Actually I don't watch a lot of films but when I do, I like experimental, avant garde, European and world cinema. That is the language of cinema I am drawn towards. I don't watch much Hollywood or Bollywood.
Film has become a marketed commodity, and the opportunities and audiences for art cinema have grown smaller. There is a general downturn in cultural literacy, perhaps because of television.
Always, European art cinema has been the most threatening and the grimmest and the most transgressive, I think.
My one hope for Netflix and Amazon is to be a little more art house- and indie-friendly, pushing those just as hard as they push their originals.
In the 80s, parallel cinema gained momentum. So, I got back to films and won National awards for Maqbool' and other films.
It is my first preference to do films with social significance. Art cinema has given me credibility and status as an actor, but commercial cinema has given me a comfortable living.
Experimental film by the '70s had become much more mainstream after 'Bonnie and Clyde' and stuff in the late '60s, when you were seeing bigger movies where people were exploring the medium a lot more.
Cinema d'auteur, cinema about people, about emotions. About la difficulté d'être, the difficulty of being, existential problems. That's what the nouvelle vague is. The early '60s was all about that.
I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film.
I watch mostly independent films.
I like independent movies, documentaries. There's not a lot of movies that are commercially made that I dig.
When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.
I was a complete anomaly in this business. I didn't fit into the Hema Malini-Zeenat Aman commercial cinema mould, neither the Shabana Azmi-Smita Patil art cinema mould.
Premium, non-network television is occupying a space that art cinema used to enjoy. 'Homeland,' 'Breaking Bad' - 15 to 20 years ago, they would have been independent cinema stories.
If the purpose of the stumpy little NFT theatre under Waterloo Bridge is not to acquaint young audiences with Ozu, with Ophuels, with D. W. Griffith and with Agnes Varda, then what exactly does it exist for?
I've always liked the idea of merging esoteric art cinema with down-and-dirty exploitation films.
You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.
It's just odd that something as essential in life as sex has been flattened out in mainstream cinema - and in art cinema. Even in art movies, sex always seems to be treated negatively. Why does it always end in disaster?
