Remember when, over a decade ago, filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee got young film buffs as excited in India’s independent film movement as the young generation that witnessed the birth of the Hollywood New Wave (Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy) and the early 90s (Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi)? These filmmakers’ rebellious spirit almost compelled one to go out and buy a camera. Unfortunately, the indie film scene today doesn’t generate the same level of excitement, despite the existence of highly talented names such as Avinash Arun (Killa), Vikramaditya Motwane (Udaan), Achal Mishra (Gamak Ghar), Chaitanya Tamhane (Court) or Arati Kadav (Cargo).
What gives? Are today’s filmmakers not as passionate? I ask up-and-coming Mumbai-based filmmaker Rohit Mittal, whose name, I feel, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the above names. But, first, some background...
Following a brief disillusioning stint as a lawyer, Rohit got enrolled in Los Angeles’ New York Film Academy, after which he managed to land an internship gig with the legendary Roger Corman, the man who played a big part in launching the careers of mavericks like Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and Peter Bogdanovich. A filmmaker with a distinctive voice, Rohit, in his films Autohead, Popcity, and Megalopolis, exhibits an affinity towards dark humour and sharp social commentary without resorting to preachiness. To give a brief picture: in Autohead (2016), a film crew documenting an autorickshaw driver (a brilliantly unnerving Deepak Sampat) is taken for a nightmarish ride when they discover he is a serial killer; in Popcity (2021), a South Indian contract killer (a funny and compelling Arjun Radhakrishnan) navigates existential crisis, bad relationships and botched assignments.
As his new film Demons, a relationship drama, does the rounds in the festival circuit, we sat down with the 36-year-old filmmaker to talk about the current state of indie cinema in the country, the need for honesty in storytelling, and more...
Excerpts:
How do you look at the evolution of the indie film scene in India as opposed to the early 2000s? Are the filmmakers not as angry anymore?
A sense of complacency has crept in—for various reasons. Back then, not only were people ready to take more risks, there was more passion and love for movies. Moviemaking changed when the corporates got bigger and even the producers turned to them for funding, in which case, people do what the funders tell them to do. It’s not that you can’t make good movies under the studio system—The Godfather is one great exception—but I feel the basic love for cinema is sorely lacking. It has become a problem of numbers with these corporates. When everything becomes about bulk, the quality suffers as a result. Besides, there is no innovation in marketing.
That said, I’m still hopeful because as long as there exist people who are passionate about movies and making them, exploring new stories and storytelling, and if we have more such people on both sides, be it the producers, directors or writers, then we can keep that fire burning.
What are the pitfalls of this ‘committee filmmaking’?
When you hire someone to make something, let him do his job. When a lot of meddling happens, the singular voice gets lost, and you end up with a half-baked product. And I’m not dismissing the role of producers because all these great classics we talk about wouldn’t have happened without them. We hardly give credit to them. But when it comes to indie filmmaking, the entire idea is to explore new voices and new storytelling possibilities.
What has been happening with indie cinema in the last 7-8 years is filmmakers trying to cater to a certain type of festival audience, and the festivals themselves are playing it safe in terms of the kind of films they select. The most notable quality of the 90s independent film movement in Hollywood was the sheer variety. There were films like El Mariachi, Reservoir Dogs, Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Blair Witch Project, and many more. Over here, what has happened is a select few think indie cinema should be in a certain way. As a result, the market also suffered for indie films because we didn’t give them any variety. When competing with multiple platforms, including YouTube, we have to expand our imagination.
Do you think some films suffer because they adhere to a ‘woke’ checklist?
That, yes, and even in terms of aesthetics... trying to make a film look a certain way to appeal to a certain group. Here’s the problem with that. A film may premiere at Sundance or Berlin, but do they find an audience later? After a point, you start wondering whom to blame —the festivals or the filmmakers? Catering to some 1500 people and their ideas of what a film should be is unhealthy. It feels as though the festivals themselves have taken the onus of bringing these few ideologies forward, which was not the case in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Back then, it was more about the movies themselves than making something just to espouse a certain social cause.
How do you feel about OTT platforms picking up independent films and then taking them off after a certain period? How do filmmakers get paid?
They get paid, yes, but peanuts. The way these OTT platforms pick content is disappointing. When they first came in, they showed an interest in all the so-called ‘good content’, but later on, they probably felt that there was no market for these films, or they felt the urge to expand and ended up joining hands with the biggies, post which they started following the old format—getting as many big names as possible for everything. When the pandemic hit, they hardly looked at smaller films; all their budgets went into acquiring the relatively bigger films and shows. They bought and bought and eventually realised there was an oversupply of everything.
Your films discuss voyeurism, sensation-hungry media, sexual repression, and racism, among other things, yet the way you incorporate them feels very organic—a rarity today.
My films came out of a lot of anger. For example, in Autohead, my anger is directed towards poverty porn filmmakers and people who record cruel acts instead of helping the individual in peril. My films also question the typical image of a movie ‘hero’. I feel there is a severe underrepresentation of authentic, flawed male characters in the films made in the last 5-7 years. It’s either these big mainstream heroes behaving like idealistic superheroes or these really ‘feminised’ versions of men in the so-called ‘woke’ cinema. The world has all kinds of people... and our films should represent everyone.