Caught GLOBETROTTING!

But you are also very happy with the feedback The Japanese Wife is getting?
Yes,I am quite happy and pleasantly surprised too. The film won the Best Film Audience Award at the Hidden Gem Film Festival in Canada. It was also the closing film at the River-to-River Film Festival at Florence. The Canada event was attended by Rahul Bose. He was thrilled when Salman Rushdie told him that he had seen the film and felt that he thought it was like a new film by Ray! What a compliment! Peter Scarlet,director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival,walked up to me in Cairo the first day and told me he had like the film very much. But Im sad that it was not part of the Indian Panorama and so did not feature at the GOA IFFI. Iti Mrinalini can be perhaps called a period film because it looks back at the cinema scenario as it existed within Bengali cinema during the 1970s and 1980s.

Why didnt you cast yourself in The Japanese Wife since you could easily have slipped into the character Moushumi Chatterjee portrays?
I do not like to act these days,especially in my own film unless there is no way out. In Paromitar Ek Din,I did play one of the two female leads because my producers had insisted that I do a major role. In Iti Mrinalini it was due to the resemblance of the character.

Has The Japanese Wife been a fulfilling experience for you as filmmaker?
No filmmaker can say he or she is fulfilled with any film. I would like to say that the making of The Japanese Wife has been the most challenging experience for me as director. I would never have been able to face this challenge without the complete cooperation of my cast and crew. Before going for the shoot at the Sundarbans,we never imagined we would have to face so many obstacles,some of them seemingly insurmountable. The physical conditions,the uncertain climatic factors and geographical inaccessibility were extremely challenging. Sundarbans is a group of islands where one of them can be completely cut off from the rest in extreme weather such as rain or if the Matla River decided to get flooded. The team was divided into groups each staying in one island. Satellite signals were non-existent and STD booths were there only in the nearest town of Gosaba. Many of the islands did not even have electricity. I fell ill and shooting had to be stalled for some time.

Was it shot entirely on location?
No,it wasnt shot entirely on location. My producers,Saregama,had put up a Rs 15 lakh set around 150-feet distance away from the Eastern Bypass in Kolkata. The entire structure including the house in the middle of a water land was recreated. It meant cultivating vegetation over time to give it the ambiance and look of reality. The final lap was shot in Bharat Lakshmi Studios in Kolkata.

Iti Mrinalini is about an aging actress and her life. How autobiographical would you say it is?
Iti Mrinalini revolves round the life of an actress in retrospect. It is autobiographical only in the sense that it carries images and experiences I have gathered over the years as an actress in the film industry. It is not the story of my life,as an actress,or otherwise.

Working with Konkona (Sensharma) was wonderful not because she is my daughter but more because she is a fine actress. I do not cherish playing the older Mrinalini in this film. It was my resemblance with Konkona that made me take up the film as we are playing the same character at two points of time. We have strong similarities in our body language and mannersims.The resemblance was necessary for this film.