Multiplex Muse

Neville Tuli, director at Mumbai-based Osian8217;s auction house, believes it8217;s more than just entertainment. His recent tie-up with eminent cinema scholar Aruna Vasudev of Cinemaya and Cinefan fame aims at a sustained effort to form an accessible archive of South Asian cinema.

8216;8216;The idea is to make people fall in love with cinema in a new and serious way, with focus on its aesthetic and creative joys,8217;8217; says Tuli.

When Tuli brought the hammer down on a limited edition Guide poster two years ago at Rs 90,000, one should have guessed that his fascination would take deeper root. 8216;8216;Good cinema shouldn8217;t be divided into this clicheacute; of mainstream and parallel. The success of the multiplex reveals that the division is false,8217;8217; he says.

Theatre person, actor and director Rajat Kapoor agrees. 8216;8216;I8217;ve never looked at Indian cinema with any hierarchy, although I8217;ve primarily been involved with theatre,8217;8217; says Kapoor, whose Raghu Romeo premiered in Mumbai this month.

Despite his openness, Kapoor does make distinctions. 8216;8216;While I8217;m aware that this film is not art house, I wouldn8217;t call it mainstream either. I think films like Raghu Romeo have got audiences beyond the festival crowd because of the multiplex,8217;8217; he says.

Photographer Subi Samuel, however, feels the work he8217;s done for mainstream Bollywood is distinct from his recent exhibition on stars. 8216;8216;Here I8217;ve tried to deconstruct larger-than-life characters,8217;8217; he says.

Owais Husain8217;s directorial debut with father MF8217;s Meenaxi-A Tale Of Three Cities has whet his appetite for a solo venture. But he isn8217;t revealing what the project is about just yet. 8216;8216;Film has taken me into new areas of creativity. Working with so many different factors, it8217;s also more of a group effort, as opposed to the solitary act of painting,8217;8217; says the younger Husain, who finds he enjoys collaborating as long as he has the final say.

One wonders why it took MF so long to enter the medium of cinema because it was always a source of inspiration for him.8216;8216;Initially, I was obsessed with painting. I took my time and when I felt I was ready to move to cinema, I took the leap,8217;8217; says Husain.

8216;8216;Also, since I8217;m not making a film for the box office, I needed financial independence. Now it8217;s more like a concert where people come and watch it if they like it,8221; says Husain, who has begun working on a comedy with Urmila Matondkar. 8216;8216;It8217;s not slapstick, but something based on everyday humour,8217;8217; is all the tight-lipped artist is willing to offer.

Writer-turned-director Khalid Mohamed, who is putting the finishing touches to Fida, his biography on Husain, finds writing and journalism a more potent medium. However, his tryst with cinema8212;Fiza and Tehzeeb8212;has left him with a thirst for more. 8216;8216;Raj, my new venture with Vashu Bhagnani, is going to be an all-out Bollywood thriller,8217;8217; says Mohamed about the film that8217;s due to release early next year.

Abandoning 8220;the snobbery of making only woman-centric films,8221; Mohamed is tackling a male-dominated area. 8216;8216;Of course, my male characters can never be chauvinists, but like most of us, they aspire to the American dream,8217;8217; he says. Mohamed insists on his own scripts because 8216;8216;I like to flesh out my characters and plots as one would do with a book.8221;

Being a film-maker from a different discipline has its pros and cons. Kapoor8217;s reference to theatre in some of the climax sequences of Raghu Romeo, such as confused, simultaneous dialogue8212;a theatrical element8212;has worked well in the film.

Others like Mahesh Dattani Mango Souffle, however, have not been so successful in translating their idiom.

The painful long pauses between dialogues may have worked well on stage but certainly didn8217;t fit in with the rhythm of cinema.

While Husian8217;s tendency to treat the screen like a canvas has worked well on a visual level, it has not translated into a cohesive narrative in both Meenaxi8230; or Gajagamini. Sometimes, when in Rome it8217;s wise to do as the Romans do.