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Anurag Kashyap On Making Films

Anurag Kashyap is an Indian film director known for pushing creative boundaries in the Indian film industry. He has directed films like Black Friday, No Smoking, Dev D, and Gangs of Wasseypur that attempt to introduce different genres to Indian audiences. Kashyap has been in the film industry for 19 years, starting as a screenwriter for television shows and films. He now runs his own production company called AKFPL that produces low-budget, creative films by new directors. Kashyap believes in global and festival markets to showcase his films before their Indian release and help fund his projects through international sources.

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400 views4 pages

Anurag Kashyap On Making Films

Anurag Kashyap is an Indian film director known for pushing creative boundaries in the Indian film industry. He has directed films like Black Friday, No Smoking, Dev D, and Gangs of Wasseypur that attempt to introduce different genres to Indian audiences. Kashyap has been in the film industry for 19 years, starting as a screenwriter for television shows and films. He now runs his own production company called AKFPL that produces low-budget, creative films by new directors. Kashyap believes in global and festival markets to showcase his films before their Indian release and help fund his projects through international sources.

Uploaded by

vikrant rana
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sustained exposure to global cinema helps the extraordinarily

successful director push the envelope in a conservative Indian film


industry.

It is 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon when I walk into The Westin, a hideous


grey-and-glass monstrosity in Gurgaon.
This meeting has been delayed by four hours and my Sunday is ruined.
So, I am really not looking forward to interviewing Anurag Kashyap.
My wait in the lobby ends when Kashyap, who's just turned 40, walks in.
He apologises with a little boy grin and offers to take my husband and me
for a film to make up. I smile, the ice is broken.
Kashyap is a star among the new breed of filmmakers that the new film
industry is spawning. From Black Friday and No Smoking to Dev D
and Gangs of Wasseypur (1 and 2), he has attempted to push Indian
audiences to accept and enjoy different kinds of films. You can say that,
arguably, for a dozen other film-makers. The big difference is many of
them, such as Bejoy Nambiar or Gauri Shinde, are just that: new filmmakers.
Kashyap has been around for 19 years. He scripted television shows and
wrote screenplays for films in the old days. The buzz is that he has ghostwritten some of the biggest hits in the last decade. So, he was the insider
before he broke free to find his inner storyteller with Paanch (2003). The
film, which was denied release by the censors for glorifying violence and
drug abuse, is now part of the industry's folklore. Paanch, quip insiders, is
the most widely watched Hindi film that has never been released.
Kashyap has been swimming for two hours and is very hungry. He spends
a long time trying to figure out the buffet before giving up. He comes back
with a few shrimps and mussels on his plate. The waiters are hovering.
Not surprising, since Delhi is a star-struck city, we have attracted stares
from the moment we entered. Kashyap asks for three grilled lobsters and
a couple of beers. I settle for a pot of black tea with honey and lemon to

battle a bad throat.


He is very excited about becoming producer with his own firm AKFPL, set
up in 2010. It has produced The Girl in Yellow Boots, Shaitan and Udaan,
among others. Almost all its films are by new, unknown film-makers.
"We want to encourage film-makers to do whatever they want to do, but
be aware of how much money it will cost and will make (in revenues)," he
says. Most AKFPL films have to be made within Rs 4 crore.
How does he get the money to fund all this creative freewheeling? From a
variety of sources. AKFPL chooses not to load its full costs onto the India
market. Only 30 to 35 per cent of the funding for most of its films comes
from India. The rest comes from film funds, television stations or
distribution deals in Europe.
Kashyap is an ardent believer in the global market and the festival circuit
as means of connecting with other cinemas as well as showcasing his own
work. Most of his films have been screened at festivals abroad, long
before their India release. Gangs of Wasseypur was the toast of Cane
earlier this year and the international markets are expected to bring in a
lot of its revenues. Ugly, for instance, has been funded by DAR Capital, a
London-based private equity firm. To balance the books and make up for
the shortfalls, AKFPL does films such as Aiyya for Viacom18 Media and Luv
Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana for UTV.
Then, there is Phantom Films, a company that Kashyap has set up with
Madhu Mantena (producer, Ghajini]) and Vikas Bahl (director, Chillar
Party).
Kashyap, however, doesn't run any of these. His partners or his family do.
For him, Phantom and AKFPL are the structures around his main passion -cinema.
His lobsters arrive and he attacks them with gusto. I hold my tea in my
hands, warming them in the cold restaurant, and watch him. It is not clear
why fate singled out Kashyap to be the torchbearer for envelope-pushing
work in the Indian film industry. There are millions of people with similar
stories. Kashyap landed in Mumbai from Banaras in June 1993 with "the
film bug" as he calls it.
"I just wanted to be around where work was happening." He started
writing for whoever would take him. He wrote dozens of episodes of daily
soaps, screenplays for films and whatever else came his way. That is how
he continued for years, till "I met Ramu".
Ramu, or Ram Gopal Varma , is the maker of films like Kaun, Raat,
Company and Satya . In the l ate-nineties and early part of the last
decade, he was the man to go to if you were a maverick and wanted to do
different suff. Among other things, Kashyap co-wrote the screenplay for
Varma's award-winning Satya (1998), with Saurabh Shukla.

Of the three things that have influenced his life and journey deeply, says
Kashyap, Ramu is the first one.
The second was his passport which he got in 2004. That is when he went
to Locarno for a film festival. It opened a whole new world of cinema that
still enthrals him. Ever since, he has made it a point to travel all over the
world for film festivals. He tries to watch all the films he can and meets
and, if possible, works with some of the people whose work he likes.
"Till then, I was in the system and trying to experiment. When I started
travelling and watching films, the possibilities of cinema and meeting filmmakers, it liberated me," says he.
The third thing that changed his life, not surprisingly, is his DVD player. It
allows him to watch as many films as he wants and absorb all kinds of
cinema. His current favourite -- Scandinavian cinema. He refers to it
several times during our chat.
His third lobster is being decimated and I am on my second cup of some
wonderful tea. This is a good time to ask him what kind of stories appeal
to him. His range of films does not follow any pattern -- any Kashyap mark
a la Ramu or Yash Chopra or anyone else. There is some angst, drugs,
violence, sex and lots of self-obsession. Is he into existential stuff like a
many film-makers who love to intellectualise cinema? "I am into character
studies. Characters drive existentialism," says he.
He thinks for a bit. "I don't have a style. I don't even know the
technicalities. If you stick to the story, the style comes automatically. It is
content that dictates form," says he. He reckons the biggest change in this
industry has been in the way a director is defined. From the guy who
knows how to compose a shot, a director is now "someone who has a
story to tell and knows how to say it. He has a visual mind. That is why
most good writers don't know how to talk".
We have moved to the tables outside because Kashyap wants to smoke.
The interview starts becoming difficult. Several groups come up to get
themselves photographed with him. He obliges with the same charming
grin he gave me. One gentleman, a senior police officer, gushes
over Gangs of Wasseypur and its realism. He gives Kashyap his card and
tells him to call him whenever he wants any help of the police for his
films. That should be useful. Kashyap's films usually dip into journalistic
work, news stories and real life.
As we settle down after half-a-dozen such interruptions, I move to
business. Earlier that week Kashyap and I had had an argument on the
sidelines of an event about how European cinema is so cutting edge and
why Indian film-makers can't get it. My argument -- European cinema is
subsidised and state-funded. That India is among a handful of markets in
the world where cinema is a robust business and no subsidies are needed.

You can import anything, yet only Indian films work.


Kashyap has a "different" take.
"Our biggest strength is that we don't need to sell a single ticket to a nonIndian. That is also our biggest weakness," says he. Maybe.
I leave him to the pleasant task of deciding what movie he would watch at
the neighbourhood multiplex that Sunday evening.

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