| UJJAL CHATTERJEE | ||
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ike any true-blue Bengali, Ujjal Chatterjee is passionate about Rabi Thakur and his poetry. ‘Jete jete ekla pathe...’ ranks high on his list of favourite Rabindra Sangeets and has been used twice already in two of his films, the National Award winning Gondi, and the equally acclaimed Kaal Ratri. The idea of a man walking alone, fighting his own battles, inspired the young filmmaker who hit the headlines last year with his third film, Escape From Taliban.
MIDBANNERThe Manisha Koirala-starrer was in the eye of a storm with writer Sushmita Bondhopadhyay alleging that the film was a gross distortion of her literary work, based on a true-life account of her trials in Afghanistan. Chatterjee refutes the reports arguing that if he deviated from the story, it was only to bring in the angle of women’s lib for which he was praised by even the Human Rights Commission.
He points out that he’s often been asked why a dictatorial regime like the Taliban, known for its irrational, often uncalled for brutality, would spare the life of a woman of Indian origin with few connections. The reason, according to him, would be because the fiery young doctor, who refused to share her marital bed with her husband’s first wife in open defiance of an age-old, unquestioned tradition, was successful in sowing the seeds of feminism and slow gathering rebellion in the hereto closed, male-dominated Afghan community. “So even the Taliban generals were afraid to kill her. As a path-finder to women’s lib, I thought I was adding a new dimension to Bandhopadhyay’s story,” Chatterjee maintains.
To his disappointment, despite sky-high expectations, Escape From Taliban didn’t fare well commercially. Chatterjee honestly admits that the film’s dismal performance at the box-office reflects his personal failure to reach the common man. “Usually, with films like this that depend on word-of-mouth publicity, collections pick up after about three weeks, by which time my film’s run was over,” he rues. The reason for the truncated showtime of Escape From Taliban, he believes, was a negative propaganda wave that greeted the film and pronounced it anti-Muslim, anti-Quran and anti-secular. This resulted in it being abruptly pulled out of theatres in Thane and Nagpur, boycotted by the Samajvadi Party in UP, unable to find a release in Patna and not screened in several countries abroad. “My film was not anti-Muslim, but anti-Taliban,” Chatterjee clarifies, “It was about a woman’s secular efforts to fight fundamentalism. But unfortunately, her efforts were polarised and promoted against the film.”
Fortunately for him, the response to his first music video has been more favourable. Today, not just Chatterjee’s Bengali friends, but even the guy from whom he buys his cigarettes and the neighbourhood chaiwala are talking about his Rajesh Khanna gaana that is playing on MTV, Channel [V], Zee TV and B4U. “This is the first time perhaps that a Bengali song is being aired on non-regional TV channels,” the director exults.
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Vishwabharati’s total monopoly over all rights to Tagore’s work, he insists, is responsible for the poet’s reach being limited to elitist circles in Bengal. For the movie rights of Shesher Kobita, which he will be directing for Manmohan Shetty from June next year starring Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta, Chatterjee had to park himself in Kolkata for 20 days. “Is it any surprise then that most filmmakers prefer the literary classics of Munshi Premchand and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay as their muse?” he queries.
Even his music video that has earned its fair share of compliments, has raised eyebrows in Vishabharati because of the inclusion of violence in a song that talks philosophically about the joy of life and the bounties of nature that envy, greed and communal hate has blinded us to. “For me, the attraction of the song was that it mirrored contemporary times. I wanted to show the negativity around us before having my “hero” pick up the torch and show people the true path, that breaks the barriers of self-centredness and petty minds to reach out to God and humanity,” Chatterjee elucidates.
The offer from Wings to direct the first music video for Indrajeet Das Gupta’s eight-song-album, though came as a surprise to Chatterjee. He had directed films before. His debut feature, Gondi was screened at the India International Film Festival in ’92 and at the Tashkent Film Festival, and the Fukoka Film Festival in Japan the following year. His second film, Kaal Ratri, was showcased at the Hong Kong Film Festival in 2000 and screened at the Asiatic Film Critics Society in London. It was honoured with awards at home and by the Bangladesh Film Movement. He also has to his credit four critically acclaimed documentaries on the illeteracy programme by the West Bengal govenment and the UNICEF, as also the child labour programme in Canada and a film on water pollution in India produced by the Netherland Film Society. There was also a corporate film on Indal Alumunium ITC. “But I had never directed a music video before and I don’t think I will do another after ‘O amar desher mati...’, another song from Dasgupta’s album, that I’m planning to picturise on Amitabh Bachchan within a month’s time, if we can work out the dates,” Chatterjee confesses with rare condour.
What grabbed him about Wings’ offer, apart from the fact that he’s a true-blue Bengali for whom ‘Gurudev’ is ‘God’, was the prospect of having his name associated with Tagore’s works. “I can’t sing and at the time Shesher Kobita was still a distant dream. ‘Anandadhara...’ gave me the opportunity to work on a Tagore song and popularise it outside West Bengal by using the ‘Phenomenon’ of the ’70s,” he points out.
Interestingly, Rajesh Khanna was not in the picture when Wings came to Chatterjee. He was informed that Alok Nath had already been confirmed. But it so happened that he was talking to Rajesh Khanna at the time for a film based on a Marathi play, Natya Samrat. “When I was approached for the music video, I sounded out Kakaji on the idea of working on a Rabindra Sangeet album. ‘Why me? What will I do in a Bengali song?’ he wondered. I told him that this was a first for me and Rabindra Sangeet too, and it would help to have a superstar act in the video and promote Tagore’s work outside the state,” Chatterjee recalls. Rajesh Khanna was instantly intrigued and after a couple of meetings agreed to allot Chatterjee a couple of days in his packed schedule.
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Rajesh Khanna has reportedly taken on the responsibility of pushing the album and video overseas. He is expected to spread Tagore’s songs in countries like the US, UK, East Africa, Singapore and Bangladesh through his own efforts and connections. He was in Kolkata for a press conference recently and admitted that the music video was his way of taking Tagore’s music to the new generation, the people who are the future of our country.
Chatterjee meanwhile has sent a concept note for the video of ‘O amar desher mati...’ to Amitabh Bachchan and already moved on to his next project. This one is a feature film titled The Search starring Manisha Koirala and Raghuvaran. The story has its base in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre and has been written by the technical editor of The New York Times. Manisha had agreed to do the film a year ago and announced her decision at a press confereance in New York. But America’s war on Iraq resulted in the project being pushed back. Now however, Chatterjee hopes to get it on the road and is waiting for the actress to return from a conference in Nepal to confirm her dates. “If everything goes well, we should start shooting from November 22,” he divulges.
The Search begins on a quiet morning in New York. The date is significant — September 11, 2001. An Indian-Muslim woman, Zarina, is preparing for an exhibition at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Manhattan where she will be making her debut as ‘Photographer of the Week’. Her small orderly world is shattered when the WTC comes crumbling down. Her husband Yusuf was on the 98th floor of the South Tower of the WTC and her son, Roshan just across the street from it. After seeing his classmates and teachers buried alive, Zarina’s 10-year-old son is severely traumatised and loses his power of sppech. Yusuf meanwhile has gone missing. Day after day, Zarina stands at Ground Zero with a photograph of her husband hoping that he’ll return someday, till her mother persuades her that for the sake of her child she should return to India. In the plane she meets a child psychologist who offers to treat Roshan at his clinic in Mumbai. Roshan responds to Dr Shamim’s therapy with a burst of writing that propels him to instant fame. Zarina is slowly getting her life together again when another shock takes her by surprise.
Chatterjee plans to shoot the film in the US and Jammu & Kashmir. J & K is an unusual choice of location today but he informs that the state is no longer out-of-bounds to filmmakers. If anything, producers like Reema Mukherjee who is backing The Search, are at an advantage if they decide to shoot there because they’ve been promised a 35 per cent subsidy. And with sufficient security cover, Chatterjee is convinced that he and his unit will be safe in what was once described as ‘Paradise on Earth’. He himself is used to living with danger. Since the release of Escape From Taliban he has been getting death threats and even today is accompanied by two security guards provided by the Crime Branch. But life goes on as imagination takes flight...