough theaters.
No wonder then, that the Indian,
and especially indie, filmmaker’s savior
remains the Internet. Netflix launched
this year in India, serving as manna to
smaller filmmakers. Film critic turned
filmmaker Sudhish Kamath made a lowbudget
indie film, Good Night, Good Morning.
Being in English, its audience was
even more limited. However, courtesy
of Netflix, Kamath claims to have recovered
a huge chunk of production costs.
Sailesh Dave, who produced Sulemani
Keeda, a low-budget indie comedy,
released it briefly in 40 theaters in six
different cities, where it ran for at most
three weeks (larger Bollywood films run
for much longer.) Not many television
and satellite channels were keen on buying
the rights. So they released the film
through The Viral Fever (TVG), a digital
entertainment channel, where people
could watch the film for as little as Rs. 99
(less than $2).
Seven out of 10 Indians watch at
least one online video per month. In
the next three years, nearly 90% of all
Internet data in India is expected to be
used towards streaming movies and
television. And by as soon as 2019, media
in video format is expected to grow
up to 74% of all Internet traffic in India.
Clearly, this new reel in Indian cinema
has not only arrived, but is all set to
grow longer both in terms of film making
and viewership.
Rituparna Chatterjee is a writer and
journalist who shuttles between San Francisco
and Mumbai. A former foreign correspondent
for The Economic Times, she is
currently writing two nonfiction books, including
an authorized memoir of the actor
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, to be published by
Penguin Random House India in 2017.
“Indian indie films made in regional languages
might be more viable commercially”
Following are excerpts from our interview with well-known filmmaker
ANURAG KASHYAP.
Indian [films] that are really
different will find themselves on
Netflix or YouTube because traditional
movie theaters will stop giving them that kind
of space. In a space-starved city like Mumbai especially,
there is no space to create any new multiplexes. Chinese
cinema, for instance, has evolved greatly because
they have more multiplexes. So every type of film gets
a chance. In India, the film doesn’t get its full run. And
today’s new kind of indie, experimental movies, take
time to pick up [and get noticed].
Several indie films are being made in the English
language today but again, they might not do as well unless
on, say, Netflix. Films like Bombay Boys, Hyderabad
Blues, and so on were made in the 1990s and had that
early mover advantage. They were funny and subversive
for that time.
Independent [films] that are made in regional languages
like Marathi and Bengali on the other hand,
have relatively more promising chances of doing better
commercially. If a film like Court, which uses four
languages including Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, and
English, was released as, say, a Marathi film, it would
have made a lot more money. It did not benefit from
the government subsidy of these regional language
films. Killa, a Marathi film, on the other hand made
nearly Rs. 12 crore.
“…Respect for
cinema as an art
form is missing in
this country.”
Excerpts from our interview with
TIGMANSHU DHULIA.
The whole point of giving cinema
weight as an art form just isn’t
there in India. We still make very bad films. Earlier,
the likes of Bimal Roy made many socially
relevant as well as commercially successful films.
It is this balance between commerce and art
which is missing in Indian cinema today. Filmmakers
like Mani Ratnam and Shekhar Kapur somewhat
bridged that through films like Roja or Bombay
and Bandit Queen.
The audience for arthouse cinema isn’t growing.
Until the 80s, some of the art films were still
seen in theaters. But then multiplexes came and
changed everything. Earlier, in the premultiplex
era, films stayed for much longer in theaters,
sometimes growing on the audience. They ran for
50 weeks, 70 weeks. And hence, silver jubilees of
Sholay or Mughal-e-Azam were celebrated.
Moreover, piracy is a huge problem. Unless
your film has a very big star, it is still very difficult
to show in theaters amidst all these constraints.
The solution is greater government support for arthouse
films and more, many more theaters.
But for that, cinema first needs to be respected
in India. Look at the French and the respect they
have for French cinema! Classical filmmakers like K.
Asif, who made Mughal-e-Azam, didn’t have a fancy
film school degree but he had such a reverence for
our culture and our language, and it showed in the
cinema he made. This reverence for our Indian history
and culture is missing in filmmakers who grew
up in Bombay. Many of them are ignorant about the
politics and the realities of our country. Neither do
they have any compassion for our country. So it is
actually filmmakers like myself, Anurag Kashyap,
Sujoy Ghosh, and others…we are all from small
towns and educated and hence, our cinema reflects
the realities of India, something that you don’t find
in the lineage of well-known Bombay filmmakers.
Tigmanshu Dhulia is an award-winning filmmaker,
director, casting director and actor. His film Paan Singh Tomar
won the National Award for Best Feature Film in 2012; his film
Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster gained much critical acclaim. He
also wrote Mani Ratnam’s celebrated film Dil Se, starred in cult
film Gangs of Wasseypur and was the Casting Director for
Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen.
“The filmmaker is the
most vulnerable person
in this country today.”
Excerpts from our interview with
BIKAS
RANJAN MISHRA.
The indie filmmaker is the most vulnerable
person in India today. Making a film has its share
of difficulties, but getting it released is a whole different
scenario. My film Chauranga is a social drama
set in rural India. The story is of a Dalit [lowercaste]
boy who is killed for writing a love letter. The
Censor Board wanted several scenes to be deleted:
a love making scene with cuss words being used
and a scene showing a Dalit boy being tormented.
If I wouldn’t have cut them, my film would have
been banned. I don’t understand this…on one
side, Mastizaade, a typical big budget commercial
Bollywood sex comedy, made in such bad taste,
gets an A [adult] certificate. So shouldn’t they certify
a social commentary like Chauranga also thus,
with an A certificate? But if I had not adhered to
the five cuts then I don’t get any certification at all,
which is censorship. Nobody openly uses the word
“banned,” but you are being denied [certification] if
the Censor Board’s cuts aren’t followed, and without
certification, who will screen your film?
National Award-winning filmmaker Kamal
Swaroop’s documentary Dance of Democracy / Battle
for Banaras based on the historic Narendra Modi-Arvind Kejriwal electoral fight in May 2014 wasn’t
even given certification. Why?—because it showed
the Indian Prime Minister in a bad light. It’s a documentary
with real life footage. So it is okay to use
vulgar rhetoric in real life, but you cannot depict it
on screen. Without certification, the film can only
be shown in festivals—that, too, a select few.
The standards [of the Indian Censor Board]
are different for Hollywood and Indian cinema. For
example, the trailer of a film like Aligarh [based on
the real life story of a professor at Aligarh University,
who was fired because of his sexual orientation]
was given an Adult certificate only because
it discussed the subject of homosexuality. But a
film like The Danish Girl has full
frontal nudity but gets through!
Aligarh, on the other hand,
isn’t about the depiction of
the human body but the
depiction of a certain type
of sexuality. So the current
Censor Board has double standards. It also doesn’t
seem to fear nudity. But it is here to curtail the politics
of sexuality.
Then, every ministry wants a say in cinema because
they realize the power and the glamour of cinema.
Shouldn’t they be regulating the sales of cigarettes
rather than [coming after filmmakers]? Isn’t it bizarre
that we stand up to sing the national anthem while
watching mindless sex comedies like Mastizaade or Kya
Kool Hain Hum?
Another layer of censorship comes from bodies
which have nothing to do with cinema in the first
place. The Animal Welfare Board of India, which has no
idea about cinema or the nuances of film making, demands
to see your script. Your film hasn’t even been
made. There is control at the script level itself. So that’s
pre-censorship! I understand, appreciate, and support
the idea that animals should not be harmed in the
making of a film. But the authorities need to understand
cinema, how films are made and how to read
a script. If a person is being killed in a film, obviously
he is not being killed in reality. It is the same with [an]
animal. We had an insanely difficult time in Chauranga
with the scene of a pig [a character named Motki] being
killed on screen, but obviously the wounds were all
makeup and in reality the pig actor was pampered rather
than harmed. The body is illiterate when it comes to
the process of film making and the medium of cinema.
In India everybody has an upper hand over
the filmmaker. The filmmaker is just not respected in
this country.
Bikas Ranjan Mishra is the writer/director of the awardwinning
film Chauranga and a short film, Dance of Ganesha.
He has served on the juries of Cannes Critics Week, International
Film Festival Kerala, and Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian
Cinema, Delhi.
A proliferation of roles for actors
Excerpts from our interview with TILLOTAMA SHOME.
If you are an optimist, then on a certain day you
wake up and feel that yes, there is a new wave of Indian
cinema. But if you wake up pessimistic, then it feels
like old wine in a new bottle. So it’s a matter of perspective.
An actor’s life, though, is so fragile, so vulnerable,
and so at the mercy of others. So an actor’s sense of
self plays a huge part in maintaining sanity even in
today’s scenario.
What’s different now is that the Internet is a huge
deal and it is just at the beginning of its explosion. It is
about content and the future of this content will not
be ruled by the rules of regular cinema. There is a lot
of independence; censorship is missing right now on
the web, which, too, is a good thing. The storylines don’t
have to be ruled by the rules of commercial cinema.
The roles are not necessarily “hero-driven.” So the explosion
of the web has given an actor a space that he or
she wants to make.
The idea of the spectator has changed, too. In India,
where theatres are still such a big deal, people are
watching films on their phones. But it is a great space
for actors like us, who are not stars, to get good roles
and give good performances. But also, well-known
faces like the actor Radhika Apte and filmmaker
Sujoy Ghosh [who made
the popular thriller Kahaani]
have explored this
format. [Ghosh made a
short film available on You-Tube called Ahalya staring Apte,
which went viral.]
Nayantara’s Necklace [a short film about middle
class aspirations co-starring Konkona Sen] was shot
in just two days. I had done a short film called Boond
in the pre-digital era in India for content. When Boond
released in 2009, there was no market for short films.
Today, it might have done better. With short films being
shown on YouTube, what was earlier a showreel for
a new director has become a legitimate way for storytelling.
And so us actors are getting to do roles we just
wouldn’t get to do otherwise.
Tilottama Shome is an award-winning actress who was first
etched in public memory for her role as Alice, the domestic help in
Mira Nair’s film Monsoon Wedding and more recently for her
award-winning performance in Qissa, also starring Irrfan Khan.