Jan 11, 1999

They belong to generation-X and voice the aspirations of modern youth. Straddling two continents, these enterprising directors are finally being accepted at home.

By Nandita Chowdhury

It was an exercise in stereotype-busting. When Kaizad Gustad set out to make his first feature film, Bombay Boys, he knew what he wanted to do: project "Bombay" as a city "more vibrant, buoyant, frenetic, crazy and radically different from anything one has seen before". And that's what he did. Three Indian expatriates return to their roots for the first time and are in for a cultural shock. The Bombay they seek is just not the Mumbai they find. What emerged from their experiences was a "Hindi film in English", a modern, urbane film with a pop soundtrack and a pop sensibility.

The film is about a generation that drinks Johnny Walker Black Label -- "the real thing, man" -- out of hot-water bags and tip-toes into bedrooms with gay partners afraid that parents would "freak out". In this MTV-style film, the city almost becomes a character, riding along with the trio in their journey of rediscovery. Director Gustad, himself a city-slicker of no fixed address, is part of the Generation X and a new breed of filmmakers that speaks, thinks and dreams in English, exploring the experiences and the identity of their post-colonial generation born in free India. There are others like him -- Dev Benegal, Piyush Jha and Nagesh Kukunoor -- who have made offbeat low-budget English or bilingual films which say something different in a different way.

What's also unique about this brigade is that they have cast their eyes at an audience beyond the Indian shores. Says Gustad: "Bombay Boys was intended to be a film that the entire world could watch. It was not made just for the Indian audience or the NRI segment." In saying that he voices the agenda of a growing tribe of independent filmmakers who are making movies with a homogeneous international audience in mind.

Three years after the success of English, August, dubbed by some as the "first modern Indian film", Benegal is now editing his next film Split Wide Open. The film looks at the contrasts a big city poses from the street person's perspective. Panning the streets and the television studios of Mumbai, Split Wide Open, like Gustad's film, shows a city where nobody wins, everybody just survives.

For inspiration, they don't have to look much further than the backyard. Debutant Jha gives a comic twist to real-life incidents in Chalo America -- a bilingual film -- which tracks the travails of three college boys from the suburbs of Mumbai who dream of going to the US. An NFDC production shot with a modest budget of Rs 35 lakh, the film has been selected for the Indian Panorama in the forthcoming film festival in Hyderabad. Says Jha: "At some stage or the other most collegiates are obsessed with the idea of going to America. I have also gone through the same thing. In terms of sensibility, this film is like some of the comedies of the '80s -- Chashme Baddoor or Jane Bhi Do Yaaron -- but stylistically very '90s." The film is due for release in January and hits the international festival circuit shortly after.

Kukunoor, a first-time producer, director and actor hit gold this year with Hyderabad Blues, a quasi-autobiographical film about the homecoming of an NRI. An engineer-turned-filmmaker, Kukunoor made the film on a soul-searching trip to India with a shoe-string budget of Rs 18 lakh and starring mostly friends and family. Though Hyderabad Blues lacks finesse, shot as it is in the home video style, it proved to be a success after a "hugely unexpected" run of 20 weeks in Mumbai. The film has just released in other cities in India and is set for a January release in the US. Kukunoor is now directing Rockford, the story of an adolescent boy coming of age in a boarding school in India, while considering a deal for the next one, Bollywood Calling, a satirical look at the Indian film industry. Like Gustad, Kukunoor too seems to believe in "think global". "I wanted to make a movie primarily for the West and I figured that the best thing to sell was my Indianness, especially in the US." But the fact that Hyderabad Blues was successful in India as well is not a mere coincidence.

There is certainly a cultural specificity to what is happening. Says Benegal, a front-runner for projecting the contemporary urban theme: "Judging from the response, there is perhaps a new Indian voice emerging which is trying to project something different from the usual films made for international audiences on subjects which are simplified for presentation." These films are also bridging the gap between an art-house product and a commercial venture. Says Anuradha Parikh, producer of both English, August and Split Wide Open: "The divide is dissolving. For us, it's not a question of making a commercial film or a parallel film. There is a lot of change going on and we'd like to address it upfront." As a result leading distributors are taking on offbeat films -- Shringar Films released Hyderabad Blues and Bharat Shah's VIP Enterprises distributed Bombay Boys and Vinay Shukla's Godmother.

The reason is clear. For the first time a huge section of the educated middle classes has found the opportunity to flex their box-office muscles. Says Renu Saluja, film editor: "What has really changed today is that there is a huge audience that is opening up, looking for new perspectives and different stories. The problem is that there is very little for them yet."

And despite their growing acceptance and a market for their films, it wasn't easy for these filmmakers to raise money or get international distribution. Gustad scouted around for funds for over a year. Money eventually came from financiers in the UK, France and the US. Kukunoor, after failing to convince financiers that "a person with no name or background" could make a movie, decided to put in his own money. Says producer-director Deepa Mehta, whose films are now all pre-sold: "People are looking at a world-wide audience. But the reality is that the market place is very small."

It's a lot easier, of course, if you are a Deepa Mehta or a Shekhar Kapur who've proved themselves in the global market. For the rest, however, it's just a trickle. As Mehta says, "Let's not fool ourselves by saying we've arrived." Maybe not, but at least they have taken the first tentative steps into largely unexplored territory.

© Living Media India Ltd