TIGMANSHU DHUlIA is a man of many talents — writing, direction, action — and he has mastered each one of these. With his unique style of storytelling, he has stood out among the hordes of filmmaker in Bollywood. The man who won the National Award for directing Paan Singh Tomar tells PRAKRITI ROY about how he started his career, what he thinks about cinema and what excites him as a filmmaker
Tigmanshu Dhulia does not have the air of a director who has won a coveted National Award. Unlike so many other celebrities, he does not have a team of cronies to fuss over him, looking after his every need. A recurring guest of honour at the newage film festivals cropping up every day, he is content to talk about anything under the sun as long as he is not starving. A simple samosa and a cup of hot chai is all he needs.
While most people remember his first directorial venture Haasil, a film based on campus youth politics, not many know that his stint with movies started back when he had hardly learnt to speak. “Believe it or not, my first film was at the age of five or six, a documentary titled Mere Sapnon Ka Bharat directed by veteran filmmaker Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, the same man who gave Amitabh Bachchan his first break!” Tigmanshu reveals.
It was just a chance happening that he appeared in one shot in that documentary, having gone to meet one of his older brothers at the Allahabad railway station with his father and other brother. “Abbasji was documenting the journey of a bunch of school children who had been selected to travel throughout India. My brother was one of them and I had gone to see him off,” he adds.
Tigmanshu is not your regular commercial film director, although he has made some of these kinds of movies as well. But he laments the lack of what he believes is ‘good cinema’ today. He elaborates on the meaning of good cinema: “‘Good cinema is an ambiguous term actually. What really is good cinemaIJ Song and danceIJ Cars flying aroundIJ Of course, we all like these films. But good cinema according to me is that which not just entertains but also manages to say something memorable that will stay with you throughout your life, to teach you something. The perfect mix of both these is good cinema. I have always adhered by this, although sometimes the film doesn’t work. Then I rectify my mistakes and try again.”
When you watch films like Sahib, Biwi Aur Gangster, Paan Singh Tomar or Bullet Raja, what are the things that you feel are common to all of themIJ Each of these films has a very distinct and rustic edge to it, a peculiar quality only Tigmanshu can create in his movies. In fact, some may even say that they are a bit rough around the edges because of their raw backdrop, characters and language. About this uniqueness in his films, he tells you, “Your subject decides everything, right from costumes to choosing locations and background score, but I also try and break the conventional method of staying within the cultural dynamics of a subject. like Paan Singh, though a rural story, had a heavy symphonic orchestration.”
Although he is a trained actor, he has started appearing more frequently on screen only very recently in films like Gangs of Wasseypur and Manjhi-The Mountain Man. In fact, his formal training at National School of Drama (NSD) has been not for direction but for acting. “I never wanted to be trained as an actor but in my batch at the NSD, only I and another student from Manipur opted for direction and it was difficult for the school to arrange a faculty for just two students. So we ended up doing acting. But good theatre is an actor’s medium. I never pursued acting after passing out as I was always interested in films and did just that,” he shares.
Be it acting or directing, all of Tigmanshu’s work comes from his personal beliefs and experiences: “My films are a part of me, my personality… I choose to say something which excites or bothers me and I express them through my films. I give a lot of importance to my expression, so I choose not to be frivolous. The subject should also have a visual appeal and a cinematic germ should be inherent in the idea. When I choose to act, I am usually helping a friend; sometimes if the money is good, my only concern is that I will not be thrashed by anyone and will not do characters that are obscene.”
As a filmmaker, there are certain kinds of subjects that he loves to work on. More often than not, his lead characters have a certain machismo about them. And there is usually a lot of gun-slinging and action sequences in his films. He tells you that he enjoys creating macho characters and he has always loved Western and war films, ever since he was a kid. What he likes is free, open spaces and characters who challenge authority — be it Paan Singh or the ignored wife in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster. Characters, who are active, are interesting to him. “Characters who succumb to situations are boring…I don’t like Devdas….he is a loser,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, the audience for whom he makes the films are also like the characters in his films. He doesn’t really aim for a particular set of takers for his genre of filmmaking but his first concern is never the audience when he thinks of zeroing in on a subject. “But I usually end up making films for an audience which is not complacent and question change. I am always looking for drama and entertainment, middle of the road films,” Tigmanshu says.
There aren’t too many mainstream actors that he has worked with, barring very few who do alternate cinema as well. And he has good reason for this too. “I like to work with people who have controlled tempers. Filmmaking is a very tedious affair where time is of the essence; tantrums and tempers are such a waste of time (as bigger stars are probably prone to). We don’t have too many options as far as actors are concerned. People feel that actors are born inside gyms but slowly the new breed of actors look more concerned about good performance and mostly opt for subtlety, which is very refreshing,” he tells you.
Back in 1999, Tigmanshu had made a short but memorable foray into the world of TV. He was the man behind some episodes of the hugely popular Star Bestsellers. Since then, none of his work has been for TV. He tells you, “Doing Star Bestsellers was so much fun. By the time we shifted to films, TV had degenerated. But yes, I’m working on some mini-series for TV and the web.” He adds that he just finished a short feature for Zee TV called Baarish Aur Chowmein.
His directorial debut Haasil released more than a decade back, in 2003. Even then, his concerns about the youth, especially in a political context, were made obvious through his movies. Although the situation has drastically changed today, his concerns haven’t been entirely dissolved. “When I made Haasil in 2002, I could sense that the youth is becoming more and more self-centred. Today everyone has a platform to voice their opinion and I see so much anger and disrespect in the young generation. But I still believe that a majority of them have a misguided opinion because they have been informed about things through social media; they simply lack analysis. It’s ‘I, Me, Myself’ for them now,” he feels.
There is an all new indie wave that is taking over Indian cinema by storm. And the growing number of film festivals around the country — be it the bigger ones like in Goa, Mumbai, Delhi — or the smaller ones that have started off just last year, are greatly adding volumes to this wave by providing independent filmmakers platforms to showcase their work. Tigmanshu feels, “Film festivals are a great way to watch good films which we can never see at the theatres. I endorse so many festivals, some of which go even to smaller cities. I feel that it is a good practice. Good films are not really being made, everything has become so commercial; at least these festivals give an opportunity to like-minded people to meet up. I would say that having these festivals is better than celebrating Diwali.”
The reason why he often ends up as a guest of honour in these fests is because: “I personally don’t really make films for the purpose of taking it to festivals. But I guess I’m invited as a guest to these festivals because of my films like Paan Singh Tomar and Sahib, Biwi Aur Gangster which are considered kind of artistic.” However, he believes that something is still missing from Indian filmmaking: “There are some fantastic new directors who are telling stories differently. It’s a consequence of exposure, but I’m still waiting for someone to explore the real Indian ethos — the middle class or rural people.”
The sensitive issue of censorship created a great number of ripples during the past year. With the issue being linked to intolerance, a lot of artists returned their awards to the State as a sign of protest. Even then, Tigmanshu didn’t do so, stating that he was given the National Award by a different Government regime which had nothing to do with the activities of the present Government. However, he doesn’t belittle the idea of censorship completely. “India is a complex country and needs censorship where communal and religious issues are expressed. There are people with nuisance value in every community, cast and political party, but that is a given for our country and we all should tread carefully. Otherwise we don’t require any censorship; it should only be as certification,” he tells you. Yet as a creative person and a filmmaker, he maintains, “censorship kills creativity.”
Tigmanshu’s last film to be released was Revolver Rani. The film didn’t do well, yet as he says, he just tries to rectify his mistakes with his next film. Apart from the TV and web series he is working on, he also lately finished shooting for his next film Yaara, a story of four friends with the time span 1960s-2010. It’s a recreation of those times with very dramatic twists and turns and stars Irrfan, Amit Sadh, Vidyut Jamwal and Shruti Hassan.
He feels that the present state of cinema would do well to get some interest and investment from the government. “Right now cinema is like any other sector today-low on investment. The Government should do something about the film industry, after all they take so much of entertainment tax. For whatIJ What does the industry getIJ Nothing,” he adds.
As a movie-goer and filmmaker, he misses the kind of movies that were made back in the 70s and 80s by organisations like the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) and Children’s Film Society (which had made Mere Sapno Ka Bharat).
“The times were so good back then that I actually bought a theatre ticket to watch this film. That was a time when such films still had theatrical releases. Today, these movies don’t release and tickets are priced so exorbitantly that children cannot possibly see them. I wish organisations like NFDC and Children’s Film Society make more of the kind of movies. Those were the films that inspired people like me to become filmmakers, not commercial cinema. That kind of cinema is needed, that too at reasonable prices so that more people can watch them,” Tigmanshu says.