Meenakshi Shedde: Curriculum Vitae

Name: Meenakshi Shedde

Email: meenakshishedde@gmail.com

Education:
Bachelor of Arts (Economics), St Xavier’s College, Bombay, 1982
Diploma in Journalism, K C College, Bombay, 1983

Professional Experience (Print Medium):
I have 24 years’ experience in journalism, including 11 years with the Times of India group. My core competencies are editing and writing (features and editorials), particularly on arts and entertainment, and gender and developmental issues; multimedia experience (film, TV, radio, websites) and an evolved visual sensibility.
* July 2005-April 2007: Senior Assistant Editor (Editorial Page, Arts and Culture), DNA—Daily News and Analysis, the national daily published from Bombay (circulation 4,00,000). I edited the editorial page and wrote editorials every week. I also headed the arts department (art, film, music, theatre, dance), edited the weekly Arts page, and wrote features on cinema and the arts.
* 2004-2005: Freelanced for media worldwide, including Cahiers du Cinema (France), Sight and Sound (UK), Film Comment and India Abroad (US), The Times of India, Indian Express, Outlook, Hindu, Cinemaya, indiatimes.com and rediffmail.com.
* 1997-2004: Assistant Editor, The Times of India, Bombay. My responsibilities included editing the editorial page, and writing editorials, features and film reviews.
* 1995-1996: Participated in ‘Journalistes en Europe,’ an eight-month international journalism programme based in Paris, and filed wide-ranging reports from eight nations. * 1990-1996: Features Editor, Bombay Times, part of The Times of India. I edited the features pages, including political, civic, social, gender issues, arts and entertainment; Features Editor (Arts), The Independent (Times of India group).
*1983-1990: Assistant Editor, The Free Press Journal; Magazine Editor, Mid-day; Assistant Managing Editor, The Indian Auto Journal; Assistant Editor, Gentleman magazine; Correspondent, Bombay magazine; Feature writer, Sol Features.

International Experience:
* October 95 - May 96: Won a French External Affairs Ministry scholarship to participate in ‘Journalistes en Europe,’ an international journalism programme based in Paris, conducted in French. I filed articles on political and economic issues, international relations, human rights, social and religious issues, urban development and the arts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Cyprus for The New York Times Syndicate, Europ, a quarterly published in Paris, and The Times of India.
* Won a Goethe Institut scholarship to study German, Mannheim, 1994.
* Covered international film festivals for over a decade, including those in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, Paris, Argentina, Pusan, Mannheim-Heidelberg, Oberhausen (Germany), Vila do Conde (Portugal), New Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram.
* Wrote for two books--on Indian cinema for Au Sud du Cinema (Cahiers du Cinema/Arte) and on Bollywood for Bollywood: Das Indische Kino und die Schweiz (Museum fur Gestaltung, Switzerland).

Film Experience--Award, Juries, Films:
* Won the National Award for Best Film Critic and was presented the Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus Award) by the President of India, 1998.
* Was on the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Jury of the Cannes Film Festival (2001), Berlin Film Festival (2000) and Venice Film Festival (2002). I was on the International Jury of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Argentina (2006); Asian Film Award Jury, Hong Kong Film Festival (2007); and the National Jury for the Indian Panorama of the International Film Festival of India, Goa (2004).
* Directed a short film Looking for Amitabh, shown at the Kala Ghoda Festival (Bombay, 2003), Commonwealth Film Festival (Manchester), Pusan Film Festival (S. Korea), River to River Film Festival (Florence, Italy) and Film South Asia (Nepal). Amitabh Bachchan’s blind fans describe their perceptions of the Bollywood star, evoking him through various senses, except vision—hearing, smell, touch, instinct.
* Have line-produced five international documentaries shot in India.

Experience with Gender and Developmental Issues:
* Am on the board of directors of Point of View (POV), a non-profit organisation (http://www.pointofview.org/) that promotes the viewpoints of women through films, books, theatre and photography. For POV:
--Wrote for a book And Who Will Make the Chapatis?, a study of the political empowerment of elected women panchayat leaders in rural Maharashtra (1998).
--Did the visual research for a photography exhibition In Black and White, exploring what independence means to Indian women, Indo-US tour (1997).
--Curated Made By Women: the International Women’s Film Festival (2004, 2005).
* Freelance writing for 15 years on developmental issues for Unesco and the Family Planning Association of India; research papers on HIV for UNDP (Senegal) and Sangram (Sangli), and others.

Multimedia experience:
* Professor of Journalism at the Xavier Institute of Communications, Bombay (1992-98).
* Assistant Director with United Television (UTV), 1992-93; freelanced for Channel 4.
* Have done programmes on All India Radio, BBC Radio and Radio France.
* Have contributed to websites in UK, Australia and India.
* Trasparenza, solo exhibition of photographs of Venice, at Olive, Festa Italiana, Bombay, 2003. Altogether, I have experience working with multiple media--print journalism, television, radio, filmmaking, photography, books and websites.
Languages Spoken: English, Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, French (fluent), German and Italian (street-hustle grade, but more importantly, enough to sing love songs!).

Investing in Art-I, DNA

‘Buy one Atul or four Santoshes’

Friday, January 13, 2006 21:50 IST

INVESTING IN ART

Meenakshi Shedde flags off a series on art investment, decoding prices and trends.

Time was when agony aunts advised you what to do if you were in love with the Muslim boy next door and your parents disapproved. Today’s post-modern aunts spoon out advice on other, perhaps more pressing, practicalities. Sharan Apparao of Apparao Galleries publishes a newsletter for Citibank called Art Venture, and her advice to someone wanting to invest Rs 5 lakh in art runs thus: “Buy 2 Husain watercolours or 1 small Anjolie (Ela Menon) head on masonite and 4 drawings or 2 Arpita Singh watercolours…If you are looking at younger artists then buy one Atul Dodiya or a pair of large Jitish (Kallat) canvases...or a large Paresh Maity or four T V Santosh canvases.” Voila, you have the magic formula. More or less.

Estimates of the size of the Indian art market vary wildly; an Indian art fund manager puts it at 3,000 resident art investors investing over Rs 20 lakh a year. Apart from the galleries, there are two auction houses Saffronart (which claims it auctioned art worth Rs 80 crore in 2005) and Osian’s (whose spokesman claims it auctioned art worth about Rs 23 crore in 2005), the Yatra onshore art fund and other offshore art funds. An auction house director believes that the Indian and international demand for Indian art is nearly 50:50.

Art investment, fuelled by a booming economy and the NRIs’ updated nostalgia for contemporary Indian art, is speeding upwards like a missile (see graph). The question is, can the boom be sustained? Art collector Dilip De is buoyant: “The boom will continue. Just as the big drive behind European art were Non-Resident Europeans or Americans, it is the NRIs driving Indian art. Their buying strength in dollars and pounds is stronger, and it’s not black money.”

However, Minal Vazirani, director of Saffronart, the only online auction house in India, is somewhat cautious. “The price increase has been very steep and is bound to stabilise. Yet, the prices we gasped at a few years ago, seem normal today. Between the 1960s-2001, there’s been a compound annual growth rate of 20-23 per cent in art prices, accelerated by the entry of the big auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonham’s. The main reason for the boom is transparency in pricing. We publish prices of the works, as well as the price history of the artist.” Art collector Harsh Goenka is more cynical. “It’s an overheated market,” he says. “There is price rigging and black money in the art market. A correction is bound to take place.”

However, for the greedy hordes with an eye on investing in art, Vazirani has a word of advice: “The price depends on the artist, period, historical significance of the work, aesthetics, rarity, size, provenance, condition. If you say a Husain now costs X and extrapolate that two years later he will cost Y, it just doesn’t work that way.”

For newcomers, here’s a cautionary tale from De: “Insist on an authentication certificate from the artist. I buy from reputed galleries like Chemould or Pundole. And I befriend the artist, and get him to verify his painting. More importantly, when investing, it should be a painting to which you can rise every morning for the next 30 years. I still love my wife—it should be like that.”
(Part I of a series on investing in art)
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1007334

Editorial on corporatisation of Bollywood, DNA

The face of mainstream Indian cinema is changing rapidly. Corporatisation is fundamentally transforming the way the film industry operates and this is directly impacting revenues and profitability. Hrithik Roshan’s much talked about Rs 35 crore, three-film deal with Adlabs is bound to pave the way for others. Since top-drawer stars often take home upto 10 per cent of a film’s budget, it heralds the era of the Rs 100 crore film.

Economic liberalisation and a growing middle class hungry for entertainment is the ballast of the entertainment boom, and this year has been a particularly successful spell for Bollywood. While corporatisation has meant greater accountability and transparency, completion bonds and insurance, and its concomitants have ensured that films stay within budget and schedule. There are fears that Bollywood’s pursuit of the Hollywood model of star-driven cinema may mean stars get to lord it over the director and story, and this may set off an unhealthy trend. The truth is, stars dictated terms to directors even at the heyday of mainstream Indian cinema in the ‘60s, but it did not necessarily spell doom.

As corporates turn out a palette of films of differing budgets, directors and stars, their chances of losses are minimised, making it easier to secure institutional finance. As in many other industries, a shakeout is perhaps inevitable. The larger corporates are able to make deals forking out large prices for stars, as well as multi-starrers, which are seen to be safer than solo-starrers, so the smaller producers are being squeezed out of the market.

On the upside, the insatiable hunger of multiplexes will keep the industry fuelled for some time to come. But along with Yash Chopra and Karan Johar multi-starrers, there is also room for the theatrical release of films, even in Bombay, by directors like Goutam Ghose, Rajeev Menon and Madhusree Dutta. Also, theatrical sales today contribute barely 30-40 per cent of a film’s earnings, with others revenue streams expanding rapidly, including cable, home entertainment, music, overseas, internet, mobile, gaming and others. Increasingly, the idea is to carpet bomb the theatres with a massive number of prints, so the film recovers its money in the first weekend, even before word of mouth has had a chance to spread. This cannot be very healthy from the creative viewpoint, yet the mainstream market is seeing such a boom, most producers are laughing all the way to their next films.

Umrao Jaan review DNA 2006

Umrao Jaan review DNA 2006/Our films...

Film of averted kisses

Meenakshi Shedde

Saturday, November 04, 2006 09:33 IST

Umrao Jaan
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai
Director: JP Dutta
Rating: ***

The biggest strength of JP Dutta’s Umrao Jaan, based on Mirza Ruswa’s novel Umrao Jaan Ada, is its moving story.

While there have been countless films on the golden-hearted prostitute, much of this story’s appeal is that it is the tragedy of a woman waylaid by fate, set in genteel 19th century Lucknow, steeped in tehzeeb, ghazals, minarets, chandeliered kothis and star-crossed love stories. But takhliya, you carpers who look for “authenticity”; this film has Suniel Shetty play a 19th century daku with a taste for hazel-coloured lenses to set off his kajra’d eyes.

Fair enough, since Aishwarya Rai as Umrao Jaan herself is pretty bejewelled, bekohl’d, besilken’d and beladen.

Certainly it is unfair to compare it to Muzaffar Ali’s exquisite and moving Umrao Jaan of 1981, and Dutta says his film is not a remake of the film but an interpretation of the novel.

The trouble is, he does a Bhansali. He brings a modern opulence to a period film, and only post-interval is art director Bijon Dasgupta allowed to show any dust or age in the Lucknow’s magnificent buildings.

Essentially this film is a vehicle for Aishwarya Rai; everyone else flits in and out of her life, with Abhishek Bachchan lingering a little longer than the others.

Certainly, Ash is ravishing to look at, and Subhanallah-worthy in some of the dances.

But being an Ash-vehicle, it must necessarily be a film of averted kisses.

Even for a tawaif, whenever Aishwarya kisses, the camera loyally leaps behind her long tresses or hungrily closes in on her palms crushing the sheets, to stand in for passion.

Although the film is told in flashback, with an ageing Umrao Jaan relating her story to the author Ruswa (which the novel employs), you never see Aishwarya age.

The camera cleverly remains discreetly behind a screen, though she does make one concession: in one final scene, she wears no make-up. Bravo! But all along the melodramatic moments allow her plenty of play in the nostril-flaring school of acting.

The story is of a young girl Amiran, who is abducted and sold to a kothi by Dilawar Khan, who has a grudge against her father. She is renamed Umrao by Khanum Sahib (Shabana Azmi, feisty as the hookah-smoking, brothel madam). Umrao Jaan has many admirers including Nawab Sultan (Abhishek Bachchan), Gohar Mirza and others, but she’s besotted by the Nawab saheb. Nawab’s dad disowns him for having an affair with a tawaif. Now a pauper, he spurns Umrao’s ‘pity.’

When Umrao dallies with Nawab Faiz Ali (Hazel Shetty) and finds he’s a daku, there’s a final showdown with Nawab Sultan, who accuses her of bewafai and marries a nawab’s daughter. Broken, Umrao returns to her family which also spurns her for being a tawaif, and she stages a final, bitter mujra.

At last, she even forgives Dilawar Khan, who had abducted her and set off her tragedy—she has spent her life forgiving those who have betrayed her.

The film is far too long and strains your patience with one cloying ghazal after the next.

You do feel sorry for Umrao Jaan, but you don’t carry her tragedy in your heart when you leave. Abhishek is competent, but likewise, is not memorable. The cinematography is quite good, but Anu Malik’s music is okay.

And just when you are relishing the pleasures of Urdu, Abhishek, our 19th century nawab, goes “Tch! Shee!” when Umrao Jaan suggests his father may forgive him. Oh dear! Go for the beauty of the story and settings, but don’t expect too much.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1062045

IFFI National Jury Review, Outlook

IFFI National Jury Review, Diary, Outlook Magazine, 18 Oct 2004

South Of Sodom

It was hard to decide if it was an embarras de richesses or a punishment posting. As members of the national jury selecting films for the Indian panorama of the International Film Festival of India 2004, we saw 117 films in 12 languages. Five a day, back-to-back, for weeks at a stretch. By the end, our brains had almost entirely leaked out.

While we have squandered years whining about its appalling crudity, sex and violence, Bollywood is puréed babyfood compared to South Indian mainstream cinema. Down there, it does not count unless it's third degree. The Tamilians win the Olympics for Horrific Crudity, Sexism and Violence. Take Subramaniam Siva's Thiruda Thirudi, offered for the Panorama. It features Dhanush, a pigeon-chested paavam who looks like a paanwala on probation, but gets the bombshell girl in the end. The lyrics of its hit song, Manmadan Raja (O Cupid Prince!), go something like this: "O Cupid princess, I've tasted you...I flooded you/ Engulfed you/I peeled you off in bits and pieces/Why are you so hasty?/I hit you, I hit you/You tanked me, torpedoed me/I've kept it for you tight at night/I've reserved my steam for you/ Don't tell me you're a virgin/Like a spicy guy, I came, I came.... The song ends with the girl telling the boy, "I'll settle your account!"

How interesting then that the Chennai censors enthusiastically passed this film, while holding up Manu Rewal's Chai Pani for a scene in which a woman smokes, and another where someone says bastard or f****** bastard. The Tamilians have a telling phrase, "Ni loosa (Are you loose/crazy)?" That's what we'd like to ask the censors. Or were they, in fact, tighta?
In M.R. Ranjith's Bheeshmar, an inspector twists a corrupt cop's head "like an idli-grinding machine", then sets him afire, then jams him in a lift door, then hacks him with a sickle 11 times, then bashes his head against a jagged windscreen. Still, he looks unsure he's achieved the desired effect.

Yin Your Face

Same goes for treatment of women. Virumaandi, a violent paean to the desperately macho director-actor Kamalahaasan, has a man ripping off a girl’s mangalsutra, thrusting his foot down on her breast and kicking her brutally. In the Kannada film Swati Muthu, a character says, "A woman’s problems end only when a man ties a mangalsutra around her neck." In the Telugu film Ammulu, a man kicks his pregnant wife till she aborts, then stabs her, shouting, "It’s a female foetus, therefore you must have been unfaithful." Much of South Indian mainstream cinema is seriously Aargh territory.

But then, in Bollywood’s Baghban, Amitabh Bachchan eloquently describes women’s status in India: "My sons are my four fixed deposits." So when lunch is served, only the men eat; their non-FD wives stand behind like dutiful dwarpalaks.

So, Malay Bhattacharya’s Teen Ekke Teen (Three Girls Three), a sort of Bong Charlie’s Angels, is a splendid attempt in a sea of sexist primitivism. It has three spunky women who, unable to raise a bank loan for a pickle business, decide to rob the bank. The end careens into mawkish bhashans about women’s empowerment. Still, it is most refreshing, since we almost never see women just letting themselves go in Indian cinema.

The Way Of Amour

Fortunately, our cinema still tackles political subjects intelligently. Rajiv Vijay Raghavan’s Maargam explored the relationship between a Communist who is out of sync with the times (a magnificent Nedumudi Venu) and his daughter, via a brilliant screenplay. Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi daringly set a love triangle in the politically charged ’60s and ’70s, when ideological commitment dictated choices in relationships. Sashi Kumar’s Kaya Taran (Chrysalis) is a tender exploration of a political subject: the bonding between Sikh and Christian minorities in the aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Dramatic choreography by Chandralekha relieves the tedium of images overexposed on TV.

As for the maddening dilemmas of women in love, there was Anjan Das’ deeply affecting Iti Srikanta. It examined contrasting philosophies of love: one, a possessive love, and another that believes that if you really love him, let him go. And Ligy Pullappaly’s Sancharam (The Journey) in Malayalam, on a lesbian relationship between two girls in a middle-class Kerala family. The characters are entirely credible, and there is an immense dignity with which the director handles the subject.

The embers of parallel cinema continue to burn. Lenin Rajendran’s Annyar is a daring film that examines communal violence in Kerala, through the relationship between a liberated Muslim girl, a TV journalist, much more daring than her Hindu adfilmmaker boyfriend. In Gajendra Ahire’s Not Only Mrs Raut, a woman kills her daughter’s rapist, while his Pandhar is a convincing anti-Enron activist film.

Ennadi, Babylona!

Outtake # 1: Character of the Year is Zeenat Aman, as the wildly improbable, Mallu-speaking Dr Babylona Menon, in Rajeev Nath’s Moksham. She’s descended from a Malayali grandfather and Spanish grandmother, and lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan, if you please. She asks someone in chaste Malayalish, "What is your belief about after death?" We aren’t certain if menace was intended, but it’s a pity she didn’t direct the question to the director himself.
Outtake # 2: My favourite credits include Bank Janardhan and Mico Sitaram in the Kannada film Teenagers. But the prize goes to the assistant director in the Kannada film Chandra Chakori—Tension Nagaraj.
(Meenakshi Shedde, who was on the national jury for the Indian Panorama/IFFI 2004, is a freelance critic and consultant on Indian cinema to the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals.)
http://outlookindia.com/diary.asp?fodname=20041018&authorname=Meenakshi+Shedde&subsubsecname=IFFI

Toronto: Suketu Mehta: 'KANK is in Bhakti tradition' - DNA

‘KANK is in the tradition of Sufi, Bhakti teachings’

Meenakshi Shedde, DNA

Monday, September 11, 2006 23:16 IST

TORONTO: “I’m particularly pleased to have Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (KANK) at the Toronto film festival because it is recognised as a festival that tips you off for the Oscar,” says Karan Johar in this windswept city. “If the film is loved here, it could be a sign of things to come. I'd love it to be sent as India's Oscar entry.”
For a fleeting moment before his red carpet gala screening at the spectacular Roy Thomson Hall, Johar whirled around with panic in his eyes. It looked like the rows of volunteers and police keeping at bay the hysterically screaming crowds might cave in. Although Abhishek, Rani and Preity couldn't make it, when Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan stepped out of their limos, a long suppressed primeval scream went out, as a tsunami of mobile phone cameras rose in a Patella reflex.
The most poignant image was of a middle aged Indian woman, who kept bobbing down the up-escalator: it was the only way she could rise above everyone's heads to get a glimpse of her heroes. Cameron Bailey, International Programmer of the Toronto festival introduced the film saying, “We're one of the biggest festivals in the world, but you're not big until you're Bollywood big.” Johar, who was also featured in the Maverick section along with Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, with a discussion hosted by Suketu Mehta, said he was “overwhelmed” since Michael Moore was also featured in the Maverick section. “I went to Cannes even though I had no film,” says Johar. “Next year I'll be at Toronto even if I have no film. My father taught me to meet people without always expecting something in return. You never know when they will come back to you.”
Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City, insisted that KANK “was in the tradition of bhakti and Sufi teachings, and reflected South Asian concerns about illicit love as a vehicle to reach God.” Oh dear! Maybe someone should have told Karan!
Meanwhile, the fans had less transcendental things on their minds. “Oooh, I got a picture of Amitabh on my mobile!” squealed Bimala Ambwani, a middle aged woman. When I asked her to show me the picture, her hands trembled with excitement. She had to ask her husband, who had driven her here from Missisauga, miles away for the occasion, to show me her idol’s photo. Shirin Mukhtar, from Bangladesh, had specially bought a new salwar kameez to see the film here and was mad at her mother for not letting her go to India to meet Shah Rukh Khan and act with him. Outside, another middle-aged Indian woman sobbed, “The police would not let me meet Shah Rukh Khan. We try so hard to hang on to our culture, you know?” One could only sympathise.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1052478&pageid=2

Majid Majidi Q/A DNA Editorial Page

DNA Editorial Page Q/A: Majid Majidi

'I try to show Islam in its pure form, says Iranian director Majidi

Meenakshi Shedde

Saturday, October 21, 2006 23:02 IST

Noted Iranian film director Majid Majidi has a huge following among cinephiles worldwide. His fans love his poignant yet heartwarming films that simultaneously evoke smiles and tears. His films emphasise humanistic values, rather than political concerns. Films like Colour of Paradise and Baran have won many prizes, while his Children of Heaven was nominated for an Oscar. In Mumbai last week, Majidi got a rock star’s reception. He was felicitated with the Asian Film Culture Award at the Third Eye Asian Film Festival, where his latest work, The Weeping Willow, was screened. In an interview to Meenakshi Shedde, given in Persian, Majidi talks about making films in Iran.
Your latest film The Weeping Willow is about a blind professor who regains his sight, and questions whether this was necessarily a good thing. What inspired the story?
I wanted it to be a philosophical, mystical film. The professor is blind, but he feels sounds, his surroundings, he reaches the real depths of sensitivity. When he regains his sight, he fails to recognise many things he knew before.
It is interesting how you deliberately connect his regaining of vision with his loss of hearing.
Exactly. His whole world is transformed. As he regains his vision, it cuts off his hearing. He no longer hears his inner voice. He sees only with his eyes.
The Persian title of Weeping Willow is Beed-e Majnoon. Is the tree’s name connected to the story of Laila-Majnoon?
Yes, you could say there are literary allusions to Laila-Majnoon. But I use the name to evoke the tree’s fragility and delicacy, as it sways with the slightest breeze.
You acted in director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Boycott, but he initially supported the Islamic Revolution, then distanced himself from it. How has your own relationship with religion and the state evolved over the years?
Mohsen Makhmalbaf was a politician who opposed the Shah’s regime. After the Revolution he continued his political work, but was gradually drawn to cinema and went back on his religiousness. I was brought up in a deeply religious family. As for the Islamic Revolution, I was more attracted to its cultural, academic aspects. So my relationship with religion is not influenced by the state, and has been steady throughout.
Islam as a religion has been widely and unfairly discredited post-9/11. Your documentary Barefoot in Herat looks at the despairing lives of Afghan refugees before and after the Taliban. Is cinema for you an instrument to depict the true nature of Islam?
Yes. In my films I try to show religion in its pure form — what comes from within — as against its outer deceptions as practised by the Taliban. In Herat, I saw how people were suffering under the Taliban, and it made me truly horrified of being Muslim. I could tolerate it only because I am Muslim, otherwise I would have criticised it severely.
Many of your films — like Children of Heaven, Colour of Paradise, Pedar — focus on children. Is this because of state censorship of adult themes, as well as because the state has funded some of your films, through the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults?
I must say I have had an infatuation with children ever since I was involved with children’s theatre at the age of 12. When we asked questions as children, we were usually reprimanded by the elders. When I grew up, I decided I would raise those questions in my films. It is fashionable to ask questions about censorship, but censorship does not drive my cinema.
Colour of Paradise was about the reconciliation between a blind boy and his father. What response did it have from blind people in the audience?
When some blind people in the audience said they “saw” my film and described it in detail, I knew they had got the picture very clearly — that was nice. But also, after the film, the authorities encouraged blind people to go to school.
I think you had shared writing credits for Colour of Paradise with Mohsen Ramezani, your little blind protagonist. Also, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami made Close-Up, a tribute to fellow director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Do you find that filmmaking has a deeply civilising influence on filmmakers?
Well, becoming a better person is not the object of filmmaking. But human values count a lot for me, and if I can improve myself or society through my cinema, that’s a wonderful thing.
With the Islamic Revolution, the regime banned many of the creative arts, but encouraged cinema for propaganda. So many musicians, lyricists and artists came to Iranian cinema, giving it great richness. Is this true?
It was true in the first decade following the revolution, but not any more. We even have rock groups performing in Iran, but not in our cinema.
Are you planning a film in India?
Yes, I’m hoping to make a film here. I was struck by the similarities between the culture of Iran and Kashmir.
====================================================