New Delhi: A panel discussion with the theme – ‘Young Filmmakers of India: Emerging Voices and Narratives’ with Karthik Subbaraj, R S Prasanna, Bhaskar Hazarika, & Raja Krishna Menon, brilliantly moderated by writer-filmmaker Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari started off on Day 4 of IFFI 2017.
Bollywood has witnessed a new crop of brilliant storytellers over the past few years and these new cinematic voices are unique in the manner in which they employs accessible methods to tell socially rooted stories that exists beyond India’s dynamic metropolitan centers. This panel compromise of few of these successful and path-breaking filmmakers who have in the recent past made far reaching content driven films with unconventional tales set in real places and among the people.
Ashwiny made her directorial and writing debut with critically-acclaimed movie ‘Nil Battey Sannata’, Tamil remake of ‘Amma Kannaku’ and also the romantic comedy ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi’. Talking about the new emergence of new storytellers, she said, “Over the last few years, Hindi cinema industry has witnessed various filmmakers who came from outside and just with their stories made their mark in the industry. The stories that they have showcased are fearless and the time has come when the audience has started accepting such stories without bothering about the actors featuring in it.”
“After making three films, I’ve ealized that it’s not easy to go out and tell your own stories. But now there are producers waiting for filmmakers like us who wants to say good stories,” she adds.
Bhaskar Hazarika says, “Subtitles work because if people in India are watching Korean films, they can watch a Manipuri film too with subtitles, except that as filmmakers we have to be conscious that we cannot have very dialogue-heavy films, because we can’t make people read all the time. So we try to do films which have less dialogue but the scenes explain a lot. I struggled for five-six years in Bombay and I realized the problem is that Hindi is not my first language. I was not able to convert my stories for the Hindi-speaking audience. Which is when I went back home and I started working in Assamese and funnily enough now when I meet producers, they advise me to make films in all Indian languages because they tend to travel more.”
Says R. S Prasanna, “It all goes back to the fact that there’s a lot of potential to being jobless. When you’re jobless, you’re walking around film festivals without being a filmmaker which is what I was, before I did Kalyana Samayal Saadham, that’s the best phase of my life. You’re training together with friends, hopping from one film to another, you’re criticizing other filmmakers. That’s the best high you can ever get. Thanks to Tamil cinema, a movie like Kalyana Samayal Saadham could happen because it is independently produced and released in a very small manner. Because word of mouth it picked up. Also because I was interacting with real people on the ground. I had not assisted anybody. I don’t come from the industry. It’s only an outsider who can possibly think of crazy ideas.”
Raja Krishna Menon says, “The film that got me really noticed is Barah Aana as a festival film. When I made the film, I thought there was a story and I thought I had to tell it and I told it in the best way I could. It was called a festival and art-house film. I was shocked because I never meant to make it like that. But I heard a very interesting review which said that this is exactly Manmohan Desai except that it’s garbed in reality. So I think when you go into reality people start accepting it. The film is about an under-dog and the treatment makes it interesting. It gets slotted very early and once it gets slotted it gets very difficult switch that slot. So I think that is changing hugely. You can tell a story even though you may not have the best production quality. But the stories are coming out. As the stories are coming out, producers are learning if there are 100000 people who want to watch it on YouTube there must be others out there who could be interested as well. We are breaking barriers.”
The 48th Edition of IFFI will take place from the 20th to 28th of November, 2017 in the beach state of Goa. IFFI is India’s biggest and Asia’s oldest film festival, making it one of the most prestigious in the world.
