I Am… Onir

In conversation with the director of “My Brother Nikhil,” who was in Chennai recently to present two segments from his latest work, the portmanteau feature “I Am.”

DEC 18, 2010 – Do you worry that the films you make have slotted you as a certain kind of filmmaker – say, “the guy who makes gay films” – and that you may have difficulties making something more traditional and mainstream in the future?

I think I got slotted by the time I made my first film. I realised later that there was this danger when I found out that a lot of stars, male stars, would be scared to even go through my scripts. They would keep postponing meetings because they were afraid I’d be coming up with another gay-themed script. And this was not always true. Even with I Am, actually, the gay angle is in just one of the segments and there are other stories, other things. What interest me are stories that are different, stories that move me somehow. At the same time I realised, when I was doing I Am, that maybe it’s better to have some identity than no identity. At least I’m not a Yash Raj director. However tiny it is, I have my own identity and I treasure that, and I feel that, at the end of the day, these films will be remembered because they were the first of their kind, and they have made a difference. For me, the emails I still get from people for My Brother Nikhil make up for whatever negativity this tag brings along.

What are the typical struggles a filmmaker faces when he zeroes in on such themes? You just talked about the reluctance of male actors, for one.

There are two things that are primarily difficult. One is the finance. When I was making My Brother Nikhil, I was very often told, “Make Nikhil heterosexual and we’ll finance the film,” or, “Make Bipasha Basu give Nikhil AIDS and we’ll finance the film.” So ultimately it was financed by friends and family. The biggest problem is finance because we are an extremely homophobic industry, despite the fact that there are a lot of people with different-shaded sexualities in the industry, like anywhere else in any other industry. The second thing is also related to finance, because finance happens when you have very big stars, and to get big stars to do these kinds of roles is unimaginable.

I will not take names, but when I was doing I Am, I thought, “Let me try for a big star for the segment I Am Abhimanyu.” This is not a gay storyline. It’s something about child sexual abuse, which really needs to reach out. And I was willing to make small changes in the script if someone would be uncomfortable. I sent it to a young star, thinking that he’s young, he’s progressive. It’s a twenty-page script, which takes twenty minutes to read. It stayed with him for three months, because he did not have time to read. It was not a “no.” Because a “no” would be politically incorrect. And that’s when I realised that when I’m doing things like this, I should just forget going to the wrong people. I should just go to people who are willing to take that risk because they’ve nothing to lose as actors and just want to expand as actors. So I only went to people who I knew were not insecure about themselves. Of course this meant that I wouldn’t get finance from the traditional sources.

And then you have the distribution headaches.

Yes. When the film is complete comes the question of how to distribute it, because you need as much money and you need the network. It’s a niche, multiplex-centric film, and something like 63 per cent of what you collect – for Hindi films – comes from just Mumbai and Delhi, and you have to spend a lot of money to create an awareness there. At the same time, if you talk too much about these elements, your film does not get picked up by a corporate or a distribution house, so you have to go for independent distribution. The audience is also scared, about how they’re going to be branded. I’ll give you an example.

The DVD sales of My Brother Nikhil were a lot better than theatrical revenues, because most of the viewers who actually went to the theatres were women. I realised that with a group of young men – say, college students – it would always be a question of “Who is going to be the one to suggest this so-called gay film?” Is he going to be perceived as gay. This is what I learnt while trying to analyse what happened with My Brother Nikhil. You have to face these kinds of barriers all through, and at the same time try and figure out newer modes of how you can continue making these films and reaching the audience. Because ultimately you have to recover the money. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

When you’re making a film on a gay person or about AIDS, how important is it for you to reflect reality? Do you do a lot of research and work that into your script? Or do you feel that filmmaking is essentially storytelling, and therefore it need not be accurate in every sense?

The stories that I have done related to sexuality issues – My Brother Nikhil, and now I Am – are based on real-life stories. I have also done a lot of research with The Humsafar Trust, UNDP, Naz Foundation, and I met a lot of people. Because for me, while the most important fact is the storytelling – in the film, I try not getting into statistics or saying things like “this is right, this is wrong” – I also want to have certain things right. Whether I use it in the film or not, I need to educate myself.

While doing My Brother Nikhil, it was important for me to know as much as possible about HIV/AIDS. There were things I did not know till I did the film – not only in terms of statistics, but in terms of disease, in terms of what was happening to people who were being victimised. While presenting people with a different sexual preference, it is important for me to not make them caricatures. I try to normalise them as much as possible. Very often, there is this whole thing of making them into this “other.” In a film like Dostana, the only true gay characters are over-the-top caricatures like Boman Irani and the guy from immigration. And I think that’s dangerous. When you’re laughing, it’s different when you laugh with someone and when you laugh at someone. As a filmmaker, I think it’s extremely important to be careful and do it correctly.

Now that I Am is on the verge of release, have you decided what your next film is going to be?

I’ve been working on a couple of scripts, and I don’t know which one will happen. Right now, I’m working with Binger script lab, Amsterdam, in association with NFDC. I’m developing a script called Shab, which means night. It’s a film set in Delhi, and it again deals a lot with issues around sexuality, identity and power politics. We are working towards it, but for a filmmaker everything depends on his previous film. But I feel that somehow I have gotten used to not stopping, just pushing myself and figuring out a way of making what I want to. I hope that will happen with Shab as well.

“I Am” was presented by Tulir – Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse and The Shakti Foundation.

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Posted in: Cinema: Hindi