{"id":29526,"date":"2019-06-28T12:11:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T11:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=29526"},"modified":"2019-06-28T12:26:20","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T11:26:20","slug":"anurag-kashyap-screen-talk-biff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/28\/anurag-kashyap-screen-talk-biff\/","title":{"rendered":"Anurag Kashyap \u2013 Screen Talk, BIFF"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the ongoing success of BIFF (Birmingham Indian Film Festival), fans and filmmakers were invited to a candid Q&A with cult director, Anurag Kashyap at Mockingbird Cinema on Wednesday. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Proclaimed the Martin Scorsese of India, Anurag Kashyap spoke with Endboard Production\u2019s documentarian, Sunandan Walia, to share his inspirations and influences that have shaped the indie director he is famous (or infamous) for today. He is an inimitable force and India\u2019s foremost filmmaker on the global festival circuit. His Netflix series, \u2018Sacred Games\u2019 was a global success and season 2 is already underway. Kashyap meanders through genres – from the provocative and edgy \u2018Dev. D\u2019 and \u2018Raman Raghav 2.0\u2019 to the two-part Godfather-esque rural gangland epic \u2018Gangs Of Wasseypur\u2019. Not least the politically rife \u2018Gulaal\u2019, \u2018Black Friday\u2019, and the contentious love stories in \u2018Manmarziyaan\u2019 and \u2018Mukkabaaz\u2019.<\/p>\n

His film repertoire boasts a myriad of talent and his commitment to anarchic storytelling and unadulterated screenwriting has garnered notable acclaim. Winner of four Filmfare Awards, a National Film Award and IIFA Award for Best Dialogue (Gangs of Wasseypur 1), audiences were quick to realise Kashyap is no ordinary filmmaker on the Bollywood block.<\/p>\n

\"\"With a record of watching 55 films in 10 days during film festival season, Kashyap is no foreigner to films outside of his own realm. Most notably, Martin Scorsese\u2019s. After some time spent in Mumbai, he had already discovered the Italian director\u2019s work while watching \u2018Cape Fear\u2019 but it wasn\u2019t until \u2018Taxi Driver\u2019, where Scorsese\u2019s technique would become the barometer for his own Bollywood inventions.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Cape Fear] was the only film that released theatrically while I was in university, but it was Taxi Driver that resonated with me. And I wanted to see more and more of him\u201d he said. \u201cAt that time, there was no Internet but there was a bookshop called Lotusbook House in Bandra, Mumbai and we could not afford the books. But they used to stock a lot of film books and Faber & Faber used to come out with a series of \u2018Scorsese on Scorsese\u2019 and Shrader on Shrader.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a screenplay on Taxi Driver. Lotusbook House used to keep screenplays on loads of books and [they] used to allow me to sit there and read so I just spent all my time sitting there and reading them. And I started my learning and printing screenplays originally came from Faber & Faber\u201d, said Kashyap, speaking with Walia about his formative western influences.<\/p>\n

Clarifying any rumours that he reached out to Scorsese for feedback on one of his films, Kashyap said he met someone at a festival who found out he was a massive Scorsese fan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey happened to mention my movies to Scorsese and I got an official letter from there saying that he would like to see my films\u201d, he said. \u201cMy producer was travelling to New York and I gave my films and he saw the films and he wrote me a long letter \u2013 that letter I have put in my office and it\u2019s everywhere. That letter is my biggest ode \u2013 it hangs in my office, it hangs everywhere\u201d, said Kashyap.<\/p>\n

Admitting it was a massive endorsement, he added, for his film \u2018Gangs of Wasseypur\u2019, Scorsese provided a quote on what he thought for the Blu-Ray release of the Bollywood drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the best thing\u201d, he said. \u201cWhen you meet him it\u2019s such a lesson because he\u2019s such a great filmmaker and he called me to be part of his [film] jury in Marrakech in Morocco \u2013 he especially asked for me and I spent 10 days with him\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a filmmaker who\u2019s so there and he still finds time for other filmmakers and he watches their films and he writes to them and he interacts with them. And after that, every time I would make a film I would take it to him or send it to him. In fact in the end, Bombay Velvet was edited in his office by Thelma Shoonmaker \u2013 the only film she\u2019s ever edited outside of Scorsese\u201d, said Kashyap.<\/p>\n

\"\"Growing up however, he was a \u2018closet writer\u2019, so took to writing short stories and draw comic books but received little encouragement along the way because his school magazine would reject his artistry for its \u2018dark\u2019 themes and the subjects were considered ludicrous for that of a 10-year-old. And would warrant a visit to the principal\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very spirit breaking. It kind of made me question myself. I would write, but I would stop showing it to people [\u2026] the kind of stories I wrote, I didn\u2019t find them anywhere\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

With Mumbai as the Mecca for Indian filmmaking, Walia wondered which door Kashyap knocked on first to get started, to which he revealed he volunteered at Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai working as a Waiter.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone used to congregate at the theatre but they had a rule \u2013 where if you had no business there they would throw you out of the caf\u00e9, or if you\u2019re not performing or watching a play you can\u2019t hang around there. They had a whole law against loitering\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The then ambitious youth revealed despite his certificates in education and achieving a degree, he insisted he would work for free at the caf\u00e9. His insistence with the caf\u00e9 owner were both confounding and inspiring.<\/p>\n

He told us the caf\u00e9 owner asked, \u201cWhy do you want to be a waiter?\u201d \u201cBecause I want to be at Prithvi\u201d, he said. He went on to wait tables at lunchtime and any remuneration would be in the\u00a0form of \u2018leftover food\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrithvi had great food \u2013 it was a good deal\u201d, he said. Kashyap said it was a place dedicated to theatre and people would go there to network for cinema and that\u2019s why the rule was there, to keep the place sacrosanct.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time I wanted to get into theatre to learn things. I was too late to join any film course \u2013 I was not accepted in any films school, so I needed to find a way to learn things. I had theatre experience for six months from Delhi so I thought I might as well start with acting. I just wanted to be in there and figure out how to go about things. And it happened, it worked out\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite his degree in Microbiology, it was his artistic ambition that allowed his cinematic flair to take flight and become the virtuoso he is revered for today.<\/p>\n

Kashyap has gone on to work with some of the industry\u2019s top talents from Irrfan Khan in \u2018The Lunchbox\u2019 and Abhishek Bachchan in \u2018Manmarziyaan\u2019. Though some consider his approach to cinema provocative, Kashyap\u2019s take on the silver screen is precisely the wake up India needs. In an industry too mollycoddled in feeble fabrications, Kashyap is resolute and revved up for more cinematic controversy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of the ongoing success of BIFF (Birmingham Indian Film Festival), fans and filmmakers were invited to a candid Q&A with cult director, Anurag Kashyap at Mockingbird Cinema on Wednesday. Proclaimed the Martin Scorsese of India, Anurag Kashyap spoke with Endboard Production\u2019s documentarian, Sunandan Walia, to share his inspirations and influences that have shaped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,53,3,112],"tags":[2175,2146,264,2145,2174],"class_list":["post-29526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contributors","category-latest","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-anurag-kashyap","tag-biff","tag-birmingham","tag-birmingham-indian-film-festival","tag-mockingbird-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}