New Delhi


"Black Friday'', a bright beginning

He might have got appreciation from different quarters, but Anurag Kashyap still has to earn the label of being a filmmaker for the `aam janta', observes Mandira Nayar...

Anurag Kashyap's first two films are still lying in cans waiting to see the light of day. Both "Paanch'' -- a film about the darker side of life of a musical group -- and "Black Friday'' -- a movie about the Mumbai riots that dares to take real names -- have been lost in controversy to most people except a few faithful festival goers. But Anurag still has the reputation of being a good filmmaker. "I take comfort in the fact that "Chariots of Fire'' was lying in cans for five years before it was released. It has been six years since "Paanch'' though. I am looking to find an example of a film that didn't get seen for six years. I still haven't found one. Thank God it was not called `Dus','' he says laughing in the Capital.

He was here recently for the Old World Theatre Festival to act in Makrand Deshpande's "Sir Sir Sarla''. In a completely different role this time round, it was the first time that Delhiites got to see Anurag's acting skills. Taking the audience by surprise with his performance as a devoted student who stands no chance to be with the woman he loves, he got a standing ovation for his acting. "I keep telling Makrand that I can't act. I just play myself. One day I will get caught," he remarks. "But I want to make this clear that I only act for him. I started out as an actor with him. He used to lock me up in a room with no food, until I got a movement right," he remembers.

His films have, however, managed to get most people in the festival circuit to take notice of his style. While they have received acclaim in the festival-free zone of the celluloid world, they are yet to find a `real' audience. With the circle incomplete at the moment, he might have got appreciation from different quarters, but he still has to earn the label of being a filmmaker for the `aam janta' that goes to buy a ticket, because until then it is just tag and far from a reality he enjoys. "It is tough. I have to constantly work and do something. Otherwise I might start thinking about all this and I easily slip into depression,'' he says. "I constantly have to make excuses for my films not releasing. After "Paanch'' I never came out of my room for a month. It is very painful,'' he remarks. A confused young boy, his life changed after the film festival in Delhi in 1993. "I watched at least 50 films,'' he says.

Finding space in the Hindi movie the hard way, he has refused to go the `desi' piracy way. "I get people coming to me and giving me foreign films that they want me to see and copy. I sometimes have to do very foolish things for money. I ghost write. Or I do dialogues only for the film, which no one likes to do. But I don't make copies of films. I think that there are enough original ideas that I have. There are enough books that I have read that still need to be made into films,'' he asserts.

Sticking firmly to the side of life he knows, like his script of "Satya'' -- the first film on the seamier side of Mumbai's underworld that started off the trend of `desi' gangster films --Anurag's films are not fit for a niche market or to win awards and like his acting, they are true to life. "Like Kay Kay says we have got so many pats on our backs for "Paanch'' that our back has gone sore. But the good thing about my two films is that I got a passport made and I got to travel around the world,'' he says smiling.

However, with his next film "Gulal'', he is hoping to try and steer clear of any controversy. Set in the future, the film is a mix of everything - a political thriller of sorts.Determined not to disappear in the glitz of the larger-than-life dream factory, Anurag is here to stay and finally find his audience.