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Posts tagged Costa-Gavras
One should never underestimate the audience-Dibakar Banerjee
011 months ago
by Fenil Seta
in Interviews
Dibakar Banerjee talks about his fascination with the 1969 film Z, the need to make a political movie like Shanghai and the unnerving response it has received
Raja Sen (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 11, 2012)
Vassilis Vassilikos’ Z is a book about a very specific Greek political assassination. What made you want to mine a true and fascinating story for plot and narrative, adding your own politics? I told my writer Urmi (Juvekar) that I wanted to make a political film, like All The President’s Men, or Z. She suggested I read Z. In the book I felt there was a lot more anguish. From Z, I took the idea of the investigation, but politically Z has a very different theme: Z is about the Left and the Right. In India we have the Rich and the Poor and the gap in between.
The Costa Gavras film made for an aware audience was stark and minimal. To try and reach a more politically apathetical Indian audience did have to make it more ‘entertaining’? We are fundamentally Indian and somewhere there is a pulse shared by you, me and a taxi driver. So I made the film the way I felt the events would unfold here.
Were you tempted to dumb the plot down, make it more accessible? We haven’t really done that. The big impact of the film – if there is an impact –lies in the fact that you watch the film and you feel the narrative. The dots aren’t joined for you.
Isn’t that a huge commercial risk, with our blockbusters becoming increasingly daft these days ? Absolutely. But if you constantly underestimate More >
Dibakar’s next Shanghai based on Greek novel
02 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
The filmmaker’s next, Shanghai will be a clever adaptation of Greek novelist Vassilis Vassilikos’s novel Z, a political crime story
Subhash K Jha (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 22, 2011)
Dibakar Banerjee has based his next political thriller, Shanghai, on the novel Z, authored by Vassilis Vassilikos.
The novel, which was translated in 32 languages, is based on a political assassination in Greece.
Although Shanghai is a completely reworked version of Z and the producers have officially purchased the remake rights of the novel by Vassilokos, Banerjee has made sure to keep the Greek author in the loop along the way of production.
Dibakar BanerjeeBanerjee tells us, “Yes, Vassilikos and I are in touch. Although, he is 80 years old and not really net savvy, we have a correspondence going on.
We have paid him for the filming rights and we have completely reworked the original novel but he will be shown the final draft of the script for a moral approval. He will get a very prominent billing in the credits of Shanghai. It is the right thing to do.”
When Dibakar first approached Vassilikos for the movie rights, the author wondered why a 44-year-old Greek novel was being turned into an Indian film and that too after so many years.
Banerjee clarifies, “He never thought Z could have any relevance in today’s times. We had to explain to him how much political relevance Z still had in India.
Vassilis Vassilikos (R) Book cover of ZActually, the novel had More >