In Conversation With Jahnu Barua

What made you shift base from Assam to Mumbai and from Assamese cinema to Hindi cinema?

I have always had a lot of offers from Mumbai to make movies in Hindi. But I took time to decide. The obvious reason is that there are much better opportunities there and I do not have to face many constraints as with Assamese cinema. As an artist, you always want to reach out to a wider audience.

Do you miss home?

Not really. Mainly because home is where I am. My family is with me always. Plus I can go back anytime I want. There is nothing tying me down, so there is no forced feeling. In fact, I am keen on working on Assamese cinema from Mumbai.

What about the feeling of being an outsider in Mumbai?

All this goes on inside you. If you choose to think of yourself as an outsider, you become one. I am at home in Mumbai. I don’t know about what others think of me though. May be, they do look at me as an outsider!

You worked with mainstream Hindi film actors like Urmila Matondkar, Preity Zinta and Dharmendra in your recent films. How different or difficult has this experience been compared to earlier days of working with Assamese artists?

Frankly speaking, I hardly found any difference. It is mainly because the moment I don the director’s hat, I am who I am supposed to be whether to Urmila or an Assamese artist. I never let artists take advantage of their star status on my sets. If they come late, I sternly tell them not to repeat it. But surprisingly, both the girls – Urmila and Preity – were very professional in their approach during Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara and Har Pall.

You have won multiple awards for your work. How important are they for an artist? How instrumental have they been in your career?

They are important, but not to the extent that you make films just for winning awards. At the end of the day, you make films for an audience, not a jury. Awards are just tokens of appreciation, a bonus. They have helped me no doubt, and instil a level of responsibility to do better work.

You have been on the jury for National Awards and have won quite a few too. What is your take on the recent controversy of 2008 awards being rigged?

The process, as it is, is very democratic. But it depends on the jury that is appointed every year. We are all subjective at one level or the other.

Who are the Indian filmmakers who have influenced you the most?

None. It is one of the first lessons taught at FTII, not to be influenced by anybody. I have favourites, of course, and that includes Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Bimal Roy.

In Memory Of A Master

For a nation that is so doped on cinema as we are, we live too much in the present; often forgetting the glory of our past. A week long celebration held in Hyderabad to mark the centenary year of Bimal Roy, one of the finest filmmakers India has ever had, did a precious lot in reminding the city of this movie master.

Organised by the Bimal Roy Centenary Committee in collaboration with Moving Images, Hyderabad, from January 26 to February 1, the event presented an interesting concoction of slices from Bimal Roy’s work and life. It began with the screening of a short film Bimal Roy doesn’t live here anymore and unveiling of Reflections – on cities and spaces, an exhibition of rare architectural photographs shot by Bimalda, at Kalakriti Art Gallery. “The photographs were shot during my father's extensive travels where he captured structures, people and nature,” says Aparajita Roy Sinha, his daughter and convenor-founding member of Moving Images.

World of Bimal Roy, another exhibition of rare photographs from his life, some of them captured by his wife Manobina Roy, was on display on the first floor of Prasad’s Imax from January 27 to 31. The photographs were shipped from Kolkata exclusively for this event.

That music was part of Bimalda’s cinematic narrative as much as the story, is something that his admirers would vouch for. The innovations he tried to bring on screen while picturising some of the best melodies that S D Burman or Salil Chowdhury have composed were pathbreaking (remember the first ever telephonic love song of India ‘Jalte hain jiskeliye’ from Sujata?). So it was only befitting that the centenary committee honoured veteran singer Manna Dey and actor Jagdeep at a glitzy ceremony at The Marriott on January 28, which the city’s cream de la cream attended. The ‘90 years young’ singer also gave a live performance along with Geeta Varma which left listeners awestruck.

Bimal Roy Retrospective, a film festival that featured nine masterpieces of the director, was of course the highlight of the celebrations. Do Bikha Zameen, Bandini, Sujata, Devdas, Parineeta, Madhumati, Parakh, Yahudi and Udayer Pathey (Bengali, Bimalda’s first film) were screened at Prasad’s Imax and Cinemax from January 29 to 31. Remembering Bimal Roy, a documentary directed by his son Joy Roy was also screened as part of the festival. It gave a fantastic peek into the life of a man who, according to Manobina Roy, believed only in one ‘ism’ – humanism! “It was a spiritual journey for me to find a link to my father whom I hardly knew. While filming it, I discovered how much people loved and respected him,” says Joy Roy.

The first few shows of the festival had half filled audis. However, the houseful shows towards the end made it clear that Hyderabadis gave a lot of mouth publicity to the event. At the screening of the closing film Sujata, Bimal Roy’s daughter and documentary film maker Rinki Roy Bhattacharya commented to a gargantuan crowd, some even seated on the floor, that such a response was unimaginable in Mumbai where there were too many distractions.

The week long cinematic extravaganza ended on a sober note with a one day symposium on ‘Outsiders, Migrants and the Indian Middle Class in Bimal Roy’s films’ held at University of Hyderabad. Jahnu Barua, the national award winning Assamese filmmaker, Suresh Chabbria, the renowned film historian from FTII, Pune, and Maithili Rao, the noted film critic, were the speakers at the symposium organised in collaboration with the UGC SAP on Visual Culture by Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication.

Passionately For Pina

It was wild and mystical at the same time. It also magically encapsulated the passion of the artist the performance was dedicated for. For Pina…, a performance in homage to the German choreographer Pina Bausch, was put together by the Bangalore-based Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts (ACMA) on February 2 at Qutb Shahi Tombs. Pina, one of the biggest names in the global contemporary dance scene, had succumbed to cancer in June 2009.

Department of Tourism, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Andhra Pradesh, collaborated with Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad in organising this site-specific promenade performance. This means that while the performers moved around utilising the space of the magnificient heritage site, in a choreography that was not confined to a stage, the audience shifted with them too.

Jayachandran Palazhy, trained at Kalakshetra, Chennai, and the London Contemporary Dance School, choreographed the performance. The theme was man-woman relationship in a contemporary context, a favourite of Pina too. Jay, also the founder of ACMA, had worked with her when she toured India.

Jay’s team of dancers, who oozed energy in every sense of the word, was a delight to watch. Like possessed spirits unconscious of their bodies, they soared far and wide. Draped in sensuous red, they illustrated perfectly how a performance that comes from the depths of artistes’ hearts can invigorate the souls of even those who are not trained in art.

The sound technology put to use was out of the world. Hyderabad has probably not seen before speakers shaped like dolphin, snail, horse and what not! Live Electronics specialists Lorenzo Brusci and Luca Cnciella created a surreal environment with their compositions and fancy gadgets. A video installation designed by Chris Zeigler formed the perfect background for the act. Particularly, the effects for the part where Jay enacted drowning were breathtaking.

The event, which was inaugurated by Information and Public Relations Minister Dr. J Geetha Reddy, also had Jayesh Ranjan IAS and Padmasri Dr. Ananda Shankar Jayant as Guests of Honour. Ananda also introduced the troupe and the act to a limited but keen audience. The performance was followed by the screening of a documentary on Pina Bausch.