New Delhi, Sep 13 (Inditop.com) He made a Hindi film in 1989 called “Bagh Bahadur” that won critical acclaim and then switched to his mother tongue Bengali in pursuing his filmmaking. Award-winning filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, whose latest work “Janala” premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), now says he would like to revisit Hindi cinema.
“I’ll go back to Hindi cinema definitely and I’ll surely make Hindi films… but then they’ll be only Buddhadeb Dasgupta kind of films and nothing different from that,” Dasgupta told Inditop on phone from Kolkata.
“There is something at the back of my mind but I haven’t put it on paper yet. I am in talks with producers but it will take some time as I don’t move ahead until and unless the script is clear. There is nothing that I have planned… I am just letting the idea grow as of now.”
Dasgupta said he “loves to live in his world of magic realism and unreal journeys deep into the sub-conscious entangled in the dilemma of lost innocence”.
“Bagh Bahadur” won the National Award for best feature film. Appreciated at numerous international film festivals, the movie didn’t do well commercially in India. But Dasgupta has no regrets.
“‘Bagh Bahadur’ didn’t have commercial value in India, but it was very much appreciated abroad… Every time I make a film, I try to make it as commercial as possible or otherwise nobody will support me,” the director said.
As of now, the poet-writer is keeping busy with his latest movie “Janala”(Window). Set to be premiered in the Masters of World Cinema section at the 34th TIFF, which runs during Sep 10-19, “Janala” is Dasgupta’s sixth film to be featured in this coveted section at the festival.
“TIFF is very important and it is going stronger and stronger every year. It’s a very big market for selling films apart from screening them there, as I make my films for audiences all over the world and they have been doing very well outside India,” said Dasgupta, who entered the film world in 1979 with “Durotto” (The Distance).
Produced by Big Pictures, “Janala” touches on the nostalgia of childhood and is areturn-to-the-roots tale based on a personal journey. Releasing by the end of this year in India, it stars Tapas Paul, Swastika Mukherjee and Indraneil Sengupta.
“The film is about the story of two wishes – about a person who wants to donate a window to his old school and the window that wants to go back to the jungle from where it started its journey,” Dasgupta explained.
” ‘Janala’ is an attempt to be reminiscent of the times when we sometimes try to make a simple dream come true, but the cogs of destiny leave us feeling unfulfilled. It is a very simple story but at times it goes beyond its simplicity and becomes magical,” he said.
“That is my style of filmmaking…Reality in itself is very boring and very predictable and once you bring in the element of magic in it, it becomes more acceptable with those dreamlike moments.
“Those magical elements are there in this film too. There is reality and then there is an extension of reality… in fact it is even an extension of consciousness,” he explained.
Born in 1944 near Purulia in West Bengal, Dasgupta was a lecturer in economics at Calcutta University.
With no formal training in filmmaking when he began his celluloid journey, he is credited with cinematic masterpieces like “Neem Annapurna”, “Phera”, “Swapner Din”, “Kalpurush”, “Lal Darja” and “Uttara”.
Ready with a script based on his novel “Rahasyamaya”, Dasgupta revealed that he is also contemplating a movie on it.
rounak