Words that get shot

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: “writing is the same as filmmaking”, agreeing that while there is a difference in the crafts, the writer and the auteur both passionately engage in story telling, “even the non-linear ones.”

Former director of FTII, Suresh Chhabria points out that words are but one element of cinema, that film is a younger medium, while the heights and achievements of cinema are in front of us. Literary theorist and filmmaker David Phillips is emphatic that film is literature and explains that the act of moving from one media to another is an act of translation. “When watching a film, you read a film too — it’s the same fundamental art, in a text there are voices, in a film also the heteroglossia remains.” For Jaishree Mishra, whose recent novel Rani is being filmed, “literature often leads to cinema, and it should end there.”

But both sides also appreciate the difference between the two mediums. “A film is a different medium, and different rules and techniques apply,” says US-based Divakaruni, in India to attend Osian’s Cinefan, which marked its tenth anniversary by choosing literature and cinema as a theme to mark the occasion.

She gives the example of Deepa Mehta, who had to drastically cut Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man to make it as Earth. Sidhwa actually did the opposite when she wrote a novel based on Mehta’s film Water, adding details to develop characters. Director Arun Khopkar points out that it has to be a symbiotic relationship where each medium produces something the other does not have.

Translating has been far from easy however. As Renuka Chatterjee, head of Osian’s literary agency puts it, “when it’s an unhappy marriage, why does it happen that both wished they had never shared a roof.” For Sen, who is putting finishing touches to The Japanese Wife, “it is much easier to make a film from a short story. In a novel lots of things are put far more in detail, and a faithful rendition is not always possible. She is also considering a film on Tagore’s short story, Goenar Baksho, where she wants to cast Govinda and Sharmila Tagore.