Amidst the ongoing arguments over censorship on OTT platforms, veteran Bollywood director and writer Anurag Kashyap today said that he did not believe in it. The director of the acclaimed movie Dev Dsaid: “I do not believe in any kind of censorship.
But it is not in my control. What is in my control is how I fight it. Whoever proposes anything there are massive public mandate and it is jot just now. I have fought censorship since my Black Friday and Dev D days and Gangs of Wasseypur. It’s my job how to fight. If my argument and reasoning are strong enough, I have grounds to stand on, the film is really a part of me then I will go till the Supreme Court to fight for it.” According to the director, censorship begins right from our home and is everywhere.
The eminent director and screen writer is in the city at the ongoing 29 Kolkata International Film Festival. Talking about the source of the idea behind his film Dev D, the director said: “I have read Sarat Chandra a lot and feel Devdas was his weakest novel and made the most of times. By chance I came across a version of his story of his life spent in Bangladesh and then I realized where Devdas came from. It was a fictionalised teenage version of the life that he lived in Bangladesh. So I did not go to Devdas but to the source.
I researched his time spent as a teenager there and then i compared it to the times we were living when i made the film and found parallels. There’s no point telling the same story several times and you are allowed to jump over time, informed the filmmaker who loves to experiment and considers playing safe to be boring. Kashyap’s upcoming film Kennedy that is said to have applauded at national and international film festivals also saw a huge turn out during the special screening today.
Talking about the female protagonist of his latest directorial, the director said: “Sunny is greatly objectified but for me she was an individual. For me she was just the way I found her during an interview that we took before the film. She was my first choice for the film. People objectify her so much. I saw her as an individual, as a person I was talking to and was amazed by it. Knowledge of a person helps me in casting and I have always cast like that.”
The director elaborated on the reasons for his being reluctant to work with some of the stars. “I do not want to work with people who have a strong fan base because I would not be able to cater to the expectations of the fanbase. I want to make my own films and not cater to anyone’s fan base expectations,” said the director who claimed of not caring about the box office collection but only recovering his producer’s money.