Do you consider direction as a logical extension of cinematography?
Absolutely. Both the director and the cinematographer must think visually. I have often had to act as second to the director for several films. My work with directors across the board in Kolkata and Mumbai gave me the opportunity to observe, sometimes interpret and think in retrospect. Sometimes, if the director was absent for some reason on the sets on a given day, I had to be responsible for the entire team. This gave me the experience to handle a large team of cast, crew, and helpers. Things like shot construction, lighting angles, composition of shots, choice of location, etc. are common to both the cinematographer and the director. For me, direction is a natural extension of cinematography. It is an integration of both functions and I am not pressurised by them. It helps when you are directing, never mind if the film is your first or your fifth.
What made you choose the story of Ekti Tarar Khonje?
Madhuja Mukherjee, a close friend, who teaches film at the Jadavpur University, narrated a one-liner and we both felt it had the possibility of being fleshed out into a complete script for a film. She developed it into a complete script. But someone had to step forward to produce it. I approached Aniruddha Roy Choudhury, whose Antaheen I cinematographed, liked the script and he decided to produce it under his Screenplay Films banner.
Your cast is not the usual kind. What is the reason for this?
We began to slot the actors to the characters even while we were developing the script. Ankur Khanna was the initial choice for one of the major leads but he was later replaced by Shayan Munshi, who has stripped himself of his glamorous model mode to get into a realistic character. Prosenjit, an old friend, suggested I try his wife Arpita Chatterjee for one of the female leads. She is making a comeback after seven years and looks as attractive as she did then. She does not carry the glamour baggage of a familiar star and that helped. Others like Rudraneel Ghosh, Anindyo Bandopadhyay, Tanushree Shankar, Dhritimaan Chatterjee and Biplab Chatterjee, fill up the other characters in this ensemble production. Arghya Kamal Mitra will edit the film.
Tell us a little about the story of Ekti Tarar Khonje.
A young man arrives in Kolkata from a small town with dreams of becoming an actor. He rents a room in a sprawling house in old Kolkata (the northern extremes) and meets a colourful range of characters that live as tenants in this house. The landlord (Dhritiman Chatterjee) lives in a strange time-warp. He reads Shakespeare, strums on the esraaj, and is proud of the family tree that is framed and hung on one wall of his room. The young man also meets a woman (Arpita Chatterjee) who lives alone. The other characters have their own eccentricities and their personal dreams. This constant interplay between illusion and reality within a criss-cross narrative, the line between reality and illusion gets blurred. We are designing the narrative in a way that might lead the audience to think whether what they were watching really happened or whether it was all a dream.
How do you balance the tightrope walk between cinematography and direction since you have been a cinematographer all this while?
I am focussed on bringing out the cinematographic potential of the film through the screenplay, co-written by Madhuja and myself. I manage the tightrope walk by involving myself with other facets of production such as what props to use in which room or scene, what costumes my characters will wear, what colours should be used in a given scene and so on. Madhuja and I have also done the production design together.
Who have you banked on to do the musical score?
It is a friend of mine called Prabuddha. He has composed five songs and the background score. Except one lip-sync song, the rest are situational and one is a Tagore song. We hope to release the film in February 2010.
Name a few of your pet films as cinematographer.
That is not too difficult. I choose Patalghar that allowed me to play around with fantasy and realism, Antarmahal that gave me the opportunity to interpret and Dosar, for allowing me the use of black-and-white that I had learnt at FTII.
