We need parallel cinema now more than ever: Muzaffar Ali

Renowned filmmaker, fashion designer and artist Muzaffar Ali, known for making movies such as Umrao Jaan and Gaman, talks about the role that the cinema and fashion industries play in connecting rural India with the urban audience. Edited excerpt from the interview:

Pallavi Srivastava: You have been a part of the Hindi film industry for several decades, and depiction of rural themes has been a constant in most of your creations, whether it was Gaman or Anjuman movies. To a large extent, even Umrao Jaan was rooted in the hinterland. Is that a subject close to your heart? 

Muzaffar Ali: I think being rooted is the keyword, and unless you’re rooted, you don’t understand the ethos of a particular area in a particular culture. Fortunately, I was born at a place called Kotwara, which is a hundred miles from Lucknow. My father was deeply concerned with that village and he always wanted to make a difference there, and that concern formed some kind of a seed in me. 

My first film was Gaman, based on why people leave villages and come to cities. It was a political question as also a poetic question. If I had not made Gaman, maybe I would’ve been a different person. 

The same thing was with my other film called Aagaman. It was on sugarcane cultivation. I realised that sugarcane was the most exploitative agricultural produce in the world. I used a lot of poetry to underline the farmer’s predicament and how he was being exploited by the business systems.

We need to understand how colonial and business systems make inroads into rural areas and how they change the cultural continuity of that region. 

PS: Your movies have been a realistic portrayal of rural life. But critics often say that Indian cinema either whitewashes it to just show the lush fields and women wearing glittering ghaghras (long skirt), or it’s what they call poverty porn. Is the film industry doing enough to show what rural life actually is to the audience? 

MA: The film industry is evolving, but possibly not in the way we would like to see it grow. The growth has to be organic. It has to understand and feel the pain around us. Unless you feel the helplessness of the people, you can’t present that pain. Therefore, being open and sensitive to the rural predicament is important. That is what changes the language of telling stories. 

PS: We saw a very strong parallel cinema movement, which showed the issues that the rural communities and the marginalised people face, with movies like Mandi, Manthan and Ankur. Did it serve its purpose? Do we still need that kind of cinema? 

MA: I think (we need it) now more than ever, because we need to put certain things into a context. People who think with their heart and who reason with their mind, they should be as real as possible. 

Today, film is everybody’s cup of tea. So your sensitivity to images, imagery and pain has to be there. It doesn’t need much money or anything like that. It needs outfits where people are made to think and feel, and where people are driven to express. 

PS: With devices like smartphones, it’s now within everyone’s reach to show their lives to everybody else, even internationally. We have people from the villages showing their dancing or cookery skills. Amid that kind of an open medium of expression being accessible to everybody, where does Indian cinema see itself going? 

MA: India has to understand what is art. Somehow we miss the art part of things. We just do things for the sake of doing things, to become popular. But I think art is really the essence of connecting, reaching out and creating an ecosystem, a culture where we can feel each other. 

Somewhere you must understand what is the essence of humanism and how humanism and art can create a balance in your everyday life. That needs inspiration. And without inspiration, there is no art. 

PS: Gaman dealt with the issue of migration of a rural young man to a big city. The protagonist is constantly in an inner state of turmoil and longing to return to his village but for employment reasons, he cannot. If you were to make the movie again today, would it be any different? 

MA: When Covid happened and people were returning to their villages, that showed another dimension to the issue of migration. If I were to make Gaman again, it’ll definitely be much more funny. There’s a lot of pain in laughter. So I would like to treat it that way, and the reasons for leaving and for going back would be quite stupid and funny. 

Nothing has remained as it was. People are questioning things in a different way. When I was making Gaman, Smita (Patil) used to say, ‘If you feel so much for the rural people, why don’t you do something for them?’ At that time, I didn’t know what I could do. But today, we can live there, make our contributions and show the story in a new, different way. 

PS: You have done a lot for the chikankari workers in Uttar Pradesh through your Kotwara initiative. That’s a craft that has come to the mainstream over the years, besides others like ikat or the Banarasi zari work. But there still are so many handicrafts in need of revival. Is the fashion industry doing its bit to bring those artisans to the forefront? 

MA: They are definitely doing their bit, and we have to all do our bit. I’ve made 18 films on different forms of textiles and crafts, and each craft is a legend. It has a deep connect with our culture, rivers, people and their aspirations. 

I’ve made a film on bidri, the most mind-blowing metal craft created at Bidar. There are lots of places where craft was there and it’s now dwindling. We need to globalise craft and add a sharp sense of contemporariness to it. But without losing the aesthetics. Craft is a wonderful ocean of experience. Film is on one side, but craft for me is a different world altogether. 

Also Read: Do ‘reel villages’ in cinema show real rural India?

The conversation was a part of the India Rural Colloquy event held by Village Square in August. Watch the full interview of the author with Muzaffar Ali below.

Pallavi Srivastava is Associate Director, Content, at Village Square.