When asked about his upcoming projects, the director said that he is currently working on a feature length documentary on Kolkata High Court which is very interesting to him. According to him this is the first time a camera entered the court while sessions were ongoing. The court recently discovered that they have no documentation of their legal procedures and offered him to do a documentary on it which led him to shoot the judicial system and hearings of courts in the far corners of West Bengal, ranging from Kolkata to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, under Kolkata High Court’s legal jurisdiction.
He also laughingly said that he agreed to do the challenging yet interesting project, but told the court officials that they have asked a person who knows nothing about the legal system. He also said this was a completely new journey for him and also found out many things about the country’s legal system and its complexity he never knew before. After finishing the documentary the director will start an Indo-Italian trilingual (Hindi, English and Italian) co-production based on the current environmental crisis and climate change. He also talked about his plans of another Indo-Bangladesh co-production as he loves to work here in Bangladesh, as casts and crew from both Banglas can collaborate. Also, he has a certain weakness for this country because his parents’ native residence was in Faridpur.
Goutam Ghose also talked about his role in Majid Majidi’s upcoming film “Beyond the Clouds” slated to release on April 20. He said that he is playing a small yet significant role in the film. His Iranian filmmaker friend first requested to cast him in this role but he declined, as he was supposed to start his Indo-Italian co-production project. Goutam later on acted on the project as his film’s production got delayed. He also said that Majidi is a passionate filmmaker whose projects reflect reality, yet have a spiritual feel to it. He hopes that Majidi’s Indian venture will be well received by the audience.
You have been directing motion pictures for more than four decades and made films in both 35mm film and digital formats. With all the technological changes that came into the film industries around the globe with platforms like Netflix and Amazon coming up and people moving away from theatres to their smartphones, some are saying we are headed towards the end of cinema. What are your thoughts on that?
Goutam: Firstly, I don’t think that is the case and secondly, we have to understand that films were not invented as an artform or anything. It was a technological marvel and a breakthrough that scientists made photos that had motion in it and they worked on perfecting it throughout the nineteenth century. When European painters first got hold of the camera obscura, more commonly known as the pinhole camera, they first started to paint pictures with accurate perspectives and exact vanishing points. So it was the painters who were the first people who tried to project the reality onto something and later on it was the scientists who invented cameras, thus paving way to photographs and photography.
As time went on scientists worked on how they could capture motion pictures and during the late 19th century Edison invented the motion picture camera and the Lumière brothers invented a projection machine that eventually paved the way towards modern day cinema and film business. In 1895, the Lumiere brothers arranged the first film screening in Paris in front of 200 people who marveled at the beauty of motion pictures. After that show the Lumiere brothers said in an interview in Paris: “Our work here is done. Now we want the artists and creative people to come onboard to create its grammar and turn it into a medium of artistic expression.”
Later on, motion pictures did turn out to be an artform with the silent films made by the Western filmmakers. Many films of the silent era are now considered as classics. But the innovations didn’t stop there. Scientists were on it and the invention of sound came in. The whole cinematic language changed. A lot of debates came in that time too. Some filmmakers did not want to accept live action sound. For example Chaplin’s “Modern Times” was a silent film in the sound era. He did not completely use sound but did have some fun with it in several parts of the film. So change was always there and always increased the quality of the medium and sometimes it decreased it.
Colour came after black and white as the digital format came after film. Film’s history was always like this. Innovators created new tools and artists, in these cases filmmakers, used it to enrich the medium and in the middle of that the market force decided which will stay and which will not. For example, I saw many film technicians lose their jobs when the digital format captured the industry and they could not adapt. Film editors who did not learn the digital non linear editing software got out of the game. These changes have always been there and always will be. Whether cinema will cease to exist or not is a huge debate, but I think it will. Maybe the number of theatres will go down but theatres will ultimately stay in the long run which is going to be a very exclusive experience then. I think that is both good and bad at the same time. The negative side is that the public viewing experience will not vanish but decrease rapidly, but your films will be at the palm of your hands on your smartphone or your living room smart TV all across the world reaching a much wider audience.From your debut feature film “Maa Bhoomi” in 1980 which was shot in Telugu to Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri starrer “Paar” to “Moner Manush” in the digital era. You have seen every step of the changes in the industry. Tell us a bit about that.
Goutam: I really consider myself lucky to be a part of a lot of transition in the film industry. I started out with black and white 35mm film, worked on optical sound, used Michele and Arriflex cameras. Then magnetic sound came, then color came and we then moved to the digital format. I have worked on every transition and transformation that hit the filmmaking workflow. If one thinks that the technology changed and they can’t accept the new wave they can’t compete in the game anymore. The market throws him off. So as filmmakers we have to constantly learn and adapt ourselves with every technological shift.
Another interesting thing is that when a new technology comes people overuse it. When the first zoom lenses came every film had overuse of zoom ins and zoom outs. When digital came an absurd amount of unnecessary special effects; when drones came out unnecessary drone shots all over the movie. Filmmakers will change that and understand that the overuse of these is unnecessary. With all this everything will adapt to improvement of the artform. Everything will stay at its place, yet will be divided. Netflix and online content providers will have their own crowd, theatres and TV channels will have their own and other upcoming motion picture forms will have their own niche and own market. People are increasing and the market is growing. What artists and creative people should and will do is keep working with these new tools and enrich the artform as a whole.But in this online era the revenue models are on pay per view basis and a lot of cheap contents are getting popular and getting commercially successful. What is the future of upcoming serious and dedicated filmmakers like you?
Goutam: Cheap contents getting popular is nothing new in this world. It was always like that. We saw a lot of pathetic films getting very famous. To be honest no one has yet discovered a formula of a film which will be a sure hit. Many films were made based on the same formula of a hit film but none of them clicked in the market. So it is very difficult to say what the market will consider as a hit. A great example is Chaplin. After the world war Chaplin realised the romantic and comic character of Tramp isn’t needed anymore. In the post world war era he made a lot of films but none of them were commercially successful except “Limelight.” The war affected audience expected the comic Chaplin but as an artist he thought that he should do what is important and something serious. So there is no rule to that. Every filmmaker should keep working from his or her own place. I want to finish off by quoting Candide that “We must take care of our own garden.”
