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Posts tagged The Warrior
I can’t direct a Bollywood film-Asif Kapadia
02 months ago
by Fenil Seta
in Interviews
Asif Kapadia confesses that he’s better off helming documentaries than anything else
Shakti Shetty (MID-DAY; March 17, 2013)
The fluency of his thoughts is admirable while his cockney accent betrays his Indian origin. Asif Kapadia, whose The Warrior won the BAFTA for Best British Film back in 2003 and Senna won the BAFTA for Best Documentary in 2011, loves to highlight the significance of documentaries vis-à-vis movies. The diehard Liverpool fan was recently in Mumbai as a mentor for this year’s National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC)’s Film Bazaar Screenwriters’ Lab. In a freewheeling chat, the London- based filmmaker shares his thoughts on cinema and its various forms.
You are mentoring eight upcoming filmmakers at Screenwriters Lab. Excited? Indeed. It’s nice to see people coming up with brilliant stories and sharing it with others as well. Independent cinema is only growing stronger and it’s good news for everyone. I hope the next stage of progress takes us to independent documentary makers since I’m more attuned to documentaries as of now.
What role did Senna play in your shift from films to docus? The very success of Senna was unprecedented. We weren’t expecting it to be big and now people approach me with ideas and the resources required to make them happen. Yes, it’s very encouraging.
As a director, how different is helming a documentary from a feature film? For a director, both are same. You’re just directing a film be it a docu or a drama. However, More >
Asif Kapadia talks about his documentary on Aryton Senna
11 year ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
Art house filmmaker Asif Kapadia talks about how he has accelerated his way into mainstream success with his BAFTA-winning documentary on Ayrton Senna
Kevin Lobo (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 11, 2012)
A self-confessed football fanatic, Asif Kapadia might be a sports enthusiast, but had little to do with Formula One. For the past couple of years though, he has been obsessed with the sport and its legend Ayrton Senna. Pouring over 15,000 hours of footage, “a lot on fast-forward,” he confesses, Kapadia has crafted Senna, the BAFTA and Sundance award-winning documentary on the Brazilian racing legend. And now, he is here to present it in India, at Enlighten’s film festival next Sunday. Asif says, “He was so famous that everything he did was documented. Every race has different camera angles, and we had to go through all of it to find the perfect emotion and shot. Remember this was before Twitter, PR and Youtube, so a lot of it would have been lost if no one had made this movie.”
This he was able to do thanks to the movie’s writer Manish Pandey, who dedicated seven years to researching Senna. The Indian-origin director, has a deeper Indian connect. His first feature length film, The Warrior, featured Irfan Khan and received rave reviews in arthouse circles.
The Royal College of Art grad’s praise has been restricted to film festivals till now but Senna changed the game for Asif. Gone are the stark landscapes and precision shots that have given Asif a name. Senna is as adrenaline More >