In the real hides the unreal: Buddhadb Dasgupta

By Sujoy Dhar Aug 8, 2007, 11:59 GMT

Kolkata, Aug 8 (IANS) Lights, camera and awards. For Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, winning a National Award has become a way of life. So when his 'Kalpurush' was adjudged best film for 2005, it hardly came as a surprise to him or to discerning cine-goers here.

Perhaps no filmmaker since the late maestro Satyajit Ray has won as many National Awards as Dasgupta, at times three years on a trot. But the filmmaker is unfazed and loves to live in his world of magic realism and unreal journeys into the world of lost innocence.

'Awards are there. I am happy, now join me for an adda (the typical Bengali chat),' says Dasgupta talking about his upcoming film 'Ami, Yasin Arr Amar Madhubala' (The Voyeurs), a film on love and relationships in the time of web-cams and CCTVs.

'Everything has got mechanised. We have become obsessed with security, but ordinary human values such as love and kindness have lost their simple meaning.

'Do the web-cams and CCTVs that are constant witnesses to our lives make us any less vulnerable than we are to terrorists? Are police and security forces really our protectors?'

The filmmaker wonders and tries to capture this theme in his seemingly light-hearted latest film. 'It has a storyline which is universal now as the characters get sucked into a vortex of events that may occur in India or Europe, or anywhere,' he says.

'Kalpurush', which bagged the National Award, has been screened in many international film fests. Bollywood actress Sameera Reddy plays an ambitious wife in the film and Rahul Bose plays the protagonist.

''Kalpurush, based on my story 'America Ami', is a film where Rahul plays our 21st century hero who survives, conquers and fights back. The film questions the definition of success. In the film, Rahul and actor Mithun Chakraborty are son and father and are not successful in the sense that we categorise success,' says Dasgupta.

'It is the story of a father and son who come to a junction where death seems sweeter than life. The father is seeking escape while the son selects life despite the darkness and deformities.'

Was the choice to cast Sameera - after Bipasha Basu reportedly refused the role - a market-driven decision?

'There is no harm in making your film saleable and so far as the director is grounded to his roots, a cast makes no difference. But I cast Sameera because her face has a certain ruthlessness that can do justice to the role of an ambitious wife who shares a cold relationship with her husband whose lack of success is a shame to her,' he says.

''Kalpurush' talks about ever changing human relationships, touched with a series of surreal sequences and underlined with humour,' says the filmmaker.

Dasgupta, after his much acclaimed 'Mondo Meyer Upakhyan', made several films, but none have found their way to a theatre in India so far.

Both 'Swapner Din' and 'Kalpurursh', produced by Bollywood biggies Jhamu Sugandh, have not been commercially released - for which the filmmaker blames the producer.

'Swapner Din' was screened under the Masters of World Cinema section at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004 and travelled to at least 30 other international film festivals.

Dasgupta says despite having a producer like Jhamu Sugandh, he has not made any departure from his original ethos of filmmaking.

'Reality as we think is actually boring and predictable. In the real hides the unreal with a drop of dream and magic, making life interesting,' he says of his films.

'Swapner Din' captures the latent dreams of three characters who come together and then things happen in their lives.' Bengali superstar Prosenjit stars in the film.

'Paresh (Prosenjit Chatterjee), the central character of my film, travels from one village to another screening an educational film. He falls in love with the image of a girl in one film and dreams of finding her one day,' says Dasgupta whose celluloid journey began in 1979 with 'Durotto' (The Distance).

In fact journeys fascinate filmmaker Buddhadeb. So his films like 'Mondo Meyer Upakhyan', 'Uttara' and 'Lal Darja' deal with the magical journeys in the lost world of innocence and fantasy, inspired by filmmakers like Luis Bunuel.

A lecturer in economics, he had no formal training in filmmaking when he began dabbling in cinema.

Dasgupta bagged the special award for best director in the 2000 Venice Film Festival for his film 'Uttara', 43 years after Satyajit Ray's second of the famous Apu trilogy 'Aparajito' won The Golden Lion at Venice.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service