Pose writer-director Janet Mock on how she changed show's tonality from dark to warmer, more affirming

A year and a half ago, Janet Mock, a writer, director and executive producer on the FX drama Pose, began to plan a wedding. A big wedding. In a big ballroom. With music and flowers and a bride so heart-shatteringly beautiful that the groom would cry as soon as he glimpsed her at the top of the aisle.

She pitched it to Ryan Murphy, a creator of Pose. His response: "Another TV wedding?" On most shows, weddings are a cliché, a ratings grab, a move a season makes when it has run through more elegant ones. But Mock knew that a Pose wedding could mean something more.

“It was my love letter to Pose,” Mock said, “and to the women who watch this show, who are craving that sort of deep, deep partnership with someone who fully shows up for them and celebrates them and loves them in public.” Her argument persuaded Murphy, and that wedding takes place during the third and final season of Pose, which premieres Sunday. (The wedding is so big that it’s a two-parter.)

To spend any time with Mock — as I did recently, by video chat — is to understand that she is extremely persuasive. “Janet is very charismatic, and she’s somebody you would follow into battle,” Murphy said. (You would. You would also anticipate some very cute combat fatigues.) On the screen, in a loose white blouse and multiple necklaces, she was poised, sisterly, a study in luminous self-acceptance.

“She’s the most graceful specimen of human that I know,” said actor Billy Porter, her Emmy-winning Pose colleague.

The child of a Native Hawaiian mother and a Black father, both of whom struggled with addiction, Mock had a difficult childhood. In her teens, she engaged in sex work to earn the money for her gender confirmation surgery. She discusses all of that in her first memoir, with compassion and without shame.

“I found myself,” Mock, 38, said. “I did that work. I’ve been healing. And now I can just be myself.”

She allows the characters she develops — the marginalised characters in particular — to just be themselves, too, imbuing them with full humanity and genuine complexity. Only two years after joining Pose as a lower-tier writer — she had never used the screenwriting software Final Draft — Netflix signed her to an overall deal, the first such deal for a transgender creator.

“Janet is a groundbreaker who’s always carved her own path,” Brian Wright, the head of overall deals, wrote in an email. “Who wouldn’t want to work with her?”

Mock has always loved stories. An avid reader, she wrote for her high school newspaper. After college, she moved to New York City and earned a master’s degree in journalism. She spent three years at People.com, churning out search engine optimized content, climbing the editorial rungs nimbly. When that job began to pall — “I didn’t feel like I was causing harm, but I knew that I was a part of a machine,” she said — she began waking up early and writing down stories from her life.

“I felt that I had a responsibility — I didn’t think that as this Black and Native Hawaiian trans woman that I had ended up here just to work,” she said. “I felt that there was more.”

By that time, she had disclosed her status to a few friends, one of whom mentioned her story to a mentor at Marie Claire. Approached for an article, Mock agreed to an as-told-to piece, published in 2011 as “I Was Born a Boy.” (Mock didn’t write the headline.) A first memoir, “Redefining Realness,” followed three years later. A second, “Surpassing Certainty,” appeared three years after that. She took occasional hosting gigs and gave talks at what she called “every damn college you can think of, every college in every little city on every little plane.”

At that same time, Pose, created by Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals and set in the 1980s Harlem ballroom scene among queer people of colour, began to hire its staff. Several of the main characters are transgender women of colour, and Murphy knew that they needed better representation in the writers' room.

“I wanted to cast not just the actors in the show authentically but the people who are making the show authentically,” he said.

He hired Our Lady J, a transgender woman and a Transparent veteran. He also felt that he needed a transgender woman of colour, a transgender woman of colour with a proven record as a writer — or as Mock put it, “a unicorn.”

Mock had never worked on a scripted series. She had never intended to. But Murphy invited her to the set of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” and hired her within minutes. (Murphy called it a “drive-thru hire.”) Afterwards, Mock had to call her representation to make sure the offer was legit.

When she began to write for Pose, she brought all of her lived experience — “I feel like I’ve had 10 lives,” she said — onto the set. “I’m not stingy with my experience,” Mock said. “I believe in abundance.”

The actors noticed immediately. Dominique Jackson, who plays Elektra, a house mother, relaxed as soon as she saw Mock on set. “She is a truth-teller; she’s a fighter for the community,” Jackson said. “She’s a true champion — she should wear a cape every day.” (Mock looks very good in a cape.)

Mock helped to change the tone of Pose, which began as a darker series and matured into a warmer, more affirming one — a family drama with some glitter and spectacle. “Ryan saw me with the cast,” Mock said. “When we were together, we weren’t like, ‘The world is hurting us!’ We were like: ‘Oh are those your new nails? What are those shoes?’”

Within a few months, Murphy had given her a producer credit. Then he told her that she should direct. She told him that she didn’t know how to direct, and Murphy told her that she did — she was collaborative, she was kind, she knew how to tell a story. He assigned her to shadow another Pose director, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, and stayed close by during the early scenes of her first episode, “Love Is the Message,” from Season 1. (She has since directed episodes of other Murphy shows, Hollywood and The Politician.”)

She insisted on a Season 3 wedding for story reasons, but for personal ones, too. “I fought for those love stories because I know what it feels like to be rejected over and over and over,” she said. She wanted an episode that would show that love and acceptance were possible, she said, as well as “a partner who shows up for you as your ride-or-die to serenade you in front of every damn person that you love in the world.” That resonated on set.

“We have always deemed these human beings that weren’t able to be loved,” said MJ Rodriguez, who plays Blanca, another house mother. “To finally have that on the television screen, instils a lot of hope.”

When Jackson saw the script for the wedding, she teared up. “Even though I’m older, I still dream of that,” she said. “A lot of us, we don’t get to have that dream come true.”

Alexis Soloski c.2021 The New York Times Company

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Dilip Kumar admitted to hospital for routine check-up, will be discharged today

Legendary actor Dilip Kumar has been admitted to a hospital for a regular health check-up and will be discharged today, his wife and veteran actor Saira Banu said on Sunday.

The 98-year-old actor was admitted to the suburban Khar-based Hinduja Hospital on Friday afternoon, Banu said.

"All the tests have been conducted by the team of doctors and sahab (Kumar) is fine. He will be discharged today. We need your prayers," Banu told PTI.

The veteran actor's family friend Faisal Farooqui added that Kumar was admitted to the hospital for a regular health check-up.

"He was admitted for a routine check-up. There's no (need to) panic or (a) concerning issue. These are routine tests that are required to be done from time to time because of his age. He is doing fine," Farooqui told PTI.

Last year, the screen icon lost his two younger brothers — Aslam Khan (88) and Ehsan Khan (90) — due to COVID-19.

Kumar, who made his debut with Jwar Bhata in 1944, has appeared in several iconic films in his career spanning over five decades, including Kohinoor, Mughal-e-Azam, Devdas, Naya Daur, Ram Aur Shyam, among others.

He was last seen on the big screen in Qila in 1998.

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दिल्ली हाई कोर्ट ने चेताया, अब बहुत हुआ केंद्र ऑक्सीजन दे, नहीं तो अवमानना मामले को तैयार रहे

अदालत ने रेखांकित किया कि 20 अप्रैल से ही दिल्ली को 480 मीट्रिक टन और उसके बाद 490 मीट्रिक टन ऑक्सीजन का आबंटन किया गया लेकिन एक दिन भी इतनी मात्रा में आपूर्ति नहीं की गई।

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Olympia Dukakis, veteran stage and screen actor, passes away at 89 in New York

Olympia Dukakis, the veteran stage and screen actor whose flair for maternal roles helped her win an Oscar as Cher’s mother in the romantic comedy Moonstruck, has died. She was 89.

Dukakis died Saturday morning in her home in New York City, according to Allison Levy, her agent at Innovative Artists. A cause of death was not immediately released, but her family said in a statement that she had been in failing health for months.

Dukakis won her Oscar through a surprising chain of circumstances, beginning with author Nora Ephron’s recommendation that she play Meryl Streep’s mother in the film version of Ephron’s book Heartburn. Dukakis got the role, but her scenes were cut from the film. To make it up to her, director Mike Nichols cast her in his hit play Social Security. Director Norman Jewison saw her in that role and cast her in Moonstruck.

Dukakis won the Oscar for best supporting actress and Cher took home the trophy for best actress.

She referred to her 1988 win as “the year of the Dukakii” because it was also the year Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, her cousin, was the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. At the ceremony, she held her Oscar high over her head and called out: “OK, Michael, let’s go!”

In 1989, her Oscar statuette was stolen from Dukakis’ New Jersey home.

“We’re not pretentious,” her husband, actor Louis Zorich, said at the time. “We kept the Oscar in the kitchen.”

Dukakis, who was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, had yearned to be an actor from an early age and had hoped to study drama in college. Her Greek immigrant parents insisted she pursue a more practical education, so she studied physical therapy at Boston University on a scholarship from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

After earning her bachelor’s degree, she worked at an understaffed hospital in Marmet, West Virginia, and at the Hospital for Contagious Diseases in Boston.

But the lure of the theater eventually led her to study drama at Boston University.

It was a shocking change, she told an interviewer in 1988, noting that she had gone from the calm world of science to one where students routinely screamed at the teachers.

“I thought they were all nuts,” she said. “It was wonderful.”

Her first graduate school performance was a disaster, however, as she sat wordless on the stage.

After a teacher helped cure her stage fright, she began working in summer stock theaters. In 1960, she made her off-Broadway debut and two years later had a small part in The Aspern Papers on Broadway.

After three years with a Boston regional theater, Dukakis moved to New York and married Zorich.

During their first years of marriage, acting jobs were scarce, and Dukakis worked as a bartender, waitress and other jobs.

She and Zorich had three children — Christina, Peter and Stefan. They decided it was too hard to raise children in New York with limited income, so they moved the family to a century-old house in Montclair, a New Jersey suburb of New York.

Her Oscar victory kept the motherly film roles coming. She was Kirstie Alley’s mom in Look Who’s Talking and its sequel Look Who’s Talking Too, the sardonic widow in Steel Magnolias and the overbearing wife of Jack Lemmon (and mother of Ted Danson) in Dad.

Her recent projects included the 2019 TV miniseries Tales of the City and the upcoming film Not to Forgot.

But the stage was her first love.

“My ambition wasn’t to win the Oscar,” she commented after her Moonstruck win. “It was to play the great parts.”

She accomplished that in such New York productions as Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo.

In 2000, she was on Broadway in Martin Sherman’s one-actor play Rose, and received a Drama Desk Award nomination for the role of an 80-year-old survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.

For two decades she ran the Whole Theater Company in Montclair, New Jersey, specializing in classic dramas.

Zorich died in January 2018 at age 93.

Dukakis is survived by her children Christina, Stefan and Peter; her brother Apollo Dukakis; and four grandchildren.

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Mahesh Babu to reunite with director Trivikram Srinivas after a decade for untitled project

South superstar Mahesh Babu is teaming up with director Trivikram Srinivas after a gap of 11 years for his next film, tentatively titled SSMB28.

The project will be their third film together after Athadu (2005) and Khaleja (2010). The makers announced the film on social media on Saturday, 1 May.

Slated to release in the summer of 2022, the yet-untitled project will be Mahesh Babu's 28th film. S Radha Krishna (Chinababy) is bankrolling via Haarika and Hassine Creations. 

Here is the announement 

The combo that everyone is waiting for is finally here!

After 11 long years, Super Star @urstrulymahesh garu & #Trivikram garu will team up again for #SSMB28 ⚡

Produced by S. Radha Krishna (Chinababu) garu under @haarikahassine banner.

In Theatres Summer 2022 ✨ pic.twitter.com/C9enTm5teO

— Haarika & Hassine Creations (@haarikahassine) May 1, 2021

Pooja Hegde will reportedly be paired opposite Mahesh Babu in SSMB28. However, the makers are yet to make any official announcement regarding its cast.

Hegde had earlier delivered films like Aravinda Sametha Veera Raghava and Ala Vaikunthapurramloo with Trivikram. If the rumours are true, this will be her second film with Mahesh Babu after Maharshi which released in 2019. 

 

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Kabir Bedi talks new memoir, and what makes him a rebel: I'm a child of the '60s, decade of social revolution

Kabir Bedi has lived a life juggling multiple film industries, continents, and families. In his new memoir, the actor dwells on the people who have shaped him, more than the events that transformed him. Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview:

The title of your book, Stories I Must Tell, has an air of compulsion to it. Why were you compelled to tell your stories? Was it more a personal release or an attempt to set the record straight?

Both. Also, it was now or never. The tumultuous roller coaster of my life is a terrific story to tell. Tremendous triumphs, heart-wrenching tragedies, milestones that made India proud, and mistakes you’d do well to avoid. Enormous emotional dramas. It was all bursting to come out. I had to tell it.

What I personally found endlessly fascinating was how your growth and coming of age ran parallel to that of India. Your personal life is inextricably linked to the socio-political milestones of the country, from your parents' involvement in the freedom struggle to your association with the Gandhis. Does your current state of being also fall in accordance with that of the nation?

Right now, I am grieving for all those who are suffering the brunt of this merciless pandemic. No health system in the world can cope with two million new cases a week. It’s the worst human tragedy I’ve experienced in my lifetime. Before I was born, my mother saw even worse when she reported on the Bengal Famine of 1943. Three million people died.

My parents knew many historic figures of the freedom struggle: Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Sheikh Abdullah, Giani Zail Singh, Harkrishan Singh Surjeet. As a child, the uprising in Tibet, which forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India, affected me and my family deeply. It’s all in my book. I was friends with Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi during the years I grew up in Delhi. Indira Gandhi was “Aunty Indu". We lost touch over the years. But that’s another story.

The flow of writing you have chosen for your autobiography is characteristic of the way you have lived your life — without conforming to linearity. Instead of dividing your story according to years, as is the norm, you fragment it into the people who have shaped you, from first wife Protima Bedi and ex Parveen Babi to your parents, and son Siddharth. Why was this approach crucial?

I find linearity boring. For 10 years, I tried to write it that way, and ended up throwing away the manuscripts. I enjoy the short story form. My chapters are a series of stories, each complete within itself. I’ve told my stories through the prism of people and places that I have known and loved. It gave me the freedom to jump back-and-forth in time, and make my book more interesting. That’s what makes my writing so compelling. 

You talk at length about your previous relationships, particularly with Protima Bedi and Parveen Babi. But there is relatively a lot less detailing of your current marriage. Is the intent behind that to guard your privacy or because you need distance or a vantage point to evaluate a relationship?

Truth is that I had to make many hard choices in writing my book. It was already over 300 pages, and many stories had to be sacrificed. Protima and Parveen I had to speak of in depth because they were turning points in my life. They were also my most turbulent relationships.

But in retrospect, I should have spoken in greater depth about my relationship with my wife, Parveen Dusanj. She’s the perfect culmination of my story. I talked in detail of why I fell in love with her but didn’t show it in emotional scenes, as I’d done earlier. I regret that now.

But you are right. I am protective over this relationship. She’s the best thing that happened to me. At 16 years, it’s my longest relationship. She was the driving force behind my book, and protected me from all distractions. I’m deeply grateful to her for making my book a reality, and me a happy man.

The most moving chapter was about your struggle to keep your son Siddharth alive and the grief that followed his demise. Priyanka Chopra Jonas, who launched your book, says of grief that it becomes one's constant companion while addressing her father's death and its ripple effects on her mental health, in her memoir Unfinished. How have you dealt with the grief over the years?

I’m sure Priyanka suffered greatly when her father died. For me, the death of  my son was the deepest grief I experienced. To lose a sensitive 25-year-old son, poised for a brilliant career in technology, was unspeakably tragic. The pain of his sudden death diminished with time, but the grief has remained forever. You learn to live with it.

In a deeply felt short story that is quoted in the book, you write about how you did not want your young children to be tarnished by social conditioning. Do you think your children managed to retain their individuality because they had an instinctive (and often impulsive) father's footsteps to follow?

Society likes conformity. Those who deviate from the norm are seen as threats. But it's our individuality that makes us unique. You have to be different to make a difference.

I’m a born rebel, a child of uncompromising idealists, and a child of the 1960s, which was a social revolution. My daughter is far more conservative than me, my son far more laid back. All of us make our own paths, depending on our minds, influences, and temperaments.

From your four marriages, you have a family that lives across continents. Does the hopping get to you? How do you ensure you remain equally invested in all family members?

It was much harder earlier. Flying my kids across continents to be with me, and vice-versa. Now, I miss my son Adam the most. He’s flying the Bedi flag in faraway Hollywood, doing special effects for films. Sadly, the pandemic has made air travel hazardous. So I keep in touch with everyone in my family virtually. It’s the new norm.

You write in the book while Bollywood could have written better roles for you, you got your due in Italy. Have you been able to decode what the Italians saw in you that made you an overnight and lasting sensation there?

The role of Sandokan was iconic. The books of Emilglio Salgari were read by every Italian, but no one had personified Sandokan as well as me. Earlier films on Sandokan had made no waves. I captured the imagination of the nation through a riveting series. It created a tsunami of fan frenzy, like with The Beatles. The power of its story ensured it became a massive hit across the whole of Europe. It’s been repeated on their television sets ever since. Then sequels, and other TV series in Italy, ensured that my fame lasted. Topping it all, Italy bestowed on me its highest civilian honour, Cavaliere, a Knight.

Your granddaughter Alaya F has made her debut at a time when Bollywood does not dictate its stars to song-and-dance, which you considered your Waterloo. What are the chances you would have been a far successful today?

Who knows? Maybe my best role here is yet to come. But I thank Bollywood for launching me as a professional actor, and making me an all-India name. It led to all my successes abroad. Alaya will blaze her own path. She just won the Filmfare Award for Best Debut (for Jawaani Jaaneman), which I presented her at the ceremony. I believe she’s on her way to major stardom. 

You have been an actor across industries and platforms. How liberating was it to shed all those myriad characters, and tell a story that is exclusively your own?

Writing my book was magical. I wrote it in a passionate frenzy when the lockdowns began last year. It flowed like a river once I’d figured out its structure. I like clean, uncluttered writing. I guess my training as a copywriter at Lintas and O&M makes me weigh each word. But it has to be an evocative experience.

Kabir Bedi's memoir Stories I Must Tell has been published by Westland Books.

— All images courtesy Kabir Bedi Archives

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Hundred years of Satyajit Ray, and his brand of visceral cinema that mirrored the politics of Bengal across decades

It is quite uncanny that the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray, 2 May, 2021, also happens to be the very day on which the results of the bitterest and longest drawn elections in Bengal’s history are being revealed. When one comes to think of it, this coincidence is as poetic as the legendary filmmaker's cinema, because Bengal's politics has always been inextricably linked to its cinema.

Fish, football, films... and politics

“Fish, football, and films” may be said to capture the essence of Bengal, but without another term, ‘politics,' the description is hardly complete. While the Bengali fixation with the first two above are rather well known, and ‘politics’ is embedded in the DNA, a word on films may be in order.

For LIVE updates of the West Bengal election results, click here

The state that has slipped on many fronts in the past half a century continues, however, to vigorously retain its remarkable lead in producing quality and thought-provoking films. With 22 movies, Bengali films have won the highest number of the nation’s best film awards, while the next group, Hindi, has secured 14. Malayalam comes third with 12 such awards, while most others are content with just one or two. One is astonished how the restless Kolkatan waits so patiently in mile-long queues outside the different venues of the city’s International Film Festival.

These four elements usually manifest themselves in pairs, and the most impressive combo emerged when films combined with politics in Bengal. We see how as early as 1938, Bengal rolled out patriotic movies like Desher Mati (My Country’s Soil), Sangram and Vande Mataram, while it grappled with more complex issues in the cinematic version of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s banned patriotic novel Pather Dabi (Right of Way) also appeared in film form even before the British had left.

It were, however, more radical films like Chhinnamul (The Uprooted, 1951) and Ritwik Ghatak’s Nagarik (1952) that gripped public attention, focusing on the burning issues of refugees who were violently and mercilessly uprooted from East Pakistan. This is where the Communists scored their first goals, as the ruling Congress establishment floundered in handling the human tide that swept into West Bengal, angry and hungry. The Communists did a great service by campaigning to ensure that the communal virus did not infect the furious millions, which was quite unlike what was happening in Punjab and Delhi. But they organised themselves and other disaffected masses in their endless series of violent movements that rocked the state over the next two decades. 

The advent of Satyajit Ray

Soon, the ‘three masters’ of Bengali film made their presence felt. While two, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, were overtly pro-communist and churned out strident films, the third, Satyajit Ray, was far more nuanced. In 1955, Ray’s debut film Pather Panchali marked the grand entry of Bengali films into world cinema, and was commended for its superb production, maturity of handling, worldview, and de-theatricalised  presentation. It was not political, but dealt subtly with the universality of human struggle and the message of survival.

This was the year when Bengal abolished its notoriously inequitable, centuries-old zamindari system, to free cultivable lands for the impoverished peasantry. While Ray added two unforgettable films to what the legendary Apu trilogy, Ghakak produced his disturbing trilogy, beginning with Meghe Dhaka Tara, in rapid succession in 1960, 1961, and 1962, raging at the tragic consequences of the partition of Bengal. This was just after the tumultuous Food Movement of 1959, which was brutally suppressed — the Communist Party claimed that several scores of their protesters had been bludgeoned to death by the police.

Bengal was on the boil, and the common man learnt to occupy the street, through agitations that preceded it, like the violent one against the increase of the fares of trams by one paisa (several trams were set on fire), and when teachers left schools to protest and sit on pavements, demanding a decent salary of just a hundred and fifty rupees. Endless protest soon emerged as a leitmotif of the state, which would start driving industry away from it. But it is rather strange, however, that there are no inspired films centred on these political struggles, though they were referred to or appear in the ‘background’ of later movies. 

Politics in Bengal underwent a paradigm shift in 1967 when Congress was dislodged from power, and left parties combined with ‘bourgeois’ groups to form a government. Its short life was ruptured when left-wing extremism tore out of the ruling Communist Party (Marxist) to stage an armed insurrection at Naxalbari. Mrinal Sen has chronicled so movingly the excruciatingly painful phase that followed, as the ‘revolution,' drenched in “the blood of beheaded class enemies," wrestled in a macabre battle with brutal and vindictive state repression. That Sen’s sympathies lay unambiguously with the oppressed and with the left movement is clear, though we are not sure which brand of the left that was.

His ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ of Interview, Calcutta 71, and Padatik, followed by Chorus, captured the terrible frustration of the youth during the 1969-1975 period, when hopeless joblessness stared in the face while the romanticised left revolution went through its dramatic convulsions. He was critical of Ray’s lack of direct involvement, but Ray’s films of this same phase, like Pratidwandi, Seemabaddha, and Jana Aranya, brought out quite vividly and sympathetically the exasperation of the thinking, educated middle-class youth.

Ray’s camera stared at the same cauldron that hissed and bubbled in a violently volatile Kolkata, and his films portrayed the hypocrisy and insecurities of the ruling system as well — with his signature and finesse.  

Along with Kerala, Bengal was always a highly politicised state but its population is almost three times that of Kerala’s, while its human development indices are nowhere near. Filmmakers in both languages operate within similar environments of class struggles and rights consciousness, and in dissecting deep human cravings — which is difficult for the film world in other states to understand. It is remarkable how Ray articulated his social and political concerns so vividly and aesthetically, without actually talking or preaching politics. 

A lesser known fact is Ray’s close association with left intellectuals of post-Independence Bengal, as evidenced from his regular visits to the office of Kathashilpa Publishers, located very close to College Street’s iconic Coffee House. It was the rendezvous of almost every radical intellectual and artist of Calcutta, including those with extreme left sympathies. This red bastion that Ray visited so regularly retained its political purity and vitality for three decades, and is credited with encouraging some of finest cultural personalities of the period.

Ray was conversant with subtle and intricate nuances of the Marxist discourse. Though he may have been impressed by many an ideal or aspiration, he could never come anywhere near any dogmatism. An uncompromising rationalist and secular liberal, he was primarily an artist and a musician who had extended his genius through the new form of articulation in celluloid. His classic critique of authoritarianism, Hirak Rajar Deshe, demonstrates his sheer mastery and white anger, as he narrates a rather simple children’s tale of an evil oppressive king. The king’s repression and ‘brainwashing’ of the populace (Ray was considerably advanced in perceiving the tactics of autocracy) backfires, and  the people revolt and dethrone him. Ray is remembered time and again in these troubled times, and his verses are repeatedly quoted almost every day, as the nation looks on aghast at mesmerised audiences who are unable to grasp the devastation inflicted by the ruler. 

On 2 May, 2021, the maverick filmmaker and one of Bengal’s greatest sons would surely like to know whether his people have voted or not for the lofty ideals for which he had lived and toiled all his life. 

*

(Also read: Aparna Sen and Madhabi Mukherjee on Satyajit Ray the man, and his enduring legacy)

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Workers Leaving the Factory: How Louis Lumière’s 1895 film bound labour and cinema together for eternity

“It is in leaving the Lumière factory that the workers give themselves over to cinema, that they attain the status both of actresses and of future spectators. Moving away from work, they enter the enchanted world of entertainment. For the world of work is only weakly enchanted (enchanting), and unlikely to be enchanted in return by cinema, except in the form of a nightmare…”

— Jean-Louis Comolli, Images Documentaires 24

On 22 March 1895, in the Rue de Rennes in Paris, inventor and industrialist Louis Lumière presented a private demo of a motion picture system he had devised with his elder brother Auguste. The device was called Cinématographe, and the 17-metre strip of celluloid used to show its working was titled Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon-Monplaisir. Lasting about 50 seconds when projected at a certain speed, it showed a mass of labourers, mostly women, leaving the Lumière facility at lunch hour from either side of two gateways. The audience at the demo, composed of businessman, researchers and photography enthusiasts, was very different from the people on screen, as most movie audiences would be in the coming decades. Traditionally considered the first ever motion picture, Lumière’s film bound labour and cinema together for eternity, the image of workers leaving the factory being a veritable birthmark for the medium.

What is less well-known, however, is that there were at least three versions of the film. In the first two iterations, the gates are already open, and the workers flood out from the first frame onwards. Even so, the factory is not emptied by the time the picture ends — that is, by the time the camera runs out of film. The culprit appears to be a horse buggy that takes time to come out of the facility. The third version premiered in the first commercial showing of Lumières’ films in the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris on 28 December 1895. In it, the door opens only after the film has begun, and thanks to the absence of the buggy, the workers get out in time and the door is (almost) closed. Now considered the definitive version, this “first film” in the history of cinema, was in fact a remake of a remake.

Why did Louis Lumière make several versions of the film? One theory is that, since there were no internegatives in the film development process at the time, the original negative degraded with every new print made. The picture had to be therefore reshot onto a new negative so that fresh copies could be made for various screenings across the continent. Another hypothesis is that the Lumières didn’t like the quality of the picture and judged that the factory gates should close before the camera ran out of film. After all, a door opening and closing in the manner of a theatrical curtain had a certain spectacle about it that is missing in the first two versions, which drop us in medias res, so to speak.

Whatever the reason, it is believed that, after the first version of March 1895, the brothers summoned their workers for repeated takes, sometime in early summer. The planned day of reshoot falling on the Lord’s Day, the Lumières requested their employees to come to the factory after the Sunday mass to simulate the scene of workers leaving for lunch on a workday. As a result, in the second and third versions of the film, the participants’ hats and clothes are fancier, their mood more cheerful: one female employee mischievously tugs at the skirt of another just as they take leave from each other. The actors themselves seem wiser to the presence of the camera, more professional, so to speak. In comparison to its predecessors, the third film is on the whole more harmonious, less chaotic, the flow of workers out the gates more streamlined. Except for an implacable canine and his bicycle-bound master, who appear in all three versions, the play of chance in this definitive version is minimal.

It is not known whether the participants were paid for any of the versions, if not as the first actors of cinema, at least as workers doing overtime (on a Sunday to boot — France wouldn’t become officially secular until 10 years later). At the time, there was no law in effect in France limiting the working hours. Labour unions were illegal in the country until 1884 and the General Confederation of Labour (La CGT), France’s first and largest confederation of labour unions was established only in September 1896, sometime between the private and the commercial screenings of Lumières’ film. On 1 May 1891, incited by Paul Lafargue (a son-in-law of Karl Marx’s), textile workers up north organised demonstrations in favour of the eight-hour work day. In the town of Fourmies, soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators, killing nine young people.

The protests were an emanation of the ferment across the Atlantic, where there was considerable labour unrest in the preceding decade. In May 1886, workers in Chicago rallied in favour of a universal adoption of the eight-hour work day, until then applicable to only certain sections of the American workforce. The rallies turned violent, a bomb exploded and several people died. Three years later, the Second International, adopted the 1st of May as the International Workers’ Day to commemorate the events in Chicago and to continue the campaign for the eight-hour work day. The demonstration at Fourmies was part of this campaign.

Much has changed in the nature of labour, its conditions and its screen representation in the century since Lumières’ film. Workers Leaving a Factory seems to possess a historical innocence that is impossible to recapture now. The men and women leaving the Lumière factory did so in an era of industrial optimism and ground-breaking scientific progress. It wasn’t until the First World War, and its technologised warfare, that this faith in scientific rationalism was seriously questioned. With Fordism rendering skilled labour ever more marginal and the Great Depression causing unprecedented levels of unemployment, industrial work could no longer be viewed the same way. The downbeat image of hunched, robotic workers changing shifts in an underground industrial-city in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) or the cut from a herd of sheep to contemporary workers leaving the subway in Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) altered the primal scene of Lumières’ film irrevocably.

For the centenary anniversary of Workers Leaving a Factory, German filmmaker Harun Farocki made a video work of the same name, which traces the cinematic genealogy of the “first film”. Analysing photographed images of workers at factory gates through the years, Farocki deems it “an image like an expression, which can be suited to many occasions”. His film views the area outside the factory as a dialectical space. For one, it is the place of direct confrontation between Labour and Capital: between picketers and guards, between strikers and the police. The factory gate becomes the membrane that separates work from workers, an economic system from its constituents. It is at the factory gate that Labour and Capital identify themselves by identifying the other

Farocki also regards this space as facilitating diverging definitions of the public and the private. On one hand, the factory entrance mashes private individuals into the mass being called workforce. It is for this reason that much of popular cinema centres on life outside work. In these films, narratives about individual lives begin once work is over and the impersonal, faceless workforce dissolves into separate somebodies. They replace the viewer’s leisure time with that of the characters, our problems with theirs and provide vicarious pleasures and catharses. “Whenever possible, film has moved hastily away from factories,” says Farocki’s narrator, noting that in one hundred years of cinema, there have been more prisons and correctional facilities than factories and workers. It is indeed telling that mainstream cinema has shown itself better equipped to depict work when it is a form of punishment or a crime than when it is part of an everyday reality.

On the other hand, suggests Farocki’s film, the area in front of the factory gates is itself subject to competing notions of property and theft. While the territorial imperative of Capital defines this liminal space as the company’s private property, for the workers it becomes a public area of discussion, congregation and protest. “Where the first camera once first stood, there are now hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras,” notes Farocki’s narrator, pointing out how cinema unwittingly became an instrument to safeguard Capital. The apparent innocence of Lumières’ film may, however, be fallacious too. With the camera cranked by Louis Lumière himself, and his employees dutifully hurrying out of the factory under his instructions, it could be argued that even the first film was a form of surveillance footage.

Surveying the factory gates is evidently in the interests of owners, but what happens when employees do the surveying? In the era of invisible labour — the rise of the class of knowledge workers, the erosion of the boundary between workplace and home, and the ceaseless digitisation of all work in general — does it even matter if the factory gates are watched over? Some companies certainly think so. In his digital video Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2011), American artist Andrew Norman Wilson recounts the repercussions of filming and talking to workers leaving the “ScanOps” facility at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. These temp workers, responsible for digitising printed matter for Google Books, comprise chiefly people of colour and don’t have the same rights as other contracted employees at the firm. Wilson, himself a contract employee then with the tech giant at the time, was sacked for violating the non-disclosure agreement even though his footage barely shows any worker leaving the building. If Lumières’ film has any lasting politico-cinematic lesson, it’s that bosses will always want to be the ones holding the camera.

Srikanth Srinivasan is a film critic and translator from Bengaluru. He tweets at @J_A_F_B

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Kannada actor Arjun Gowda launches ambulance service in Bengaluru for coronavirus patients

As India witnesses a rapid spike in the number of coronavirus cases, Kannada actor Arjun Gowda has come forward to do some humanitarian work. He is currently working as an ambulance driver to help the COVID-19 patients in Karnataka’s Bengaluru city. At a time, when many actors have stepped up and volunteered to contribute towards COVID-19 relief, Gowda is winning hearts on social media with this gesture.

He has launched his own ambulance service, called Project Smile Trust, to help coronavirus patients reach hospitals. Not just that, he also helps in carrying out the final rites of those who have lost their lives to the virus.

During a recent interview with Bangalore Times, the actor shared the main reason behind this drive. "I've been on the road for a couple of days and I've already helped out around half a dozen people with assistance for final rites. We want to ensure that we help out anyone in need irrespective of where they come from or what religion they practice,” he said.

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Gowda also shared a snippet of the news article on his social media handle saying he has taken all necessary precautions and training for the job. He feels overwhelmed with all the wishes pouring in for him.

“It's my commitment and my honour to serve and work for the people of Karnataka," he added.

Gowda is best-known for his work in movies like Yuvarathnaa, Odeya, Rustum, Aa Drushya, and many more.

So far, celebs like Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Sonu Sood, John Abraham, SS Rajamouli, Taapsee Pannu among others have been actively taking part in coronavirus-related SOS requests on social media.

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Paul, Justin Theroux discuss Apple TV+ series The Mosquito Coast, and what inspired them to adapt the1981 novel

Allie Fox, the escapee from society at the heart of The Mosquito Coast, is no fan of any technology he didn’t invent. So it’s kind of a kick to talk to Paul and Justin Theroux on Zoom, a video chatting app that Allie would abhor as intrusive.

Paul wrote the novel The Mosquito Coast, originally published in 1981. His nephew Justin plays Allie in the new Apple TV+ adaptation, premiering 30 April. (Both men are executive producers). Paul, also one of the world’s foremost travel writers, was working in Hawaii when we spoke earlier this month (“I can see the Pacific Ocean from my window,” he said); Justin was at home in New York. Both were eager to discuss this unique familial collaboration, the story of a disillusioned, egomaniacal white patriarch and his family who must flee the United States.

“Nepotism had nothing to do with this,” Paul said. “This was all a happy accident, but it’s great. I’ve made a number of films of my books, but I’ve never talked to an actor in such a friendly, intimate way.”

Among the other topics on the table when we spoke: the significant differences between the novel, which also inspired a faithful 1986 movie starring Harrison Ford, and the series. In the book, Allie, an inventor thoroughly sick of modern life and convinced the next world war is imminent, uproots his family from Massachusetts to Honduras, where he tries to create a self-styled utopia. Hostile missionaries and other obstacles, including his own delusions, stand in his way.

Some of that could still happen in later seasons of the series. (Only one has been greenlighted thus far.) But for now, Allie and his family, which now includes a teen daughter (Logan Polish), are running from the law for mysterious reasons. They execute a reverse (and bloody) border crossing to Mexico, where they stumble into a fine mess with a cartel lord.

The first season is a tightly plotted suspense thriller and family drama with philosophical heft. Through the course of seven hour-long episodes, it’s also a great example of how to adapt the written word for the screen.

“Hopefully, knock on wood, in subsequent seasons we’ll be getting more into the core themes of the book,” Justin said.

From their perches on opposite ends of the country, uncle and nephew also discussed the familial and political roots of Mosquito Coast, the similarities between yesterday and today and the pleasures of portraying a man who is unflagging in his dangerous convictions. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

It’s been 40 years since The Mosquito Coast was published. What inspired it?

Paul Theroux: It was the times, particularly the late ’70s. Japan was flooding the U.S. market with cars and electronic goods. And bank interest rates were at 18 percent. People were blaming the government. I was also thinking about Huckleberry Finn’s father, and Jim Jones, and [the founder of Mormonism] Joseph Smith. I wanted to think of the personification of someone who wanted to leave the country and take his family with him and say: “This isn’t the country I grew up in. It’s gone wrong. Let’s go someplace.”

Justin, can you remember the first time you read the book?

Justin Theroux: I actually have a vivid memory of reading it on a bus going to and from school, when I was living in Washington, DC I think it was a couple of years above my pay grade when it came out. I probably read it four years later, and it made a big impression on me, especially the character of the son, Charlie, who is the narrator and the POV. I loved it. Then, once the movie came out, me and my brothers and sisters and cousins were all kind of enamoured with the fact that Harrison Ford was going to be doing a movie of it.

Paul Theroux: This was the first book of mine that my kids could actually connect with. My sons, Louis and Marcel, were 11 and 13. Justin was 10, so he was in the same sort of family milieu. I deliberately made the kids in the book the age of my kids so that they could read it and relate to it.

In the series, the law is coming for the Fox family, though we’re not sure why. In the novel, they leave of their own volition. What was the idea behind that change?

Justin Theroux: I think there were certain decisions that Neil Cross [the series’ creator] had to make when faced with serialising it. The characters are largely the same but updated and built out a little bit. But when you have that much runway in front of you — it could be two, three, four seasons or more — Neil, I think, smartly made some changes. So the law is now the propellant that forces them out of the country, as opposed to Allie’s own free will and wanderlust.

Neil was very clear from the beginning: The movie’s obviously been made, and to do a faithful retelling of it in the serialised version would feel like we were maybe eating someone else’s sandwich. But the one thing we had very sharp elbows about was protecting the character of Allie and his philosophy on life and those sorts of things.

Paul Theroux: The idea of being pursued is terrific for a series. In a movie, it’s different. I think that series are truer to books than films are. A film becomes something else, but a series is like … do you know what a Victorian three-decker novel is? Well, novels used to be trilogies. So when Charles Dickens was writing David Copperfield, it was two or three books. It wasn’t just one.

A TV series is a very literary form because it’s in parts: Part 1, then Part 2, then Part 3, Part 4. A film isn’t. A film encapsulates and leaves a lot out, but the detail that you find in a novel can be elaborated on in a series. That’s the pleasure, actually, of a series.

Justin, what drew you to Allie as a character?

Justin Theroux: There’s a complexity to the character, but he doesn’t overcomplicate things for himself because he’s obviously married to his convictions. I really like that. I thought it was going to be hard to play. But when you’re playing someone who’s that shiny a penny in his own mind, and that convinced of his own correctness, then it’s liberating. Your whole body opens up, and you think, “Oh, this is really fun.”

He can be by turns extremely charming and funny, but also infuriating. I was thinking of The Great Santini, or that kind of classic antihero. He’s not square-jawed and leaning into the wind and can solve any problem that way. He’s deeply flawed, but I just found him really enjoyable.

Paul, can you see similarities between the time the novel was written and today?

Paul Theroux: I truly believe that today is a distant echo of the late ’70s. The economy is in the toilet. With the pandemic, there’s also no shortage of people who are saying, “I’d like to leave.” I mean, you probably know them. They’re saying: “I’d like to go to Mexico. I’d like to go to New Zealand. I want to go to Canada. I’d like to go somewhere else.” It’s amazing.

People want to go do what Allie Fox did. Allie Fox says, “I’m taking the best of America with me, and we’re going to remake America somewhere else.” There are plenty of people now saying that very thing. Trust in the government is at an all-time low. So Allie has to leave, in the series, because the government is after him. But he’s the sort of person that would want to go. And he goes to Mexico, which is terrific. I like the idea that he’s crossing the border the other way.

What keeps us from hating Allie, with all of his character flaws?

Paul Theroux: As a can-do guy, and as an optimist, Allie inspires people to come with him. No one’s going to follow him if he’s downbeat. Justin has that to a T. It’s impressive that he brings his family with him, and that they’re on his side.

Justin Theroux: He’s also not a liar, so he’s not a bastard in that sense. He might commit sins of omission, or he might make a promise that looks very different from what it ends up being. But he’s true to his word.

Chris Vognar c.2021 The New York Times Company

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R Madhavan warns fans of COVID-19 drugs fraud, says there are ‘devils amongst us’

Actor R Madhavan, who has been amplifying requests seeking COVID-19 related resources, has warned his fans and followers against fraud. The actor shared information alleging fraud by a Remdesivir seller. The photo tweeted by the actor mentioned the name of a seller Ajay Aggarwal and his contact number. It said that the person takes Rs 3,000 in advance from people to supply a vial of Remdesivir anywhere in the country. However, once the payment gets done, the seller does not pick calls.

Warning people of fraud, Madhavan asked his Twitter followers to be aware. Speaking about the person allegedly committing fraud, the 50-year-old actor added that there are devils amongst us too.

Many actors, social media influencers, and public figures are amplifying SOS requests related to COVID-19. The request ranges from oxygen cylinders, ICU beds, medicines, ventilators to plasma.

Like many others, Madhavan, who has 2.8 million followers, is using his social media clout to help people find information regarding the required resource.

Last month, the actor had tested positive for coronavirus after his 3 Idiots co-star Aamir Khan who had also contracted the virus.

When he tested positive, Madhavan tweeted a joke with a poster of 3 Idiots featuring Aamir and himself. He said that ‘Virus’ has always been after Rancho and Farhan (their characters from the film) but this time, it caught up with them. He was referring to the coronavirus and Virus — Boman Irani’s character in the film.

Madhavan added that this is the one place where they do not want Raju (played by Sharman Joshi) to join them. He had informed everyone that he was recovering well.

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कोरोना काल में “फरिश्ता” बना यह पूर्व MLA, जिनकी संक्रमण से घर पर हो जा रही मौतें, उन्हें दफनाने का टीम के साथ संभाल रखा है काम

उन्होंने कहा कि पिछले दस दिनों में मैंने कई भयावह दृश्यों को देखा है। मैंने ऐसी हालत कभी नहीं देखी थी। मैंने छोटी लड़कियों को अपने पिता के शरीर को अंतिम संस्कार के लिए ले जाते देखा है।

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आपकी सरकार ने भिखारी बना दिया..लोग श्मशान में भी इंतजार कर रहे- BJP प्रवक्ता पर बरसे कांग्रेस नेता, मिला ये जवाब

देश में कोविड की जरूरी दवाइयों की भारी कमी हो रही है और वैक्सीन की कमी की ख़बरें भी आ रही हैं। इसी मुद्दे पर डिबेट के दौरान बीजेपी प्रवक्ता जफर इस्लाम और कांग्रेस प्रवक्ता आलोक शर्मा के बीच तीखी बहस हो गई।

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बिहार के बाहुबली शहाबुद्दीन की AIIMS में दम तोड़ने की खबर, तिहाड़ जेल ने कहा- कोरोना से नहीं हुई मौत

हालांकि, लालू यादव की आरजेडी से सीवान सीट से पूर्व लोकसभा सांसद की मौत कोरोना से हुई है या नहीं? यह फिलहाल साफ नहीं हो पाया है।

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Satyajit Ray's 100th birth anniversary to be commemorated through year-long celebration in India and abroad

In a homage to Satyajit Ray, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on Friday, announced that it will organise year-long celebrations across India and abroad to mark the 100th birth anniversary of the legendary filmmaker.

Satyaji Ray (2 May, 1921- 23 April, 1992) was a renowned filmmaker, writer, illustrator, graphic designer and music composer.

He started his career in advertising and found inspiration for his first film, Pather Panchali, while illustrating the children's version of the novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.

The film catapulted him into international fame. Ray went on to make other great films such as Charulata, Agantuk and Nayak, an I&B Ministry statement said.

Ray was also a prolific writer, making the famous sleuth Feluda and scientist Professor Shonku, a popular part of Bengali Literature. The government of India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, in 1992.

In homage to the legendary filmmaker, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will organise year-long birth centenary celebrations across India and abroad.

As part of the celebrations, the media units of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting - Directorate of Film Festivals, Films Division, NFDC, NFAI, and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata - are planning a series of activities.

Other ministries and departments including the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Culture will also be playing an active part in organizing events, the statement said.

However, in view of the pandemic situation, the celebrations will be held in hybrid mode, digital and physical both, during the year, it said.

In recognition of his legacy, ''Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Cinema'' has been instituted from this year to be given at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) every year starting from this year.

The award consists of a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh, a certificate, shawl, along with a Silver Peacock medal and a Scroll.

As part of the celebrations, the Directorate of Film Festivals, the Films Division and the Ministry of External Affairs will be organising Satyajit Ray Film Festivals in India, and abroad through Indian missions, where films and documentaries by and on Satyajit Ray will be showcased.

A special retrospective and screening of Ray's films are being planned at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, the ministry said.

The Directorate of Films Festivals will also be organising a special retrospective at the IFFI, 2021.

The retrospective will be travelling to prominent international and national film festivals.

The Films Division will be creating a dedicated Satyajit Ray section at the National Museum of Indian Cinema, Mumbai.

This section, which would also travel to different museums in the country over the year, would host memorabilia from Ray's life in both physical and interactive digital versions, including the best shots from his films, interviews etc.

The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) will do restoration and digitization of all the available films and publicity material of Ray, the ministry said. It will also organise a virtual exhibition of the posters of his films.

The National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) will organize a film festival on its OTT platform, cinemas of India, showcasing five of the maestro's films.

The SRFTI, Kolkata will be unveiling a statue of Satyajit Ray on its campus.

To promote understanding of the filmmaker's genius, a course on his work will also be taught at the Institute.

A package of Ray's works for children that can be given to schools is also being developed, the ministry said.

Inter-college competitions on themes from Ray's films will also be organised amongst film schools, it said.

The Ministry of Culture will be organising cultural activities and showcasing the various perspectives of Ray's personality and works in arts and literature.

To oversee the activities, an implementation committee under the chairmanship of the Secretary (I&B) has been set up. The committee includes senior Filmmaker Dhritiman Chaterji as the nominated member, and other senior officials of the Ministries of Information and Broadcasting, Culture and External Affairs.

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