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Made in India English films the new flavour
Made in India English films seem to be the order of the day if the ongoing 35th International Film Festival of India is any indication.
cMade in India English films seem to be the order of the day if the ongoing 35th International Film Festival of India is any indication.
It started with Indipop finding takers worldwide, then call centres plugging urban India into a English networked globe and then films like Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and Rahul Bose's Everybody Says I'm Fine and even earlier, Aparna Sen's 36 Chowringhee Lane.
It is all finding increasing acceptance around the world and is being reflected here as well. The IFFI is also showing increasing signs of filmmakers looking at the lingua franca of current times as a means of channelising their creativity.
Feature films like Anjan Dutt's Bow Barracks Forever, Anup Kurian's Manasarovar and Madhu Ambat's 1:1.6 An Ode to Lost Love are making their presence felt.
Bow Barracks Forever deals with Kolkata's shrinking Anglo-Indian community, and director Dutt says the choice of English was natural. "They (the characters on whom the film is based) speak English and a little of Hindi."
The Kolkata-based Dutt argues: "If the film was on taxi drivers of Kolkata, it would have to be in Hindi (because most of them are from Bihar). Kolkata is a multilingual city.
"India is a multilingual place. Our only common language is English. There needs to be sensible, meaningful and relevant English-language films. People in alternative films need an audience," Dutt told IANS.
"Manasarovar is an urban-rural Indian "love story that ends before it begins", according to its director Anup Kurian from Kerala. English is perhaps the apt language of communication in a pan Indian film that goes from Pune to Kerala and even the India-China border.
For its music, Manasarovar depends on David Prahl, Lisa Stanislawski and Craig Leininger, who come with a background in the US music circuit.
English is also the preferred medium of communication for Chennai-based cinematographer Madhu Ambat, who has worked with several major directors in various Indian languages ranging from Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan (who went on to make waves in Hollywood with films like The Sixth Sense) to 80-year-old GV Iyer.
In his debut film as director 1:1.6 An Ode to Lost Love, Ambat makes a film where, amid a number of sub-plots, the protagonists says at the end that he has decided not to make the film.
Says Ambat, who acknowledges the influence of Ingmar Bergman: "This film is made in English because English has remained the language of the elite in India. Each state speaks a different language. But when people especially from south and north India meet, their common language is English."
English seems to be language of choice in the world of non-feature and documentary films as well.
Documentaries making their presence felt at this festival include An Encounter with A Life Living directed by Suja from Kerala, The Green Warriors - Apatinis about tribal eco-friendly practices in Arunachal Pradesh and I Couldn't Be Your Son, Mom by Sohini Dasgupta on a child suffering a gender identity crisis.
There is also Kaevan Umrigar's English and Gujarati Invisible Parsis: The Poor of a Prosperous Community and Sanjivan Lal's Is God Deaf -- about a Mumbai-based senior citizen HS. D'Lima, who takes on vested interests, faces death threats and encounters police inertia and civic apathy while fighting politicisation of religion.
Other non-feature films at the Goa IFFI Indian Panorama section in English are Once Upon A Time by Anil Thomas, Passing On by K Bikram Singh, Rabin by Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Santiniketan: A Flashback by Arun Khopkar, An Unfinished Movie by Avira Rebecca and Anand Patwardhan's classic on the South Asian nuclear race War and Peace.
