Jio MAMI Day 4: Jury member Cameron Bailey on the changing possibilities of Indian cinema

By Tanul Thakur Cameron Bailey, artistic director at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is not a stranger to contemporary Indian cinema. Curating Indian films for TIFF from 2005, Bailey has, over the last decade, successfully tracked the pulse of the country’s filmmaking scene and introduced some fine Indian directors to a wider audience abroad. [caption id=“attachment_2493458” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Cameron Bailey. Image from Facebook.[/caption] I meet Bailey at an empty bar in the J.W. Marriott hotel, in Juhu. He is currently in Mumbai as one of the jury members for the International Competition section of the JIO MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Interviewing Bailey is like watching an introvert come out of his shell. At the beginning of the conversation, he has an air of formality around him; he avoids eye contact while speaking, and his answers are articulate but brief. However, gradually, as he begins opening up about his journey, the movies in general, and Indian cinema in particular, Bailey looks much relaxed. He begins laughing easily and frequently, making eye contact, and sharing his thoughts about where Indian cinema is right now and where it is possibly headed. Excerpts from the interview: You began programming Indian cinema at the Toronto International Film Festival from 2005. As an outsider, who’s also uniquely intimate with the Indian filmmaking scene for the last 10 years, how much do you think has Indian cinema changed since? Enormously. When I first came here, I only had glancing familiarity with Indian cinema. I had studied some of the great classic films, and I had a chance to see some of the contemporary films, but really at that time [around a decade ago], there was only Bollywood and the very high art cinema — movies by great Bengali and Malayalam filmmakers. But in the last four to five years, there’s been a complete sea change. So filmmakers like Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap and Ritesh Batra have transformed the possibilities for Indian cinema by bridging that gap by bringing independent sensibilities from outside of India —sensibilities from art house cinema around the world — to commercial films. As if almost insisting that there doesn’t need to be a divide between the marketplace and the art house, that their cinema can be truly independent, personal and yet connect with the audiences. I think it is still a struggle; I think there’s still a way to go; I think these filmmakers still have to battle, not just to make their films, but just to get to the audiences through distribution. But I am so pleased to see that evolution. It was something that Indian cinema needed for a long time. Indian independent cinema is slowly finding its feet, slowly finding its voice; now it has relatively more visibility and recognition at international film festivals abroad. But how do you think it should evolve — either in terms of filmmaking, distribution, or, in fact, anything else — from here on now? I have been really impressed with what Indian filmmakers have done to advance the film culture in India. Indian filmmakers are now engaging with international cinema. When I first started coming here, it felt to me that Indian cinema was in a bubble. It was thriving inside its own culture, but it had very little connections with films winning prizes in festivals around the world. Now I think that has changed. Indian filmmakers travel around the world now. But distribution and exhibition still remain huge issues for me. Maybe I don’t know understand the industry well enough here; I don’t understand why a film like Peddlers is getting a release two years after it was at a film festival. Is it getting a theatrical release? Or is it only being screened at the festival? My understanding was that it’s finally getting a release. But maybe I am even wrong about that. I know that it’s playing at the festival. But the fact that these films, which are doing so well internationally and have a very high standard, can’t get into theatres here is mystifying for me. This is the largest, most enthusiastic, film audience in the world who likes a wide variety of films, but there’s very little space in the marketplace for films that are not purely commercial, and I don’t understand why even one or two screens at a massive multiplex can’t be devoted to this kind of cinema all across the country. A few years ago, you had said that Indian filmmakers should try to understand their audience — they need to know that their films can cross the local markets, reach out to an audience that’s global. Do you believe some recent Indian films have been able to negotiate that hurdle well? The most obvious example that has been discussed to death is The Lunchbox. And I think that it did that beautifully, and if you do look at The Lunchbox it tells you what exactly the audiences around the world are looking for. I think what we have to remember is that there is a divide here, because as steeped in Indian cinema nearly every Indian person is, most people outside India — ones of south Asian origins — don’t watch many Indian films. They may have not seen any; they might have seen one, or they might have seen Slumdog Millionaire as an Indian film, which is not an Indian film. So, first of all, you are starting from a very low baseline. So all of the conventions and tropes, the things people are familiar with here, are not very well known So I think that’s the first thing Indian filmmakers need to understand; that people [outside the country] might not have a common language or vocabulary. Moreover, Indian commercial cinema had a deep sincerity in storytelling and almost no irony, and in North America, from the 1960s onwards, they made a shift into an ironic mode, so Hollywood art house films are ironic, pessimistic and cynical. That’s something you have slowly begun seeing in Indian cinema, too, but it’s fairly new. At the moment, the JIO MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is quite young; it’s begun attracting the attention of cinephiles only in the last six to seven years, sourcing acclaimed films from all the major film festivals of the world. What would it take for MAMI to become a big player on its own? I have been very impressed with their programming this year because they have managed to bring many top films, which played at other international festivals. I was also impressed with the fact that films that were premiered just a few weeks ago — either at our festival, or Telluride or Venice — are here already. And I know it is not easy to get those films. Because people are very protective when the films are brand new — movies like Charlie Kauffman’s Anamolisa, and Room. So I think that’s a very good sign for the future. The next steps would be to get some of those films first. That is a very big step. In our case, we, TIFF, are 40 years old. We had some early advocates — like Roger Ebert, a very influential film critic, wrote about our festival in glowing terms, called us the most important film festival in the world at a certain point; that helped. We did tributes in our early years, and we had people like Martin Scorsese, Warren Beatty as their subjects, and they would come in, and that attracted other people. You know, festivals are kind of a confidence game in a way, not in a bad way, but in the sense that if you want to get people in films that are high profile and of great promise to your festival, it helps if you have done it before [laughs]. In a way it is a bit of a vicious cycle, but you have to start somewhere and use what successes you have to get to that next level. TIFF’s “City to City” program in 2012 concentrated on the city of Mumbai and Indian filmmakers. What makes you excited about Indian cinema right now? I think the creativity, the passion, the volume, the force of the cinema in India is as strong as any around the world — and maybe stronger in some senses because it is more central to the culture here than anywhere else, and that gives its artists incredible opportunity. I think if they can harness and channel that energy, that dynamism, and, in some cases, that money [laughs], they will be able to achieve a lot. And I think they have begun doing some of that. I think one of the key things that were missing before in terms of international success was that successful Indian filmmakers didn’t need to care about the international audience. They had a massive domestic audience that would be plenty to satisfy their needs commercially — in terms of reputation and everything else. Now there are filmmakers who are channeling the energy that comes from Indian film culture but also seeing what’s happening in South Korea, what’s happening in Argentina, what’s happening in France, or the U.S., or Scandinavia, and taking influences or inspirations from them. And then you have even stronger films, then you have the possibility for a whole generation of filmmakers, not just one or two here and there, but a whole generation of filmmakers to really change international cinema. I think it’s possible. Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited is a venture of Reliance Industries, which owns Network18 (of which Firstpost is a part)