Small film, big impact

Nitin Kakkar, director of Filmistaan, tells sudhish kamath, how he took his first steps into filmdom

June 21, 2014 06:35 pm | Updated 06:35 pm IST

Filmistaan

Filmistaan

“How do we recognise each other? What song are you going to sing for me to find you,” I text the director of Filmistaan , when he agrees to meet me for an interview by the café down the street.

He laughs it off texting: “See you there.”

“I wanted to say Jahaan Teri Yeh Nazaar Hai,” the 38-year-old Nitin Kakkar admits when I meet him for an interview to find out how he got his small film that big a release. Excerpts:

Let’s start with the flashback. How did you get to this point?

I wanted to go to Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, but they had this thing about being a graduate... I still don’t understand the education system. Why do you need a degree if you want to do films? So I did my graduation in commerce. Debit what goes in, credit what goes out is NOT what I wanted to learn. So I decided I can’t fight the system and learnt filmmaking on the job. Film schools abroad are very expensive. So I did music videos, assisted on films. My first short film was in 2004. I was very choosy about films and directors I wanted to assist. But that’s the mistake I made. If you want to learn, you should be able to learn from any director. You will learn how to do it or how not to do it.

Do you want to talk about films and directors you assisted?

I assisted in a Marathi film called Devki but was uncredited. Then, I assisted Shhh (the film with Dino Morea and Tanisha)… and I eventually started getting TV offers. So I did TV for five years.

I didn’t do soaps because it would be a full-time job. I took up one-off episodes for Crime Patrol, Shhh Koi Hain and CID Special Bureau … that would take about eight days of my month and would spend the rest of the time writing. TV teaches you to work fast.

WasFilmistaanthe first script you wrote?

I was working on another film that had five stories of Manto. It was meant to be a black and white film. But nobody wanted to make that because it was a dark, stark, festival film script and I was never able to raise finance for it. So when the bank balance used to go down, I would go fish for TV gigs. Then I got to assist on We are Family because the director Siddharth was a friend. I had never worked on an A-List set-up until then. So it was great fun. Then, one day, I hit upon the idea of Filmistaan . It started off with the idea of a guy who makes his own hostage video. It sounded unbelievable but I wanted to make a film about the power of our cinema. People around the world may not know who our Prime Minister or President is, they may not even know Shah Rukh Khan or Kajol … but they know Raj and Simran. Films have a way of taking you to places you have never been and introduce you to a culture. So somewhere in this jigsaw of wanting to do something commercial and an attempt to weave in Bollywood, Filmistaan was born.

Did Sharib Hashmi get dialogue credit for his improvisation or was he a writer who became the lead?

Sharib and I worked on the Manto script. He is an encyclopaedia on Bollywood films. He had mentioned that he wanted to act and so we auditioned him along with others, but maybe because he was one of the writers he was able to grasp the character better than the others who auditioned. While others were going for slapstick, he got the sur for the role right.

How did you decide how realistic or filmy the film should be?

I never thought about it. I don’t believe in slapstick. I knew that because the situations were unbelievable, the performances needed to be real. So I gave the story a fable-like dreamy feel but the backdrop was rigid and rough. We used Bollywood clichés with a twist as part of the script. This is 80s ka Bollywood cinema, but coming from a world cinema perspective.

Did you shoot alternate filmy endings?

No, this is the ending I had in mind. There were only two options. One they cross, two they die. Crossing was too convenient and killing them would have been too depressing. This is my film, my story, so I knew I could give the ending I wanted… I know that you cannot defeat terrorism, but my heart didn’t agree to these guys losing the battle. Whether they cross or not… they are still somewhere there, trying to cross in the middle of all the gunfire. The day both countries open up to each other is the day they will cross.

What are you doing next?

I have signed a film with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. I am very tired, so I am going to take a short break and start fresh. I have seen that filmmakers make the same thing again and again. So I want to work on other people’s scripts before starting on my own. I want to find the balance between one of my own and one from outside. I am not really a writer. We wrote Filmistaan ourselves because we didn’t have money to hire writers.

Sharib is getting a lot of films now?

He is getting offers. He has two scripts in his bag and he’s yet to read but he is getting a lot of love for the film.

And the Manto film you wanted to make?

I don’t think I will make it. What I wanted to say with that film, I’ve already said it in Filmistaan . Filmistaan is what happened when Sunny Arora met the soul of Manto.

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