BIFFes 2019: India has fallen back, says Shaji N Karun

BIFFes 2019 has reserved a special place for Shaji N Karun. He is a veteran who has been honoured with a retrospective of his films, while the festival also offered a platform to premiere his latest film, the fantasy 'Olu'.

Shaji, who holds the rare achievement of having had three of his films in the ‘Official Selection’ at Cannes film festival in different years, has moved away from his traditional social-realist narrative. 'Olu' is a fantasy about a romance that develops between a rape victim, who is given a sort of afterlife underwater in the backwaters in Kerala, and a painter who falls in love with her.

DH caught up with the veteran filmmaker to speak about his latest film and what he thinks about the films of today.

Why have you made a shift to fantasy from your earlier social-realist films?

All people dream. Dream itself is a sort of reality. People can’t exist without a dream. I used fantasy because I want to utilise the concept of dreams. Also, in 'Olu', I wanted to utilise the many stories in Kerala about the backwaters. Kerala is a place that has so many areas with backwaters, but there has been no movie that tells a story inspired by the stories around it.

Another shift from your earlier films is the use of computer graphics in 'Olu'. What was that like?

When cinema began, there was no sound. Colour came much later. Cinema is very dependent on technology. Cinema, as it grew, has used the tools available to it. I needed a girl to be able to talk under water, which is fantasy, and so I had to use computer graphics. You must just make sure you are using the tool and the tool doesn’t use you.

What do you think of today’s cinema?

Filmmakers must realise that the the point of good cinema is not immediate consumption. If you show Aravindan’s 'Thambu' (1978) at a theatre today, people will still come. Kerala is a highly consumerist society today, and in consumerist societies, the ‘now’ is what is important. This applies to everything from music to food to alcohol. People today may not understand, but we need to make works that survive today’s consumerist age.

How do you think Indian cinema is doing today?

I have been at film festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Locarno. They choose films from Vietnam and Thailand and Indonesia but not from India. Why don’t they see us? Or is it that they are ignoring us? Or do they think we travel along with them? Cinema has a universal language. And in global forums, when people talk about Indian films, they still talk about Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. It’s like in the Olympics. We have some 1.3 billion people. But some very small countries produce winners. We have fallen back in world cinema. Countries like Iran are far ahead of us.

Many Indian filmmakers have turned to online streaming portals like Netflix for offbeat films? Do you see yourself going that way?

Cinema and Netflix should co-exist. And when they co-exist, cinema becomes more refined. Some filmmakers are panicking about Netflix because they see it as a substitute for cinema.

Are cinema and Netflix that different?

On Netflix, people can pause when they want, they can reverse and watch things again. Filmmakers have never looked at this as an option. Filmmakers should choose whether that’s the sort of consumption their film needs. That’s why a lot of my films haven’t even been digitised today. Filmmaker have their platforms, let makers for Netflix do their thing. I am not saying one is right and the other is wrong. Different people have different areas.