Directors' Diaries: Creative influences of some film directors #Direct...

Directors' Diaries: Creative influences of some film directors #Direct...: The First Cut (Creative influences of some directors) #DirectorsDiaries article in Shubh Yatra, Air India's in-flight magazine....

Creative influences of some film directors #DirectorsDiaries in #AirIndia

The First Cut (Creative influences of some directors)

#DirectorsDiaries article in Shubh Yatra, Air India's in-flight magazine. Oct 2015.

Shubh Yatra means Happy journey. Creativity, creative influences, and even inspiration, and experience, are journeys too. Just like there is no escape from shadows, as they continue to exist during day and night, there is no escape from the influences we will gain during any yatra we choose to undertake towards our goal or dream.

Even if you not an artist or poet, you will experience influences during any yatra, whether it be your day’s goal, or ultimately your life-destination, and you can apply the learnings from these yatras in your own field of work, even if you not creatively inclined nor an artist. Even a business person, or a pilot, is creative.

When I myself went on this yatra with more than 28 iconic film directors from primarily Hindi cinema, over the last four years, writing this book to compile their stories of what really influenced them to become filmmakers eventually, the book is tilted Directors’ Diaries – The Road To Their First Film, it was a shubh yatra for me, being her author. I gained the deepest insight into the lives of these fine directors, their culture, their goals and aspirations since childhood, formative years and youth and realized how they got creatively influenced during various stages or periods of their lives.

To quote three directors from the twelve we published in Volume 1:

Anurag Basu, the director of two movies that impacted me creatively, by way of writing, direction and performances, Barfi, and, Life In A Metro, shared with me, with minute pearls of eye-dew resting on his lower eyelashes, that his father, a supervisor at Bhilai Steel plant, post work hours indulged passionately in theatre. The family had their own theatre group and his parents acted, wrote, directed, produced their own plays and even toured the state performing them.

Another area of creative influence for Anurag was dance. In his early years in filmmaking he was even a background dancer. To quote him - I must have been in the seventh standard when I was introduced to the panthi group of folk dancers from Chhattisgarh. Panthi is an aggressive folk-dance form. They came to our school to teach us the dance. I participated and loved it. Soon, I got involved with their sub-group of rural dancers, who were farmers by profession. I must thank Devdas Banjaari-ji, the Padma Shri awardee dancer; he encouraged me to join their group. So did my father. I was the only educated and urban child in this group of rural people. We travelled through the state, performing dances. We never got paid, but we got meals. (Laughs) We would mostly sleep under the sky, the fields were our toilet, and we would bathe at the well or by the hand-operated water pumps in the fields. travelling around the state with these dancers was my first experience of complete independence. I have these rural experiences to thank for maturing faster than my urban friends.”

Zoya Akhtar, whose films for me arrived as a breath of fresh air, breathing in a zone between a foreign language film and mainstream Bollywood, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara for me was straight out of a fine fiction novel. When I met her for our book, Directors’ Diaries, I was not surprised that her primary creative influences were films like Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay and many foreign language films she happened to view because her mother, a writer, travelled to Pune’s FTII and took Zoya along and that is where Zoya got introduced to many foreign films. Books, were another big creative influence, and she co-writes her own films.

Her father and her mother, even her aunt who is mother of Choreographer-Director Farah Khan, would perpetually be gifting her books and they would even discuss them after she had read them.

Imtiaz Ali, whose film, and my most favorite, Jab We Met, which had a most memorable character Jeet, played by Kareena Kapoor, was born from the cauldron of mixed cultures that influenced him from his formative years in Jamshedpur. In his words – “Jamshedpur has a mix of Biharis, Bengalis, Oriyas, south Indians from Andhra and Tamil Nadu, Maharashtrians, Parsis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, etc. The mixed culture of Jamshedpur is a huge reason why I am the way I am. (Smiles) I have played and eaten in Sikh homes and served devotees at Gurdwaras. Therefore, when I wrote Jab We Met (2007), my second film, I knew what a Khalsa-Sikh household would look like, how the character of Geet Dhillon would talk, even though I had never been to Punjab. Jamshedpur gave me my own point of view of various cultures. I am glad you asked me this question because where I grew up has really helped me as a director. Growing up in a milieu as diverse as I did really helps you; you can relate to anyone. Nobody is alien to you anymore. And this really helps you as a director because as a film-maker you are dealing with a variety of people, you are in the business of telling stories through people. “

I realized, by the end of four years and hundreds of hours of audio interviews with nearly 28 iconic directors writing this book, that creative influences arrive from all kinds of influences which arrive from having diverse experiences. If I attempt to elaborate on this, our need or desire creates purpose in our life, which creates intent to act on it, which creates will to perform, which creates our action or deeds, which creates mistakes or success, which creates experiences, along with them comes influences, which hones or talents and skills, and which eventually creates we are at any given moment and eventually and thus our destiny. It all encompasses the influences we suffer or gain, whether they be non-creative or creative, they create us.

Any experience good or bad will someday serve to stimulate thought and enrich creativity and thus skills, making life for us multi-dimensional and thus fuller. Because art is created by mixing nature with human nature. The history of man is a history of his friendships, with humans and nature. Because Both impact his creative influence.

#RakeshAnandBakshi for #AirIndia #ShubhYatra in-flight magazine Oct 2015.

Directors' Diaries: #MadhurBhandarkar - I was always a film buff since...

Directors' Diaries: #MadhurBhandarkar - I was always a film buff since...: I always wanted to be a filmmaker, right from my childhood years. Even though I would read Amar Chitra Katha, Archie's, Phantom,...

#MadhurBhandarkar - I was always a film buff since childhood... #DirectorsDiaries #RakeshAnandBakshi

I always wanted to be a filmmaker, right from my childhood years. Even though I would read Amar Chitra Katha, Archie's, Phantom, Chanda Mama comics, many other novels, authors, I was always more fascinated by cinema. I had always wondered how movies are made!

In addition to mimicking film actors, I would go to the Raddiwala (old newspaper buyers) to buy second hand film magazines, and even read the gossip, (laughs) and the linkups between actors; (laughs). I became very entertaining amongst my friends sharing the film gossip I had read. (laughs)

The neighbourhood I lived in, they would show films on the street, on 16 mm projectors; I must have seen a thousand films on the street at night! These films would be shown particularly during big festivals, like Diwali, or post Satyanarayan Pooja, or then on Independence or Republic Days, and of course, during the Ganesh and Govinda festivals too.

#MadhurBhandarkar #RakeshAnandBakshi #DirectorsDiaries 

Directors' Diaries: #DirectorsDiaries tribute for family of legendary ...

Directors' Diaries: #DirectorsDiaries tribute for family of legendary ...: A tribute.  "Very early in my career, Sahir Saab advised me - Bakshi, choose simple words when you write film lyrics. Your ...

#DirectorsDiaries tribute for family of legendary #Shailendra by #RakeshAnandBakshi

A tribute. 

"Very early in my career, Sahir Saab advised me - Bakshi, choose simple words when you write film lyrics. Your songs have to be heard all over the nation by all sorts of diverse people.

I admire most Sahir saab, for blending shayari into a film-song situation. I learnt how to weave simple words along with shayari, poetry, in a film song from him. 

Madhok saab ka rang hi kuch aur tha! For me, Madhok was the genius of simple-lyrics writing. His simplicity in lyrics-writing inspired my own lyrics-writing style. I must thank him for that, the simplicity, which people are liking in my own lyrics. 

And Shailendra Saab, his simple folk-songs are simply very marvelous. They tug at your heart at the very first hearing! Kya baat hai unki! Folk songs are simple, and not always poetic, but they have a lot of depth - I learnt that from Shailendra’s lyrics-writing style. 

So, these three poets and lyricists truly are my Gurus. I must thank them, and poets like Ramprakash Ashq and Bismil Saeed, for where I find myself today." 

- Lyricists #AnandBakshi. (In an interview to a film magazine. Late 1970s)

(I am happy that  writer-director Priyannkka Shaily Shailendra, an aspiring feature- film director, and grand daughter of the legendary Shailendra, (her father Shaily was a lyricists too) has our book. :) 

Happy reading Priyannkka. We hope our little book inspires you in very many ways. Regards. - #RakeshAnandBakshi #DirectorsDiaries )

Directors' Diaries: Farah Khan my fav director #DirectorsDiaries

Directors' Diaries: Farah Khan my fav director #DirectorsDiaries: #FarahKhan My favorite director. :) MY TAKE I tried very hard to meet Farah but could not. I never gave up. She replied to me after many...