Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

Film and the city

All for cinema Hariharan, Kamal Haasan and Jean Claude Carriere

Kamal Haasan remembers that fateful chat he had with veteran French writer Jean Claude Carriere and Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami when they first discussed their plans of mentoring the next generation of writer-filmmakers, bogged by mosquitoes a t a hotel in Madras.

“They had bigger ideas, and I tried to sculpt it down to a palpable size. The Chennai International Screenwriting Workshop we held recently was just the tip of the iceberg,” he reveals, when Academy award winner and Luis Bunuel’s old ally, Jean Claude Carriere (he worked with Bunuel for 19 years and has co-written “Maruthanayagam” with Kamal Haasan), flew down to flag off the mentoring process and the launch of Kamal Haasan’s ambitious short-film project.

The actor-writer-filmmaker plans to produce 30 short films on Chennai, written by students from the workshop. “The idea is to get the short film ‘movement’ moving in Tamil Nadu.”

“There’s an ancient, intimate, deep, secret relationship between cities and cinema,” says Jean Claude Carriere. “It’s like a love-affair since the beginning of cinema. Some of my director friends talk about cities they want to shoot a film in and some cities they will never shoot a film in.”

The temptation, for most filmmakers, is to go to the streets and make a documentary on the city. But he believes fiction often turns out to be more insightful than reality.

“Fiction is not the enemy of reality. On the contrary, fiction sometimes reaches a deeper level of the same reality. Don’t hesitate to invent even impossible situations, or explore dreams or science fiction situations taking place in a city that can reveal different aspects of the city. A documentary filmmaker can never use these tools,” explains Carriere.

“Imagine your children and your grand children when they watch it. It would be a treasure, a gift. Give the city something nobody else can. Give the city what vision you have, what you have seen, heard, dreamed, and imagined about it,” is his advice to young writers.

“We have to teach the new generation how to do, but must never teach them what to do,” Carriere believes.

“We have to explain how we did, and never impose our ideas, our views, our stories to the newcomers.”

Carriere rarely uses the word screenwriter.

“The screenwriter is a filmmaker. Screenwriting is not the end of a literary exercise but the beginning of a cinematographic adventure,” he explains. The writer of the Peter Brook play, Mahabharata, draws a parallel between Dushasana unsuccessfully trying to disrobe Draupadi and his own attempts at seeing the real India. “I can never see India naked as much as I try,” he says, wishing the young writers luck.

“If all goes well, we will go on floors by March 2010,” K. Hariharan, director of the LV Prasad Film and TV Academy and member of the jury reveals. “Writers will be invited to the location.” For details, visit http://screenwritingindia.com

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail