Building a global connect

INTERNATIONAL GLORY

As the first show of the film ended, the elite audience comprising the likes of Sir David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra stood up to give a warm applause to Chetan Anand for his commendable work. Neecha Nagar won the first grand prix at Cannes jointly with Sir David Lean’s Brief Encounters. Unfortunately the film did not see the light the day in India due to a poor distribution network and it flopped miserably in the few sectors it was screened, disheartening the imaginative and sensitive Chetan Anand.

In 1954, when Awara was shown at the first Moscow International Film Festival, an excited President Bulganin stood up and exclaimed, “Actor, Actor” pointing towards Raj Kapoor. In the same year, the first Venice and Peking Film Festivals showcased Do Bigha Zamin, Awara, Aandhiyan and Rahi. India’s first delegation to an international film festival outside the nation consisted of Bimal Roy, Chetan Anand, Balraj Sahni, KA Abbas, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Nargis. Even the great Sir Charles Chaplin invited the Indian delegation to his residence at Montreux and discussed cinema at length with them.

From 1955 onwards, the likes of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen brought glory to Indian cinema like no one else did or has done yet. Ray, Ghatak and Sen, the eternal trio of Indian cinema, made films about their people in their mother language Bengali for an international audience without worrying about market demands. But never has so much noise been created about Bollywood going truly international until now. Agreed that Anil Kapoor and Irfan Khan have starred in Slumdog Millionaire, the latter also has played a major character in Mighty Heart.

A number of films in the past three years have been screened at the non- competitive section of the Cannes International Film Festival. Huge premieres have been conducted for blockbusters, for instance My Name Is Khan was showcased at the Berlin International Film Festival. The likes of Aishwarya Rai, Sharmila Tagore, Shekhar Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap have been invited to be jury members at the Cannes Film Festival, but all this is nothing compared to the international recognition Indian cinema had already garnered years back.

Compare it with the appreciation Nargis received from director Cecil DeMille for her award-winning performance in Mother India at the Karlovyvary International Film Festival in 1959 or the standing ovation accorded to the retrospective of Guru Dutt and Smita Patil’s films in Paris in the late 90s or Dustin Hoffman considering Naseeruddin Shah amongst the world’s top ten actors after seeing Paar (for which Naseeruddin Shah received the best actor’s award at the Venice Film Festival in 1985), and one realises that Hindi films have already made a mark internationally.

Rahul Dholakia explains, “Earlier there were only prestigious festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Venice. But now, many festivals are mushrooming across the world. I really don’t understand the need for so many of them. Many Indian films may have been screened in those festivals but it does not denote that such films are of international standards.” Madhur Bhandarkar disagrees diplomatically, “Undoubtedly earlier classics were appreciated in international film festivals and Indian cinema did receive acclaim. But in this new era of cinema, Bollywood has been received with open arms by the western audience and international filmmakers are increasingly getting fascinated by Hindi films.”

True. Experiments are being carried out like never before — Black Friday, Maqbool, Corporate, Lagaan, 3 Idiots and The Girl In Yellow Boots have definitely received accolades outside India. Peepli [Live], if it does get shortlisted at the Oscars, may receive some appreciation from the western film world, which generally looks down at Indian cinema as amateurish. That however, does not prove that Bollywood is truly going international. Says Mrinal Sen, “Which Indian film in the past two decades has created waves or earned accolades at the competitive sections of either Cannes, Berlin or Venice? And Slumdog Millionaire does not qualify as it is a British and not an Indian film. This year when my film Khandahar was screened at the classic section of Cannes, many internationally-reputed filmmakers and actors told me that they know of Indian cinema only because of Ray and me. And I am not blowing my own trumpet.”

Speaking about Indian cinema, Martin Scorsese had recently said, “All the films made by Ray are eternal delights for cine goers throughout the world. Some of Ritwki Ghatak’s and Mrinal Sen’s films have also stood the test of time. I hardly remember any other Indian film that is at par with films by these filmmakers.”

After all, not a single director of new-age cinema has been able to create the same magic as the montages of Neecha Nagar, the neo-realism of Do Bigha Zamin or the magic of bounce lighting in Kagaz Ke Phool. Classics can never be created in a hurry and manipulation or media hype cannot create a genius. Bollywood can truly go international the day it can recreate the magic of it’s golden era in cohesion with the new millennium, cinematically.