Some of Anupama Chopra’s earliest memories of cinema include watching Sholay and being terrified of the soundtrack that accompanied Gabbar’s entry into a frame, and watching the first Star Wars movie in the theater and feeling the goosebumps on her arms because “I understood so instinctively that we were watching something incredible. We were watching something that we had never seen before,” she recalls. Years later, her work as a film reporter acquainted her with the power of cinema as she interacted with massive stars like Amitabh Bachchan and observed, as she puts it, “the mass seduction that Hindi cinema could conjure up.” Needless to say that her relationship with cinema has been a passionate and enduring one, which finds itself encapsulated in her new book, A Place In My Heart. Composed of various pieces that span across the length and breadth of the cinematic world, and Anupama’s place in it, the book is a must-read for everyone who has found themselves revelling in the brilliance that is the medium of film. The National Award-winning author, journalist and film critic tells us more about her book below:
What inspired A Place In My Heart?
I really wanted to write a book. It had been many, many years since I’d written one. And you know, I’ve spent the last six or seven years being a digital journalist and man, that is bad for your attention span because it’s all about creating videos and social media. So you lose the muscle that is required for the long distance run. You lose that ability to just sit and work on something for six months and wait for another year before it comes out. So I needed to cultivate patience in myself. I needed to hone my abilities as a writer. And that is really actually what inspired A Place In My Heart. Also, talking about films and people and places that I love in cinema is just such a no brainer. In fact, I really want to do A Place In My Heart part two now because there’s so much more I want to express.
How did you curate the written pieces for this collection?
You know, the way I curated the pieces was that I didn’t want to repeat myself, which is why Shah Rukh Khan isn’t part of the book because I’ve already written a book about him. However, I wrote a book on Sholay about twenty years ago, and I feel like too many people now, young people, haven’t seen Sholay and don’t really understand the impact and the magic of that film, which is why I included it. But more than anything, I wanted to talk about films that people can watch. The idea really is to maybe get people to rewatch films or to draw them to films that they perhaps haven’t seen, to experiment with new titles. And the idea is to really talk about stuff that’s available easily to be watched, as well as to talk about things that I haven’t talked about. That was really the curation process.
What do you hope the readers take away from this book?
My hope for the readers is to indulge in the joy of movies, of talking about movies and letting films sort of consume you. You know how they have consumed me for, what, 25 years now? And I hope if readers kind of come away from it having found some of the happiness and the absolute sheer pleasure of the art form the way I have, I’ll be very grateful. And if they can discover a couple of films which maybe they hadn’t considered before and watch those, I would be very happy.
With the upcoming Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, could you tell us more about the impact of film festivals in our current milieu?
To me, film festivals have always been magical places because when you’re in a film festival, you really believe that for those few days, just for a few days, film is all that matters. There’s nothing more. Well, you don’t talk about anything else. You don’t think about anything else. You’re watching three or four movies a day. You’re standing in line, you’re discussing movies with the stranger behind you or in front of you. Your whole life is completely immersed in cinema. And so, film festivals have a very, very massive place in my heart, and especially the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, because that’s the only one I’ve ever worked on. And it was genuinely the first time I helped building something from scratch. I think the impact of film festivals is massive. I think it’s immeasurable because the way we see movies at festivals is a very, very intense experience. It’s so undiluted. The way you experience a festival is so unique and so specific, and I think it really shapes sensibilities, it really shapes generations of filmmakers. So I don’t think the impact of film festivals can really be measured.
Could you also share some of your personal observations regarding the evolution of independent cinema in India?
One of the great things that has happened in the last couple of years is that those very clear demarcations between independent cinema and mainstream cinema and masala and Hindi, are not the same as back in the day. These lines are just blurred, like in the case of a movie like The Lunchbox. I think they’re kind of almost redundant now. Obviously there are two ends of the spectrum, but those lines that existed in the 70s and the 80s between art cinema and parallel cinema and mainstream cinema, I just don’t think they exist anymore as you have actors that go back and forth and do all kinds of movies.
Lastly, what are your goals for this year?
In the new year my hope is to take Film Companion to the next level. I think we’re ready. We’re at a tipping point. We’ve really built the brand over the last seven years and I now want more. I’m hungrier. I want bigger and better.
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Text Nidhi Verma
Date 29-01-2022