Writer-director Shyam Benegal, one of Indian cinema’s most influential filmmakers and the father of alternative cinema, was in Kochi recently to inaugurate the ALIIFF and the Indywood Film Market. The man behind major landmarks of Indian films like Ankur, Nishant, Kalyug and Junoon, received the life time achievement award at the function, but clarifies that his contributions to films will continue.
“A filmmaker never retires. He simply must keep going until he is physically capable of it. I’m still active in filmmaking and I’m working on a film on the history of Punjab right now. I’m also a part of various festivals across the country. But this festival is special because it’s happening in Kerala where we have more film societies than anywhere else in the country perhaps and has the most film-aware audience,” he says.
He also says Bengal and Kerala started the trend of alternate filmmaking. “Until early 1950s, Bengali films were second-hand imitations of commercial Hindi films.”
“But in mid-1950s, we had directors like Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak who came forward to make an alternative kind of film, providing quality content the audience were seeking. Interestingly, Bengal and Kerala developed these alternative films simultaneously before it spread to other parts of the country. Malayalam films have always had this high quality in terms of subject matter as in Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and K.G. George films,” the veteran director says.
When asked about the recent new wave in Malayalam, he says, “I’m not very aware of the most recent Malayalam films, but I know that directors like Sohan Roy are creating large-scale films today. I don’t know if we have the audience size to support such high-budget projects like Hollywood, which has worldwide releases. So we have to now decide which of these two courses we have to choose for our Indian film industry,” says Benegal.
Referring to the protests at FTII, where he had served as a Chairman twice, he says, “The students at FTII felt that the appointment (of Gajendra Chauhan) is politically motivated and that the appointed person does not have enough credentials. Personally, I don’t agree to this as political inclinations of a person are an individual choice and credentials mean nothing more than a list of titles. What the students must be concerned about is his capability.”
He feels things should have been dealt with in a different manner in the FTII. “They should have had a talk with the Chairman to judge his capability before calling for a strike of this form. But neither the students, nor the Chairman made such efforts in the issue and it exaggerated. Besides, the Chairman is only involved on the level of policy and, theoretically speaking, doesn’t even have to visit the college once during his term. It is the Director with whom they have to interact with on a daily basis and it is his capabilities that the students should question.”
He also remembers facing a protest during his FTII term. “When I was the FTII chairman, I was gheraoed not just for a couple of hours, but for over 24 hours. Yet, I decided not to call the police. The students are not criminals. Instead, I called a meeting with the entire student body — comprising of hardly 300 — and we solved the issue in half-an-hour! But now, the students have given up the strike and they still haven’t achieved anything. The issue has only been temporarily resolved and the concerns that the students had is still unaddressed. It’s very unfortunate.”
Benegal also disagrees with the Award Wapsi trend even though he agrees with the fact the there is rising intolerance in the country. “When you take incidents like the Kalburgi murder and the UP lynching, there is definitely a cause for concern. The government is not exerting any control over these acts of religious intolerance. But what sense does it make returning a National Award for it? What did the nation do? If you disagree with the present government and they offer you an award, your declining it is sensible. But now it is this epidemic where everyone is returning awards and it’s not achieving any results,” he feels.
“We are a country of great diversity and we need to become more accepting and develop the idea of inclusiveness. But above all, we need to start upholding humanitarian values as this is common to all religions and regions across the world and the intolerance we see today rises from overlooking this,” he sums up.
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