I'm so drawn to photography because you can convey a complex story in a single frame.
I started out with V Shantaram. But my favourite director has been Gulzar, with whom I did intelligent cinema in movies like 'Khushboo,' 'Kinara' and 'Parichay.'
I always wanted to do an animated movie. I find it to be incredibly liberating as a way of telling a story.
People confuse 'pretty' with good cinematography.
Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.
The 'Station to Station' film is a fast-moving journey through the modern creative landscape. It's a kaleidoscope of voices and impressions rather than a standard linear film.
The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.
In writing 'A Portrait of Athens' I have attempted - rather impressionistically - to give a panorama of its present. But I have also brought in its past because I sincerely think that there is a continuity.
I've made some films that were very much image based: 'Anna Karenina' and 'Pan,' for instance.
I can bring in all these different components, and I marry these components, and I let them get traversed by the viewer, who reorganizes them.
As a documentarian, you think, 'Follow your curiosity.'
Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.
I never control a film. The film controls me.
Somebody has to make good artistic films. Somebody has to break open the doors so that others also will follow and make good and meaningful films.
Mohan Raja is an interesting filmmaker. He is constantly, if I may use the word, contradicting himself. He explains a scene, and then he will try to break that and rebuild it. That, to me, is filmmaking. Every scene is constructed after a lot of discussions.
Dichotomies are an inherent part of comics, aren't they? Comics are both pictures and words. They blend time and space. Many feature characters with dual identities like Bruce Wayne/Batman. Cartoonists also tend to live dichotomous lives because many of us have day jobs.
I was never attracted to being a very proficient singer or player. I suppose I was interested in creating a vision; in the same way I was very drawn to tension within cinema.
What's great is that each medium has a unique set of things that it does and does well. Film is a visual medium, and obviously, you can't fit a whole book into two hours unless you're really economical about it. Obviously, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and on some level, it's sort of true.
Often your face is your autobiography
That's always a cool thing to be the voice of what the eyes are seeing. It gives you the role of the Greek chorus and that's always fun to do.
There's two aspects of film crafting that I'm very strict about, and that's how I move my camera and where I cut the film.
I don't like fast editing.
I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.
