MUMBAI: The first series of Directors’ Cut was organized in Mumbai last weekend to commemorate the art of filmmaking and shed light on the journey of a film from inception to completion.
Participating in the discussion were a host of filmmakers including Anurag Kashyap, Sudhir Mishra, R. Balki, Anurag Basu, Vinod Pande, Kunal Kohli, Vivek Agnihotri, Madhur Bhandarkar, Kaushik Roy, Prahlad Kakkar amongst others.
Keynote speaker Javed Akhtar elucidated on the need for cinema to portray the anguish and life of the common man. Addressing the gathering he said, “Somewhere our cinema no longer does that. It is something the filmmakers of today need to think about.”
When the discussion was thrown open to the caucus, director Vinod Pande voiced his anguish by stating that the two major factors that have led to a redundancy in the industry are mushrooming multiplexes and rise of the corporate culture in Bollywood. Retaliating to this statement directors Anurag Basu and Kunal Kohli addressed the merits of both. “It is because of the presence of a company like UTV and the multiplexes that I am able to show a film like Metro in theatres today,” said Basu.
The discussions addressed the journey of filmmaking and the various levels each of the directors connected with their films. Additionally a film poster exhibition, traveling through time, from the 40s to the 80s was also showcased.
