REGD. NO: KARENG/2009/29264 ISSN 0975 - 5810 ArtConnect An IFA Publication An IFA Publication Volume 7, Number 1 January-June 2013 Volume 7 Number 1

ArtConnect January-June 2013 Contents Rs.150

EDITORIAL 3 100 Years of Indian Cinema

GOING UNDERGROUND: NOTES ON AN UNCONTROLLED CINEMA

Ashim Ahluwalia 4 Volume 7, Number 1

WRITING HISTORY IN THE DARK: FATMA BEGUM IN CONVERSATION WITH MS KITTY

Rashmi Sawhney 20

OUT OF SIGHT: ARCHIVING HIDDEN HISTORIES OF PRACTICE

Debashree Mukherjee 42 January-June 2013

SOUNDBAAZI: SPACE, PLACE AND MEANING IN THE HINDI FILM SOUNDTRACK

Gautam Pemmaraju 60

FOLLOWING FANS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MAN FROM JAPAN

Lawrence Liang 82

India Foundation for the Arts ‘Apurva’ Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore-560 094 Phone/Fax: 91- 80 - 2341 4681/82 Email: [email protected] www.indiaifa.org

ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 1

Contents

EDITORIAL

3

GOING UNDERGROUND: NOTES ON AN UNCONTROLLED CINEMA

Ashim Ahluwalia 4

WRITING HISTORY IN THE DARK: FATMA BEGUM IN CONVERSATION WITH MS KITTY

Rashmi Sawhney 20

OUT OF SIGHT: ARCHIVING HIDDEN HISTORIES OF PRACTICE

Debashree Mukherjee 42

SOUNDBAAZI: SPACE, PLACE AND MEANING IN THE HINDI FILM SOUNDTRACK

Gautam Pemmaraju 60

FOLLOWING FANS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MAN FROM JAPAN

Lawrence Liang 82 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 2

ArtConnect An IFA Publication Volume 7 Number 1 January-June 2013

Editor C.K. Meena

Design Mishta Roy

Printed by B Narahari, published by Anmol Vellani on behalf of India Foundation for the Arts and printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Udipi, Karnataka - 576 104 and published at India Foundation for the Arts, 'Apurva', Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross, Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore - 560 094. Editor - C.K. Meena

Photo and Text Credits Ashim Ahluwalia, Gautam Pemmaraju, Rashmi Sawhney, National Film Archive of India, Journal of the Moving Image, Times of India Archive, Debashree Mukherjee, Priya Paul, Lawrence Liang

Cover Image A small-format poster, called a lobby card, for the film Doctor Z (1959). Photograph courtesy Priya Paul.

In ArtConnect Volume 6 Number 2, on Page 75, several women percussionists were mentioned as belonging to the devadasi community. Thanjavur Rajalakshmi a.k.a. Rajam has clarified that she is not a member of this community. We regret the error. — Editor

All efforts have been made to contact and receive permission from all copyright holders. Any source not acknowledged will be credited in subsequent issues. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 3

Editorial Since the centenary of Indian cinema is a milestone that cannot be ignored, our choice of theme for this issue was pretty much unavoidable. What we did take care to avoid, though, was treading the beaten path. We have slipped behind the scenes and sneaked towards the fringes, chosen the seedy over the glamorous, the fans over the superstar, the little- known over the celebrated, the background score over the hit song. The cover image blatantly advertises our intention—to intrigue, startle and amuse you as much as to enlighten you.

Filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia, a self-confessed hardcore fan of trash and sleaze, reminds us that C movies are a legitimate part of our ‘filmic’ past. His article, an excerpt from a forthcoming book, offers a vivid picture of the subterranean world of exploitation cinema. Ahluwalia provocatively argues that C-grade cinema—and not our so-called art cinema or parallel cinema—is the only truly experimental Indian film form.

To find out what Mrs Solomon and Robert Master are up to, you will have to read Debashree Mukherjee’s brief history of film practice extrapolated from Priya Paul’s vast collection of film memorabilia. Concentrating largely on B movies, Mukherjee locates the Bombay film industry as a work site and gives us a glimpse of the innumerable skilled specialists—many of them obscure and unsung—who contribute to the collective enterprise that is filmmaking.

In keeping with the unusual nature of this issue we have an unorthodox piece: a fake 3 interview by a fake journalist. Far from it being an untrammelled flight of the imagination, the ‘interview’ constructed by Rashmi Sawhney consists of meticulously excavated chunks of research adroitly welded together to sculpt the figure of Fatma Begum, India’s first woman filmmaker, and offer a speculative history of her life and times.

Gautam Pemmaraju takes us beyond the archetypal dishoom-dishoom sound of the hero- villain fights in mainstream Hindi cinema as he examines how sound effects contribute to the composite soundtrack. Through his interviews with a galaxy of sound professionals and filmmakers who have worked on landmark Hindi films, he provides an insight into effects- production and aesthetics in the era of analogue sound, and the changes they underwent with the advent of digital technology.

If you believe that the life of the scholar lacks the ‘thrills, spills and chills’ that the big screen offers, you might change your mind after reading Lawrence Liang’s description of an academic exercise that morphed into a comedy of errors. While following fans of the south Indian film-star Rajinikanth, Liang gets swept away by what can only be described as a ‘filmi’ turn of events.

Permit us, too, a bit of dialoguebaazi: This is a magical, engrossing, unique and inimitable homage to Indian cinema.

C.K. Meena [email protected] ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 4

Going Underground: Notes on an Uncontrolled Cinema

Ashim Ahluwalia All photographs courtesy the author

Call them cheap, trashy, pornographic, underground— C movies are a legitimate part of our filmic past, argues Ashim Ahluwalia. During his decade-long love affair with Indian-made exploitation cinema, he has found it to be not only deranged and scandalous but also accidentally lyrical and avant-gardist. Saluting its rejection of established conventions, standards and categories, he provocatively states that C-grade cinema is the one truly experimental Indian film form. In this excerpt from a forthcoming book, Ahluwalia describes how the C movie unwittingly breaks the patriarchal order and contains stylistic elements that lend themselves to radical filmmaking. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 5 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 6

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ producers and directors in the murky taste – Pablo Picasso backrooms of the industry. Many of the films were pornographic, and therefore 1 illegal. Eventually the documentary I wanted to make fell apart—nobody he stars must have been wanted to participate for fear of arrest aligned when, entirely by or of knife-wounds from gangland Tchance, I happened upon a financiers. Years later, I returned to sordid poster of a film-in-production those abandoned experiences, called Maut Ka Chehra (n.d., Face of reworking the stories and characters Death). It was the late 1990s and I had into a semi-fictional film called Miss caught a glimpse of it in Super Cinema, Lovely (2012). It’s only now, in a trade magazine crammed with retrospect, that I am beginning to truly unreleased C-grade films looking for grasp what dragged me into this distributors. The poster featured a cinematic wilderness in the first place. man in a silver-foil suit ripping the heart out of a hairy gorilla. Blood was One of the first C movies I saw was 6 shamelessly hand-painted all over the made by two men with missing photograph. Around them floated cut- surnames: Vicky (the director, who outs of garish nymphets offering also inspired the name of my breasts and thighs. A few midgets protagonist in Miss Lovely) and provided comedy. Everyone looked like Suleiman (the producer). The film, they were about to give, or possibly Band Kamre Mein (n.d., Behind receive, some form of sexual Closed Doors), is the tale of a freshly gratification. The blurb asserted: married woman called Seema, “Never seen before such sexy lover possibly the most repressed housewife story.” It was all so nasty, and yet so on the planet. Eager to lose her incredibly alluring. virginity, she is shattered to find her new husband impotent. Eventually That image spiralled me into a collapsing into a nervous wreck, decade-long love affair with C-grade Seema sweats her way through a cinema. I decided to make a series of seductions of family members documentary about the filming of who include her husband’s nephew Maut Ka Chehra, spending much of Ravi. More seductions follow—one the following year with actors, involving a male prostitute, and finally ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 7

Going Underground – Ashim Ahluwalia

cohesive storyline, C movies never cared to do so. They were concocted to deliver cheap titillation to a sexually starved audience of working-class males. And yet, at least in the early days of Indian exploitation cinema, they weren’t hard-core pornography either. For decades, C-grade cinema and pornographic films followed separate paths, eventually marrying in the fleapits of India in the early 1980s.

Of course, sex and cinema have been friends since the very birth of motion pictures. The late David F. Friedman, maker of exploitation films in the US, writes, “After Mr. Edison made those tin-types gallop, it wasn’t but two days 7 the icing on the cake: a lesbian liaison later that some enterprising guy had with Rosy, the sexy servant. his girlfriend take her clothes off for Hallucinating about a sex potion that 1 the camera.” By 1899 the first totally can make all her fantasies come true, nude females appeared in motion Seema is left with no choice but to pictures, and within three years sexual bump off her tiresome husband with a intercourse had been captured on film. toy gun. A sprawling mess of a film, it left me with the desire to watch a The exact date of the first hundred more. pornographic film remains unclear, though two shorts that date from as The next thing I chanced upon, 2 early as 1907 have been identified. In Ramesh Lakhiani’s Khopdi (1999, The India it was possible to find 16 mm Skull), offered a twist on the same stag reels produced by maharajas or theme by adding rubber monsters to colonial rulers that showed their the sex-starved landscape. I couldn’t household help in erotic situations. As believe these films could get weirder, public demand for smut grew, these but they did. Unlike B movies that private productions would no longer actually tried to follow through with a ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 8

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

suffice. New approaches of dispersal industry, such as the female daku had to be invented. (bandit) picture, the tribal exploitation film, the domestic lesbian tragedy and In C-grade cinema, producers would the impotent husband melodrama. bypass the censors by never including The most intriguing, however, was the explicit material in the main film. Even medical film. In movies such as I.V. if censors demanded cuts it would Sasi’s Teen Love & Sex (1982) and have no effect on the outcome, for the anonymous fare such as the undated forbidden reels, known in Bombay as Lady Doctor, Gupt Gyan and Birth of a “bits”, would make it directly to the Baby, audiences were shown graphic projection booth of the cinema at footage of childbirth and venereal night, carried by hand or on a bicycle. diseases. The basic idea behind these Here these sex reels would be spliced films cloaked in pseudo-science was to back into the main film, often in a allow the mostly rural audience to get random spot. So in the middle of a guilt-free peep at female genitalia. The tragic death scene, it wouldn’t be camera would often participate like a unusual to suddenly have an eleven- doctor, probing the female body in the 8 minute female masturbation sequence. form of a medical check-up. Ghastly scenes would sometimes offer up From the 1930s to the 1960s, ‘bits’ diseased private parts for examination. reels were intermixed with any trash Animated eggs would float across the picture, popping up in the middle of screen, fusing with a barrage of creepy Dara Singh wrestling movies, for photographs and narration pinched example, and often containing full- from forgotten Italian sex education frontal nudity. In the 1970s, these reels films. would also come to include explicit sexual activity stolen from scratchy It was no surprise, then, that the Swedish or German blue films. By the Indian middle class saw this as early 1980s, however, Indian producers intolerable screen fare. Bollywood were no longer smuggling in European looked down on these films like poor, porn; they were very confidently unwashed relatives that had arrived for shooting their own. dinner uninvited. And yet they couldn’t be dismissed because of their Besides sex-horror films, several sub- massive small-town viewership. genres were spawned by the C-grade Spurning the narrative weight of ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 9

Going Underground – Ashim Ahluwalia

Bollywood, these pictures dealt in smutty, uncontrolled spectacle. They articulated what spectators truly desired—a vision sometimes deranged and scandalous, sometimes accidentally lyrical, but always dangerous if silenced and banned.

Eventually, though, these filmmakers were silenced; their stories have been left unrecorded. As India globalised in the 1990s, and celluloid became unaffordable, porn on VCD and the internet flooded the market, destroying the need for these underground films. They exist only as oral history and hearsay. All we know is that thousands of them were made each year and hundreds would play every month. Most are now lost. It is a mystery how these filmmakers and actors functioned in such a conservative atmosphere. C-grade cinema is authentically In a sense, my film Miss Lovely offers a marginal, a cinema of the gutter, and sort of ‘revisionist’ history. Not because the missing link between Bollywood it documents the history of exploitation and pornography, documentary and films, for such a record has never narrative, tradition and modernity. existed, but because it can be seen as an And what appears to be simply attempt to address an inequality in our marginal soon exposes itself to be conception of Indian film history. After symbolically central. Through these all, our filmic past is not just contained films we can see how Indian society in the worlds of the mainstream and struggles with outlawed subjects: parallel/art cinema movements, but in eroticism, violence, female sexuality this shadow cinema as well. and homosexuality. If most Bollywood ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 10 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 11

Going Underground – Ashim Ahluwalia

pictures are about the Indian ideal of commented, in mainstream cinema sameness and the things that bring us “Control is of the essence. The lines are together (family, tradition, ritual), C written down and learned by the movies are about our differences. This actors, the actions are rehearsed on cinema breaks the repressive carefully constructed sets, and the patriarchal order unintentionally— rehearsals are repeated over and over because it is wildly out of control. again until the resulting scene conforms to the preconceived ideas of 2 the director. What horror… None of 3 this activity has any life on its own.” In contrast to these eccentric, handmade films, Bollywood and other In industrial cinema, the slickness of mainstream cinemas of the world are production conceals the lack of the industrial projects of entertainment real, the shallowness of themes, and a dictated by business. The dominance general exhaustion of cinematic form. of manufactured cinema is now Mainstream cinema exploits ideas and universal, trickling into our images from the past, from already- consciousness and expression. Over popular comics and literature and from 11 the last few decades, we as audiences any place it can find inspiration, have sluggishly consented to, and, at raiding and appropriating until nearly times, enthusiastically collaborated in every trace of purity, emotion and these widespread mechanised systems meaning has been worn out. If any of pleasure, allowing a sort of hollow, cinema was truly to be called plastic form of communication to exploitation cinema, it wouldn’t be C- become the norm, all in the service of grade cinema with its cottage-industry decency, popularity and turnover. production: it would be the mainstream. Ever since the invention of the ‘talking picture’ it has been assumed that films 3 are an extension of theatre where a story should always be acted out Unfortunately the alternative offered literally before an audience (the by the art cinema movement, formerly camera) under controlled conditions. known in quaint terms as parallel But cinema has so much more to offer. cinema, is equally uninviting. As filmmaker Ricky Leacock ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:27 PM Page 12

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

The early days of Indian art cinema successfully to kill off, in subsequent were full of hope with Satyajit Ray and generations, an interest in exploring Ritwik Ghatak introducing a genuine, new kinds of cinema. They had few indigenous modernism into India’s successors, and left next to nothing for cinematic culture which, at that point, future generations of young Indian was still largely rigid and theatrical. filmmakers to take forward.

It was just a matter of time, however, There’s never been a better time, then, for state-sponsored parallel cinema to for a new generation forced between fill the gap left by these directors. A the two rather unsatisfactory poles of new breed of director and film mainstream and art cinema to look at emerged, claiming to be formally and what the C movie involuntarily authentically ‘Indian’ but lacking in offers—with its accidental avant- historical consciousness. These films— gardism, its unlicensed madness, its with a handful of exceptions, mostly underground spirit that rejects made by south Indian filmmakers— established rules, laws, conventions, were hardly Indian in form, and had an standards, genres and categories. This 12 obvious debt to a bagful of European cheap, trashy cinema recognises films of the time. Some of the most something every filmmaker can learn ‘Indian’ art films of the 1970s were from: that expression is a primary essentially Bresson, Bergman and purpose of the human organism, and Godard re-set in Indian rural without restrictions, it can detonate landscapes. The oblique nature of and flower in the purest, wildest, most these films and a notional relationship beautifully unchained form. to ancient Sanskrit texts made these films critic-proof. If you questioned 4 them, you didn’t ‘understand’ them.

By ‘tagging’ ancient Indian manuscripts One could argue that the C movie and theory that the viewer might not offers a third option, bursting with know, and embedding them in an more formal potential than the two indescribable haze of content, certain traditional tropes of mainstream and directors got away with never being art cinema. In fact, as far back as the fairly assessed. Almost everything they 1920s, artists and writers of the made was considered unquestionably Surrealist movement began to channel ‘brilliant’. But this also managed the unconscious as a way of revealing ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 13 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 14

the true power of the imagination. screening venues of these films. As They were the first to understand the Robert Desnos writes, “Above all, exploitation film not as parody but as cinema auditoria must be afflicted with offering new aesthetic possibilities that the same decay as the films they 5 reflected an unconscious, primal state. show.” The Greek surrealist Ado Kyrou was clear in his advice: “I ask 14 Paul Hammond, a critic who studied you, learn to go and see the ‘worst’ Surrealism, describes how these artists films; they are sometimes sublime.” He went prospecting for the latent described the incredible Ship of meaning of movies, mining seemingly Condemned Women (1953), made by innocent-looking films for buried Raffaello Matarazzo, as a film “in sexuality. Connoisseurs of garbage, which sadism, revolt, eroticism, they uncovered treasures of poetry and religion and melodrama conspire to subversion in the bargain basements of form a series of problematically linked cinema, in the C movies of their time. scenes dependent on the André Breton, the founder of commonplace, raised by its rigour to 6 Surrealism, mentions a film he saw in the level of pure involuntary poetry.” the late 1920s that completely disorientated him. Titled How I Killed The French poet Louis Aragon talks as My Child (n.d.) and made by an early as the 1920s of ‘synthetic anonymous priest known as Peter the criticism’, suggesting an alternative way Hermit, it is described by Breton as “a to interpret a film, a way to bring to 4 7 film of unlimited insanity.” Nor did the surface a film’s second, secret life. the surrealists ignore the crumbling In a sense, any Kanti Shah or Joginder ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 15

Going Underground – Ashim Ahluwalia

film is bursting with this hidden experimental cinema. Such fractured content: Sapna erotically handling a storytelling charges a film with a doorknob or Poonam Das Gupta strange energy, making it more sucking on a whisky bottle reveals a unusual, more spectacular, more veiled space where society’s latent mysterious, and more taboo. Evoking repressions can be found. more dream than reality, it signals the forgotten, repressed dimension of 5 things.

In production, as in consumption, C- (b) THE SELF-AWARE FILM grade cinema is a marginal, naïve enterprise, at once scandalous and The centrality of spectacle in the C idiotic, almost condemned to fail from movie tends to disturb the normal the very start. So what is inspirational cause-and-effect chain required to tell about these films? And can they offer a story, and allows the filmmakers to any aesthetic possibilities for future get away with murder when it comes filmmakers? to continuity editing. Most C movies blatantly use stock music and 15 (a) THE DREAM FILM recycled shots throughout. Shots of exteriors of buildings, thunder and The story, in the classical sense, is lightning, breasts and thighs are unimportant in the C movie. In shamelessly stolen from other films. Haiwan (1977), as in many other Actors look into the camera while films of this kind, strange scenes that performing, breaking the illusion that feel incomplete are inserted at random conventional films construct. points throughout the film. Actors Whereas the classical narrative film change, primary characters disappear accentuated ‘seamlessness’, the C and new characters are introduced. movie does the opposite—falling The C movie is spontaneous, apart at the seams—reminding the episodic, associative and audience that they are, in fact, unconstrained by the rules of watching a film. This offers a far traditional narrative cinema. This, in more postmodern, self-conscious the hands of a more able filmmaker, viewing experience than mainstream opens up all kinds of possibilities of films, which feel almost old- form, not unlike those of fashioned in comparison. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 16

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

(c) A NEW VOCABULARY and in many ways, this is what C- grade cinema does. It centralises the This kind of cinema is full of unsteady role of the heroine (the heroes are camera work, underexposed and out- usually sidekicks, unlike Bollywood, of-focus shots, and colour banding where the female characters are rarely caused by poor-quality film stock. Yet, significant); it displaces the natural in a strange, accidental way, there is order of middle class morality by something magical about this style. In introducing unbridled sex and an unrelated text, the experimental violence; and it destabilises the status filmmaker Jonas Mekas engages an quo, forcing us to question many idea that could quite easily be applied conformist tendencies that we take for here: “I am sick and tired of the granted. With a wild disregard for all guardians of Cinema Art who accuse rules and for the act of censorship, the the new filmmaker of shaky C movie is no less than a cinematic camerawork and bad technique. In like mutiny. manner, they accuse the modern composer, the modern sculptor, the 6 16 modern painter of sloppiness and poor technique. I have pity for such critics. We can see from many of these They are hopeless. If we study the tendencies that C-grade cinema, quite modern film poetry, we find that even unconsciously, is the one truly the mistakes, the out-of-focus shots, experimental Indian film form. the shaky shots, the unsure steps, the Separated from their shabby hesitant movements, the overexposed substance, these films have stylistic and the underexposed bits, have elements that lend themselves to become part of the new cinema radical filmmaking. This cinema vocabulary, being part of the inadvertently blows apart filmic psychological and visual reality of conventions, mapping undercurrents of 8 modern man.” desire while it does so.

(d) A CINEMATIC RIOT Miss Lovely is inspired by many of these formal elements. Just like in Ado Kyrou writes, “We seek a shock exploitation cinema, the film uses little cinema with lightning and thunder, fragments of plot as loose frameworks 9 murderous passions, a lust for revolt” to explore and exhibit the characters’ ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 17

emotions, attitudes, experiences and of making films that reach us slick and reactions. Letting go of an allegiance to dead, we could try and break that cycle a written script, the film dodges through a complete derangement of 17 regulation, developing organically. Its the official filmic senses. And there is pulse and personality are not no better model for that than the dominated much by ‘story’ but cheapest, trashiest films one can find. primarily by the atmosphere and people in it, their faces, movements, [Excerpt from a forthcoming book due tone of voice, their stumbling, their for publication by Onlab (Berlin) in silences—reality as exposed through 2014.] everyday qualities of life, free from literary and theatrical dominance. Ashim Ahluwalia is a filmmaker Possibly, future Indian independent based in Mumbai, whose debut feature filmmakers could draw inspiration and film Miss Lovely was selected for the energy from the collision of discourses 2012 Cannes Film Festival. He was in C-grade cinema—psychological, named “one of the ten best emerging sexual, political, poetic, philosophical film directors working today” by —detonating these elements into new, Phaidon Press in Take 100: The uncontrolled forms of cinema. Instead Future of Film. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 18 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 19

Going Underground – Ashim Ahluwalia

NOTES

1. Eric Schaefer, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919- 1959 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 6.

2. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

3. Richard Leacock, ‘For an Uncontrolled Cinema’ in P. Adams Sitney (ed), Film Culture Reader (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), p. 77.

4. Paul Hammond, ‘Available Light’ in Paul Hammond (ed), The Shadow And Its Shadow: Surrealist Writing on the Cinema (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1991), p. 29.

5. Ibid., p. 24.

6. Ibid., pp. 29-30.

7. Ibid., p. 8.

8. Jonas Mekas, ‘Notes on the New American Cinema’ in Sitney (ed), Film Culture Reader, p. 105.

9. Hammond, ‘Available Light’ in Hammond (ed), The Shadow And Its Shadow, p. 4. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 20 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 21

Writing History in the Dark1 Fatma Begum in conversation with Ms Kitty

Rashmi Sawhney

Fatma Begum has lived a life away from the arc lights for several years now, so when this first lady of Indian cinema, who’s never given a media interview, agreed to speak to me on 3 May 2013, I promptly made my way to her once-impressive but now crumbling residence in Dhanraj Mahal, where she lives with her daughter Zubeida. Clad in an olive- green chiffon saree, Fatma looked every bit the begum I’d imagined her to be. After supping on the best Hyderabadi kebabs and qubani ka meetha I’ve ever had, we settled down on huge, heavily-cushioned sofa chairs, sipping chai, to have a chat about her life and films. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 22

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

s Kitty: Fatma-ji, thank Ms Kitty: Well, let’s try. How did you so much for agreeing you get into films? Where does the Mto this interview. You have story begin? generally stayed away from the media, so this is really very special. Fatma: Do you know I did my first film when I was thirty? Yes. Before Fatma: I never really warmed to the that I was acting on the Gujarati and media. Only gossip and scandal! Poking Urdu stage. I never really thought into the private lives of film stars! about becoming a film actor. And even after I started, I acted in films Ms Kitty: But when you started only now and then. And then the working in cinema in the 1920s, many talkies came… Duniya Kya Hai film magazines were being set up all [1938] was my last film; I must have over the country. There was this great been about forty-six or so then. 22 interest in cinema and its technology. People wanted to read about cinema in Ms Kitty: You and your daughters Europe, Russia and America. had overlapping film careers. Sultana and you made your debuts in Veer Fatma: That was then. But now? Abhimanyu [1922]. You were thirty; Good thing I was never a star. No she must have been fourteen or journalist wanted to spread gossip fifteen? Two years later, at the age of about me. (Laughs) As for my life in twelve, Zubeida made her debut in cinema… Gul-e-Bakavali [1924]. The three of you were like the first all-female Ms Kitty: Yes, that’s what interests family of Indian cinema! Was it me. The world hardly knows strange being in competition with anything about it. your own daughters?

Fatma: No one knows, not even me! Fatma: Actually, acting in films with (Laughs at her own joke) How much can my daughters, made my entry into I remember at my age? It was so long the industry much easier. We worked back. quite a lot with Imperial and ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 23

History in the Dark – Rashmi Sawhney

actor, singer, writer, director, all at the same time. I played Subhadra, Abhimanyu’s mother. It was a huge Kohinoor, and these studios became project: do you know that more than an extension of our family life—in 5,000 people were involved with the fact I was so comfortable working production? there that I rarely freelanced with any other studios. Zubeida, Sultana Ms Kitty: Five thousand people! Mr and I shared everything, including all Irani must have been some producer our gossip! to pull that off. You must have learned a lot about production from Ms Kitty: So do you have any him. memories of Veer Abhimanyu? That was Ardeshir Irani’s first film as Fatma: He was a shrewd producer before he set up Imperial businessman, and a great manager. Studios, wasn’t it? Also a nice person with many friends. 23 Fatma: How can I remember? I can hardly recall my own life! Let me see, Ms Kitty: He was like a mentor to memories are so visual, almost like a you, wasn’t he? film playing in your mind. Sometimes we make it all up. (Smiles Fatma: Yes, he took me under his mischievously) I remember the scenes wing and was so generous with his where Sultana, as Uttara, learns to time and ideas. I remember when we dance from Arjuna, who’s in exile were doing Nanubhai Desai’s Sati and in disguise. She was absolutely Sardaba [1924] I got a crash course exquisite! Sultana was the best on taxation from him! This was the dancer in the family. She often first film Ardheshir produced under practised at home, but even I was the banner of Saraswati Films; I startled by what she pulled off in the remember this because he was facing film. Manilal Joshi, who directed the some tax issues with the earlier film, played the role of Abhimanyu. production house, and had just set In those days you often had to be an up this new one. It was those ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:28 PM Page 24

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

Fatma: Yes, yes, that one. You’ve done your research, huh! I was playing Minalvati and Sandow was conversations that got me thinking King Munja. Manilal worked out a about setting up my own production shooting schedule which made sure house, which I did two years later. Zubu and Sultana were not on sets when the romantic scenes were being Ms Kitty: I find it amazing that all filmed. So these kinds of minor three of you acted in this film. adjustments were possible in those Zubeida played the lead role of days. Of course, all of us watched the Sardaba, if I’m not mistaken? It must film together when it was released, have been great fun to watch and but nothing in it made us squirm. learn from each other. But was it awkward to do romantic scenes in Ms Kitty: Excuse me for digressing a front of your daughters? bit, but I can’t help but notice that 24 photograph on the wall. There, that Fatma: No, not really. I mean, we all large one behind you, to your right. I understood that it was acting, after can recognise Homi Master in the all. Well, maybe at first it was a bit photo, surrounded by a big crowd as awkward, because Zubu and Sultana he’s getting out of a car. And there’s a were quite young when they started woman in the car, wearing sunglasses, acting. But the producers and whose face is not very visible… directors we worked with were very understanding. For example, I had Fatma: Oh that! That’s the only some steamy scenes with Raja photo I have from my film years, a Sandow in some film. Kayu film press photo from the premiere of hatu, kashu yaad nathi rehtu have. Kala Nag [1924]. That’s me in the (What film was it, I don’t remember car. Homi Master played the male anything these days.) lead. He was very popular with the crowds, but was quite overbearing as Ms Kitty: You’re thinking of Manilal a co-star. He fussed over every aspect Joshi’s Prithvi Vallabh [1924], the of the film. Kanjibhai Rathod who historical romance? directed the film was a soft person, ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 25

History in the Dark – Rashmi Sawhney

and we felt sorry for him sometimes Ms Kitty: A secret recipe from the because Homi would bully him into royal kitchens of Hyderabad! Yes, changing this or that thing in the please, my friends will be so envious film. In the end, though, it turned of me! But perhaps later, when we out to be a fabulous thriller. It was finish the interview. Do you have a based on that infamous Champsi- favourite among the films you acted Haridas murder case, one of the first in? films to be based on a real-life crime. Fatma: I think Nanubhai Desai’s Ms Kitty: Which reminds me, Mumbai Ni Mohini [1925]. What a Fatma-ji, I have something to give wicked film! You know how films you. I found this in a kabaadi shop. needed to have English titles to be It’s a copy of the The Bombay able to travel? I don’t know why, but Chronicle dated 5 January 1924, Mumbai Ni Mohini had two English 25 which carries an advertisement for titles: ‘Social Pirates’ and ‘Night Side Kala Nag. It says: “Thrilling plot, of Bombay’! Mohini was meant to be revealing various styles of a pun on the ‘charms of Bombay’, and treacherous fraud of the modern I thoroughly enjoyed playing the civilization, and dreadful character of a temptress. You assassination for the ardent desire of remember the story? I fall in love wealth or passions and rape and with the Anglicised manager, ravishment by atrocious villains!” Manohar, of my rich old husband’s estate. Manohar embezzles a large Fatma: Mashallah, that’s so kind of you! sum of money from my husband, Would you like some more kebabs? blames it on a co-manager, whom we Nobody makes them like Zubu does— then attempt to murder, it’s a secret recipe she learnt from her unsuccessfully. mother-in-law, the Rani of Dhanrajgir. (Lowering her voice) But I’ve seen her Ms Kitty:Agreat story for a make those kebabs on the sly; I will give Hitchcock film or a film-noir! you the recipe in return for this wonderful newspaper clipping. Fatma: But I didn’t like the ending: we ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 26

did, you could have been a fearless diamond queen, flying from horseback to train-top, wielding a whip…

Fatma: (Laughs) Well, not unless I was also a white woman; Wadia would never have chosen a dark- skinned Indian woman for that role! But seriously, you have no idea what it meant for me to get into the film industry. People say Fatma is the first woman director in Indian cinema, but so what? Had I been the tenth woman director in India, would it have been any less significant? There are many women 26 actors today who have become politicians and cultural ambassadors for India. This had already started happening in the 1950s with Nargis and…no, even earlier, with Devika Rani. But the 1920s was different. To add to that, I was married to the Ibrahim Muhammed, the Nawab of Sachin. Raja of Sachin and to leave all that Photograph from www.royalark.net (accessed luxury to struggle to become a film on 10 May 2013) actor in those days, can you imagine get caught and have to die. I would have how difficult that was? liked to rob the old husband, elope with the lover, and escape to a sunny island Ms Kitty: Sachin was a princely to lead a James Bond lifestyle! If only I state near Soorat in British India, were an actor today… right? Pardon me for asking a personal question, but didn’t your Ms Kitty: Or perhaps if you had met husband object to your joining the Jamshed Wadia before Mary Evans industry? ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 27

Fatma: (Laughs hysterically) I got Zubeida was top of the charts in the married in 1906 at the age of 1930s, earning Rs 2,000 per month. fourteen. My husband, Ibrahim Sultana was the absolute star of the Muhammed Yakut Khan III silent era, but her memory was weak, Bahadur, the Nawab of Sachin, and I and she couldn’t remember her had three daughters. Zubeida first, diaogues for the talkies. I was a strict then Sultana, and then Shehzadi. In mother and I made sure the girls had the 1920s, often the nawabs were their milk and badaams every unable to pay taxes demanded by the morning, but Sultana would drive me British rulers, and it was easier to mad, making me chase her around send off their older wives to the film the house with a fistful of badaams, industry than to support them. Of the little shaitan that she was! Of course, I was a stage actor, and had course, when love comes knocking great interest in films—we had there’s no getting away, and Sultana special screenings for the zenana and her husband Seth Razzaq moved 27 women when the travelling cinema to Karachi after Partition. Though companies came to our town… she gave up acting after marriage, she dabbled in production. The one Ms Kitty: Oh, I see. So it suited you thing I will regret until my dying day both. And your daughters? Do you is that I couldn’t go for the premiere have any regrets that they joined the of Sultana’s first production, Hum film industry? Ek Hai [1961], in Karachi. I can’t remember exactly what year it was Fatma: I thank Allah that my …but it was just a little before the daughters grew up to be independent war with China. The newspapers women. When I moved to Bombay, I used to be full of reports on brought them with me. There was no tightening border controls. So my way they could have escaped the lure visa was rejected. I guess life is as of cinema, and fortunately, all of Allah wills it. them came off the better for this. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 28

have been nine or ten when we moved to Bombay. She never got to like the city. She missed her friends in Sachin. Zubeida, Sultana and I were so busy with our film shoots in those years that perhaps we neglected her…Then one day she told us she was going back to Sachin. For the first year or two after she left she would send an occasional letter, but slowly that too stopped. None of us have heard from her in a long time. When we got news of her abba’s death, I was secretly hoping News report on Sultana’s marriage – Times of India Archive that I’d see her at the burial, but she didn’t come. (Blows into her delicately Ms Kitty: But didn’t Sultana marry embroidered handkerchief and pops a Yakub Husseinbhoy Laljee in paan into her mouth.) Bombay in 1930? Ms Kitty: I’m sorry to have upset Fatma: That Yakub was a liar and a you—perhaps we should talk about thief, and I hope he rots in hell! more cheerful things. Why don’t you tell me about Bulbul-e-Parastan Ms Kitty: What about your [1926], such an amazing fantasy film youngest daughter, Shehzadi? You’ve that was! hardly spoken about her. Fatma: Shehzadi came often with Fatma: Shehzadi was always the me to the Bulbul-e-Parastan sets. I quietest of the three. But so much was hoping seeing the shoot would suppressed anger in that girl get her interested in film production. ...nobody but her abba could pacify But she would sit all day, head buried her when she threw a fit. She must in some book or another, never ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 29

29 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 30

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

glancing at the glamour and Tamil version, and N.T. Rama Rao 2 excitement around her. in the 1962 Telugu version. I am amazed by Indian cinema’s Ms Kitty: It was your first film as a fascination for these stories of director, wasn’t it? Quite an doomed love between celestial expensive film for its time, what with women and mortal men. I wonder all the special effects and trick what it is about impossible desire 3 photography. that holds such allure for cinema. See, I bought this poster of the 1930 Fatma: The film was partly set in a film from some auction house in fairyland, so the script demanded a Bombay—had to spend a fortune on lot of special effects, which Ardeshir it. It’s ridiculous how film helped me to create. Even simple memorabilia has become such a hot things, like showing the movement of ticket item in the art market. 30 celestial creatures between parastan and earth, had to be worked out Fatma: If only we’d all been a little from scratch. more careful about our film knick knacks, we could have been Ms Kitty: What was it about millionaires by now! I had so many parastan or fairyland that was so old film magazines, letters from fans, appealing to filmmakers in the 1920s photographs, posters, even costumes and 1930s? Gul-e-Bakavali is one of from some of those fantasy the most widely adapted stories in films…but that wretched fire film history. Zubeida and you acted destroyed everything. We had to in Mohanlal Dave’s production gather what little could be salvaged [1924]. Then Mohanlal Shah did a and rebuild this house. Zubeida’s remake in 1930. Then Madan Film husband had built it for her in the Company produced it in Bangla in 1930s. It was the most expensive Calcutta, and it was adapted twice in house in Bombay at that time. My Telugu and thrice in Tamil. Some of son-in-law was an extravagant man, these films had famous stars too, like with opulent taste. Of course, we M.G. Ramchandran in the 1955 couldn’t restore the house to its full ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 31

Imperial theatre, Lamington Road, Bombay

glory. But I am still hopeful. Ms Kitty: That would be wonderful! 31 Sometimes old belongings are As it is, only a handful of the silent suddenly rediscovered. Just a few films survive. You were so lucky to years ago, didn’t they find the letters watch all these films in the theatre! two French philosophers had written They say that more than 1,300 were to each other? Some Beaver (sic) and made. Do you have any recollection her lover, Sater (sic) [Simone de of watching your first public Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre] or screening of Gul-e-Bakavali? something—I can’t pronounce those French names. The woman thought Fatma: Like it was yesterday! I had the letters had been lost when her some photos of the film premiere, lover’s house was bombed, but then but they were lost in that fire too. So they were discovered in her own all these years, I’ve played out events house after her death. So I pray each from my film life like a reel in my day that my little bundle of film mind’s eye, hoping the images won’t souvenirs is lying around forgotten disintegrate…I still remember the somewhere, waiting to be discovered sari I wore that day, it was deep blue and make me rich again! with a large gold border. Zubeida, ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 32

Sultana and I sat together. And in imagination…but today nobody cares the row behind us sat Mohanlal about its history. Dave the scriptwriter, Dwarkadas Sampat the producer, and Khalil the Ms Kitty: My mother remembers lead actor of the film. Or perhaps watching the film in Lucknow. I they were in the row in front of us. think it was one of the first films to They must have been; I think be distributed across the country, Sampat’s bald head was getting in my and I read that even the Indian way. He was not exceptionally tall, Cinematograph Committee of 1927- but since I’m a short woman, I 28 mentions that it was liked by always prefer front rows in the audiences both in the north and south 32 cinema. The hall was packed, and I of the country. Even by British felt so proud watching Zubu and administrators. It was probably the Sultana on screen. biggest hit of the silent film era, establishing the Arabian Nights Ms Kitty: Where did you watch it? fantasy as a viable genre for the 4 Bombay film industry. Fatma: At the Imperial theatre on Lamington Road. All Kohinoor films Fatma: Perhaps the film had wide used to be released there. Gul-e- appeal because it belonged to Bakavali ran for over twenty weeks in everyone and no one. It was like a Bombay. Imperial theatre started as an pan-Indian khichdi. With earlier opera house in 1905, but I’m told that films you could often tell it was today it only screens Bhojpuri films. I made by a Gujarati, Maharashtrian was driving past the theatre the other or Bengali and so on. In Gul-e- day and was really pained to see it. It’s Bakavali, we used all kinds of on the verge of collapse. At one time costumes: tribal-type outfits, skirts its screen had projected and etched so and shararas of the sort Arabian many film stars onto the public’s women wear, saris and dhotis, and ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 33

History in the Dark – Rashmi Sawhney

33

Sultana – National Film Archive of India

gypsy-inspired dresses. There was a going in bold directions with the brilliant dance sequence with the Kohinoor films. It’s a pity that the dancers in burqas—you would never studio was forced to shut down in see that today. A Rajput character is 1932. You must have some good called Jalad Singh and his son Taj-ul- memories of Kohinoor… Mulk has a Muslim name. Mohanlal Dave was a conservative man, but his Fatma: Well, it was a long time ago, script had clothes slipping off a but I’ll never forget a film directed 5 sleeping Bakavali! All this was new. by Kanjibhai Rathod. What fun we had working with him! Kanjibhai Ms Kitty: Dwarkadas Sampat was was the first professional director at ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 34

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

Kohinoor —he was not a partner in play being filmed. Ardheshir got the firm, but was hired especially to Joseph David, the stage director, to direct films. He was a Dalit and his help with shooting. Joseph brought a parents were Arya Samajis, and we camera and a mike. On the first day expected him to be very strict. But of shooting, a coconut was broken, he never took offence at our silly silence was ordered, the camera and pranks on the sets. I remember how mike were switched on, and the the actor Gangaram would mimic scene went on and on! Nobody really Kanjibhai’s mannerisms, especially knew when to stop or start the the way he consumed snuff. And scenes and dialogues, and finally the then once in some very serious American sound expert Mr scene—I think it was a death scene Lemming—or was it Fleming?— or something—we started mouthing [Demming] shouted furiously, “Will 7 all these funny lines while acting! Of somebody please say cut?”! course, that was because in the silent 34 days, actors could say anything they Ms Kitty: Many filmmakers and liked while playing a scene as long as producers found it difficult to cope 6 they had the correct expression! with the technology and finances of sound recording… Ms Kitty: That really does sound like a lot of fun! Pity Dwarkadas Fatma: The transition to the talkies Sampat could not quite get the hang was very difficult. The cost of of the talkies and keep Kohinoor making films went up because alive. But Ardheshir Irani made the producers had to import new transition nicely. You must have recording and editing equipment, visited the sets of Alam Ara [1931] and exhibitors had to wire up their while Zubeida was shooting for the theatres to screen films with sound. film. What was that like? Ms Kitty: Wasn’t Ardheshir Irani Fatma: Alam Ara was a leap in the the first to equip Imperial Studio dark! The crew made lots of with a Tanar Single sound-on-film mistakes as no one knew how to recording system? shoot with sound. It was shot like a ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 35

History in the Dark – Rashmi Sawhney

Fatma: I made a few mistakes with finances, and had to dissolve the Fatma: (Ignores the question) And company and re-establish it as sound meant realism. It meant Victoria Fatma Film Corporation in language and speech and all that goes 1928 for tax purposes. with it—local setting and culture, for example. That was not my cup of tea: Ms Kitty: But then you directed and I liked to borrow from here, there and produced two films in 1928 itself! everywhere for my films. So I gave up Heer Ranjha, in which Zubeida film production and only did some played Heer, and Chandravali. acting roles after 1929. Fatma: Yes, I had become wiser by Ms Kitty: But what made you get then. But my best year was 1929, into film production in the first when I managed to make four place? A woman in the 1920s! films: Kanaktara, in which Sultana acted, Milan Dinar, Naseebni Devi, in Fatma: You think women couldn’t be which both Sultana and I acted, and enterprising in those days? And Shakuntala. But after that…It was 35 remember I’m Gujarati and I thought hard for a woman filmmaker to raise that my production house would finances. Harder than even now… make money. I had to fend for myself and my daughters. When I set up the Ms Kitty: Well, many women production house, I was still learning directors have told me that producers how the business of cinema worked. think women have no head for In 1926 and 1927, I made only two business! I’ve heard some strange films under the Fatma Film stories about Dwarkadas Sampat Corporation banner: Bulbul-e-Parastan too. You knew him well; what was he and then another film which was really like as a producer? better known by its English title, Goddess of Love. Even I’ve Fatma: I don’t know what you’ve forgotten what it was called in heard, but Sampat was quite a Gujarati! visionary. He was among the first to imagine a professionally-run studio. Ms Kitty: And what about finances Before that, film production in India and distribution? was a rough-and-ready business. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 36

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

Even what Dadasaheb Phalke set up up the Patankar–Sampat story in was nothing more than a family-run some article; I have made a note cottage industry system. Sampat was somewhere, I should look it up. But a strange kind of realist, though. He Sakina told me Sampat gave her a insisted that characters in his films really tough time. wear real jewellery and authentic clothes, which I agree is a bit crazy. Fatma: Which Sakina? The actress? He also maintained a zoo in his studio, to provide animals for his Ms Kitty: Yes, she said she had to do 8 film shoots. some scene that demanded semi- nudity in one of Sampat’s films, and Ms Kitty: So how did he get into she wasn’t very comfortable with 36 films? that. Fatma: From what he told me, he was Fatma: That Sakina is such an inspired by the success of Phalke’s attention-seeker! She has been telling Lanka Dahan [1917]. But because he this story to everybody, trying to make was a newcomer in the industry, no trouble for no reason. What happened director or technician was ready to was that Sakina had to bare her work for him. At that point he heard breasts in Sati Anusuya [1921] in the that the director S.N. Patankar was in scene where Anusuya suckles the gods. need of finances, so he decided to fund But she sat alone in a room in the him. Of course, they fell out a few studio, while the scene was shot years later—some silly squabbles over through a hole in the studio wall with cultural identity or some such thing. the camera placed outside, so what is You should ask Virchand Dharamsey- she making such a song and dance 9 bhai about this story, he knows what about? really happened. I don’t really know all the details. Ms Kitty: Well I guess she just wasn’t adequately prepared for doing Ms Kitty: Yes, Virchand-bhai brings a scene like that. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 37

Fatma: That doesn’t make her a very good actor then, does it? I personally get very angry with all this hullagulla over morality. It is full of hypocrisy.

Ms Kitty: Did you never object to your daughters doing bold scenes? For example, Zubeida’s forty-eight kisses with Jal Merchant in that Ezra Mir film Zarina [1932]—did that never bother you? The media was ablaze with controversy over that film for months. For example, I came across this magazine report on Zarina which says, “Zubeida plays a vibrant, volatile circus girl whose kisses steam up the screen, sparking Zubeida in Zarina - Journal of the Moving Image 37 off a heated debate on censorship…”

Fatma: You know only too well how indecorous dancing; excessively the media like to sensationalise passionate love scenes; and bathing things! scenes passing the limits of propriety! Ms Kitty: I won’t comment on the media, but I find the Bombay Censor Fatma: (Laughs) I know this list very Board’s list of ‘objectionable’ scenes well. I had to go over it each time I quite extraordinary. I have this sent a film to the Bombay Censor document here with a long list of Board. I could almost rattle it off in such scenes. Let me read a few out to my sleep in those days. Look, where you: unnecessary exhibition of is it gone, that photo of Zubeida’s; I feminine underclothing; the had kept it safely in this book to exhibition of profuse bleeding; nude show you. Ah, here it is. Some media figures; offensive vulgarity and people had come the other day to impropriety in conduct and dress; interview her; they took a photo and ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 38

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

gave her this copy. What does she look like if not respectable?!

Ms Kitty: She looks beautiful, and she looks a lot like you! Your times were so fascinating. All this confusion about what was socially acceptable and what was not, and cinema of course was the greatest taboo of all. Apparently 38 Dadasaheb Phalke found it so difficult to get

women actors that he Zubeida - National Film Archive of India had to cast men “with delicate features and slender hands” as See, I have a copy of the article here. 10 women. The film industry must What does he mean by ‘base mode of really thank Muslim, Jewish and living’ and ‘want of culture’?! Anglo-Indian women for taking to the screen. Tell me, why did the Fatma: Any woman would welcome industry men fuss so much about it if the industry stopped exploiting making the industry a place where women. Let them start by paying us ‘respectable women’ could work? the same as our male co-actors. Men Dhiren Ganguly, the filmmaker, like Ganguly decided that the film writes in Film Land that “the women industry would become more in the industry were unfit because of respectable if more upper caste their base mode of living, vicious Hindu women joined the industry. environment, their want of culture Such men thought that Devika Rani, 11 and their indifference to education”. Shanta Apte and Durga Khote—all ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 39

History in the Dark – Rashmi Sawhney

wonderful actors—contributed to industry—those who are still the respectability of the industry. So around, mashallah—have been I am told. gathering all the old celluloid strips the censors made us cut. Our Ms Kitty: But they didn’t escape the celluloid is like us, you know, it’s hypocrisies of the industry either. wasting away day by day, so we Devika Rani’s kissing scene in Karma thought we’d have some fun with our [1933] kicked up such a controversy! moving images before they fade away altogether. We meet here every Fatma: And what a wasted kiss too! Wednesday, look through the film They must have slowed down the bits. Some of it is quite raunchy, let speed of the projector to make that me warn you! Sometimes we join kiss last four minutes. There was no the bits to create new content. chemistry between Devika and her 39 husband Himanshu Rai—it looked Ms Kitty: I can just see the headline like both of them were ready to of a sensational news report—film run…and of course she did run off a stars of yesteryear experimenting few years later, with Najam-ul- with naughty found footage! Hussain! Would you like some more tea? Fatma:(Laughs) Now I’m tired…all these memories you’ve stirred up. I Ms Kitty: No, thanks, I think I really need to sleep my thoughts should take your leave now. We’ve away…but I’ll see you soon. Next been chatting for long, and you must Wednesday, perhaps? be tired. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you. I’ll come back another On her off days Ms Kitty day maybe, for your kebab recipe? masquerades as Rashmi Sawhney, Programme Executive at IFA, and in Fatma: Well, come on a Wednesday. Second Life, as faculty in film and That’s when nobody is at home. And cultural studies at the Dublin I’ll let you in on a little secret. Some Institute of Technology. of us ladies from the old days of the ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 40

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

NOTES as Mouj, Majha, Filmland and Film India— about her films and her daughters’ lives in 1. “A film historian is somewhat like an cinema, come to the rescue in what can archaeologist, trying to get an idea of a only be a futile, if wishful, pursuit of society gone by, with the help of a few discovering India’s first woman filmmaker. potsherds, broken bangles and some beads.” I have therefore resorted to a patchwork- T. Bhaskaran, ‘Problems Faced by Film quilt approach in weaving together this Historians in India’, Journal of the Moving narrative in the form of an interview Image, No. 9 (2010). between a film journalist, Ms Kitty, and An undisputed challenge to historians of Fatma, to create a speculative history of early Indian cinema is the dearth of her life and times. documentary evidence—scripts, photographs, industry records, posters, 2. Kaushik Bhaumik, ‘Gul-e-Bakavali as 40 film production equipment, and indeed Text and Film Script: Introduction’, the films themselves—to help reconstruct Bioscope, 3 (2) (2012), pp. 175-207. the history of this period. What can emerge, then, is merely a partial narrative 3. For an interesting discussion on that cajoles you into alternative ways of re- pari/parastan stories, see Gayatri thinking film cultures and historiography. Chatterjee, ‘Writing History for Cinema: Using the liberty afforded by this duress, I Archives, Archeological Sites and have attempted to reconstruct the context Homes’, Journal of the Moving Image, No. 9 within which Fatma Begum—whose (2010). Chatterjee argues that the pari generic title of Begum forever cloaks her in symbolises the impossibility of desire. For mystery—worked as an actor, director and example, a common narrative is that the producer in the Bombay film industry in pari falls in love with a mortal man despite the 1920s and 1930s. A few entries, across numerous warnings and then has to deal disparate sources—mainly in journals such with this problem-situation. She can either ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 41

choose to stay with her lover in the human 8. Sampat belonged to a Kutchi-speaking world, or can return to parastan. If she Halai Bhatia family from Jam Kambhatiya stays on, she must lose her wings—the near Jamnagar and ran a shop in Rajkot. symbols of her freedom and powers—and At some point in the early years of silent be fully domesticated. Or she holds on to cinema, he bought a projector, and was her wings, but goes back to her own land given a few short films for free, which he broken-hearted. Chatterjee adds that it’s started to screen. His parents wanted him not only the pari who succumbs to desire; to go to Europe to become a chartered men too give in to her beauty and accountant but he was not really 41 seductive powers, but ultimately they must interested. Fortunately for him he fell establish control over her and diminish her really sick at sea and had to return mid- superiority. “The ultimate male fantasy is a voyage, after which he pursued a career in superior woman, but one who is still cinema. ‘Transcript of Interview with available and subservient to him.” Virchand Dharamsey’, Bioscope, 3 (2) (2012). 4. ‘Transcript of Interview with Virchand Dharamsey’, Bioscope, 3 (2) (2012), 9. Ibid. pp. 175-207. 10. Mohun and Choudhuri, ‘Of Wayward 5. Ibid. Girls and Wicked Women: Women in Silent Indian Feature Films’, Deep Focus-6 6. Ibid. (1996), pp. 4-14.

7. Virchand Dharamsey, ‘The Advent of 11. Samik Bandhopadhyay, Indian Cinema: Sound in Indian Cinema: Theatre, Contemporary Perceptions from the Thirties Orientalism, Action, Magic’, Journal of the (Jamshedpur: Celluloid Chapter, 1993). Moving Image, No. 9 (2010). ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 42

ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 43

The poster of Zabak (1961) directed by Homi Wadia.

Out of Sight: Archivingof Hidden Practice Histories Debashree Mukherjee All photographs courtesy Priya Paul

Chairperson of Apeejay Our understanding of Indian cinema would remain incomplete until we acknowledged its supporting cast of hairdressers, poster painters, costume designers, still photographers, makeup artists and numerous other specialists invisible to the public eye. In January 2013, Debashree Mukherjee curated an exhibition of Hindi film memorabilia titled ‘Maya Mahal’, which featured artefacts from the private collection of Priya Paul, Surrendra Park Hotels. In this essay, Mukherjee uses examples from the collection to point to hidden histories of work and practice, and to give us a fragmented view of low-budget films, lost genres and the wage-workers who mark each film with their individual skills. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 44

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

eterodox in its scope and the elemental contract of cinema range, Priya Paul’s itself: to deliver sensory excitement, Hcollection of film voyeuristic delight and magical memorabilia represents an eccentric worlds. Thus, the exhibition mix of films. There are archives larger showcased genres, practitioners and than this, there are archives that are aesthetics that are often forgotten in more systematic, but the pleasure of a bid to celebrate auteurs and ‘classics’. serendipity springs from This is an alternative history of juxtaposition, not from order and Hindi cinema—one that is decidedly expanse. Comprising approximately excessive, melodramatic, even 5,000 paper artefacts, the Priya Paul utopian. collection was built using an intuitive logic that brought disparate objects Many of these films have not been together with scant regard for considered socially or artistically cultural hierarchies. And thus, significant by dominant standards. Mehboob Khan’s Mother India Most of them firmly belong to the B- (1957) is shelved with K.S. Reddy’s circuit and were made on a low 44 Daku Rani Himmatwali (1984), and budget, with scant attention to Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957) jostles for subtlety and much emphasis on space with Akkoo’s Aadam Khor thrills. B movies have traditionally (1955), to create an associative magic. circulated in mofussil towns, rural centres, and the working class In January 2013 an neighbourhoods of big cities. exhibition titled ‘Maya The point is not Mahal’ presented a whether these first glimpse of this films are ‘good’ or collection. As its ‘bad’, but that these curator I wanted to are desires and distil the chief imaginations that promise held out have existed alongside by the collection the mainstream, often rather than erupting into it. The illustrate its power of the mainstream range. This blockbuster draws on the promise was affective charge of the ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 45

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

underground, the unseen. The two go Signs of this change in direction can be together, much like the Ravi-Vijay seen in Raqs Media Collective and duo in Yash Chopra’s Deewar (1975). C.K. Muralidharan’s research on ‘The In the A-circuit universe, Vijay must History and Practice of 1 be punished for his transgressions Cinematography in India’, Sarai- and die in the climax. But he is also CSDS’s project titled ‘Publics and the more exciting sibling, dangerous Practices in the History of the Present’, and sexy, flouting all norms and Ranjani Mazumdar’s work on making us secretly root for him. As production designers and poster 2 we celebrate the centenary of Indian makers, Clare Wilkinson-Weber’s cinema, we must also look at the B study of ‘dressmen’ (costume managers movie, the ogre in the cave, the in Hindi cinema), Tejaswini Ganti’s misshapen twin of the mainstream. ethnographic research on production and Gregory Booth’s study of the music 3 Hidden histories of work and practice industry. are encoded within the Priya Paul collection. Film artefacts such as lobby We do not have any collective memory cards, posters and song booklets evoke of the actors, producers and directors 45 layered histories—of the men and of B- and C-grade movies. And when women who created the object in itself it comes to the legendary classics of (still photographers, poster painters, mainstream Hindi cinema, we rarely graphic designers, printers) and of recognise the efforts of specialists such those who created all that is contained as art directors, costume designers, within the frame (art directors, makeup artists or stunt masters. Here costume designers, choreographers, are some artefacts presented in the background dancers, light boys). The ‘Maya Mahal’ exhibition, viewed from Bombay film industry is seldom the angles of labour and biography. approached as a site of work. But it is What follows is an exercise in seeing in fact an industrial-affective site where and naming that will necessarily be technology, innovation and incomplete and fragmented, for it will improvisation go hand-in-hand with largely take the form of an inventory risk, ambition and desire. Over the last of biographies, a catalogue of decade, some areas of Indian film and practices. Perhaps it could also point media studies have clearly veered to possibilities for research and toward the documentation of practice. historiography. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 46

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

46 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:29 PM Page 47

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

Tarzan-fashion, and adopted by Dada, a chimpanzee. Seventeen years later the professor’s brother arrives on a mission to find his nephew. He is accompanied by his beautiful, adopted daughter Leela. This character is played by Chitra and she immediately falls in love with our dashing local Tarzan. For the rest of the film we see her play Jane in demure leopard skins and battle it out with her romantic rival, Maya.

Chitra (d. 2006) was a leading lady in low-budget films of the 1950s and 1960s. Born Afsar Unissa Begum in Stunts and Action Hyderabad, her life and work have gone practically undocumented. The 47 Zimbo (1958) was a Priya Paul collection, with its colour remake of Wadia Movietone’s emphasis on stunt and fantasy films, superhit film Toofani Tarzan (1937), brings an actress such as Chitra into both directed by Homi Wadia. The the public eye. In an interview to success of Toofani Tarzan had Khalid Mohamed in 1990, Chitra launched a veritable cycle of jungle constructs her own narrative. As a adventure films; the film itself child she frequently went to Bombay remained in circulation for about for family holidays, and was soon twenty years. The story begins when swept up by the film craze. Her first Professor Chakravarty, who is working role was opposite Ajit in Safdar Aah’s on a formula for eternal life in his top- Maan (1954) but real success came secret forest laboratory, is killed by with P.N. Arora’s Chor Bazaar (1954) 4 wild animals. Before dying, though, he opposite Shammi Kapoor. fixes the anti-aging formula in an amulet around his infant son’s neck Chitra proudly listed Zimbo among and sets him aloft in a hot air balloon. her most significant films calling it The boy is brought up by the jungle in “India’s first jungle colour film.” Her ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 48

opens up several other narratives of lost genres such as jungle stunt films, and players such as Azad, the muscular Tarzan of India, or even Pedro, ‘the human chimpanzee’.

Opender Chanana, film professional and labour activist, starts his book on work conditions in the Bombay film industry with a reference to a news report from 1938 written by a young film journalist from Lahore, B.R. Chopra. Three account of her short-lived professional actors had drowned in the Powai success is bitter-sweet: Lake during the shooting of Mohan 48 Pictures’ Vir Bala. Chanana recounts I’ve done all sorts of films… I that Chopra wrote a strident lived in a bungalow-type house, editorial in his magazine, Cine I changed seven cars as I Herald, and “called upon the became more and more popular. Producers to give material and moral I’ve done 111 films, I’ve support and relief to the dependents counted them actually… But of the victims. It also suggested, as then there was an ajeebsi guidance for future, to stunt [strange] tragedy… Work companies, to arrange for safe guards stopped coming and there beforehand for those who play with wasn’t the kind of money flow danger. It stressed the need for as earlier. … I’m okay, I have a security and assurance against loss of 6 decent 650 sq ft flat, a phone. life to artists.” This editorial did not God forbid, I’ve never starved. change the industry’s approach to I’ve adjusted to the times. I like safety norms or compensation. travelling by auto rickshaw, it’s However, it pointed to a huge blind 5 like sitting on a jhoola [swing]. spot in discussions around the Tracking biographies like Chitra’s Indian film industries—that ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 49

unorganised, informal labour and precarious working conditions had been ignored entirely.

In the same year as the Powai Lake accident, a predecessor of Chitra and Azad at Wadia Movietone faced a series of shooting mishaps. Pramilla, born Esther Abraham, acted in more than thirty-five films from 1935 to 1961 and was closely associated with the stunt film genre, acting in adventure films such as Jungle King (1939) from Wadia Movietone and Bijlee (1939) from Prakash Pictures, where one would find her dressed in tiger skins and jumping off horses. Pramilla performed her own stunts in 49 tiger costume, which was heavy, many films and sustained many severe and when she finally gave up, she injuries. In 1938 during the shooting of was thrown out by the whirlpool Jungle King she had a couple of narrow onto the bank. Everyone came up escapes. The film unit had gone to to congratulate her – ‘Kya scene Ghodbunder for an outdoor shoot and 7 tha!’ there was a scene in which she had to sing while swimming in a river. The other serious accident that took Unbeknownst to anyone in the crew: place at the time gave Pramilla a broken nose, and for years to come she A whirlpool sucked her under; took great pleasure in pointing out the she kept bobbing up and down; ‘dent’ in her nose. each time she managed to come up she would make frantic Esther Victoria Abraham (1916- gestures asking for help. The 2006) was born into a wealthy camera crew continued shooting, Baghdadi Jewish family in Calcutta. mistaking her frantic gestures for Like in a typical melodramatic film, a authentic acting. She was in her sudden reversal in family fortunes ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 50

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

forced Esther and her sisters to seek in their highly risky, improvisational 9 employment immediately after school. work environments. Esther started her professional life as a teacher at the Talmud Jewish Boys’ Publicity Art School. By 1934, Esther was nineteen, divorced and a single mother. During a One of the few Hindi cinema ‘classics’ casual visit to Bombay, she got an represented in the Priya Paul acting offer and immediately sent a collection is Mother India. The telegram to Calcutta “saying she would collection contains a publicity booklet 8 not be returning”. for the film, an elaborate document that carries production information As Pramilla, she excelled in roles that and a heavily illustrated synopsis. This presented her as a bold, westernised twenty-two-page booklet differs from woman, mostly playing a ‘dangerous’ the song booklet genre in that it second lead. While Fearless Nadia contains no lyrics at all. Most unique played the vigilante superwoman in is the fact that instead of photographic many of these films, Pramilla publicity stills, it carries hand-painted 50 performed the scheming vamp. But images in which the technique of over- she seems to have recognised that painting is used—the artist paints these gender stereotypes not only sent over actors’ photographic portraits out moralistic messages about the with oils. Rachel Dwyer and Divia ‘emancipated woman’ but, Patel point out that the artist L.L. paradoxically, also enabled the Meghanee had selected “key unabashed portrayal of strong, photographs illustrating the most sexually-aware female characters. dramatic points in the film.” They analyse the visual style, saying that “the The fragmented archive of Indian exaggerated and rough brush strokes cinema bears traces of these few give an effect similar to that of shooting accidents primarily because Western Expressionist painting. they involved relatively well-known …The entire booklet is charged with actors. It might be worth mentioning an emotional and passionate intensity that there is no count of the light that aimed to glorify India and its 10 boys, stuntmen, setting dadas and traditional ways.” One sees a steady electricians who have died of electric rise in this kind of formal analysis of shocks or fallen off tarafas (catwalks) poster art and artists, and a growing ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 51

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

interest in compiling these artists’ songs, which are transliterated into professional histories and studying the those languages. Booklets were often history of poster printing meant as publicity targeted at technologies. distributors and exhibitors, but were also sold directly to spectators, as the Another interesting publicity price of four annas printed on some document is the song booklet. This is covers indicates. Not surprisingly, this a slim pamphlet that carries a fragile and slight object is one of our miniaturised version of the film poster most precious resources for writing a on the cover, and contains the history of Indian cinema today. Nearly synopsis, production stills, and 2,200 films were produced in Bombay complete cast and crew credits, besides alone between 1931 and 1950 and at the lyrics of the songs. Most song least eighty per cent of these films are booklets translate the textual material now unavailable for viewing. The into two or more languages, such as prints have crumbled to dust, been English, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and destroyed in fires, or simply Bengali, except for the lyrics of the disappeared for lack of care and archival attention. It would hardly be 51 an exaggeration to say that the archive of early Indian cinema is haunted by ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 52

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

this absence. Thus, the song booklet Hair and Makeup with its rich information and illustrations is often the only means to Tracking film practitioners through reconstruct a lost history. From the film memorabilia is a dizzying perspective of visual history, the design enterprise. Clues lead to other clues, and typeface used in these booklets also protagonists multiply and mimic reflect the artistic currents of the times. each other, the original chase is For example, the stunning booklet cover forgotten and one starts shadowing for M. Udwadia’s Shahu Chor/Prince of newer characters. One such character Thieves (1936) uses a mix of styles is ‘Madam Solomon’ credited for the including an art deco background and ‘Hair Styles’ in S.U. Sunny’s Uran typeface combined with photographic Khatola (1955), a fantasy film cut-outs. A preliminary search has starring Nimmi, Dilip Kumar and revealed nothing about the artist, S.K. Surya Kumari. Written by Azim Murthy, except that he was possibly a Bazidpuri, the film is set in a well-known art director in south India. mythical land called Shanga, ruled by a fair queen. The plot opens when 52 Dilip Kumar’s plane crashes in this ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 53

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

land and he falls in love with the high- IMDB claims, the nine films that are born local lass, Nimmi. The film was listed can only represent a slice of her 11 lavishly produced by Naushad who body of work. also scored some memorable songs for the film. Given that there are no Hairdressers in the 1950s and 1960s screen credits for individual actors’ were part of the small tribe of female hairstylists, it can be assumed that film professionals you would Mrs Solomon was responsible for encounter in a studio. The other styling at least the main female careerists in this tribe were actresses, characters. Nimmi sports a variety of extras and dancers. Ram Tipnis, a elaborate hairdos in the film, mainly makeup artist who started his film chosen for their old-world appeal. Soft career in the 1940s, has said in an curls, fancy ringlets, intricately interview that: arranged plaits, and semi-pompadours from the Victorian era create Nimmi’s In fact Bombay Talkies and pretty look. Surya Kumari’s hair is Filmistan started the trend of more demurely designed to create a having a separate Hair mature and elegant effect. Both Department. Before that the 53 characters are given a wide range of actresses would get their maids hair accessories and ornaments to add to do their hair or everyone to the exotic appeal of the imaginary would just do their own hair, you world they inhabit. One can only know Indian style. …Even in the imagine what references Mrs Solomon Costume department we had used to decide upon these looks, or men. Sometimes if they needed what discussions there might have help they might call the Hair been at a pre-production stage. There assistant, but no, there were no is no trace of the mysterious Madam other women employed in the 12 Solomon in the usual records. studio. IMDb.com, however, has a listing for Mrs R. Solomon and credits her with By the mid-1950s the situation had a brief filmography including Guide changed somewhat. Bhanu Athaiya (1965), Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), was hired by Guru Dutt to design Ram aur Shyam (1967) and Patthar Ke costumes in CID (1956) and the rest Sanam (1967). Even if Solomon’s is history. career was only a decade long, as ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 54

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

The story of women’s work in the film and events, we can have a more industry is waiting to be excavated from contemplative relationship to the film clues such as these. While those who visual. The Uran Khatola lobby card worked in the first decades of the film capitalises on this difference in form. industry are no more, it is yet possible It is relatively spare and showcases the to do a much-needed oral history two highlights of the film: sets and project for the 1950s and beyond. costumes. In a fantasy film, these are the chief attractions, and the lobby Art Direction card economically privileges these to guarantee an evening of spectacle. When the moving image is frozen on paper, in the form of publicity stills, Uran Khatola opens with a scene of an our relation to it is altered. Not caught up with following characters, actions

54 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 55

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

old-fashioned galleon being tossed collection with films such as Zimbo, mercilessly on the high seas. Only one Nanabhai Bhatt’s Madame XYZ man survives the shipwreck and finds (1959), and Homi Wadia’s Zabak himself on the shores of an unfamiliar (1961). island. He then makes his way through an eerie forest and reaches a tiny Art Direction, nowadays known as house, shabby and with a pointed Production Design, was one of the first roof, much like in an illustrated specialised film categories to be Grimms’ fairytale. These are carefully acknowledged by the Filmfare Awards. constructed sets complete with Instituted in 1953, the Filmfare specially moulded trees, painted skies Awards started with five basic and artificial giant cobwebs. Coupled categories: Best Film, Director, Actor, with low-key lighting and wide-angle Actress and Music Director. The next lensing, the determinedly non- year it added the categories of Story, naturalistic sets create an Supporting Roles, Cinematography Expressionist aesthetic. Later, when and Sound. In 1955, two more we are taken to the mythical land of categories were added: Editing and Art Shanga, the film treats us to a Direction. It took another couple of 55 dizzying series of phantasmagorical years for Lyricist, Dialogue Writer and sets. Colossal statues of gods that Playback Singer to be included. breathe fire, idyllic pleasure gardens, a Categories such as Action and musical bridge, flying chariots and a Choreography, those staples of Bombay royal bed shaped like a blossoming cinema, were only recognised post flower are just some of the stunning 1988. The film industry has long creations of art director V. Jadhav Rao. recognised Art Direction as being one Rao’s name crops up in films from the of the core elements of film production, 1950s right through the 1980s and yet but the names, filmographies, one can find no systematically listed innovations and signature strategies of biographical or professional art directors are difficult to come by. information about him. The same goes The Bombay film industry is often for Bachubhai Mistry, the art director blamed for not documenting its own of Zimbo and of several special effects past but traces do exist as award and stunt films produced by the histories, and records of crafts unions Wadia Brothers. Mistry’s name and associations. recurrently appears in the Priya Paul ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 56

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

Choreography on symmetrically arranged bodies, epic sets, chorus lines and frontal tableau Zabak is a resplendent Persian displays. The film credits three adventure film shot in Geva Colour. It choreographers: Satyanarayan, Surya stars Mahipal as the title character, a Kumar, and Chetan. Both polyglot healer and a carefree soul. He Satyanarayan and Surya Kumar were falls in love with the wealthy Zainab prolific choreographers and dancers (Shyama) but the difference in their from the 1950s right up until the status presents the first of many 1980s. Satyanarayan was partial to obstacles in their path. After being ballet and some of that proclivity is persecuted by Zainab’s family, he joins evident in Zabak. The dances in the a gang of bandits. The sets, designed film work organically with the sets and by Bachubhai Mistry, are extravagant costumes to create a unified pageant of in scale and breathtaking in detail. attractions. Mistry follows the Islamicate iconography of spires, domes, latticed Surya Kumar was Anglo-Indian by windows, diaphanous curtains and birth and was known to his colleagues 56 pendulous chandeliers. The costumes, as Robert Master. He is sometimes by Mohamed Umer, follow the even listed in a film’s credits as ‘Robert’. Arabian Nights model of unisex harem Symptomatic of the acute lack of pants, waistcoats and fezes. Umer was documentation of choreographic also responsible for the costumes of practice in Bombay cinema, Surya Zimbo, radically different from those in Kumar’s professional information is Zabak. The film credits three women nearly impossible to come by. This is for ‘Hair Styles’: Nargis, Norma, and compounded by the fact that for the Geeta. At this stage in my research, I ninety-four films he is known to have have absolutely no information on worked on, there are many more where them. his work might be uncredited. He himself appeared in many of the No Persian fantasy is complete famous dances he choreographed, as a without dances, and Zabak features backup dancer, a band member, or examples of synchronised group even to partner the lead female dancer. choreography. It continues a tradition According to the dancer Edwina Lyons seen in films such as K. Amarnath’s and Thomas Daniel, it appears that he Alif Laila (1953) wherein the focus is introduced the international dance ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 57

collection brings certain histories into focus with its privileging of stunt and sensation of the 1960s, ‘The Shake’, to fantasy genres. Narratives of local Hindi film audiences with the song innovation, transnational referencing, ‘Jaan Pehchaan Ho’ from Raja 13 and precarious labour are stamped Nawathe’s Gumnaam (1965). It is onto these films. A focus on cultural worth mentioning that Surya Kumar work can yield a new approach to the 57 was the man behind the ‘Hum Aapki history of Indian cinema, one that Aankhon Mein’ dream sequence in simultaneously acknowledges its Pyaasa. Typically, the Priya Paul industrial and artistic facets. We are archive frequently brings up his name. also reminded that film is an He also choreographed dances in Uran inherently collaborative medium Khatola. involving hundreds of salaried experts and wage-workers who mark each film According to Lyons, Surya Kumar was with their individual skills. An so penniless in his last years that he auteurist history of Hindi cinema is had to beg his dancers to buy him a inadequate to either the memory of pair of spectacles. He died of a heart these practitioners or the complex attack sometime in the mid-1980s, in a practices they represent. makeup room in a studio. Debashree Mukherjee is a Ph.D In the preceding sections I have tried candidate in the Department of to demonstrate some of the tangents Cinema Studies, New York University. one could follow while looking for Her dissertation tracks a history of traces of film work. The Priya Paul film practice in late colonial Bombay. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 58

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

NOTES in Popular Hindi Film’ in Anthropological Quarterly, 79(4), pp. 581-608 and her 1. This research project was among the first forthcoming book titled Fashioning Bollywood: to be supported by IFA. The Making and Meaning of Hindi Film Costume; Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay 2. Ranjani Mazumdar received an IFA grant Cinema: An Archive of the City (New Delhi: in 2002 to study the Bombay film poster. Permanent Black, 2007) and ‘The Bombay Film Poster’ in Seminar-525, 2003; 3. Gregory Booth, Behind the Curtain: http://www.sarai.net/research/media-city. Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (Oxford & New York: Oxford University 4. http://cineplot.com/encyclopedia/chitra/ Press, 2008); Tejaswani Ganti, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi 5. Ibid. Film Industry (Duke University Press, 2012); Clare Wilkinson-Weber, ‘The Dressman’s 6. Opender Chanana, The Missing 3 in Line: Transforming the Work of Costumers Bollywood: Safety, Security, Shelter 58 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 59

Out of Sight – Debashree Mukherjee

(Switzerland: UNI Global Union, 2011). See everything from carpentry and painting to also G. Nihalani, S. Chatterjee & Gulzar arrangement of props and furnishings. A (eds.) Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema: An tarafa is a narrow wooden walkway that runs Enchanting Close-Up of India’s Hindi Cinema above the set in a studio and from which (New Delhi: Popular Prakashan, 2003) for light-men hang and adjust lights and cables. the section on stunts and safety hazards. 10. Rachel Dwyer and Divia Patel, Cinema 7. R. Shahani (ed) Pramila – Esther Victoria India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film Abraham (Mumbai: Sound & Picture (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), p. 163. Archives for Research on Women, 1998), p.16. 11. See http://www.imdb.com/ name/nm1351931/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 8. Ibid. 12. Interviewed in Bombay, 2008. 9. A lower-rung Art Department assistant is often called ‘setting dada’, the term ‘dada’, 13. http://dustedoff.wordpress.com meaning ‘older brother’, being a mark of /2011/10/10/edwina-part-2-a-cast-of- respect. Setting dadas are responsible for characters/(Surya Kumar) 59 dressing a set according to the instructions of the art director. It is a job that includes ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 60

Gautam Pemmaraju Soundbaazi:1 The Sound of More than Music

‘Loud’ is the word that most easily springs to mind when one describes the soundtrack of the archetypal Hindi film. The main purpose of sound is to heighten the melodrama, to imbue the hero with a mythic aura through blood-and-thunder dialogue. What, then, is the role of sound effects in the composite soundtrack and how are they conceived? Drawing from conversations with several sound professionals and filmmakers, Gautam Pemmaraju gives us an insider’s view of effects production and aesthetics during the analogue era of sound production in Hindi cinema. From the age of the talkies he takes us through the dubbing era to the digital age, when technology brought about a radically different tone, texture and timbre to contemporary sounds. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 61

ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 62

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

alking out of a movie The final arbiter of the sound mix of theatre with a buzzing films for the Indian viewing public has Whead, ringing ears and traditionally been (and in many ways fevered eyes after a three-hour, dense continues to be) the projectionist. sensory encounter, carrying away in With a studied or even random one’s mind an iridescent pastiche of method of ascribing hierarchical value, bravado-ridden dialogue, catchy tunes, he may boost the volume during sugary lyrics and a dizzy graphic dramatic sequences, amplifying crowd- composite, is a profound cultural pleasing, paisa-vasool (get your money’s experience. In the numb moments worth) dialogues, histrionic portions of immediately after the film ends and the background score, or any other the lights are switched on, the complex sections that he may regard as worthy vortex of images and sounds swirling of in-your-face audio. This process about within us conceals far more than invests him with extraordinary cultural what is later articulated and discussed power—he post-mixes the film threadbare with companions and soundtrack during its viewing, friends. The sound of cinema, beyond conducting a real-time ‘live’ mix which, 62 the spoken word and the music, is in turn, shapes and influences what is registered in (and more often than not heard more prominently and what is relegated to) the deeper recesses of the not (and where it is heard from, in mind. From the more obvious quite a few cases), thereby recalibrating ricocheting gunshots to the lone the painstaking and fine balance dramatic footfalls and to the abstract achieved by the collective efforts of the textures embedded deep in the ‘sound department’ of the film. In fact, background, there is a complex ecology it is he, one can safely surmise, who has of sonic material that accompanies the shaped in extraordinary and image, providing context, psychology, idiosyncratic ways the loudness of the oblique cues and significant depth. film, altering the craft of the recordist, ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 63

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

2 re-recordist and mixing engineer not practitioners and viewers alike this to mention the final choices of the loud, shrill sound was indeed a ‘culture’ director, the producer and others who born of specific needs, practices and influence the film sound’s final form tastes linked to pre-existing performance traditions. By all before it is released to the viewing 3 public. This idea of optimum loudness accounts, Mangesh Desai the is central to the film sound mix and celebrated sound recordist understood has been traditionally associated with this elementally. Acutely aware of efficacy, impact, power and success. poorly maintained projectors, foggy The sound must ‘cut through’, the lenses, poor mechanical transport, dialogues must be heard, especially the acoustically inadequate spaces and ones that lionise the hero and whimsical projectionists, the man who demonise the bad guy, and also those influenced generations of film sound that map the moral landscape of the professionals in India was able to strike story through the characters that play an unusual balance—a fine ‘mix’, so to it out. Importantly, the sound coming out of speakers of varying fidelity and competence must also ‘cut through’ the 63 large, noisy fans affixed to the ceiling and walls; it must be heard above any and all extraneous sounds that stubbornly find their way into poorly equipped theatres in moffusil towns and inner cities. From Rajahmundry to Raibareli, the sound must be heard.

The projected sound is typically tinny and shrill, much like the mixes of bawdy folk tunes, film songs and religious/devotional music played in rickshaws and trucks, wherein the mid-range and high frequencies are boosted so that the music may be heard in the open cabins despite the rush of wind and traffic noise. For film ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 64

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

4 speak—given the reality of theatrical negating time and space.” With one exhibition and the vagaries of microphone capturing all the sound— style/taste on a broad scale. It had to the spoken word, the songs, and work for everybody. effectively every incidental, ambient sound that occurs—the ‘mix’ on set as In the conventional hierarchy of film the camera filmed the scene was sound, dialogue took precedence over moderated by moving characters who background music and effects. Of sang and spoke in turn, and by course, songs in Hindi cinema occur musicians hidden away behind set mostly as independent tableaux within props or off-camera. Booth says in this the narrative, and it is only on occasion context that “the network of attitudes that they are more cinematically and practices that determined the use integrated with the narrative structure of sound-film technology was of the film. Early Indian cinema structured by the technological mimicked (and often adapted) stage demands of simultaneous recording, as plays; music and songs were performed well as aesthetic and narrative alongside dialogue. Virchand conventions of music drama 5 64 Dharamsey writes that most studios performance”. produced films on the lines of stylised Parsi theatre with “Oriental and Apart from songs and playback music, mythological subjects and costumes, what were the other sounds of plots of high exaggeration, mistaken mainstream Hindi cinema? The identities, coincidences, lost and found onomatopoeic myths of ‘dishoom’ and 6 themes, and above all, the progression ‘dishkiyaaon’ notwithstanding, how of narrative through songs were sound effects produced; and dances and the how indeed were they traditions of ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 65

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

conceived of? What was their than-life performances and rendering”. 7 importance and role in the composite The ‘dubbing era’, when sound was soundtrack? Drawing from untethered from the visual, further conversations with several sound contributed to this conception, as the professionals and filmmakers, I look reconstruction of the soundtrack here at effects production and involved primarily dialogues, aesthetics during the analogue era of background music and songs, followed sound production in Hindi cinema, by ambience and effects. The which began to fade away in the early background score was in constant 1990s. Digital technology brought counter-play with the foreground paradigmatic change, not just in terms (dialogues), and sought as much of the non-linear editing process, attention and space. Given this density sophisticated stock effects libraries, on the soundtrack, “…where is the digital recorders, storage and transfer, chance of using ambience and other and ultimately projection and effects?” Ranjan asks rhetorically. The exhibition, but also in the way it scenic drama and the theatrical broadly impacted practice as well as declamations (popularly known as specific aesthetic, creative choices. In dialoguebaazi) were underscored 65 particular, digital technology also primarily by background music; the brought about the radically different sounds intrinsic to the physical tone, texture, timbre and dynamics of action—from footfalls and door-closes contemporary sounds, a more rigorous to body movements—were always technical realism that effectively subservient and often deemed created a previously unheard ‘universe unnecessary. The idea of fighting for of sounds’ and current modes of sonic space for effects is a critical one; there bricolage. literally was no space, either physical— in the limited capacity of optical film Culture-driven Soundtrack and later magnetic film, or conceptual —in the idea of what kind of sounds Rakesh Ranjan, veteran sound man appeared in the soundtrack. All that and Head of the Department of mattered was that the effects had to Sound Design and Recording at have some ‘value’, some raison d’être that Whistling Woods International, argues justified their inclusion. Punches, in that the Hindi film soundtrack is this context, had to be “larger than life”, culture-driven and is linked to “larger- Ranjan points out, and were often ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 66

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

specifically tailored to distinguish the turmoil of a tortured soul, or a grim, hero from the villain. The hero’s traumatic event. The filmic moment, punches had to be more ‘heroic’, and in the narrative context and the many instances, they were distinctly surrounding sonic space shape the louder than the others, endowing a symbolism. special aura to the filmic moment and the character, and contributing to the Symbolism has been dominant in film mythic quality of the hero and of the sound practice. Kuldip Sood, a film. practitioner who is Ranjan’s senior, also points to such usage. As an This expressionistic usage is a unique assistant re-recordist, Sood was narrative device, and the art of Hindi responsible for creating all the sound film sound is linked in no small effects for Sholay (1975), the first 70 measure to such ideas, says Ranjan. He mm stereophonic Hindi film—a alludes to Ajay Devgan’s fight scenes in landmark for the sound crew and for Qayamat (2003), where the foley work sound design in Hindi cinema. The on his punch sound included that of a ‘heroism’, he says, is reflected in the 66 metallic ring being struck, thereby mukkey ka awaaz (the sound of the enabling the sound to be “a performer punch), which should ‘sound heroic’. in itself ”. The effectiveness of the The artfulness during that period, sound effects and sound design is what Sood continues, was in working with “contributes to the storytelling”, says the limitations: the economic realities Ranjan. He makes a fine point here: of the times, the government many sound effects have performative restrictions on imports, the poor- and narrative attributes that go beyond quality amplifiers, and the lack of the merely incidental and resources and time for extensive, representational; they are less detailed sound work which was embedded in the psychological terrain, reflected in the culture of relegating where a compounded sonic space sound (aside from music and provides subtle, abstract cues. background sound) to the bottom of Interestingly, he brings up a general the food chain. idea: vigorously clanging temple bells could signify a joyous occasion, such as But on occasion, the foresight and the birth of child, but in a complete passion (and money) of a director or inversion, it could also signify the inner producer would open up great ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 67

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

opportunities, and Sholay, Sood says, ‘parallel cinema’—mostly, state was singular in this regard. From sponsored low-budget cinema which, sourcing over a hundred different belt unlike mainstream Hindi cinema, buckles for Gabbar Singh’s famous usually recorded sync sound on “Kitney aadmi thay” scene to location. Largely echoing the ‘loudness’ reconstructing the tonga, or horse-cart, theme and ‘heroic’ aspect of punches, in Rajkamal Kalamandir studios, the he points specifically to a scene from freedom and time available to create a Shyam Benegal’s Nishant (1975) complex sound design was exemplary wherein Girish Karnad unsuccessfully and unheard of in those days. resists the abduction of his wife, played Interestingly, a variety of sounds of by Shabana Azmi. As he walks around jewellery, baubles and trinkets were in agitation, pleading with the used to accentuate Hema Malini’s bystanders who watch on impassively, “bubbly character”, says Sood. Since an eerie rhythmic chant occupies the the ghungroo (bell) clusters of the payal soundtrack. The film was shot in (anklet) were small and far too close to Pochampally in Andhra Pradesh, and one another to make a loud sound, Ghosh recalls that as the crew were they were made to order so that the wrapping up the day’s shoot in the 67 foleyed sound could be resolved to little town where darkness had already tape without distortion and with descended, they heard a strange, appropriate definition. All soundmen unsettling sound. Ghosh went off into speak of the difficulties of working the darkness to investigate, following with bells during the analogue era and finally locating the sound: it was (recording crickets at night, on the other hand, seems to have been a rite of passage). Similarly, glass bangles of different gauges were combined to create a composite sound.

Hitendra Ghosh, who worked with Mangesh Desai, the mix engineer on Sholay, at Rajkamal Kalamandir, speaks at length in revealing anecdotes. He specifically points to the use of sound in what was then known as ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 68

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

being chanted by a woman who had contributing obliquely, by intent, to the been visited by the devi, a ‘possessed mood and psychology of the filmic woman’ who was in a trance. He moment. Referring to surreptitiously unobtrusively made a recording. In the recorded police wireless sounds that post-production stage, they found the were used in Ardh Satya (1983). Ghosh background score falling somewhat points out that foley work was not short in expressing the helplessness extensively done during that period. and fear experienced by the Recordists such as he made extensive emasculated husband. They decided to recordings during location shoots use the chant in lieu of music, as (birds, rain and other nature sounds texture to convey the power of the were big on the agenda), and these scene. were informally exchanged with other colleagues. Rajkamal Kalamandir, he This textural use of a sound effect was says, had a fairly extensive collective of uncommon then. The effect is neither stock sounds, including punches, incidental nor atmospheric, and it does gunshots, some explosions, door and not perform a narrative function. window sounds, nature, and ambience, 68 Intent is what is critical here. Going and one would hear them on many a beyond convention, the sound effect soundtrack since most sound work achieves an abstract screen life, during the 1970s and 1980s was done ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 69

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

at Rajkamal, with Mangesh Desai at of cheap quality magnetic stripe tape the helm. affected sound quality. Stripe tape is a 35 mm monaural format with a Budget Constraints magnetic recording area and a ‘guide’ stripe to keep the tape properly aligned Possibly the most limited and when played back. The costlier and hackneyed sound is the screeching of superior format, though, is 35 mm car tyres, says Ghosh. Creating ‘full-coat’ tape with three to six track extensive, realistic location recordings variants. He points out a fascinating was nearly always out of budget; car aspect of the business—that a lot of chase scenes were generally shot only stripe tape was cheaply imported in once. Such ‘expensive’ sounds would bulk during the 1970s because there travel widely, and it was no surprise was a roaring trade in cheap bangles that the same loops of car tyre squeals made of melted-down tape! The reels and screeches were so commonly of these tapes were made up of lengths heard. This sound, in turn—much like of stripe tape of varying quality— gunshots, explosions and punches— different levels of magnetic emulsion, came to signify a certain kind of sound differing lengths joined together 69 culture within the community, which poorly, etc. Stripe tape would be sold reflected budgets and attitudes towards the sound effects track. The sound quality also varied significantly since it depended on the quality of magnetic tape used in transfers, dubs, and the occasional original recording. ‘Transfer 8 rooms’ also sold stock sounds, or to be more precise one could rent the rooms by the hour to collect stock sounds for a film under production. BR Films too offered these facilities, says Narinder Singh, one of the early sound recording graduates (1966) from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

Singh describes how the proliferation ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 70

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

according to the number of joints in it which it was often used in lieu of the while full-coat was the norm for prohibitively expensive Kodak. Anup recording dialogues, songs, and Deo, a senior sound engineer tutored important effects. But as Narinder by Mangesh Desai, says that testing Singh and others point out, harsh the stripe tape became important, and economic realities and the hierarchy of the aim was “giving good sound” within cinema production process resulted in the constraints. “One or two joints in a several make-do solutions, the use of 1000-foot reel were fine,” he recalls. jointed stripe tape being one. Sound recordings on such tapes made their From the dynamic limitations of 9 way to the final mix. Looped sound optical tape (mixes were still done on effects (a short effect replicated several optical till the late 1970s) to high times to cover an entire sequence), contrast film, noisy negatives, and the created and transported on such general proclivity towards ‘loudness’, inferior quality tapes, travelled from the limited dynamic range of produced one production to the other. Indrajit sound in Hindi cinema remained 10 Neogi, another veteran location intact till the arrival of magnetic tape, 70 soundman, says that “for quite a while which initially opened up the dynamics we survived on recycled, joint tape”. for production (if not for exhibition), Referring to Indian-made stock from and then of multi-track magnetic the now-defunct public sector firm formats and synchronisation of 11 INDU, he specifically alludes to the machines, which further expanded poor quality of emulsion, despite the possibilities for more complex and rigorous layering of the soundtrack. The chemical processing of stock was also a problem, so much so, Singh reveals, that on Mangesh Desai’s insistence V. Shantaram set up a lab to maintain higher and uniform standards. The playback era and the era of dubbing effectively destroyed perspective in Hindi cinema, Singh says, echoing a thought that is commonly uttered by soundmen and other professionals of that time. The ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 71

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

effects that appeared on post- never seen to have the same production soundtracks were alien to complexity…the cinema created the the space in which the action took world through the visual, and sound place on screen (and so were the vocal played a secondary role”. Discussing performances); synthetic sounds that the elementary principles of cinematic ruptured the linkage between space sound, from illustrative, incidental, and sound became the norm. This synchronous and non-synchronous 12 generalised absence of fidelity (diegetic and non-diegetic), the iconic entrenched itself in broader practice. filmmaker asserts the sensory And by all accounts, including Singh’s, experience of sound. Pointing to a the art then was not about the variety of uses, he says, “I’m very keen truthfulness of perspective, realism, or on telling you what is happening all the fidelity of tone, texture and timbre over the space…and what you cannot but about the narrative, expressionistic see” and thus, the story and “strength of and mythic values of the sound effect, the image”, Benegal says, is enhanced for it was through such a culture- by sound. This is a fine point indeed specific set of codes that “the illusion is for it marks a distinct difference getting completed”. Textile mill sounds between the films made by him and 71 in Sai Paranjpe’s films, airport his peers who made films in that vein, announcements in Humraaz (1967), and commercial Hindi cinema. Shyam train sounds in the award-winning 27 Benegal mostly shot sync sound and Down (1974) and Kudrat (1981) worked with Hitendra Ghosh, and besides several others, the use of Mangesh Desai mixed the films; atmosphere and silence in Ijaazat although the sound professionals were (1987)—Singh cites a variety of common to both kinds of cinema the creative uses of sound effects in his results were almost always dramatically work. He points also to the work of different. He too refers to import others, in particular, the dramatic door restrictions and the slow diffusion of knocks in 1942 – A Love Story (1994). new technology over several decades and argues that the grammar and Shyam Benegal says unequivocally that vocabulary of sound work (and cinema the general objective, in films with for that matter) were linked to non-synchronous sound, was “how to technological changes. Benegal also keep the ambience out”, since sound brings up the profound cultural was regarded as an ‘add-on’: “it was moorings of sound in Indian cinema, ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 72

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

giving the examples of the sound of a must exist between technology and bird recalled from memory in Satyajit storytelling. With Sholay though, as he Ray’s Aparajito (1956) and the rustling has said on numerous occasions, money of paddy fields in his own Ankur was not on his mind—it was the (1974). creation that mattered. The time, effort and money invested in the sound Landmark in Soundtrack design of the film remained unmatched during that era and for a long time “In the art world,” Ramesh Sippy after. From the eerie silence following explains, “they thought of sound and the arrival of the dead young boy, the visual together; it was not just a film equally disquieting sounds of the that told a story.” Sholay was an swing in the sequence where the family important event in India for the is being butchered, Hema Malini’s cinema soundtrack: it was the first 70 ‘jabber-jabber’ presence, Gabbar Singh’s mm stereophonic projection. Thinking footsteps and the ricocheting gunshots, about sound conceptually and to the captivating drama of the train narratively began at the writing stage, heist sequence, the sounds that shaped 72 the veteran filmmaker says. “The the film are not just numerous but very galloping sounds of the horses had to skillfully and painstakingly created. So come alive in a different kind of way,” involved was he with the film and its he says, and with Sholay, “sound was every process, Sippy reveals, that he what really mattered”. The ability to even stepped on and off the tonga that build a character through sound was was brought to the dubbing floor by alluring, says Sippy, recalling how the Kuldip Sood, hoping to contribute in character Gabbar Singh draws the belt some small way. Perhaps a few of those buckle across rocks in an iconic scene; sounds made it to the final mix? it was a way also to awe the audience, heighten their expectancy. He points “Indian cinema never understood out that the original writing was very composite sound,” says K. Hariharan, powerful; it was through the written an award-winning filmmaker and word and the meticulously constructed teacher from Chennai. The rules of character traits that the sounds melodrama dominated the approach, emerged. Sounds came to mind just as and the sounds, from incidental to visuals did, he points out tellingly, archetypal (crickets, koels, monsoon adding that a fine, essential balance rains etc) primarily served the purpose ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 73

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

of heightening the melodrama. He techniques, greater formal distribution argues that the soundtrack was in and exhibition of Hindi cinema essence “a ritualistic celebration of around the world—all these come into traditional archetypes”. The ‘non-real’ play significantly. What changed sounds—those located outside the radically, though, was the sound film’s visible frame—performed the itself—its tone, texture, timbre and function of ‘real’ sounds; they signified dynamics. the action, or more precisely, were intended to perform a representational Nakul Kamte, one of the more function in part, but through a prominent sound designers working fetishised dislocation and amplification. today, speaks of the crowd sounds in There was dissatisfaction with the real. Lagaan (2001). Cables were laid out Reality and realism were not enough; and planted in the dusty fields of Bhuj; something larger, mythic—and multiple microphones placed at louder—was needed. Hariharan strategic points captured the largeness reiterates the running theme: “It was and density of the animated crowds. believed that film delivers its best He points to an altered approach to 73 when at the highest volume.” microphone technique. It is not just about the number of microphones, The playing field, the resources and money and flexibility, but also about the game—so much has changed with how one conceives of capturing sound. digital technology. But it would be For example, he does extensive foley inaccurate to attribute this change work and also has the luxury of being merely to technology. Sweeping able to tap into very extensive and economic changes, the onset of satellite detailed sound effects libraries. The television, increased access to more composite sound effect is a complex ‘western sounds’ and production composition of layers, including ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 74

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

foleyed sound, stock, textures, and been “handicapped” by having merely a anything else that the designer may few days of “proximity to the film” think appropriate. Pointing to Taare beforehand, he says, and therefore it Zameen Par (2007), he says that the was always a fight to assert the value sound was considered to be ‘invisible’ and the importance of the composite by several commentators, which he soundtrack. He argues keenly that considers a big compliment. This too is “every sound comes with indicative of a shift in approach. The anthropological information”; big, dramatic sound still exists and is recognising this idea helps one an integral part of the sound culture, understand the staging of sound. This but within certain contexts, he points is an interesting shift in thought and out. A distinct style of sound use still approach, and it is linked not just to dominates films such as Don (2006), the opening up of technological Son of Sardar (2012) and other such possibilities, but also to the conception big-ticket mainstream films. He reveals of the spectrum as a unified space; for that they had to source some punch the sound spectrum is not just a stage sounds from Hyderabad for Om Shanti in itself, but a multidimensional 74 Om (2007); they performed the terrain. It was partly such a notion that function of harking back to the era of informed his approach to Slumdog damp, recycled, false-perspective Millionaire, wherein the strategy “was sounds. not to record dialogue but to record the soundscape of the city”. Pookutty Resul Pookutty, whose work on also does extensive foley work, building Slumdog Millionaire (2008) won an up the sync track. He often works on Oscar, describes the transition from certain sections of the effects track at analogue to digital during the early facilities abroad, where foley artists are 1990s in great detail. He had always able to create complex specialty effects.

Nuanced Sound Design

Pookutty’s colleague and contemporary P.M. Satheesh also does foley work abroad whenever he finds that the effects cannot be created in India. Quite appropriately, he starts by ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 75

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

speaking of his first job interview in the art is one that must be carefully Bombay after he moved there as an calibrated. He points to his work on FTII graduate. It was in a sound the national award-winning facility and as he was being asked documentary Kumar Talkies (2000), questions, an effects track of punches Ishqiya (2010) and Saat Khoon Maaf on magnetic tape kept playing in loop. (2011) as examples of more thoughtful Work was in progress in the studio, and nuanced sound design. and it seemed to be an apt punctuation to the beginning of his professional Foley work in Indian cinema has not career. His thoughts too indicate a attained the stage of sustained shift in approach and ideas. Technology discipline and innovation. There are has certainly made things easier, he just a handful of foley artists and argues; its purpose is to find smoother, unlike in the West, there has not been easier, less time-consuming and more a continuing tradition—from stage efficient processes. But the conceptual plays, magic shows and radio dramas approach, he asserts, lies in to television cartoons and feature understanding the soundtrack as “an films—of specialists who know how to abundant, complex and polyphonic” make sound from objects. Karnail 75 composite entity. He believes foley to be one of the tools of sound design, but the soundtrack itself, with its complex sonic terrain, he indicates, is constructed using a wide range of tools and devices, not to mentions skills and talent. With good foley work and a more cohesive, broader sense of design aided in part by new technology, as opposed to patchwork, piecemeal approaches, one can make a modest budget film seem far more sophisticated, Satheesh suggests. But as we move on to more complex exhibition systems the balance between the toys and ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 76

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

Singh, who has been working as a foley Baylon Fonseca, another contemporary artist along with his two-man crew of award-winning sound designer, Sajjan Chaudhary and Gupta for over strongly feels that one needs to be as twenty-five years now, reiterates the artful as one can with whatever is at problem of space on the soundtrack: hand. He concedes, though, that what “dialogues aur background key baad is at hand is radically different from bachey huey gap mey hamara kaam hai”. what was at hand twenty years ago. Drama, dramatic effects, and big, loud There are still battles to be fought in sounds—these again are the building the terrain of the soundtrack and the blocks of soundbaazi. Hitendra Ghosh balance between its components. Even recounts a fascinating instance of a to this day “the level goes up if the film made by Shyam Benegal for director feels the soundtrack is empty”. which the sound work was done in He firmly believes in designing the Moscow. The sound facility there texture of the dialogue in the context provided a team of women foley artists of the idea of the film, the characters who very inventively devised a and the composite soundtrack, makeshift pulley and gear contraption indicating a unified approach to the 76 on the spot, in order to create the sonic space of the film, as opposed to sound of a bullock cart moving along a discrete hierarchically placed village road—a sound they had never components. As an example he alludes heard before. to Game (2011). Also mentioning the sound work on Rock On (2008), Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 77

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

Wake Up Sid (2009), Udaan (2010), loudness levels in cinema theatres here, 13 Shaitan (2011) and Gangs of he points out. Although Dolby (and Wasseypur (2012), he says that DTS) has brought in greater recorded sound effects still travel sophistication in cinema sound around a fair bit, although in projection systems, and theatres have contemporary times, unlike in the also altered significantly over the last analogue days, sounds can be so two decades, traditional attitudes multilayered, textured and transformed towards the soundtrack have yet to that it may be impossible to identify change. Dolby stereo projection had a discrete original recordings. short life here in India before Dolby 5.1 appeared on the scene. Now that Vikram Joglekar, a senior sound several theatres are Dolby 7.1 designer and technician who works compatible, the new multichannel with Dolby, describes the mainstream format Dolby Atmos will also be Hindi film sound mix as a ‘cobra mix’: introduced soon. Dolby professionals the dialogues and the background rise such as Joglekar conduct mixing up in volume periodically at sessions to demonstrate the provocative junctures. The changes we capabilities of the technology and how 77 have seen over time, he argues, are the various channels can be exploited. basically “less and less defects, more The learning curve often appears steep, realistic perspective, and better he says, since there is really little point placement of sound effects”. He points in filling the multiple channels with to the soundscape of Kolkata in the same sounds. It is how one Kahani (2012), and the design of conceptually understands and exploits Anhey Ghorey Da Daan (2012) as sonic space that really matters. interesting examples of contemporary work. He too points to the general Things have changed for the better in discomfort with silence on the many ways, Shantanu Hudlikar of soundtrack and a deeply entrenched Yashraj Studios says, but generally culture of ‘loudness’. Unlike in the “there is too much sonic information”. West, there is really no regulation on With immediate access to sound ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 78

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

libraries and talent around the world, the possibilities, in theory, are endless. But he feels that there seems to be a tendency to over-contour the soundscape and fill it up with sounds “just because you can”.

There are a wide range of approaches to foley art and although the spoken word, the song and background music still dominate the Hindi film soundtrack, there seems to be a steadily increasing desire to strike out in more interesting directions. The sounds of yesteryear may have gone but several intrinsic structures of taste and form are still in place. If, yesterday, 78 artfulness was expressed through inventiveness that overcame privations, perhaps the art of today lies in making sonic sense of all that abounds.

In all of this, from then to now, from the analogue to the digital and to the curious, fascinating in-between time, the baazi was and is very much in play.

Gautam Pemmaraju is a Mumbai- based independent writer and filmmaker with a keen interest in sonic art and sound/music conceptualism. He is currently working on a documentary film supported by IFA on the comic-satire poetry traditions of the Deccan. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 79

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

NOTES 5. Gregory D. Booth, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios, 1. The grandiloquent lines delivered with a (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), flourish by the heroes and villains of popular p. 34. Hindi films are known as dialoguebaazi. I’ve coined soundbaazi to denote the loud and 6. Part of the cinematic pop-culture, dishoom theatrical background sounds that is an onomatopoeic word mimicking the accompany the words. shot, retort, bang or explosion from a gun. Besides little boys’ mock gunplay where, 2. The main technicians who work on the much like bang-bang, dishoom is shouted out Hindi film soundtrack. loud to indicate a shot being fired, the word has a much broader semiotic character. Its 3. For list of credits, see this IMDb entry: ‘social life’ is a wide and interesting one. In http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0220827/ popular myth, this representative sound of when gunshots are fired on screen is mimed 4. Virchand Dharamsey, ‘The Advent of by sound professionals shouting out the Sound in Indian Cinema: Theatre, word. Dishkiyaaon is an onomatopoeic Orientalism, Action and Magic’, Journal of the variation; the elongated syllable at the end 79 Moving Image, No. 9 (Kolkata: Jadavpur denotes reverberation. University, 2010). ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 80

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

7. A critical landmark in the history of 8. Transfer rooms are where images/sound cinema is the separation of the production of are transferred from one format to another, the sound from the image. In India, this led i.e. from celluloid to videotape, from optical to the ‘playback’ and later, the ‘dubbing’ era. film to magnetic tape, and now from Although technically some productions analogue to digital. Whereas exclusive began to record songs separately from the transfer rooms were common because of the mid 1930s onward, special recording many formats and the time-consuming facilities for music began to be established in process of transferring material from one to the late 1940s and early 1950s. ‘Dubbing’ the other, nowadays (and for over a decade eventually followed ‘playback’—the already now), most post-production facilities offer recorded song was ‘played back’ on set and transfer and data management services. actors mimed the words of the song. Soon enough, the production of the dialogue also 9. Early sound recordings for film were came to be separated from the filming on a made on optical tape, essentially set or a location. This was driven by a photographic film upon which the analogous technological imperative: the noise made by sound signal was captured. This sound the moving parts of the camera. For further would be read by the film projector 80 reading, an extensive online resource is alongside the image. (For further reading, see available at http://www.filmsound.org/film- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film sound-history/. See also and http://www.filmforever.org/chap2.html.) www.cinematechnologymagazine.com/ pdf/dion%20sound.pdf 10. Magnetic tape revolutionised sound recording and production, and it had a significant impact on films. Sound captured analogously on tape with magnetic emulsion on it was of far better quality (and dynamics) than that on optical film. Audio ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 81

Soundbaazi – Gautam Pemmaraju

playback heads on projectors would read and 12. Diegetic sound is sound whose source is decode the signal on magnetic stripes that seen on the screen or implied by the action ran alongside the optical film for the image. in the film, i.e. the sound of an empty shell (For further reading on magnetic tape from a gun falling on the ground, where the formats see falling shell may not be seen but is implied http://www.filmforever.org/chap2.html; by the gunshot. Non-diegetic sound is the http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/13071/2004 opposite: there is no visual action to indicate 03030000/www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HIST_R its source, nor is it implied by the action. EC_NAGRA.html; Voice-over narration and music are non- and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic diegetic sounds. (For further reading see _tape_sound_recording) http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic. html) 11. Magnetic tape machines with multiple tracks on them were used in parallel, 13. The Calm Act is a U.S. broadcast effectively increasing the number of tracks regulation which controls the loudness of upon which sound could be recorded. This digital programming, including commercials. was known as multitrack recording. During the dubbing era, a significant innovation was 81 the Rock and Roll dubbing machine invented by M. Ninnie around 1960, which allowed the sound to be recorded in synchronisation with the picture. This eliminated the approximate and laborious process of trying to independently record a sound effect that syncs with the action in the picture. This dubbing machine eventually found its way to Hindi cinema in the early 1970s, (For further reading, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_m ultitrack_recording. See also the links in Note 9 above. For the Rock and Roll system,see http://msteer.co.uk/analyt/jfilmd ubbing1.html) ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 82

Following Fans: The Curious Case of the Man from Japan Lawrence Liang All photographs courtesy the author

82 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 83

A scholarly pursuit of the fan club phenomenon led Lawrence Liang to the streets of Bangalore, in 2005, where a mighty army of fans of the film-star Rajinikanth was preparing to celebrate the release of his latest film Chandramukhi. As cine- ma conquered reality, Liang found it increasingly difficult to retain his autonomy and maintain a professional distance. On an impulse, he decided to abandon the notebook and embrace the new role that had been suddenly thrust upon him—a move hovering on the brink of perilous discovery, as he was to soon find out.

83 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:30 PM Page 84

o there I was on a mandap, seated on a large, ornate chair S(the kind used by newly-wed couples on stage) between the local corporator and a religious pontiff, a massive garland of flowers around my neck, waving at over 5,000 Rajinikanth fans assembled at the Rai Bahadur Arcot Narrainsawmy Mudaliar School (RBANMS) ground in Ulsoor, Bangalore, with a single thought running through my head: “How did I get myself into this and how am I ever going to get out of it?”

Flashback to March 2005

Rajinikanth’s film Chandramukhi (2005) was slated for release just a few weeks after I had finished reading S.V. 1 Srinivas’ seminal book on fan clubs of the film-star Chiranjeevi in Andhra Pradesh. Enthused by the direction that his work was taking film studies in India to, I decided that it might be fun to come up with a few of my own questions and follow the activities of the Rajinikanth fan clubs in Bangalore. Srinivas’ book on fan clubs begins with a fundamental question: What is the nature of the public sphere constituted by cinema? Given the pervasive publicness of cinema, Srinivas finds it curious that classical accounts of the public sphere ignore ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 85

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

the cinema-watching public, and that burden of mobilising migrant most historical and contemporary identities. Most members of the debates on film spectatorship in India Rajinikanth fan clubs were young men constantly condemn the unruly and working in precarious labour excessive behaviour of fans and conditions in the informal sector as relegate it to a non-public space. His auto rickshaw drivers, mechanics, work on Chiranjeevi fans sought to waiters and so on. determine the political history of fan clubs by examining how the star was Around the same time I was also the focal point for the mobilisation of interested in the histories of different various subaltern groups, and how cinematic spaces in the city, how cinema constituted an important different kinds of public congregated mode through which people asserted around a Rajinikanth film, and what their claims over the public sphere. the differences were between a Sri Balaji theatre in Neelsandra and a I found his argument compelling but Naga theatre in Ulsoor. So, armed was also curious to see how it would with my questions, a camera and a hold up in the context of Bangalore, a notebook I started tracking these 85 city with a history of linguistic spaces and talking to fans in the run- diversity, but which had also witnessed up to the release of Chandramukhi. I a rise in an aggressive form of was joined by my colleagues Namita linguistic sub-nationalism. Tensions and Shailesh on the day of the between the Tamil and Kannadiga premiere. Besides the buzz that populations erupted every once in a usually accompanies the release of a while over the sharing of the river Rajinikanth film there were great Cauvery’s waters, as well as over the expectations from Chandramukhi since perceived threat posed by the strong the previous Rajinikanth-starrer Baba presence of Tamil films in the city. It (2002)—which many had speculated seemed to me that unlike the would launch his political career—had Chiranjeevi fan clubs within Andhra been a surprise flop at the box office. Pradesh, which primarily addressed Rajinikanth had gone on record to say the question of local politics, the fan that after the release of his next film clubs of stars such as Rajinikanth and he would compensate all the Kamal Haasan in states other than distributors of Baba who had suffered Tamil Nadu carried the additional losses. The date that had been selected ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 86

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

for the release of Chandramukhi was poet–saint Thiruvalluvar, the author 2 significant also because it was the very of the Thirukkural, who is often day on which Kamal Haasan’s self- regarded as a symbol of Tamil identity. produced film Mumbai Express (2005) In 1991, after the statue had been was being released, and while the two erected, various pro-Kannada groups stars may have had some fans in protested. The statue was veiled and a common, fan clubs are usually police van permanently posted at the competitive and antagonistic, venue to protect it from vandalism. especially when it’s a question of The measure of this little statue’s which star occupies more public space. symbolism can be gauged by the fact In Ulsoor, Kamal Haasan’s film was to that when the (Tamil) sandalwood be released in Ajanta theatre, which smuggler Veerappan kidnapped the was less than 250 metres from Naga matinee idol Rajkumar—one of the theatre, the venue of Rajinikanth’s leading figures of the Kannada public film. sphere—one of the ransom demands he had made was that the statue be Ulsoor has traditionally been a Tamil- unveiled. Riots had erupted after the 86 dominated locality. Its history is linked news of the kidnapping and the Tamil to that of the Tamil migrant labourers community had borne the brunt of whom the British brought to the mob violence. Bangalore in the early nineteenth century when they demarcated the The covered statue also inspired Cantonment region from Old anonymous graffiti that would appear Bangalore. A number of the street around every birth anniversary of names and prominent buildings testify Thiruvalluvar, especially in Ulsoor and to the Tamil character of this the Cantonment area. Most of these neighbourhood. The Tamil Sangam were straightforward political appeals has its office opposite the Ulsoor such as “CM [Chief Minister] Unveil Lake. On the road skirting the lake Statue of Saint God Thiruvalluvar” and less than 100 metres from Ajanta but sometimes they amusingly theatre is a statue that testifies to the referred to current events, as in “First history of the linguistic and ethnic read the Holy Thirukkural. Then read contestation between pro-Kannada The Da Vinci Code”. The statue was groups and Tamils. This statue, a little finally unveiled, after a High Court under three feet high, is of the order in 2009, by the then Chief ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 87

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

understanding of cinema—as a carrier of political messages to the masses. This model ignores the specificity of cinema as a representational medium in which the star on the screen is not just a figure of glamour but also invested with the ability to represent the identities and aspirations of a particular linguistic community-in-the- making. The star in south Indian cinema is thus a vehicle through which a new kind of patriarchal figure emerges, and upon whom rests a burden of political and moral represen- tation of a linguistic community. In Minister of Tamil Nadu M. this formulation there can be no clean Karunanidhi, who was himself a division between text and context, and symbol of the marriage of film and Prasad offers us a new term—cine- 87 politics in south India. A number of politics—which allows us to view the leaders of the Karnataka Rakshana realm of politics and cinema not as Vedike (Karnataka Protection Forum) separate but as necessarily conjoined had been taken under preventive concepts that allow us to better detention before the unveiling understand why certain star-fan ceremony, and over 4,000 security relations emerge specifically in south personnel shared space with members India, which are distinguishable from a of the Tamil Sangam and various fan generic fan-devotional activity directed clubs during the unveiling ceremony towards a pan-national star such as which was thinly attended since many Amitabh Bachchan. According to feared it would spark off violence. Prasad: M. Madhava Prasad, in an important Cine-politics is not about the rethinking of the relationship between 3 infusion of star charisma into cinema and politics in south India, electoral politics, nor about the suggests that scholars who attempt to use of cinema to disseminate explain the cinematic basis of politics party slogans. It is a distinct form often have an instrumental ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 88 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 89 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 90 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 91

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

of political engagement that Srinivas’ and Prasad’s works attempt emerged in some of the to understand fan activity in relation linguistically defined states of to a larger understanding of politics, it southern India at a certain may also be useful to see such activity historical juncture where Indian in ways that are not subsumed by the nationalism’s ideological suturing question of politics or claims of could not take care of certain identity. Of equal importance for me gaps in the symbolic chain. A set would be how fan activity allows for of contingent factors led to a an expressivity of the body and situation where cinema, a form temporal experience. What does it of entertainment that was then mean for a fan to come out to learning to speak, came to be celebrate the release of his star’s film? chosen as the site of a strong What forms of connectivity to political investment, where different planes of life does a audiences responded with celebration allow? What forms of self enthusiasm to an offer of are vitalised by a passionate leadership emanating from the investment in the success of a film screen and, through the fan which one owns by virtue of one’s 91 associations that emerged later, affective investment in the star? What established a concrete set of does an enthusiastic dance activate for everyday practices that re- other bodies? affirmed the position of the star 4 as leader. A Corporeal Cinephilia

Extending Prasad’s argument, one Walking through Neelasandra and could describe the relation between Ulsoor, one could almost sense a fans and stars in terms of affective palpable passion hovering in the air, as affinities in which the transaction if one were witnessing not just a kind between the star and the fan is of cinephilia—a word primarily measured via the currency of passion, reserved for a visual experience—but a enthusiasm and commitment. I use corporeal cinephilia which implicated the phrase with a nod to Goethe’s idea all the senses and transformed every of elective affinities, which attempts to aspect of public space. Almost every characterise forms of attractions in inch of St Johns Road, from Naga natural and social relations. While theatre leading up to the RBANMS ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 92

huge crowds waiting expectantly outside the hall, although the show would begin only at 12.30 p.m. Those fortunate enough to have a ticket looked pleasantly smug but they sympathised with those trying desperately to buy a ticket. Rumours of the going rates of black-market tickets circulated slightly faster than share prices in a stock exchange, but there were no bears to be found in this bazaar of devotion. When I asked people how much a ticket would cost ‘in black’ I was first told that I could secure a front stall ticket for around Rs 3,000. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, another person clarified in a somewhat indignant tone that the information was inaccurate, that that was the rate the previous evening, and that by now it was Rs 5,000 for the front stall and Rs 10,000 for the balcony; he even offered to help me get a ticket if I were interested. There ground, had been covered with was, of course, no way of verifying this posters, banners, pamphlets and flags information without significantly bearing images of Rajinikanth and of denting my less-than-impressive his fans as well. The façade of Naga wallet. theatre had been obscured by a massive collage of Rajinikanth posters I decided to focus instead on speaking that provided us with a virtual tour to people and documenting the variety through his career; the collage seemed of signage on the road. An auto to be as much of an attraction as the rickshaw driver showed me a fresh film itself. tattoo of Rajinikanth’s name on his hand, while many others showed me Right through the morning there were watches with his images. But the one ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 93

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

image that struck me the most was occupy public space suddenly erupt in that of a black-and-white photocopied dances, claiming their share of A4-size sheet of paper with the image publicity, and anonymous faces appear of a young man posing stylishly for in pamphlets otherwise reserved for what seemed like a studio picture. ‘missing persons’ announcements, Raja (a fan of the Rajinikanth film literally bodying forth an ephemeral Basha, as the sheet informed us) wore presence. But what did the appearance sunglasses, held a mobile phone in one and disappearance of this presence hand and had the other hand in his mean? The pamphlet would disappear pocket. Morphed images of in a few days, as would the gigantic Rajinikanth surrounded his own. He collage on the theatre’s façade, but for had innovatively stuck his little the duration of their existence they pamphlet above the more glamorous had been transformed, and they had posters and it rode on the wave of not also transformed the space they just the star but of other fans as well. inhabited.

5 There was something strangely Kajri Jain’s work on calendar art effective and touching about Raja’s provides us with a useful way of 93 strategy. If most of the posters invited thinking about ontology as duration. the attention of the public through the Tracing the different circuits of value logic of the spectacle, limited resources embodied in bazaar images of gods, had necessitated an aesthetic she suggests that while these images, innovation that nonetheless enjoyed which are cheap reproductions, vicarious success. This led me to think occupy the space of low art, they of the relation between vicariousness simultaneously gain great ethical value and fan activity. In legal theory, as religious objects. By focusing on vicarious liability is a concept that their circulation one is able to provide assigns liability to persons even if they an account of the value of these are not necessarily the agents of an objects as “fleeting constellations action; thus an employer may be held between the image, other bodies or to be vicariously liable for the actions objects, and the quality, rhythm and 6 of his employees. Fan activity, with its intensity of time at a given moment”. forging of affective affinities with the It seemed here that in contrast to the star, appeared to allow for the exercise idea of a given time in which the of a certain vicarious sovereignty of hands of the clock move ceaselessly to the self. Bodies that do not visibly dictate the rhythms of work and the ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 94

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

body at work, what fan activity surrounded by Rajinikanth and allowed for was a celebratory time in Kamal Haasan posters in the which vicarious sovereignty served as a Shivajinagar area. The conversation way of determining one’s ‘time pass’. then steered towards my ethnicity and I had a slightly more difficult time As I walked towards the RBANMS explaining my Indian-Chinese origin ground where a major rally was to and how it had little to do with my culminate, I should have intuited the interest in Rajinikanth. By this time adventure that was in store for me. the handful of people around me had The procession itself was a spectacular grown into a larger group and I could carnival with over a hundred Tempo hear people whispering “Japanese vans carrying cutouts of Rajinikanth Japanese” in the background. I making their way slowly through the mumbled something about not being streets of Ulsoor. The procession was Japanese and attempted to slip away led by a motley crew of acrobats, since I was worried that the drummers dressed in leopard skins, procession was getting far ahead of us and a brass band playing the star’s and we would miss the programme. 94 greatest hits. The music was infectious After a series of handshakes and hugs and very soon everyone including me I managed to shake them off and was swaying to it as we walked along rejoin the procession but I was with the procession. The persona of a followed by a small and persistent visible outsider who could even have group that, to my dismay, kept been a foreigner partaking in the introducing me to various people as festivities for Rajinikanth is not the Japanese. It was clear that vicarious ideal one for an aspirational fly-on- sovereignty had come back to claim its the-wall ethnographer to adopt, and I tax from the researcher. was very soon the object of curiosity for a number of people. Going With the Flow

It started innocuously enough with When the procession came to a stop many of the fans asking me about at an intersection, a group of what I was doing and why I was enthusiastic young fans started asking interested in Rajinikanth. I tried me whether people in Japan loved explaining my general research interest Rajinikanth as much as they did in and talked about growing up India. I didn’t have the heart to say ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 95

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

that I had no clue, and I don’t know apparently carried a story that day, what it was that prompted me to claiming that many Japanese fans had answer, “Yes, we love Rajinikanth very flown down from Tokyo to catch the much.” Perhaps I just went with the premiere of Chandramukhi in Chennai. flow, or maybe it was my natural inclination towards being a prankster, Soon I was posing for photographs or just a pragmatic surrender to the with various fan clubs and a idea that it was easier to answer these Rajinikanth flag was draped around questions than to explain my me. The fact that I didn’t sound participation in the celebration. At any Japanese, that my English was clearly rate my answer only led to further inflected with a Bangalore accent, or questions: Which is Rajinikanth’s that I spoke Hindi and even most popular film in Japan? Do only understood a smattering of Tamil boys like Rajinikanth or girls too? didn’t matter. The idea that I was a Will Rajinikanth ever act in a Japanese Japanese fan from Tokyo seemed far film? Do Japanese fans dance in the more important than the trivial matter hall when a song plays? Which was of veracity. Phone calls were being my favourite Rajinikanth film? I made, informing others that a Japanese 95 discovered that the only correct fan was present at the celebration, and answer to the last question was the next thing I knew I was being Padiyappa (1999) after I was gently introduced to the President of the admonished for placing Basha (1995) Rajinikanth Fans Welfare Association. above Padiyappa. But by this time I started to enjoy the banter with the there was no turning back, and like various groups, gave a few autographs, Yudhishtira’s whispered white lie and even corrected them when they “Ashwathamma the elephant not the said “Tokyo”—I was from Okinawa, I man” all I could feebly mutter in the told them. din of the music was “the researcher not the Japanese fan”. I subsequently By then I had figured that it was found out that there had already been pointless continuing this adventure as larger conspiracies churning which a research project. I kept aside my resulted in my initially hesitant and notebook and decided to just enjoy subsequently enjoyable role of the rest of the celebration. By the time Doppelganger. One of the leading the procession reached the RBANMS newspapers in Bangalore had ground I had my own little band of ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 96

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

protectors who claimed partial introduced to the corporator and the ownership over me for having pontiff who were already seated on the discovered me. The president of the fans dais. association started his speech and introductions of the chief guests amidst I quickly tried to think of what I would much cheering, and at one point in the say and even wondered whether I speech he seemed to mention the word should put on a slight Japanese accent “Japanese”, or was I imagining things? to sound a little more authentic, but all He translated his own speech into my plans were laid to waste the English and announced, “Friends, today moment I came face to face with 5,000- we have with us a Japanese fan who has odd enthusiastic fans. I muttered a few come all the way from Japan to celebrate nervous words about how popular with us and show his affection for our Rajinikanth was in Japan and how we beloved superstar. We would request wished that we could have someone like him to come on the stage and say a few Rajini-sir in Japan. Sensing the slight words.” I temporarily forgot the situation disappointment of the crowd I raised I was in and excitedly thought that there my hand to show the famous Baba sign 96 perhaps was a real Japanese fan who and then managed to end on a more may have travelled from Chennai to buoyant note with the well-known Bangalore. I dug into my bag to retrieve saying among Rajinikanth fans, “There my camera to click the Japanese fan, but is only one sun, there is only one moon, before I could take it out, the fans close there is only one mother and there is to me broke into cheers, and grabbing only one star—Superstar.” As academics my hands, started waving them about. I we know that the largest crowd that we was rapidly led towards the stage. I will ever address will at best be a few ineffectually protested about not being hundred in a seminar room, and if able to give speeches, to which the earlier in the morning I had been president laughed and said, “Why sir, thinking about vicarious sovereignty, all feeling the shy, don’t worry superstar I could think of now was what it might Rajini is with you”. When I tried to feel like to be a vicarious rock star. resist for the second time he was visibly Feeling slightly more at ease I went back displeased and requested me in a tone to my chair and proceeded to engage that sounded more like a command, “Sir, more confidently in some small talk please come up and show respect for the with my fellow chief guests. After a few star.” I walked up to the stage and was more speeches the president said that garlanded by the president and there would be an early lunch after ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 97

Following Fans – Lawrence Liang

which the procession would finally head me and urging me to join them for towards Naga for the premiere. I was by lunch, and with a puzzled policeman now quite enthused with my newly who was perhaps wondering if all adopted persona and even hoped that Japanese looked alike, I hopped into a the welfare association would give me a moving auto, much to the free cinema ticket. disappointment of the fans, and asked the driver to just take me anywhere. As I descended from the stage, I encountered a group of policemen As a research trip I guess it was an deployed to provide protection for the unqualified disaster, and I am not any programme. One of them smiled at closer now than I was in 2005 to me and said, “Sir, aren’t you the lawyer figuring out the dynamics of with that human rights organisation?” Rajinikanth fan clubs in Bangalore, but I recognised him as someone I had as an encounter in which cinematic met a few days ago in a police station I effects spill over from the screen and had gone to in connection with the eventually take over the real world, arrest of a Tibetan activist. Before I infusing it with the magic of surreal could answer I could hear the fans encounters, shared happiness and 97 clapping and waving and realised what momentary dangers, one couldn’t have this revelation could mean. I looked at asked for more cinema. the cop blank-faced, kept saying “Okinawa” and walked straight ahead Lawrence Liang is a lawyer and film towards the exit, looking for the scholar at the Alternative Law Forum. nearest auto rickshaw. My big garland He is currently finishing a book on law around me, a group of fans following and justice and cinema in India. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 98

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1

NOTES 4. Ibid.

1. S.V. Srinivas, Megastar: Chiranjeevi and 5. Kajri Jain, ‘More than Meets the Eye: The Telugu Cinema after N.T Rama Rao (New Circulation of Images and the Embodiment Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009). of Value’, Contributions to Indian Sociology-36 (February 2002), 2. The Thirukkural, believed to have been pp. 33-70. written in around 30 BC, is considered a masterpiece of Tamil literature. It is written 6. Ibid., p. 67. in the form of couplets that deal with virtue, love, and other aspects of ethical living.

3. M. Madhava Prasad, ‘Cine-Politics: On the Political Significance of Cinema in South India’, Journal of the Moving Image, No. 1 (1999). Available at http://www.jmionline.org/film_journal/jmi 98 _01/article_03.php. ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 99 ArtConnect corrected_Layout 3 6/24/2013 5:31 PM Page 100

About IFA

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is one of the country’s leading independent arts funders, championing the cause of arts philanthropy and advocating the importance of the arts in public life. In the last decade and a half we have substantially enriched India's cultural landscape and infused passion and professionalism into the business of arts philanthropy.

IFA was set up in 1993 to focus on urgent but unattended needs in specific areas of the arts. Since we began we have committed eighteen crore rupees (approximately three-and-a-quarter million US dollars) to projects located in almost every corner of the country. 100 Our support has gone out to independent research and teaching institutions, cultural and development organisations, scholars and artists. Musicians and choreographers, writers and visual artists, filmmakers and film scholars, architects and conservationists, sociologists and art historians, craftspersons and folk performers have been among the beneficiaries of our support. Today we fund cutting edge artistic practice, support initiatives to bring the arts into the classroom, assist in institution development and infrastructure creation, fund research in the arts, help in the preservation and transmission of valuable cultural knowledge, and create public platforms for the dissemination and advocacy of the arts. We also act as a source of information and expertise to those in the arts community and beyond.

To receive regular information about our activities, send an email to [email protected] asking to join our mailing list.

To support our activities and in turn receive ArtConnect and other IFA material for free, become a Friend of IFA. Visit www.indiaifa.org for more information.

REGD. NO: KARENG/2009/29264 ISSN 0975 - 5810 ArtConnect An IFA Publication An IFA Publication Volume 7, Number 1 January-June 2013 Volume 7 Number 1

ArtConnect January-June 2013 Contents Rs.150

EDITORIAL 3 100 Years of Indian Cinema

GOING UNDERGROUND: NOTES ON AN UNCONTROLLED CINEMA

Ashim Ahluwalia 4 Volume 7, Number 1

WRITING HISTORY IN THE DARK: FATMA BEGUM IN CONVERSATION WITH MS KITTY

Rashmi Sawhney 20

OUT OF SIGHT: ARCHIVING HIDDEN HISTORIES OF PRACTICE

Debashree Mukherjee 42 January-June 2013

SOUNDBAAZI: SPACE, PLACE AND MEANING IN THE HINDI FILM SOUNDTRACK

Gautam Pemmaraju 60

FOLLOWING FANS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MAN FROM JAPAN

Lawrence Liang 82

India Foundation for the Arts ‘Apurva’ Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore-560 094 Phone/Fax: 91- 80 - 2341 4681/82 Email: [email protected] www.indiaifa.org