Kartikey Sehgal

[The author met actor Joy Sengupta who talked about his vision for Indian cinema.]

Joy Sengupta wants to develop films that cater to an international audience and the local Indian masses.

Movies should have fierce locality and a global vision. Movie watching should be an experience. It should make you grow from within.

That’s subject to movie-making…

That too should be an experience. Otherwise we’ll have masala films like *** and *** and ***. I am tired of Indian cinema that has been run over by Bollywood

How?

Everywhere, Indian films are being recognised by the term Bollywood. It’s something similar to what happened in the late seventies and early eighties when Hollywood ate up films from France and Italy. Good French films were being designed on Hollywood ideals.

Even today, the French could be ignoring their local French film for a Hollywood feature starring some popular stars.

European cinema is superb and America has some fine Independent film makers. Jim Jarmusch is well known and Woody Allen gets good response in Europe.

Even there (Europe), the industry is run by Hollywood or Hollywood style films.

Have you been there and seen it?

(Nods) Yes.

What’s your ‘vision’ for Indian cinema?

Film development. To develop some films that are very local and yet have a global vision or global aesthetics.

Why develop and not make such a film instead?

Yes, to develop ideas and then to make a film on them.

Distinction in cinema can be simplified; there’s good cinema and there’s not good cinema… art and commerce…

Art and commerce are just… there’s good cinema or bad cinema.

So good cinema is naturally global, why the emphasis on global vision?

There are certain aesthetics that are global in nature. So the idea would be to remain local and carry the common global idea.

So aesthetics aren’t common?

No. There are some important common aesthetics…

Which aesthetics are not common to cultures?

I’ll give you an example. The film Children of Heaven tends towards neo-realism and children play a very important role in it. Now a filmmaker in India will realize the importance of the theme and make a film. He would source the theme from Children of Heaven and localize it to cater to the Indian mindset.

I saw a Japanese film where there is a long stage performance about Japanese culture and its subject is very alien to Indians. I liked it but some may not understand it. However, the idea that the sequence is important for the film and the filmmaker has not compromised on the quality makes it important and relevant.

Yes…

You’d say that the song and stage makes the theme common to Indians and not the performance or the idea behind the performance per se…

The song and culture would make it common to Indians.

But the Japanese filmmaker may not have made the film with the view to cater to Indian people

That’s where the idea of common aesthetics comes into picture. You have to include them to make the film universally appealing.

And that’s what you want to do

The talk ended soon thereafter with the idea of another such meeting.

Photo taken from here.