The feeling I remember from my conversation with filmmaker Leena Yadav is a constant oscillation between utter ease and extreme nervousness. Sitting with us at the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival 2023 in Guwahati, Assam, Leena is as candid as ever, but this is a filmmaker who made the breathtaking Parched! To her credit, the conversation would put any film lover at ease; it flows between her thoughts on post-pandemic cinema, the evolution of queer cinema, to her experiments with format and her favourite titles from recent times (Past Lives and The Fall of the House of Usher).
Firstly, Leena is elated with her first-ever visit to the BVFF. “This is a community of passionate people who truly support cinema,” she says. Who better than Leena to speak about the culture of film festivals? Parched premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival while her Rajma Chawal premiered at the 2018 BFI London Film Festival. One would assume that the changes the pandemic brought to the larger narrative in mainstream cinema would trickle down and affect the sense of community that film festivals offer. Leena, however, believes that the community and the culture have come back with more purpose. “Priority shifts have happened to all of us in our lives — which will be more visible in a few years when we are fully reeled out of the shock — but why we are doing what we are doing with film festivals has become clearer.”
Festival director Tanushree Hazarika felicitates filmmaker Leena Yadav at the opening ceremony of the 8th edition of the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival, in Jyoti Chitrabon Film Studio, Guwahati, Assam | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Streaming platforms’ role in the mainstream, ‘Parched’ on Prime Video, and more
In our conversation with BVFF’s Festival Director, Tanushree Hazarika, she said that streaming platforms are helping indie films or small films that play at festivals get wider reach; Leena agrees. “A lot of these films used to disappear after the festival. Television was completely driven by theatrical success but not OTT; so even if they have a niche audience, they are still available online.” Having transitioned from an ad filmmaker to a television director to a feature filmmaker and a documentary filmmaker/series creator, Leena has seen cinema transition across mediums. While she agrees that OTT has not democratised all of cinema and that the star system is very much alive, she stresses it has given rise to new voices in cinema.
She says that there will be room for different types of storytelling in cinema and that there will be a clearer demarcation between what people like to watch on the big screen (like, the larger-than-life spectacle films) and on streaming. This is, however, in conflict with what many filmmakers have accused OTTs of — that they require your pitch to have some “commercially viable” elements. Leena says that for this, we shouldn’t turn towards the streamers, but towards the audiences. “Because what we forget — I am allowed to forget this because I am a filmmaker (laughs) — is that it is a business that has to make sense. You make films to reach the maximum audience and to make economic sense, so the challenge is in finding a distribution for your niche.”
In doing that, we need to understand that we are a star-struck culture, she adds. “We can’t blame this on one thing. I mean, the star culture is also why Parched (starring Radhika Apte and presented by Ajay Devgn), amongst all that it got, brought people to the theatres. A Jawan or a Pathaan needs lesser publicity than a Parched but a Parched cannot afford that publicity.” The innovation to strike a balance has to come from within the system, she says. “We can’t run OTT and theatres against each other; they are serving the purposes that make sense to them.”
With Parched streaming on a platform available across 240 countries and territories worldwide, you’d assume that Leena would have gotten more feedback from viewers around the world since the digital premiere. “Strangely, no; a lot of people who speak to me about Parched speak about the theatre experience. This is not to say that it wasn’t watched because these platforms certainly have the potential for crazy reach. It just didn’t happen with Parched. With Rajma Chawal, I got calls overnight from friends across the world, which had never happened before.”
Experiments with format and genre, and where queer cinema stands now
As of now, Leena has dabbled in multiple genres across formats, and she still hasn’t ceased experimenting; she’s currently making short films and one might expect more non-fiction from the House of Secrets: The Burari Deathscreator. “I need to keep rediscovering because you need to keep learning and unlearning. I am interested in human stories with interesting psyches and moralities, regardless of the genre, and I want to keep challenging myself.” After being introduced to the short film format, Leena understood that she shouldn’t just use it to tell shorter features. “This format has to define something else and we need to create a language for it. So now I am making short films and I am using a lot of abstraction to accelerate the story. I am also challenging myself with keeping words to the minimum and just playing more with visuals and sound. That’s exciting”
Now, how does Leena, a fan of Pedro Almodovar, and a filmmaker who has an interest in queer narratives, believe such themes have evolved in recent years? “We have reached a space of at least acknowledging that we don’t have this. But right now, I think, we are in a space where we are more concerned about ticking boxes.” A kind of tokenism exists in attempts that want to seem politically correct, she feels. “This is a phase we need to pass to reach a space where such themes are naturally part of the narrative because they are naturally part of life. I think we are still in the awkward phase of really accepting it.”
Balancing drama with facts and why composer AR Rahman is her favourite collaboration
She might be a graduate in mass communications with a penchant for non-fiction but Leena doesn’t believe that all filmmakers should balance dramatic movements with facts in their films. “After doing House of Secrets, I realised through experience that reality is much more dramatic and stranger than fiction. Whether your film is dramatic or factual, your film language will make all the difference. So that’s where the filmmaker and their craft come in.” Some day, she hopes to conduct an experiment on this: “You give the same script to five different filmmakers and see what they make.”
Leena, in the four feature films that she has made, has worked with the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Ben Kingsley, Sanjay Dutt and others. Surely, like most, she would have felt a tinge of nervousness before shooting with these veterans, but her advice to a young filmmaker who is about to work with a star is this: “Everybody has a different experience with everybody. When you are collaborating, you are vulnerable. The moment you feel endangered, you immediately get your walls up. So what I am with you need not be true for others. I listen to everybody’s opinion but I know that the experience will differ.”
Speaking about collaborations, Leena says teaming up with AR Rahman for House of Secrets was an experience she’d always cherish as one of the two most favourite collaborations she has had, with Parched music composer Hitesh Sonik being the other.
“I was in awe for obvious reasons but Rahman made the process so open and I could communicate anything with him. Even if someone isn’t in the know about the nitty-gritty of music, he will find a language to be able to communicate with him. So, with any technician, you need to find a language to communicate in, but with him, it felt effortless. I am waiting for an opportunity to have something brilliant enough to take to him again because there’s so much to learn from him,” she says.
Poster of ‘Cowgirl’s Last Ride’ | Photo Credit: @leenaclicks/Instagram
So what is Leena Yadav up to now? She last directed a short called Sharing A Ride, starring Jacqueline Fernandez, as a segment in an anthology called Tell It Like A Woman, which had seven filmmakers from seven countries telling a story with a female protagonist. “I just shot a short film in the first week of December in Ladakh. And I am waiting for my film Cowgirl’s Last Ride to happen, which I am hoping should happen next year,” she signs off.
The interviewer was in Jyoti Chitrabon Film Studio, Guwahati, Assam, at the invitation of the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival
