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I will release my film Asha Jaoar Majhe on YouTube: Aditya Sengupta
HT City caught up with filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta, who spoke about how he plans to take his film Asha Jaoar Majhe to the people. Excerpts:
Filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta is going through a difficult time. Sengupta, whose debut film, Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love), recently won National Awards for Best Debut Film of a Director and Best Sound Designing, is struggling to find a distributor.
Incidentally, the film which has no dialogues, has travelled to more than 40 film festivals such as Marrakech and Abu Dhabi and won the Best Director Award Of A Debut Film at 71st Venice International Film Festival.
HT City caught up with the filmmaker who spoke about how he plans to take his film to the people. Excerpts:
Have you initiated talks with distributors for releasing the film?
I can release the film whenever I am asked to but a lot of commerce goes into releasing a film. I have spoken to a couple of prominent distributors but most of them don't want to release it because few films recover money these days unless it has a big star. It doesn't make sense releasing the film because we will end up losing more money in the process.
It will require Rs 20-25 lakh to market the film and it won't be easy recovering that money. It's a sensitive situation.
What are your plans with the film?
I will release it on YouTube. People can download and watch it. There are two ways of looking at the situation. If I want the audience to watch my film and appreciate it, then I would prefer releasing it on YouTube. Whereas, if I want to recover money by making the audience come to the theatres, then it's a different ballgame.
The distributors wouldn't want to release a film like this and lose money. Instead, they prefer distributing a film that has Dev.
I want my film to release but someone has to come forward. I made this film with all my savings and it isn't possible for me to spend more and release it.
My intention is to reach out to more people and I would be happy if a producer or distributor comes forward.
Did you never have the urge of having dialogues in the film?
There were dialogues in the last scene. We had a small crew comprising five people and we were shooting inside an empty house. The ambience was calm and meditative. When we started shooting, it started developing a language of its own. By the time we reached the stage where dialogues were to be used, the film had already taken a new shape.
You are the director, writer-editor of the film and have also done the cinematography with cameraperson Mahendra J Shetty. What's your first love?
I like the entire process of filmmaking. I like expressing through films, because filmmaking is a wholesome process. It allows me to write, direct, translate words into images, do graphic designing, which are my areas of interest.
I was compelled to do the cinematography. After shooting 40% of the film, Shetty had to leave for some work and couldn't come back. Other cinematographers didn't want to take up the project, so I was left with no option but to do it myself.
Any plans of working with actors like Irrfan Khan?
I had approached Irrfan for a Hindi film long ago but that didn't happen. We are genuinely trying to do something interesting but nothing has been decided yet.
