Meenakshi Shedde watches movies for a living, usually on her laptop, often on the move. But occasionally she sneaks in a show at Mumbai’s Gaiety Galaxy. Here, the popcorn and samosas are still priced like they were in the 1980s; nobody uses pretentious words such as ‘concessionaire’ that make her “break out into a purple rash”; and she can tell exactly what the audience thinks of the film. “It’s a multiplex with a 100% single screen mentality,” she says. Two decades earlier, she used to be a regular at Deepak Talkies in Parel, watching “any old trash” with the area’s workers. “I need to know what is working with the public. I like to keep my feet on the ground.” She took that philosophy to its literal extreme last year when she wore a pair of ₹100 black Bata rubber shoes on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet as it was forecast to rain heavily.
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Shedde has been on the jury of 25 top film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin and Venice. She was a Golden Globe Awards International Voter in 2023, the only one from India, and is a member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy in Australia. She’s a curator/ consultant for film festivals in at least three continents; has contributed to/ edited 21 books, mostly on cinema; and directed and helped produce documentaries. She’s curator and advisor to the upcoming Berlin Film Festival or Berlinale where, for 26 years, she has helped select films. Last year, she helped platform a former Jadavpur University student whose love for Farsi drove her to make Be Kucheye Khoshbakht, a documentary about Iranian cinema and poetry. Shedde brings South Asia’s cinematic creativity to the world.
Shedde with other jury members at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week 2023 | Photo Credit: Pascal Le Segretain
Watching 550 films
She talks faster than I can type — and is a little alarmed when she finds out I’m not recording the interview. When I ask her age, a requirement of this newspaper, she says she finds the question ageist and, as she always does, “cheerfully skips answering it”. She also doesn’t like answering questions about how many films she watches during the year because, she says, calculating the number might paralyse her. “I will self-destruct if I keep track,” she says. In 2022, she later reveals, when the demands of the Golden Globes and Berlinale coincided, she watched at least 550 films.
Through global script labs, she’s mentored many filmmakers and some have won prestigious awards for those films: such as Singaporean Yeo Siew Hua, whose A Land Imagined won the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival in 2018, or Iraqi Mohanad Hayal, whose Haifa Street won the New Currents Award at the Busan Film Festival in 2019.
She makes copious notes on every subject, from the films she needs to watch to her dream of using her curatorial skills and contacts to facilitate a museum of Dalit history and culture, inspired by global projects such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her second resume lists her nearly three decades of experience in gender and development issues.
Shedde watched P.S. Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali, a searing portrayal of patriarchy that wants to exorcise a woman’s right to choose her own partner, during a visit to Chennai to meet director Pa. Ranjith. It will have its world premiere at the Berlinale next month, and become the first Tamil film to be screened at the festival. Vinothraj’s debut Koozhangal was India’s Oscar pick for 2021.
Though Shedde is “insanely fond of Bengali” and began learning the language through its lyrical songs, she says that Bengali films, once at the top of their game, have now lost to Malayalam cinema. Tamil cinema comes a close second, she adds. She’ll never forget how Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi got an overwhelming greeting at the International Film Festival of Kerala in 2018. “A stadium full of people roared when he came on stage.” She’s seen everyday Malayalam audiences cheer hard when Javier Bardem’s name appears on the credits and has noticed that film posters in the State showcase a different kind of star. “On posters, the cinematographer and screenwriter get top billing. Everyone knows Syam Pushkaran has written the film or Shyju Khalid has worked on the film,” she says. Malayalam filmmakers’ best reward is their knowledgable audience, she believes.
Cuts, more cuts
She has also had a front row seat to the censorship that has shadowed Indian cinema in recent years. The latest instance was Honey Trehan’s Punjab ’95, based on the life of prominent human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, that was withdrawn from the Toronto International Film Festival. Reports said the censors asked for 21 cuts and wanted the name ‘Punjab’ removed from the title, and then asked for more cuts. “There’s no end to the harassment. It’s heart wrenching,” she says. “Now even things in government records and based on factual events aren’t being allowed.” Streaming platforms have their own set of censorship guidelines, she adds.
Yet, this year was an “exceptionally good” one for Indian cinema. “This despite the challenges of raising money and censorship and self-censorship. It’s a miracle that any film gets made at all,” she says.
As for those Bata shoes, bought for a Mumbai monsoon, that Shedde repurposed for Cannes? She paired them with a handloom sari and jewellery, borrowed from her sister and her friends. She likes to say she did Cannes (and other film festivals) on a “love budget”. “The red carpet clothes question irritates me no end,” she says. “It takes away from films.”
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
Published - January 12, 2024 07:42 am IST
