HYDERABAD: All those who have worked with her know her as a tough task master and she wears that as a crown. Adding to the growing list of power women who are being celebrated in their respective fields, Swapna Dutt commands attention. Although she is the daughter of a renowned Tollywood producer, Ashwini Dutt, she managed to come into her own soon enough. Meet her and the first impression is, “This woman means business.” And she indeed does, as we find in this candid chat we had with her. Excerpts:
Cinema has been in your life since you were born. Did you know that this would eventually be where you would be putting your efforts in?
For the virtue of growing up in cinema, there was something that always pulled me towards it. If you ask me if I knew all along, I admit, didn’t want to be here from childhood. It’s just something I grew into. Cinema was always bleeding in and out of whatever I do. However, dad and I were particular that education was important. Pursuing a masters degree was a part of the plan. Coming back from business studies, I figured I should use what I studied in media itself.
You had to take over a legacy. Was that pressure on you to keep up the name?
Pressure was there when I came back here. But it was more about how I was perceived. It wasn’t peer pressure. It was internal. I wanted to do something beyond; not to take over or to prove something. I wanted to do something on my own. I also knew that there would be baggage of the family name but that was in my own account. I realised that if I take to cinema at that point it would have been just my father putting a film together. It wouldn’t be me doing something. I’d probably just implement. That wouldn’t make me an entrepreneur it just makes me a media manager. Dad also told me to start something on my own. During that time, television was doing great on a global platform. We were just on the verge of turning TV into a big thing in 2004. That’s when I thought, ‘Let me start TV’. So I started my first TV show which was a reality show. It was a stupendous hit. And then continued in it for a very long time after.
You were doing great on TV. And now cinema. Was the switch from TV to Cinema seamless?
There was a time in my life when I went into broadcast and I had a big fall. The dip was quite big. Cinema wasn’t a switch. I wanted to tell good stories no matter which media. I went back into content and started working with TV channels. I felt that because we have the access to media, we had to make some diffeence to ourselves for being in cinema for so long. In that lean phase we thought if we could tell a great story we could rebuild ourselves. We heard a bunch of stories and when Nagi told us Yevade Subramanyam I jumped at it. It felt like a sunrise for us.
There is often a debate about the creative and the trade ends of making a film. Have you ever experienced that? And what’s your strategy to figure it out?
We hardly have done anything to have a strategy about it. But so far, it’s been instinctive. If we felt, ‘Sh*t! This is working’. Then it really did work. I hope we don’t work on a strategy going forward either. Because so far this has been amazing.
But again, I wouldn’t disagree that there is a certain format. There is something called a “safe zone”. However, there is also something that only some cinema can change. We certainly broke those myths with Yevade Subramanyam and Mahanati, which was a high budget movie without a hero figure. Not just Mahanati, Arundhathi was a Sankranthi release and it still broke all records of the year. I think it’s great cinema at the end of the day that works. Good cinema doesn’t have boundaries to it.
There’s an emerging number of women working in cinema. How do you think that will change the scenario in the industry?
It’s changing massively, especially since my father’s era to today. Women then had really specific roles; mostly in the fashion department or as make up artists or hair dressers. Now it’s beyond that. There are avenues opening up. There is a lot of exposure. Women from smaller towns too want to come and work for cinema. You have them learning home editing or putting a video together. Watching other women make their way in the industry inspires others to do so. Lot of women are coming up and we should totally embrace it. It’s a delight to watch our young independent women working hard and they indeed are dependable and responsible.
To be so young and to have to lead a team does it take work to be taken seriously? And how does criticism affect you?
You can only be taken seriously only through your work. You can’t be taken seriously if you try to throw around power or use a man card or woman card. That never works.
I’ve had quite a spat of criticism. I had a few tell me that I was giving my father the sun-stroke and called me “daughter stroke”. (chuckles) But after you make a film like
Mahanati everythin just vanishes. It is the work that talks. Sometimes, your ground trembles a little bit, but you have to hang on and wait for the good time to come. I am enjoying the praise coming in so I’m ready for criticism also. I don’t become weak for criticism I also don’t let praise get to my head. I’m more balanced now... Glad I got the criticism early on. (laughs)