“I was a good writer”
“I was a good writer,” said Gulzar after watching the screening of Libaas at International Film Festival of India. The film was screened as the opening film of his retrospective at the festival. "Watching in the presence of my grandson I was a little nervous as people might find it dated, Aasman will come to know what his Bade Miyaan did but after watching it, my faith in my writing and human relationships is vindicated. Perhaps songs could have been shot better.” Screened almost 26 years after it was made, Gulzar said even he had forgotten about the Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi starrer. "In those days we used to send a copy for Panorama soon after completion largely to save the excise duty."
The film was never released in theatres and Gulzar said efforts to release the film through video didn't come through because the producers were against it.
He thanked the Directorate of Film Festivals for the thoughtful gesture.
No place for Famine
During his session at NFDC's Film Bazaar on recreating the city of 1943 Calcutta for his upcoming film Byomkesh Bakshy , director Dibakar Banerjee was asked how can he set the film in 1943 and ignore the great Bengal famine. Dibakar said the film is an escapist fare, a detective story set around the World War II and the bombing of Calcutta by Japanese in December 1942.
“This story has no space for famine. Had my villain been a food hoarder and Bakshy had to crack his case then I would have definitely discussed the famine part. In this story if I had brought the shots of famine it would have been tokenism and even reprehensible.”
Defence mechanism
Vidhu Vinod Chopra was at his candid best during his masterclass at Film Bazaar. Laced with four letter words, his talk was both emotional and informative at the same time. Towards the end, Director Shekhar Kapurtook him on in his inimitable gentle way when he asked him if Chopra allows his personal ego to come in the way of his creative ego. Chopra responded, “The place of personal ego is in dustbin. But like Shekhar I haven’t studied abroad. I came from DAV College and when I joined FTII I hadn’t heard about Shakespeare and Hamlet. I thought Sigmund Freud was a European filmmaker. And when my first film Khamosh didn’t find any buyers for a year despite lavish praise I was almost shattered. In this scenario cuss words became a sort of defence for me. The good thing with them is they convey the thought in two words.” Shekhar asked if he had one for him, sending the crowd into raptures. Chopra said now it has become part of his being and if he doesn’t use them people around him feel that he was not normal.
“It happened with my assistant recently, whom I had not abused for a month. He looked uncomfortable. And one day when I asked him what's the matter by adding a cuss word to it. He said, now it’s ok. I thought tussi mujhse naraaz ho .”
