War: le riprese in Italia

[Archivio] Yash Raj Films e il regista Siddharth Anand sono tornati a girare in Italia. Questa volta si tratta di War, adrenalinica pellicola d'azione interpretata da Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff e Vaani Kapoor. I blindatissimi set sono stati allestiti nella prima quindicina di ottobre 2018 tra Minori, Amalfi, Capri e Positano (Spiaggia Grande), Matera e lago di Como (Bellagio, Mandarin Oriental di Blevio, centro di Moltrasio). Video del brano Ghungroo.

Da Minori ad Amalfi e Positano bello Bollywood ma Hrithik Roshan irriconoscente coi propri fans, Positano News, 9 ottobre 2018. 

Di seguito alcune fotografie dei set allestiti a Positano.

Costiera Amalfitana

Birsa Dasgupta in Italia

Il regista bengali Birsa Dasgupta è in questi giorni in Italia. Nella fotografia a sinistra, Birsa è a Roma in compagnia del regista Tommaso Rossellini. La madre di Tommaso è Isotta Rossellini, figlia di Ingmar Bergman e di Roberto Rossellini, e sorella gemella di Isabella. La nonna di Birsa è la sceneggiatrice Sonali Senroy Dasgupta, compagna di Roberto Rossellini. Sonali lasciò il marito, il documentarista Harisadhan Dasgupta, e il figlio Raja (padre di Birsa), per seguire Rossellini.
Aggiornamento del 2 ottobre 2019: nelle fotografie seguenti, Birsa è in compagnia di Isabella Rossellini e del regista Alessandro Rossellini, figlio del produttore Renzo Rossellini, secondogenito di Roberto e della prima moglie, la sceneggiatrice e costumista Marcella De Marchis.

Dev revisits old haunts in city with Rukmini in tow

The Times of India pubblica oggi nel supplemento Calcutta Times un articolo molto originale nel quale Dev, accompagnato da Rukmini Maitra, ripercorre i luoghi di Kolkata che hanno segnato i suoi primi anni difficili nella metropoli, quando, rientrato da Mumbai nel 2006, il giovane aspirante attore tentava di conquistarsi un posto al sole nell'industria cinematografica bengali. Dev revisits old haunts in city with Rukmini in tow.

Malayalam Cinema: Frames of Small Things

Vi segnalo l'articolo Malayalam Cinema: Frames of Small Things, di Divya Unny, dedicato alla recente evoluzione del cinema in lingua malayalam e pubblicato ieri da Open:

'Syam Pushkaran, the writer of Kumbalangi Nights says, “There has been a very conscious attempt to look at the kind of stories we need as a society, and the lives of real people around us. A film like Kumbalangi Nights that speaks of insecurities within a family, selflessness among strangers, a kind of fearlessness in new love, brings to the fore those stories. When we show a man’s vulnerabilities or strip his ego down on screen, we are not trying to defame a gender or a person, but asking if we need to take a hard look at ourselves and our conditioning.” (...)

With homegrown stories told in the most visually intriguing fashion, these films are so local that they are global. You can see, smell and taste Kerala in them. Coconuts being scraped, banana leaves being chopped, fresh tapioca getting fried, pork being sold, fishnets being laid out, paddy being farmed - from foods to festivities, nuns and nurses, from toddy and tea shops, to buses and motor boats, from pointless strikes to churches and mikes, the filmmakers proudly evoke their state’s culture as a backdrop for their stories. (...)

You begin to empathise, answer questions, and marvel at the irony of life thanks to everyday characters within these films who are neither black nor white, but just human. (...)

With OTT platforms these films can now reach a far wider audience thanks to the subtitles. (...)

For many, the evolution of Malayalam cinema is categorised broadly as the pre and post Chemmeen (1965) era. The film on the lives of rural fisher folk in Kerala and social prejudices against them was an adaptation of the award-winning novel by the legendary author Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, and became a cinematic benchmark. (...)

For those who have grown up on Malayalam cinema, there’s never been a lack of realism and stark humour. Priyadarshan’s films especially of the 80s and 90s painted the common man in unusual ways. Actors like Mohanlal became the face of that common man. However, it can’t be denied that much of commercial Malayalam cinema till recently was driven by the male protagonist, and his transformational powers. Both Mohanlal and Mammootty were flagbearers of this power for over four decades, and that’s now changing. The ‘Lalettan’ and ‘Mamokka’ (how the actors are lovingly referred) monopoly is slowly fading, spelling the end of an era in Malayalam films. (...)

All the characters are so well fleshed out, one can never predict where the story will lead. (...) Almost dissolving the very idea of a ‘protagonist’ in a film, and thereby setting a new foundation for cinema. No character is on a moral high-ground and you almost feel like you know them'.

#MumbaiMirrored: All that jazz

Oggi Mumbai Mirror pubblica uno stupendo articolo di Sidharth Bhatia dedicato alla scena jazz mumbaita degli anni cinquanta e sessanta del secolo scorso. Una vera chicca. #MumbaiMirrored: All that jazz.

Vedi anche Naresh Fernandes: Taj Mahal Foxtrot.

È morto Shyam Ramsay

È morto questa mattina a 67 anni il regista Shyam Ramsay, appartenente al clan il cui nome è indissolubilmente legato alla tradizione horror indiana. E a proposito della sua originale famiglia, vi propongo l'articolo Indian Horror Returns: Beware the Ramsays, di Lhendup G. Bhutia, pubblicato da Open il 12 aprile 2017:

'His father Fatehchand Ramsingh owned a large electronics store in Karachi with “14 windows”, Ramsingh Radio and Electric Company, where he sold the latest radio transistors. But his clients, most of them British officers and their families, struggled with the name of the shop, at best managing to pronounce ‘Ramsingh’ as ‘Ramsay’. When the family moved to Bombay during Partition and set up a radio transistor shop in Lamington Road, and later entered film production, this new name ‘Ramsay’ travelled with them too. And the seven sons - Kumar, Keshu, Tulsi, Kiran, Shyam, Gangu and Arjun - came to be known as the Ramsay brothers.

Fatehchand Ramsingh produced several films. (...) All his films did moderate business. But the last of them, Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi, was such a spectacular failure that Fatehchand not only lost a lot of money, he also lost the heart to make another film. “He was heartbroken and he didn’t want to do another film,” Tulsi remembers.

By then Tulsi had dropped out of St Xavier’s College in Mumbai to run a textile shop. Bollywood films in those times, as Tulsi remembers, used to take several years to complete. Shooting happened in bits and pieces only for a few weeks and would halt for several months until the producers raised funds for the next leg of production. The brothers would take leave from their jobs and studies to assist their father.

As the father locked himself up in his house convalescing from a broken heart, the brothers, unable to take the stifling environment of failure, would walk to the neighbouring theatre, Minerva Cinema, every evening to catch the failure unfold for free. (...) The theatre would be filled every night with just 10 or 20 viewers who would be half-asleep. But every night, the brothers noticed, Tulsi says, that at one point in the film, the bodies of the sleepy and sluggish audience members, would suddenly stir. The scene involved a heist sequence, where the statuesque Prithviraj Kapoor, disguised in a dark costume with a cape, enters a museum to steal from it. When the police would shoot at him, the bullets would bounce off his body. “He was so hideous and scary-looking in that part. The public would scream and jump,” Tulsi says. By then, Tulsi was already a big fan of American and European horror films. “We brothers began to think, ‘Why don’t we expand the elements of that short sequence? Why don’t we make an entire horror film instead?’”

The seven brothers managed to convince their father to fund their venture. But this time, they agreed, they were going to do things differently. They were going to keep costs low. They were not going to hire stars and they were not going to recruit outsiders to make and direct the film. The brothers were going to do everything. Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay would direct, Gangu, who was interested in photography, would handle the camera, Kiran, who was interested in music, would handle the sound department, Arjun would edit, and Kiran, the most educated of them, would write the script. The brothers read a book on film production, they made a small film as trial, and put together a cast of unknown characters. The family and cast got into a bus to head to the neighbouring town of Mahabaleshwar, where the wintry nights and deep woods would provide an ideal location for a horror film. The brothers would shoot during the day and night, while their mother cooked for them and the crew in the guesthouse. “It was really like a picnic for all of us,” Shyam remembers.

The film, Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972), which cost a pittance and was completed before schedule, made the family a lot of money. “There had been Bollywood films with a horror sequence here and there in the past. But this was India’s first legitimate all-out horror film,” Shyam says.

In the next few decades, the Ramsay brothers averaged at least one horror film every year, sometimes as many as two or three in a single year. Bollywood was changing drastically by then. Films were becoming more expensive to make. (...) The Ramsay brothers lay at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps outside it completely, making films with unknown faces and tacky visuals, creating their own formula of sex and horror. According to Tulsi, during this period, the more well-known families and stars in the film industry would often laugh about their films, but because of their success, often kept an eye on their projects.

The seven brothers, as Shyam remembers it, shared two rooms in an apartment. They would challenge each other to tell new horror stories all night long, and include their discussions into a film script by the day. A bevy of actors, respectable and semi-respectable, depending on the moment in their career, made their way in and out of a Ramsay film. Many of the regular 1980s and 90s actors - Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Satish Shah, Mohnish Bahl, even Irrfan Khan - often featured in a Ramsay Brothers’ production. In one of their biggest hits, Purana Mandir (1984), their star turned out to be a seven-foot monster, an actor named Ajay, who later played the monster in several of Ramsay Brothers’ films. “He came to me wanting to be a hero,” Shyam says. “I had to convince him to become the monster. I told him in our films, the ghost gets more screen time than the hero.”

The brothers would market their films on the radio, offering money to people brave enough to watch their film alone. Shyam recalls, “We would say, ‘Shut your doors, close your window...’ And then we would cue in the sound of a heroine screaming. And say, ‘A Ramsay Brothers’ picture is coming out tonight’.” One of their films caused a man to die of a cardiac arrest, Shyam claims. And while filming a scene one night in a jungle, they say they once accidently dug up a body. (“We just said a few prayers and dug the body back in,” Shyam says.) Saasha, who as a child would often travel with her father on shoots and later assisted him on The Zee Horror Show and some films, recalls growing up in a house filled with scary masks and prosthetics. “Most of my friends’ fathers did a nine-to-five job. I would tell everyone my dad does a six-to-six (am) job.”

The Ramsay Brothers’ films had everything. There were exophthalmic witches, monsters with scrofulous cheeks and scarred foreheads, and human heads that would either explode or appear disembodied in refrigerators. And like good horror filmmakers, they didn’t just rely on gore. Women with milky white skin would often find themselves in a shower, bosoms would perennially emerge from swimming pools, and village belles would roll about on haystacks for no particular reason. “People complain about the censor board now. I faced much more back then,” Tulsi says. For their first film, Tulsi recounts, with unusual relish for a 70-year-old, how he spent almost an entire night filming a sequence where an actor just kisses the actress. “I would find my father watching that scene again and again at home,” he says. Several minutes of that scene were edited out, but what was released always elicited hoots from the crowd.

Of the seven brothers, two have already died. Kiran passed away more than a year ago from a liver-related ailment. Tulsi recounts with some bitterness how the other brothers weren’t informed of his poor health. Professionally, the brothers had already split long before. Two amongst them had moved out of horror films in the 1990s to find some success producing action films with Akshay Kumar. After the remaining brothers finished up with their TV series and could not find the same success with their later films, most of them quit. Only Shyam continues to work, now with his daughter. While Tulsi, like always, hopes to return to making horror films.

“Do you think ghosts exist?” Tulsi asks, without displaying much interest in my opinion. “I think they do. If there is light, there is also darkness,” he says. Tulsi has a limp and a lopsided stance, somewhat like a jammed accordion. Beside him is an old fashioned briefcase that contains articles about the brothers from magazines and newspapers, many of them which have long since been discontinued. He spends his day in the house or watching films alone in a nearby theatre. He has stopped entertaining old acquaintances. Occasionally, a fan will seek him out. He tells me of a horror he has finished shooting, about his plan to start new projects, and of doing a horror Marathi film'.

Bombay Rose a Roma

Bombay Rose verrà proiettato a Roma, al cinema Nuovo Olimpia, il 18 settembre 2019 alle ore 18.30.

Chola a Milano

Chola verrà proiettato a Milano, all'Eliseo Multisala, il 25 settembre 2019 alle ore 18.30, nell'ambito della manifestazione Le Vie del Cinema.

Woh

Vi segnalo l'articolo How two men pulled off a 52-episode Indian adaptation of Stephen King's It... without reading a single page, di Gayle Sequeira, pubblicato oggi da Film Companion. Il pezzo racconta l'incredibile realizzazione di Woh, una serie televisiva indiana horror diretta da Glen Barretto e Ankush Mohla, trasmessa nel 1998 dal canale Zee TV, ispirata dalla seconda parte del celebre romanzo It - o meglio, dalla sinossi di dieci righe - e dalle due puntate della miniserie americana omonima. Né i registi né gli sceneggiatori hanno mai letto il libro. Nel cast Ashutosh Gowariker, Shreyas Talpade e Liliput Faruqui (nel ruolo del clown). L'articolo include il link ad un paio di episodi.

'Fresh off the shoot of Akele Hum Akele Tum (1995), on which he [Mohla] was an assistant director, he wanted to bring that "small-town, college campus" wibe to Woh. He asked Barretto, a chief assistant director he'd met as an apprentice on Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992), to help him adapt the book into a series. (...)

His [di Barretto] next task was 'Indianizing' the show. He moved the setting from Derry, Maine, to the hill station of Panchgani, linked the resurgence of the clown to a solar eclipse (considered inauspicious in Hindu mythology) and wrote it such that the evil could only be defeated by a crystal found inside the well of a local temple.

In 1996, the two shot a 40-minute pilot at Madh Island "just for fun". They were in their 20s. (...) As he [Barretto] had assisted Gowariker on Pehla Nasha (1993) and Baazi (1995), convincing the director to play the part of Ashutosh, whose son is kidnapped (and later possessed) by the clown, was easy.

What's harder was finding takers for the show. (...) Sony passed on the pilot. Doordarshan picked it up but gave the show the 6.30 PM 'child programming' slot on seeing the clown. Baffled, Mohla and Barretto decided to turn down the offer. (...) Zee TV was interested in the show. " We got to know this in November 1997. Janyuary 1998 was supposed to be the telecast date. Everything moved quickly after that," says Mohla.

The title track happened overnight. Mohla and composer Raju Singh holed themselves up inside a room and listened to English electronic band Prodigy from 11 PM to 5 AM. They emerged with an eerie, childlike 'na na na na' tune. The voices chanting 'woh woh woh woh' over what sounds like a sick turntable beat are theirs. The resulting opening credits were a spooky, seemingly Se7en-inspired montage, featuring shots of a bloodied knife, scorpions, barbed wire, tribal masks and a mud crab (to represent Madh Island, where parts of the show were shot). (...)

As neither writer had read the book, they borrowed much of their characters' personalities from the actors playing them. (...) Mohla himself, who had what Barretto calls a "James Dean vibe" played Shiva, a local don. (...) As most of the cast were friends, dialogues were born out of their banter. Scenes and subplots were written, rewritten, added or subtracted to accomodate actors who had become more popular over the course of the show and were now busy with other projects. (...)

Liliput's own life experiences heavily influenced the ending. He told Mohla and Barretto anecdotes of being publicly laughed at and discriminated against because of his stature. His move to Mumbai and success as an actor despite these obstacles made them determined to give the character a great sendoff in the finale. The actor would later say this show was one of the few times he wasn't relegated to just the comic relief'.

Vicky Kaushal: 'When KJo's video was shared, I had no clue that I became the charsi'

Vi segnalo questa magnifica intervista (non integrale) concessa da Vicky Kaushal a Mayank Shekhar e pubblicata oggi da Mid-Day. Il pezzo include il link al video dell'intervista completa.  When KJo's video was shared, I had no clue that I became the charsi':

'How did you land Uri [given the unlikely CV]? (...)

I got a call from Ronnie Screwvala's office that they had dropped off an action script [to be directed by Aditya, who I already knew]. I saw the title, Uri: The Surgical Strike. And now I wasn't the actor. I was actually curious to know what happened [in Uri]. It took me four-and-a-half hours to read the script, in one go, which is what I prefer - as if I'm watching a film. That's when I get a true sense of what I feel.

As an audience?

Yes. So I started watching the film, and I just couldn't get it. There was just too much information, military-technical-logistical language. Also, I didn't feel anything. Because I hadn't taken four-and-a-half hours to read a script before. (...) My dad, who was equally curious about the Uri incident, and had read the script lying around, asked me what I thought of it. I said I'm not sure. He told me that if I miss this film, it'll be the biggest mistake of my life! He said that maybe I'm in a different space right now, in another kind of military film, and that's why unable to connect.

You were playing a Pak military officer, shooting for Raazi. Of course you're not going to like Uri!

[Laughs] And then I don't know what happened. I got back to the script four days later, finished it in an hour-and-a-half, as if I was reading it for the first time. I called up Sonia [Screwvala's associate] at 3 am, and said, I will do the film.

You essentially have your dad to thank for Uri. What I find most fascinating is actually your dad [Sham Kaushal]! Tell us his [lesser known] story.

My dad and mom are from a small village in Punjab. He was good in studies, and started learning English in sixth grade. He went on to top BA, in English Literature; did his MA. And wanted to be an English professor in Punjab. But the family's financial situation was such that he could not pursue an M.Phil from Chandigarh. At 23, he was frustrated, with no job, even after an MA degree. My dadaji [grandfather] had a very small kiraane ki dukaan [convenience store] in the village. My dad's friend Satpal was going to Bombay to become an actor. Since my dad was doing nothing at home, and frustrated, my grandfather asked him to tag along with the friend, for a few days, feel better, and come back. In Bombay, my dad wanted to start a new life. He had a distant uncle in New Bombay, who got him a salesman's job in a plumbing-wall shop, behind RK Studios, in Chembur. He did that for Rs 350 a month, and really struggled. He's been on streets. Without letting anybody know, he used to live in the office, having done a 'setting' with the peon. He would sleep, leave early; and come back, when work started.

He would take a shower in office?

Yeah, everything. After a year, he knew he couldn't start a family with R350 a month, even if he did the same thing for 15 to 30 years. So, without Plan B, he quits his job, and comes to a PG [paying-guest accommodation] in Santacruz. Here, he stays with 10 Punjabi guys, who're stuntmen. They leave for work in the morning, and come back with a tidy sum in the evening. That's when he discovers this [profession]. Purely for survival, he decides to become a stuntman, at 25. People start training at 13-15, when their body is flexible. He had never done any physical activity before. He used to sit in his father's shop, and do accounts. So he is a stuntman for 10 years. He lands up his first film as action director with Mohanlal, because the Malayalam filmmakers were shooting in Bombay. They needed someone to handle the stunt sequences. They would've been okay with an experienced stuntman as well. So long as the person understood English, so they could communicate with him. My father was the only guy around who knew English. He got that job because of his degree in English Literature! (...)

Did you get to observe showbiz closely as a result?

No. Well, my brother Sunny and I knew that the good things we were getting in life was because of a lot of dad's hardships, and my mom's support to him. But it was never a house, where we wanted to meet our favourite stars, go on sets, parties, etc. We had friends line up outside our house, for an autograph of an actor who was visiting. For us, that actor was my dad's friend. For example, Anurag [Kashyap] sir and I always have a laugh about this. He knows me since Black Friday [in which my dad was action director]. I was probably in my eighth grade. So when he used to come over for meetings, I used to call him uncle, serve him parathas, and go out to play cricket. So it was that. (...)

Did it bother you, as in a system where a star takes all, or that you would have to become one [in order to succeed]?

Not at all. To be honest, I don't know why, but I never had a sense [of entitlement] that I should be launched as a star. I knew I could make a mark by knowing my job - just going through the drill, and getting opportunities on the basis of what I know. Also, my father had made it clear that he would back my decision to be an actor, as a father alone. And not as an action director. So I had that reality-check - that nobody is going to spend crores, because I'm Sham Kaushal's son. And he's not going to do it either. Besides, for whatever reasons, whether some sort of complex, or plain under-confidence, my dream wasn't so big - that I want to be a hero. I was just on auto-pilot - that I'll give auditions, learn the craft through theatre, be an AD [assistant director]...

You did a lot of theatre?

I did. But I started off as an intern to Anurag Kashyap on Gangs Of Wasseypur. I also started reading scripts that my dad would get, to match with the final film, and see changes that an actor brought in. I could visit sets with him. But realised I'd then just be a visitor. My knowledge of engineering is so bookish that I can't even repair a TV. I wanted to be an engineer, who has been at the garage for four years. So I decided to dive into acting, with on-field learning. (...) Through actors on set, I got to know the importance of theatre. I'd been active on stage since school, but feared it professionally. I started doing theatre with Manav Kaul, Kumud Mishra, Naseer saab [Naseeruddin Shah], Thespo Festival, and Rage Productions - my first pay-cheque. I joined Kishore Namit Kapoor's acting academy. I also had to clean my slate, after being an assistant-director, because I wasn't looking at that profession. I completely cut off from Anurag sir.

But he made you act in Gangs, though!

It's the scene where Nagma Khatoon [Richa Chadha] goes to a brothel. Last minute, everyone [junior artistes] that we'd rounded up in Benares refused to participate in that scene, once they realised it's a brothel. The entire direction team stood-in for them. I'm that silhouette you see behind the window-grille, (...) when Nagma Khatoon is cursing Sardar Khan [Manoj Bajpayee]! That was the first time I faced a camera.

Oh, I'm told your first time before camera was for [director] Michael Winterbottom?

Yes, that was the first time I faced the camera, and you could see my face! Michael Winterbottom was making a film called Trishna, with Freida Pinto. We'd just finished shooting Gangs in March, 2011, and I had these braces, and was an AD. I had gone to my native place in Punjab with family, when I got a call from Anurag Kashyap, and he said, "Item number karega (Will you do an item number)?" I was like, what? He said, it's a Michael Winterbottom film, and Huma [Qureshi] and I will dance, and that he's acting in it as well, it'll be fun. So, Trishna, that's Freida's character in the film, comes to Bombay from Rajasthan, and a friend of hers takes her to a film-set. There's a song being shot with choreographer Ganesh Acharya, which is being picturised between and Huma and I [in the film, within the film]. (...) I was wearing this shimmery black, typically item-number costume, which I was very conscious of. I had no idea how it feels to be before a camera, with 50 back-up dancers, and 200 people around. So, my body is dancing, but my face is like this [frozen]. Ganesh Acharya sir, who was very sweet, came up to me and said, "You're dancing well. Now just dance from your face!" Of course, with several retakes, we got it right. (...)

Masaan was your first release. But Zubaan, which picked up top festival awards, was actually your first film. Honestly, couldn't understand that movie. Should one go back and watch it again?

I don't feel an audience should change the way they should watch a film. If you can't connect, you can't. It really resonated with me - a Punjabi from Gurdaspur, going to a big city, living that life, eventually realising it's not him; and now he has to connect back to his roots, and music becomes his medium. There was a lot for me to do as an actor - the journey, plus that stammering, plus music... If I feel connected to a material, for any reason, I just plunge into it. I don't think if it's going to do any good. I went through several rounds of auditions, from a short-list of around 200-300 actors, for that role.

Even Masaan, for that matter, I'm told, you'd seen the pilot promo of that film with other actors already. Who were the other people doing that film then?

I remember [director] Neeraj [Ghaywan] and I, with the entire AD team of Gangs of Wasseypur, were going to Pune. Because a friend had lost someone in her family. We were in the same car, catching up after long. He was telling me about a film he was trying to make. (...) He showed me the pilot-promo. It looked very interesting, and he gave me the gist. The cast was Rajkummar Rao for the part I [eventually] played. (...) There was Manoj Bajpayee for the part played by Sanjay Mishraji, and Richa [Chadha], and Shweta [Tripathi]. That was the promo. The film had to be shot in October during Durga Puja. (...) If they missed the deadline, they'd have to shoot the following year, which they couldn't afford. Raj couldn't make it during the time, so that slot became open. They were looking for new actors. So they auditioned me, and I passed!

That was a breakout role. You owe your career to Rajkummar Rao!

[Laughs] Yes. In fact, my first few films, even Zubaan or Raman Raghav [2015], had gone to somebody else, and then they started auditioning again. (...)

Speaking of directors, you've worked with Anurag Kashyap as an intern [Gangs], then actor [Raman Raghav, Manmarziyaan], he also produced Masaan. He's notorious for throwing actors into the deep-end, no script, etc. How did that work for you, starting off?

He's a very impromptu kind of a creative force, relying on impulse. If you give him everything ready on paper, then he might not know what to do on a set. He does give you the lines. He just doesn't want actors to be rigid, when it comes to them. So he wants you to enter knowing what your character is. And then allow him, the geography, and the costumes to mould you.

Give an example?

Sometimes, we may not have the lines beforehand. For example, my last scene in Manmarziyaan. It's the separation scene between Taapsee and I, in her room. We were ready in costume. He had told the DOP [cinematographer] to keep the tracking-shot ready. And he is with his pen and paper, writing the scene, while we're in costume. He gives us the lines, and we have five to ten minutes to prepare. I had to hug Taapsee. It is an emotional moment. My character has accepted the fact that he's not the guy in her life. He hugs her. And once a scene is over, as per the script, for the next ten to fifteen seconds, Anurag sir has a tendency to not say cut.

He will just keep the camera rolling?

Yeah, while the actors are thinking, what do I do next? I still remember, it was my OS [over-the-shoulder] shot. I have hugged Taapsee. The moment is done. And done. And done... But I still can't hear, cut! Then I see Anurag Kashyap sitting right next to that camera, looking at me, going, "Alag ho jaa, alag ho jaa [separate]." So in that emotional, teared-up state, I don't know what to do. She [Taapsee] doesn't know what to do either. And then, I just start beat boxing. That makes Taapsee smile. And that makes me smile. And then, he says cut. That is the moment, and the scene in the film. Not the one he had written.

Is Rajkumar Hirani the methodically prepared, polar-opposite?

He is as organic. The difference between them lies in the writing, and structuring of the film. And their ways of presenting a story. As directors, they are both fine editors. They can see the film while shooting it, and so they are super-fast - no safety-shots, no safety-cuts. I've seen on Sanju, Raju sir has called for a steady-cam operator on set for a specific shot and moment. It's a full night's shoot anyway. While shooting the scene, he captured that moment on a static camera. He was so sure that he had got the shot, that he just told the steady-cam operator to pack-up'.

Maria Rosaria Borrelli: Raccontare la notte dell'anima. Il cinema di M. Night Shyamalan

È in distribuzione nelle librerie italiane il saggio Raccontare la notte dell'anima, dedicato al noto regista M. Night Shyamalan. L'autrice è Maria Rosaria Borrelli. Pubblica Shatter Edizioni.