I was a virtual tyrant with these two kids. They took all my admonitions without ever raising a murmur of protest. This despite the fact that it was a completely new experience for them. They had come to work in a film and not to a military academy. I believe that actors should be trained rigorously so that they can completely dispossess themselves of any ego and effortlessly become any character they are asked to portray. Ideally an actor should be like water, acquiring the shape of the vessel it is poured into. But popular Hindi cinema does not encourage that. I was lucky to have not one but two kids with scant knowledge of films understanding the larger picture and believing in me. I suspect it was largely due to my dramatic persona and the way I spoke. There were no profound deliberations or realizations.

We did the regular theatre training routine. Before working on the roles they were meant to play, they worked on body language and articulation. After a while work became play and both of them started enjoying it. Initially Maradona had a problem. Though, he was the younger of the two, he had dabbled in some amateur theatre and thought that that he did not need to ‘learn’ acting. He thought I was teaching him how to imitate me. When I explained to him that at the end of the day people would see him on screen and not me, he eventually understood. Amit never ever even complained.

After the workshops would get over, almost every day, I would make them stay back and watch an international film. That opened their eyes further. They saw for themselves different methods of acting adopted by actors from across continents. The workshops turned into a playground. The magic circle became a comfortable refuge inside which reality was being altered constantly.

Pankh was born out of my experiences of pain. I delved into the deeper recesses of the human mind to trace the root cause of suffering. In the coming days I will try to articulate what I went through in realizing my dream. I hope it resonates it in your hearts and becomes your own story.

I wrote the film several years back and could not find a backer for this project. In 2006, a production company signed me on for this Film and we were all ready and rearing to go. I cast two newcomers after months of auditioning several aspirants. We were all set to roll when suddenly my producers developed the ‘heebie jeebies’ for completely warped reasons and turned turkey. I was virtually left high and dry without even a shoulder to cry on. I felt doomed but thankfully did not wallow in self pity. I was determined to make this project work. After all, this was the first Hindi feature film I always wanted to make. I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to make cinema that confronts reality and stares it in the face. This was a film about angst, about madness, about human suffering! Here I was left suffering. But I had my team intact. My two newcomers and my entire team standing behind me solid as rock.

Rohit Roy, the actor is a dear friend of mine. He and his wife Manasi Joshi Roy heard about my predicament. They offered emotional support. Rohit told me he would get this project together no matter what. He was completely convinced about the subject. He told me that he would introduce me to his close friend, Sanjay Gupta, the famous producer and director. I thought it was a mad idea. Sanjay Gupta makes these slick action thrillers about ‘men and guns’. How could he even dare to endorse such a daringly audacious film? A film that delineates the psychological trauma about sexual identity.

When I asked Sanjay how long he would give me to narrate the film to him, he said very cursorily, “at the best twenty”. I started narrating and Rohit left the room. Sanjay sat engrossed and heard me out for about an hour without any interruption. At the end, he asked me a pointed question, “do you want to make this film exactly the way you narrated it to me?” Coming from a producer of commercial films that meant, “You must be out of your senses”. The question hung over my neck for around 15 seconds. But my inner self spoke out and I said, “yes I want to do it exactly they way I narrated it to you”. Sanjay just jumped off his chair and vigorously shook my hand. He told me,“ I am doing this film”. I almost could not believe him. Here was a commercial film producer who wanted to back my film. Not only that. He launched a new company called Whitefeather Arthouse Films to support this endeavour. That was indeed a new beginning!!!!

While writing the script, the only actor I had in mind for the most intriguing role was Bipasha Basu. I felt she had the right oomph and daring to give visual shape to the idea I had in mind. She heard the script and commented, “I was not hearing a narration; I was seeing a film”. Contrary to popular perception, she did not play any star power game and immediately agreed to do the film. She gave the film its face on the popular platform and has helped it reach out to larger number of people. I think the Bong Connection worked here to a minor extent.

Casting Maradona Rebello and Amit Purohit (both newcomers) was the more trying task. I was sure that I wanted fresh faces without any image package for these two roles. The process of casting for my protagonist Jerry was the most harrowing experience of my life. Either guys would not fit the bill or they did not have the guts to test for this complex character. There was a time when I wondered whether this film would eventually be made if we did not find the main guy. I chanced upon Maradona’s pictures by sheer accident and called him for an audition. The moment I saw him, I knew he looked correct for the role. He has a boyish charm and innocence. Moreover, he bore a striking resemblance to my favourite actor in the world, Gael Garcia Bernal. He auditioned right and I knew the rest I would take care of by doing rigorous workshops.

Maradona chickened out on hearing the subject. He was just a nineteen year old kid without any experience in acting per say. He had done a few plays in college. But his Catholic upbringing combined with his perception about Bollywood made him say a resounding NO. He had heard horror stories of the casting couch and freaked out when told about workshops. He thought that was a ruse to seduce him. I had to speak to his teacher and both his parents to convince him. They took a shine on me and assured him he was in ‘safe hands’. Once convinced, Maradona surrendered unquestioningly.

Amit was referred to my friend Debasrita, a casting consultant. One look at his pictures and a meeting later I knew he was the guy to play Salim, the stuntman in the film. He was also raw and had no prior exposure. But he was willing and obedient to a fault. Thus the magic circle was created. (I will talk about this later)

Lillete Dubey loved the first narration and came on board. So did Mahesh Manjrekar, Ronit Roy, Kiran Karmakar, Sanjeeda Sheikh and others. I wanted Asha Sachdev to stage a comeback and she too was elated to be a part of the film.

With the cast in place, I was ready to begin my film.

Sanjay Gupta was there, of course, greeting his pals from the industry. His leading lady in the film, Dia Mirza, looked stunning in a blue gown and wooed and wowed the cameras. Also posing and preening for the shutterbugs were other Bollywood bombshells viz Sophie Choudry (also in a gown), Aarti Chhabria and Urvashi Sharma.

Fardeen Khan was missing in action here, as opposed to his role in the film, but his cousin Zayed Khan walked in with wife Malaika. The other actors of the film — Manoj Bajpayee, Aftab Shivdasani and Dino Morea — were present too. Manasi Scott, who’s rendered a smashing song-cum-video for the film, was at her excited best.

Tusshar Kapoor, Anuj Saxena, Kabir Sadanand, Parvin Dabbas, Arshad Warsi, Nandita Mahtani… the guest list was endless!

Source: Times of India

Inspired by Hollywood film Unknown, Acid Factory is engaging in most parts. Also, it’s well adapted to suit Indian sensibilities. It starts off strong enough and keeps the momentum going till the end, though, of course, it goes back and forth at times and that could get a bit confusing.

Acid Factory demands your attention from the very start. The viewer ought to stay alert and watch the goings-on carefully. Even if you blink, chances are you may miss a vital link and the subsequent portions may not work for you since there’s something happening every minute.

At the same time, Acid Factory has its share of loose ends. The climax, for instance, could’ve been more impactful. Also, the concept is too urbane and holds appeal for the urban youth, who’ve a penchant for slick thrillers.

Final word? Acid Factory is a well-crafted, well executed film with the ensemble cast pitching in competent performances.

A man (Fardeen Khan) wakes up in a deserted factory surrounded by several other seemingly dead men. He has absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there and he is unable to get out. Before too long, the others (Aftab Shivdasani, Dino Morea, Manoj Bajpayee, Danny Denzongpa, Diya Mirza) wake up and they all have amnesia too.

All they know is that some of them have been shot, one is tied to a chair, a third is hanging by his wrist, which is handcuffed to a railing… It is eventually discovered that they have lost their memory because of gas leaked from a container.

Much later, they figure out that two of them have been kidnapped by the other three. Who are the kidnappers and who are their victims? Meanwhile, the police are tracking a sinister man (Irrfan Khan), while a worried wife (Neha) desperately searches for her husband.

Acid Factory has enough going for it, thanks to its premise which is intriguing. But the plot is such that it takes time to come to the point. There’s not much happening in the first hour, except the fact that everyone’s clueless about their identity and how they seem trapped in a dilapidated factory.

But the answers start flowing in the second hour. The answers come quick and the reasons why they are trapped are also justified. But, as mentioned earlier, the conclusion could’ve been as realistic like the rest of the proceedings. Also, the track of the harried wife trying to trace her husband isn’t too convincing.

This is Suparn Verma’s second film as a director and midway through the film, you realise that Suparn has grown as a storyteller. The film bears a slick look and also, the narrative holds your attention for most parts. Cinematography is top notch. So is the sound design. Tinu Verma’s stunts and chase sequences deserve distinction marks.

Every actor pitches in an effortless performance. They aren’t putting on an act. The film has an assorted mix of experienced and accomplished actors (Danny Denzongpa, Manoj Bajpayee and Irrfan Khan) and yet-to-reach-there actors (Fardeen Khan, Aftab Shivdasani, Dino Morea and Diya Mirza) and each display confidence in their respective parts. Neha doesn’t get scope, while Gulshan Grover is as usual.

On the whole, Acid Factory is a slick thriller that has an interesting premise and also super stunts and chase sequences as its trump cards. The film is targeted at the urban youth, especially those who relish thrillers. Of course, the film will have to storm the dull pre-Diwali period which might curtail its prospects to an extent despite decent merits and also, the three biggies that arrive next Friday.

To understand how Pankh emerged, it is essential to know where I come from.

A Bong brat with a Post Graduate degree in English Literature and Diploma in Cinema from FTII, Pune. Career started at Kolkata and moved all over India—– a very successful stint in advertising, TV(both Hindi and Bengali), as writer producer, director of fiction and non fiction programming, set up first private news channel in Bangla, daily chat show host in Bangla for 3 years, iconoclast, social commentator, journalist, writer of fiction, prose, poetry, screenplays and dialogues. Presently settled in Mumbai and have completed my first Hindi feature film Pankh – the Flight.

The academic background of a combination of literature and cinema brings with it a certain bathethic vanity which one invariably tends to overlook in salad days of youth.  One is instilled with a foolish notion of superiority, harbouring rabid dogmatic notions such as these — “Popular Cinema always needs popular idioms or cliché’s to make itself palpable to people.  Why was there the bloody need to explain everything? In difficult times you need complex structures to create a truly satisfying work of art.  Does communication become difficult when you use metaphors and metonyms rather than similes?  Why are the common people such blithering idiots? “  Fortunately, with age one can see through the idiocy of such posturing that almost tantamount to a sort of aesthetic rabble rousing. For any work of art to survive there has to be an emotional connect. Otherwise it descends to barren scholasticism. The sixties had tolerated Goddard’s childish pranks and polemics as avant-grade.  Jean Luc Goddard is among the unfortunate few who live to see their death – in cinema. He has been rendered archaic, irrelevant today. Like Eisenstein, like Pudofkin – great grammarians without souls. I thank my lucky stars that I did not commit such hara-kiri by making Pankh earlier in life. Or else I would have treaded the same path as well.

For whatever is its worth, Pankh douses such bigotry. It is one from the heart and aspires to connect to an audience emotionally first and then cerebrally. It may be a flawed work but is ruthlessly honest. I firmly believe in what Jean Cocteau said, ”it is through those loopholes, those very flaws that art enters”.

It was important to clarify my perspective before I started talking about the film. To rid myself of any aesthetic vanity, to unburden myself of the tradition that weighed so heavily on my shoulders and then speak the language of my heart. This was my chapter zero after the prelude in the first installment. Henceforth, no more digressions! Let the flight begin.

I guess in wishing words imprinted on pages to become reality on screen as truth told twenty four times a second, a maker culls his mise-en-scene of expiation and actuates himself in those trepid moments when he loses control over his work. In those fragile moments of terrifying numbness as the camera whirs, a million thoughts whiz past his mind and the cinema of the interior finds fruition.

But then is cinema ever real when technology trying to reinvent mimesis, reduces itself to a sheer whirlpool of images and sounds? Where does consciousness truly manifest itself when the dying ember in an actor’s eye proclaims guileless deceit with dexterity? Can truth ever be told or does truth happen of its own sweet will? Is there uniformity in what is perceived as reality?

After its complete does the film belong to me anymore as it undergoes million interpretations, evoking sundry reactions of the viewer? Am I left with my meaning anymore?

A story is essentially a lie I create for a greater truth

The tapestry of words woven around characters that never existed

Beyond the magic of constructed words at best portrayed by actors on screen

People living others lives giving shape to the abstract text of dialogues

One mind creating several minds and moments of mirth or sorrow

Creating an imaginary social fabric in imagined times under the garb of reality

Lies mirroring truth beyond vacant looks in listless eyes.

Pankh has been a burden of dreams that I have been carrying too long, awaiting for actuation and realization. Finally, the end seems somewhere in sight. Or is it a mirage? Only 11^th September’09 can answer this. Till such time let me take you through this arduous journey that I undertook eons back when I first ideated the film. Welcome to my matrix!!!

- SUDIPTO CHATTOPADHYAY

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