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The Photographer shatters the concept of realism: Mazhar Kamran

Says filmmaker Mazhar Kamran about his short movie, The Photographer, which will screen at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival

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A still from The Photographer, (Right) Mazhar Kamran
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Mazhar Kamran’s repertoire includes Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya, Kaun and Mast, Sujoy Ghosh’s Jhankar Beats as a cinematographer, Mohandas as a director, and Ainie Apa (on Urdu author Qurratulain Haider) among others as a documentary filmmaker. These days, he is also the faculty of world cinema at IIT Bombay. His short film, The Photographer (under the banner of IIT) is set to have a world premiere at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival. Here, he talks about the short, his next feature film and other things.

All about the movie

Mazhar points out the irony of working on realistic cinema and making an ‘unrealistic’ short like The Photographer — the story of a fashion photographer, a model and the former’s memories. “In fact, it shatters the concept of realism,” he laughs, “It’s a metaphor for how dreamers and poets find the prosaic world trivial. The two kinds of people live in different worlds and don’t understand each other.” The project is based on eight poems by Rumi, which have been woven into the contemporary narrative.

Being indie

“My lifelong quest has been to make films my way. I consider everything else as incidental,” he explains when pointed out that usually indie makers move on to mainstream cinema while he has done the opposite. “I didn’t even want to shoot Satya. I was making documentary films and was pulled into Bollywood when RGV was looking for a cinematographer who did not belong to the industry to capture his film realistically,” he tells us. It was after Kaun that he decided to direct and made the critically-acclaimed Mohandas starring Nakul Vaid and Sonali Kulkarni, which is based on identity theft. He remembers, “A big banner signed me for a movie and I was expected to get a star, which I could not manage.” This led to the filmmaker wasting a couple of years and eventually going back to making indie short films and documentaries.

A feature film in the pipeline

Mazhar is working on his next feature — a story about a petty female thief and the police. “Mohandas was called a Kafkaesque thriller and I want to make this in the same space. If someone genuine and serious shows interest in backing this project, I’m open to it but I won’t actively look for a producer. I want to make a viable independent film,” he emphasises.

Making realistic cinema

Mazhar believes that a huge infrastructure is not required to tell a good story. “My temperament is to simplify filmmaking. I want to explore new cinema — novel ways of telling a story. Most people are mistaken that realism just happens. But it has as much style as a glamorous film. It’s an achievement to make a movie look effortless, as if the camera is not there,” he concludes.

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