Filmmaker Devashish Makhija, known for directing Ajji, Bhonsle, and Joram, spoke about the difficulties of sustaining a career in a film industry that is slowly losing touch with the idea of ‘patrons’. He said that it took 14 years for him to release his first feature film, and that if somebody had warned him it would take this long for his career to start, he’d have packed his bags and returned to his home city of Kolkata. In the two decades that he has worked in Mumbai, he hasn’t been able to secure himself financially, the filmmaker said, and still doesn’t know where his next paycheque will come from.
Wary of his words being ‘misrepresented’, and his struggle ‘romanticised’, Makhija said in an interview on the Long Live Cinema YouTube channel that he is reluctant to go into detail about his struggles, and the cost of remaining true to his vision. “Even today, when I call an actor or someone to meet me, they say, ‘Where’s your office?’ and I say, ‘I don’t have an office, so you tell me where you are, or we’ll meet in a coffee shop, and I’ll tell you which coffee shop because I can’t afford most of the coffee shops in Versova’. I’m still in that place.”
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He continued, “I get called for meetings in studios, and the executive calling me tells me where to park my car. I say, ‘I don’t have a car’. I don’t even have a two-wheeler. So they ask me how I’ll come, and I tell them I’ll come by auto, or if it’s far, by bus. The minute I enter those meetings, they think of me as someone who travels by auto and bus, so they talk to me that way. They think that I’ll work for peanuts. That has not changed for me in 20 years and four feature films.”
He said that he lives with this insecurity to this day, and that his latest film, Joram, left him ‘financially wrecked’. “I’ve made peace with the fact that this isn’t going to change for the rest of my life, so do I change then?” he asked. He continued, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay my cook next month to eat her food, all these things are playing on my mind… My insecurities are tangible, and they’ve piled up to the point that the repercussions will be felt tomorrow, not two years from now. I need to keep working because I don’t know where the next cheque’s coming from. I need to be firing on 20 fronts, hoping that one bullet hits the bullseye.”
Makhija said that the world changed irrevocably after the 2008 recession, which also affected the production and consumption of art. “Art is the most luxurious thing you can put your money in, because you don’t know if you’re going to get your money back,” he said. Makhija said that he sustained himself when many of his projects were shelved by writing subtitles, and children’s picture books.
He said that he has no idea what his next movie will be, because greenlighting it is not in his power. “I’m working on eight stories simultaneously, because I don’t know which one will be be greenlit…” He said that for more than a decade, he has gone to bed with these insecurities. Starring Manoj Bajpayee, Joram played at several international film festivals before being released in theatres in December.
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