'Without spectacle, film won't exist'

Illustration/Uday Mohite

The thing about Corona is that it is so pervasive, many of us are unable to consider any aspect of life, except through the prism of Corona. Everything is now BC and AC: Before Corona and After Corona, whenever that is. In the film industry, which has been devastated along with the others, the larger questions remain: what is the future of cinema, theatres, audiences - and what happens to our stories? For the last, I was invited to moderate a roundtable discussion on The Future of Storytelling at the Asia Pacific Screen Forum last week, organised online and at the Home of the Arts (HOTA), Gold Coast, Australia, by the 14th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA). Currently led by Jaclyn McLendon, APSA has been awarding the best films from 70 Asian/Pacific nations. The panellists were internationally acclaimed Asian filmmakers - Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur, Psycho Raman, India); Anthony Chen (Ilo Ilo, Wet Season, Singapore), Mouly Surya (Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, Fiksi, Indonesia) and Ivan Ayr (Soni, Meel Patthar/ Milestone, India). Sharing excerpts from the discussion:

Anurag Kashyap: The stories haven't really changed, but how we tell them, and how we watch them, has changed... OTT isn't always a great option for indie films. Online films are driven by algorithms and genre films - thriller, horror, comedy. It's a scary future: even big budget Bollywood films have not been released. Debts and interest have piled so high, if this continues, it will break the backs of producers and studios. Even a big mainstream film like ‘Wonder Woman 1984' is going straight to HBO Max. International co-productions are one way out, but they need part of the budget to be spent overseas. So, French actress Sylvie Testud had actually shot for Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan (that was at Cannes in 2015), but later her role was edited out, as it didn't work. Disney is killing cinema. They bought a big studio like UTV and shut it down. They took over Fox Star Studios and have (practically) shut down production, now doing mainly film distribution…I don't know if people want to get out of their homes. HBO Max even has an app for watching films now.

Anthony Chen: (His debut Ilo Ilo, on a nanny's relationship with her ward, a bratty boy, won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013). The new normal? We cannot tell the stories we want to tell. Singapore has a population of just five million, so the Singapore Film Commission's mandate has changed: it is now easier for me to produce a South East Asian film, than to get funding for my own film in Singapore! It's hard to tell a story about our own culture, our own home. My next story, set in Singapore, could be my last film made in Singapore…Netflix paid just $3000 (about R2.2 lakh) for all-Asian rights to Ilo Ilo. Everybody wants genre films, so the definition of indie films is morphing. Without spectacle, film will cease to exist, it won't be seen.

Mouly Surya: (Her jaw-dropping ‘satay Western' Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, about a young widow who is raped and takes revenge by coolly beheading her rapist, was at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017): Has Corona's smaller budgets and crew, encouraged risk-taking cinema, forcing cinema to turn inwards, be more reflective? "I've been making personal films even before Corona, so filmmakers will always find a way. In Indonesia, theatres are 50 per cent full even during the pandemic. People want to go to the cinema, to socialise."

Ivan Ayr: (His Soni and Meel Patthar (Milestone) were both at the Venice Film Festival) More mainstream films mean we will have fewer Anurag Kashyaps, Michael Hanekes, Asghar Farhadis. There were crowds in the streets and temples only for a religious festival like Diwali. I don't want to judge them; am just very happy people are going out again.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com

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